Dorn: A Star Wars Story

20. Pirate - Part III

I met Khomo once.

I figured he would have if what I had heard about the clan-oriented Mandalorians was true, but I couldn't help but wonder what sort of a man he had grown up to be. I wondered what he would be like, if he'd be anything like his father.

I only missed a handful of people in my life, and Kando...

I never knew my actual father.

The man who sired me.

Or my mother, really, aside from vague flashes of her from my memory and the one, old, broken holoportrait of them. One taken before I was born.

Kando was more of a parent to me than either of them had been. Maybe had things been different, maybe I wouldn't think that way, but...

I missed him.

I couldn't leave Brea and Shenna alone when he asked. Not after they had lost everything. It was easier when Shenna got older, and as we sat there waiting on Talen and Reo to finish prepping the speeder, that wave of regret hit me like a tauntaun. It was one of the reasons I hated downtime. It gave me too much time to sit down and think.

"What do we know about Khomo?" Nyra asked as she looked up from her rifle. "Strengths? Weaknesses?"

"He's a Mandalorian and son of my former mentor," I spoke up, looking up from my boots to meet her gaze. "Other than that, I don't know much."

Talen jumped in as he stepped away from the speeder, "He leads Clan Ordo now. There's all sorts of stories about him and his group, but they apparently came back to Rishi for a reason. Rumors have it he was on the trail of Mandalorian artifacts to help boost morale and to get his people out from under the New Republic for a little while. Rishi has an old Mandalorian base here - Galactic Civil War era. I think that's why he's here."

"This is definitely the place for it..." I muttered as I stood and saw Talen finish up preparation on the speeder as he turned to the rest of the group and replaced his rebreather.

"Hop in," he gestured. "It's one hell of a ride to the base. Reo will get us there."

We piled into the hunk of junk and set off through the forest. It was an old transport speeder, rickety but effective, probably used in its prime for hauling laborers from one part of the planet to another. The open top let us take in the sights as we passed, and I had to admit that Rishi was a planet I wanted to see at some point when we weren't on a life or death mission to take out a group of Rebel pilots. The whole planet was coated with greens, yellows, and browns, absolutely teeming with greenery and life. I hadn't gotten to see a bunch of planets like that in my time, and it was easy to get lost in the beauty of it all. The paths would give way to deep crevasses and ravines that snaked their way through the thick forests of the planet like the lashing tails of some jungle beast. Gradually, the ravines gave way to metal bridges that connected the smaller islands to one another, and I saw Randd reach her hand out and glide it along the water as we rocketed across.

I was fixated on watching the islands in the distance when we were all snapped backwards sharply as the speeder shot up one of the metal ramps to take us to the island that seemed to house our destination. When we reached it, I caught the distinct smell of burning earth and rocks. Reo beeped out a warning about the presence of lava, and I turned to Talen, "What kind of hell hole did you drag us into?"

"Don't look at me! Ask Khomo when we find him," Talen called over his shoulder as he and Reo took us up a steep path and onto one of the new islands. 

The smell of sulfur and magma was almost overpowering when they finally parked us. When we disembarked, I saw exactly what Talen meant when he talked about an old Mandalorian base. Massive weather-beaten statues rose from the thick jungle foliage wearing ancient Mandalorian armor, and as we carefully made our way through the forests, the little signs of life became more and more visible. Tracks from land vehicles, abandoned crates of supplies, stripped droids, and broken down weapons. In the distance, rising above the trees, was the top of some metal building, and I took a guess that if we were going to find these Mandos anywhere, it was going to be there.