Many Years Ago...



Concord Dawn



They'd been here for three days now, holed up in a small hill range. Out of site and out of mind, as Dan often liked to say.

Of course, Dan wasn't here - she was. Herself, along with a small contingent of commandos. One of them, an angry looking Besalisk, kept to his own. He was one of the originals, one of the first soldiers from the conception of the White Phoenix Commando Squad. Phrexus, he'd said his name was. She had no idea how old he was, and she'd not had the desire to ask him, either. He seemed as though he'd been about long enough to have seen a good portion of the galaxy, and she was certainly not going to pry. Not that anything like that was particularly necessary to know - the White Phoenix Commandos had a tendency to die young, so when some made it past their fifth mission, they were often enough simply seen as older than time. Grizzled vets who'd seen some shit and lived through worse.

And Concord Dawn was no vacation venue, either. Any planet that was missing a not insignificant portion of its landmass was the furthest thing from a good time as a person could get.

Dan had said there was a small clan here; one that had been cast out from the rest, and he'd wanted to gain their help. It was a longshot, but he'd said that it was worth taking. He'd said that the White Phoenix, with her attached to their small numbers, could do it.

She wasn't so sure.

The refuge was a decently sized cave, fortified and well defended by the commandos who slept in shifts and passed their free time either eating or making sure that their gear was in fighting form.




"What're they called again."

The Besalisk's gravely voice cut through her thoughts as she sat just beyond the cave's yawning mouth, propped against a small rock outcropping.

"Clan Maru."

Phrexus snorted out an exhaled breath.

"Been three days. You sure Dan's intel was right?"

"He seemed confident in it."

"Confidence don't help when it comes t'our asses on the line. Enough Mandalorians on this busted-ass planet won't think twice 'bout givin' folks like us to the Empire."

Lifting a hand, she flipped her helmet-mounted macros up. A broken gaze tracked over, to meet the hard eyes boring down on her.

"Too late to get cold feet now, Sir."

There was a bare moment of silence before he smirked, lips drawing back to expose sharp teeth. He gestured back to the empty expanse that they were watching, settling himself a little bit more comfortably as one of his hands lifted, flipping down his helmet-mounted macros.

"I s'pose havin' a Jedi about gives us more'n a 15% chance of succeedin'. I reckon we got... oh, 17%, now."

An exasperated sigh, and s'Il returned to her watching.

"You're confidence in me is... astounding," she grumped, even as another of his hands reached over to give her shoulder a good-natured - if not slightly rough - pat.