A Good Thing

-Mandalore-

Chapter 52

-Mandalore-

They had engaged as soon as they dropped out of hyperspace. Din flew the Cin Vhetin alongside dozens of squads of X-wing and Y-wing fighters, overwhelming the Tie-fighters in less than thirty minutes. With their fighters out of the way, it didn't take long to destroy their light cruisers. In less than two hours, the space battle was won.

Descending into the atmosphere, they had come under fire at once. Anti-aircraft artillery had been set up around the dome, and turrets blocked every entrance into the city. But they had been prepared for that. As more Tie-fighters poured out of Sundari, they waged a battle on two fronts.

It wasn't until he made a pass at one of the turrets guarding the main entrance into the city that he saw them. Sargent Park and the two Mandalorians, his men, that he'd sent into the city were dead. Their bodies hung—stripped down to their compression layers—from a balcony thirty meters over the entrance. Blood trickled down the side of the dome beneath them and in the fleeting moment Din had to look closely, he could see the evidence of beatings on their discolored faces.

With an enraged cry Din fired at the turrets, taking a burning pleasure to see four stormtroopers fall to their deaths. How fucking dare they.

Without thinking about what he was doing, he banked around to attack the entrance again. Beside him, Asta finally saw what he did. Her furious sob only angered him more.

"No! No... Vod..." She leaned around in her seat, her visor trained on him. "Vi Kelir gotal'ur cuun aru'ese Waadar, Mand'alor!"

Not losing focus for a second, Din fired again and growled out his response. "Vi Kelir gra'tuar cuun vod."

As he flew away from the heavy fire to regroup and contact Skord and Bo-Katan, he suddenly had a flashback to the day his buir had fallen. He hadn't been able to take his body with them. They had been fleeing, overwhelmingly outnumbered and had barely managed to escape with their lives. He'd watched, with his last glance back as stormtroopers irreverently trampled and jostled his buir's lifeless body as they pursued them.

His beskar had been stripped from him, he knew. Melted down and used by the Empire. Part of him—the dark and angry part that hurt so much in the years immediately after as he went down a path he was thankful Omera never asked about—had wondered if they had desecrated his body after they'd stolen his skin too. As he looked back at the three dead men practically naked without their beskar hanging from the city dome, all he could see was his own father, laying dead and trampled in the street.

If Din had had any lingering doubts over the necessity of reclaiming Mandalore, they were gone now. Anger and guilt soured his gut and threatened to steal his better judgment. He wanted to act rashly—to hell with their plan—to rush the city with their greater numbers and kill every single Imperial remnant man and woman in the place.

Before he completely lost his sense of self, he remembered how devastating it had been to lose his buir. For the second time in his life he had lost his father, and it had nearly broken him. He had hardened and closed himself off to survive and hadn't felt much of anything until he'd found his own son.

He wouldn't leave his own children to that fate. He couldn't, he'd promised.

Taking a deep, burning breath, he turned the Cin Vhetin away from the dome. They would take the city, but they would follow their plan and he would survive to go home to his family.

<DO>

This fucking city. Cara had fought close quarters before, but urban warfare was a pain in the kriffing ass. Especially when their enemy was dug in and had nothing left to lose with absolutely no desire to surrender. Not that Din would have accepted anything less than annihilation after what they'd done to his men.