Past’s Sparks, Future’s Flame – Parts 0 & 1 – ThirteenRedVampireBites

Prologue – Past’s Future

“You look pensive, sir.”

Obi-Wan didn’t startle from his spot at the bridge window; he’d felt Cody’s Force-presence approach from behind long before the man spoke. With his hands folded behind his back, he twisted to look at the other man as his Commander finally came to stand at his left, rather than loitering behind him with his arms crossed over his chest, hiding the starburst painted across his chestplate. Obi-Wan hummed lowly and turned back to the view out the window.

“I have a—” Obi-Wan started, huffing.

“—bad feeling,” Cody finished, sighing and dropping his hands to his sides, fingers unerringly finding the blasters on his hips.

The corners of Obi-Wan’s mouth twitched up as he shifted his weight, swishing the hems of his robes across the floor with a soft surus. “This is most definitely a trap,” he murmured absently, staring out into the blue of hyperspace.

Cody subtly turned to eye the mix of Vode and Natborn personnel milling about the bridge of the Negotiator behind them, then shuffled a step closer to Obi-Wan and leaned in to murmur, “This is the GAR, sir; of course, it’s a trap.”

Obi-Wan had barely gotten the first notes of laughter past his lips when the blue of hyperspace flared with a quick flash of blood red, and before Cody could call out, they knew no more.

–

A brisk knock at his door made Commander Fox of the Coruscant Guard look up from his ever-growing stack of datawork, a glower on his face. He’d been out of sorts all day: he’d woken up with a massive headache; the caf machine in what passed for an Officer’s Lounge was broken; he had a pile of reports in his inbox of the various messes the Fronties had gotten up to while on leave; and it seemed like there was a new interruption every ten minutes. He was not in the mood for anything else to go wrong.

“This better be karking important,” he grumbled, then called out, “Come!”

The door slid open, and on the other side stood a sight he’d never seen before.

Quinlan Vos, his constant pain in the shebs cyare, was not typically one for wearing the traditional garb of the Jedi. He was more often found in the leather and canvas of spacers’ gear, looking like something a Tooka dragged in, rather than the serene, Monk-like facade the other Jedi put on. But right now, he stood in the main hallway of the Guard Office in pale gold robes with all the bits and bobs he would usually never be caught dead wearing. But really, it was the colour that said everything.

Gold, for Kiffar, as far as Fox had been able to find on the HoloNet, was the colour of death. The colour of mourning. The colour of sacrifice.

Fox didn’t need to ask who, as Quinlan entered the room properly, closing the door behind him. He knew; now that he thought about it, he had known something was wrong all day. He shook his head slowly, wishing he could deny it, but he knew to his marrow that the first to come to mind were gone.

A sad smile spread over Quin’s face as he leaned back against the door. “Plo’s got Wolffe,” he assured Fox weakly, folding his hands into his sleeves.

Fox got up from his desk and rounded the furniture to crowd into Quin’s space, pressing their foreheads together as he stared into honey-gold eyes. “May they be one in the Force, and with us always,” he murmured.

Quin raised a ringed hand to Fox’s face, cupping his cheek as he whispered, “Ni su’cuyi, gar kyr’adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum—Obi-Wan Kenobi. Cody.” They stared at each other in silence for a long moment before a nasty smirk crossed Quin’s lips. “How do you feel, my Fox, about Sith-Hunting?”

Fox blinked twice at him, a matching, almost feral grin spreading across his lips. “Oya, cyare.”

Part 1 – History Hunting

“And you’ll behave for Silas?” Jaster Mereel, of House Vhett, Clan Mereel, Mand’alor the Reformer, questioned his ade as they all stepped out the door to the Mand’alor’s Keep in the Heart of Keldabe. He turned and leaned against the thick stone railing, setting his hip against the capstone’s edge with a soft clink of his beskar’gam.

He didn’t need to look to know that both his children were rolling their eyes at him; there was just a feeling in the air. They’d gotten to that age where mischief was both expected and, in some cases, actively encouraged. Azara was fourteen, and the kind of kid who snuck out in the middle of the night with her friends to find every stray animal or random plant she could coax into letting her carry them home—usually in hopes of rehabilitating them, but just as often to use as a prank against some unsuspecting verd who’d met her ire. Ten-year-old Jango and his best friend Myles were the ones more often found in strange places (the number of times Jaster had needed to send someone with a jetpack up to rescue these kids from somewhere they shouldn’t even have been able to get to without one…) and doing strange things (the current obsession: attempting to build a fort out of every bit of flimsi that wasn’t nailed down or filed somewhere from every room in the Keep). Hopefully, the three of them—and yes, Jaster was going to count Myles as part of this, since Silas folded like a wet towel in the face of his ad’s pleas—didn’t run Jaster’s Second too ragged while they were in his care. Still, he wouldn’t be terribly surprised if Silas asked for a few days off when they returned, to have some time for himself.

“We’ll be fine, Jas’buir,” Azara assured him once he’d finally looked at her, her hands flying through the Hand Signs to match her words. She flicked her head, tossing some braids back over her shoulder, the beads clinking against her armour’s pauldrons.

“Yeah!” Jango agreed, making the accompanying signs as he continued, eagerly bouncing on his toes. “And if anything happens, we have your Comm Code and can call you right back.”

Jaster huffed in amusement; the bouncing made it difficult to read what Jango was signing, so he was incredibly thankful he had his hearing aids in to pick up the slack. He stepped away from the railing, moved close enough to clasp Jango’s shoulders with both hands, and held the boy down with careful but firm pressure so he wouldn’t pop off like a fizzy drink. “Alright,” he agreed, feeling the buzz of his own voice more than hearing it as he squeezed Jango’s shoulders lightly. “Don’t hesitate to do it,” he reminded them as he stepped down a few steps to be more level with the kids. He leaned in to half-hug each of them in turn, wrapping his heavy arms around his kids. He spent a moment with each kid, brushing their temples together lightly and imprinting fresh impressions into his mind, as he did every time he had to leave them for longer than a day, something that started all those years ago when Azara was just a toddler and freshly in his custody. His scales caught lightly against theirs each time, and if there was one thing Jaster was especially thankful for, being from one of the Oldest Lines, it was this ability to take sense-imprints of his kids.

On the surface, they both smelled of sand from being outside unprotected, but underneath that, he could clearly find their personal scents. Azara smelled mostly like the desert blossoms that lined every space in her room, but undertones of citrus from her hair products and the musk of the various strille that occupied the Keep were mixed in. Jango’s scent was both natural and environmental: fertile earth from helping in the Keep gardens, the quality flimsi from Jaster’s office that he so rarely used, and a smoky layer like fresh jetpack exhaust.

“We’ll send confirmation when we get to the campsite,” Jaster assured them, releasing his final hold on Jango and leaning back to study them for another moment. He mentally noted the areas in Jango’s training armour that needed adjustment once they got back, if Silas didn’t do it beforehand, and idly considered asking Azara about setting up another appointment to recolour her hair, since the sunlight, what little there was, made fading colour more obvious than it had been inside. But those were things to worry about later.

“And before you go in,” Azara reminded him pointedly, reaching out to poke him in the chest with the hand not currently signing along. It didn’t do much against all 18 stone of him, but it wasn’t supposed to.

“And before we go in,” Kal agreed, finally speaking up from his spot perched on the edge of the seat of the speeder bike they’d packed with the last-minute things to load onto their transport ship. Jango translated for Jaster with a slightly cheeky grin, and Jaster turned to look at his partner when his ad was finished, studying how the faint sunlight of the early morning caught the white stripes along the edges of every panel of Kal’s beskar’gam, and deepened the blues that made up the rest of the paint job, excluding the bright red splashed over his right pauldron in a matching pattern to Jaster’s left, as it had since they exchanged armour pieces with their vows three years ago. Kal pushed off the edge of the seat with a faint smirk, practically preening under Jaster’s attention, then straightened and signed to Jaster a quick [ready-go], tilting his head questioningly.

“And before we go in,” Jaster repeated, nodding firmly at Kal. He turned back to the kids, eyed the mischievous grins on their faces, then let out a bone-deep sigh and pushed every worry aside for now. Whatever they got up to while he and Kal were gone wasn’t Jaster’s problem. With his thumb and middle finger pressed together, Jaster tapped them twice against his forehead, and the kids mirrored the motion. With a huff of amusement at Jango’s continued bouncing, he leaned in and kissed both on the forehead, making exaggerated ‘mwah’ noises as he did so, earning an eye roll from Azara and a small noise of protest from Jango as the boy rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand.

“Behave,” Jaster reminded the kids one last time as he pulled away. “Silas is still gonna be busy with his usual work, and he doesn’t need to be putting out any fires in the Keep.”

“Other than the metaphorical ones,” Azara muttered to Jango as Jaster took the last few steps down the stairs to ground level. Jaster barked a laugh, twisting to look at her briefly, a wry smile tugging at the corners of his lips. She was spot on with that assessment; if it was calm in the Keep, it wouldn’t stay that way for long—someone would inevitably break something or a message would come in with some sort of stress-inducing news that would send the Keep into a frenzy of activity.

She smirked at him, and with a shake of his head, Jaster crossed the final short distance between the bottom of the stairs and the waiting speeder bike in the middle of the courtyard. He bumped Kal gently as he passed, smirking at the soft huff that escaped the younger man as Kal went to say his own goodbyes to their kids. He paused beside the speeder to unclip his buy’ce from his belt, then reached up and pulled it on, feeling the magnets lock into place as soon as they were close enough to activate. His ability to hear anything cut off briefly as the systems built into his beskar’gam booted up, his in-ear hearing aids turning off to let the built-in ones take over.

Kal was just finishing rubbing a hand through Jango’s hair when Jaster’s hearing came back online with a short beep, just in time to hear his partner remind the kids, “We’re planning to be gone for a tenday. Behave for Silas, complete your classwork on time, try not to burn the Keep down, and we’ll see about the trip to Vau’yaim when we get back.”

“Thank you, Kal’buir,” Jango cheered as Kal stepped away and removed his own buy’ce from his belt. “We’ll be extra good!”

Kal huffed a laugh. “We’ll see,” he reminded before pulling his buy’ce over his head. As the mag-locks activated, he walked back across the courtyard to join Jaster at the speeder, gently bumped his partner, and climbed onto the front of the bike. He waited for Jaster to climb on behind him, then both men waved to the kids before Kal started the speeder and drove away.

They were quiet as Kal maneuvered out through the Keep’s outer gate, then he spoke, briefly turning his head so he could see Jaster on his HUD through the peripheral cameras. “So, run it by me again,” he requested, turning back to face the landscape. “What nugget of history did you find interesting this time? And what are we going to be looking for exactly?”

Jaster leaned heavier against his back for a moment, sliding his arms around Kal’s waist. “Do you remember last year when we accidentally crossed paths with Duchess Esse Talda of Alderaan and her company?” Jaster questioned instead of answering.

Kal huffed in amusement. Did he remember a year ago, almost to the day, in fact, entering the “cargo” hold of the slave ship they’d been tracking for nearly twelve weeks and finding the youngest sister of the reigning King of Alderaan in cuffs, which she had already half-escaped on her own? And did he remember how she’d immediately quipped at them with no fear, even as most of her fellow captives—excluding those of her company, who’d revealed themselves by their exasperation—stared at her incredulously and at them in apprehension? Or how she’d tried to flirt with all three of them, but mostly his husband, for two minutes until the lights finally came back on and revealed the matching colours of their armour? Yes, of course, he remembered. It wasn’t often that anyone outside of the Mandalorian Sector interacted with them without some kind of underlying fear, and those who did were often searching for one of two things: a very specific sort of good time that Kal was only interested in playing out with Jaster, or a Bounty Hunter, and they were just as likely to press. So it was immensely surprising when she immediately stopped flirting with Jaster upon seeing the two of them standing together, matching pauldrons practically pressed together, only to turn her attention solely to flirting with By’tal Kyrne as the other woman worked on releasing her remaining cuffs. (Kal had later stumbled upon Esse exiting By’tal’s bunkroom in the wee hours of the morning, and said exactly nothing to either of them the next times he’d come across them together throughout the hyperspace trip back to Alderaan, nor in the months since then as he watched By’tal file for extended leaves to Alderaan when she had the time.)

Did he also remember the number of zeros attached to the credit deposit the King of Alderaan had snuck into their accounts for bringing her home? Why yes, yes, he did.

“What about her?”

“There was a night about a week into our trip back,” Jaster started, leaning into the tilt as Kal curved around one of the market buildings in the plaza. “I was getting some datawork done in the galley when she came in to get something to drink. We had a lovely conversation about the history of Mandalore while she waited for the kettle to boil. And after I tried to give the credits back—”

Kal snorted in amusement as he made the final turn out through the stronghold’s walls, sliding through the narrow gap between a freight-transport and the stonework with ease. That whole interaction had gone about as he’d expected when Jaster first mentioned trying to give the credits back after discovering them—it hadn’t happened. King Brol had been fittingly stubborn about his expectation that they take the payment for bringing his sister back, even without a Bounty Puck in their hands, let alone one filed at the time, when they brought her and her whole company home with only minor injuries. Jaster shifted to attempting to talk him down next, but the King wouldn’t hear a word of it—in fact, King Brol had threatened to add another two zeros to the number.

“Brol told me later that Esse’s been fascinated with a lot of the Warrior Cultures since she was a child, especially Mandalore and the Jedi.” Jaster hummed a low note, feeling it buzz in his throat, then shook his head quickly to clear it. “Anyways, I woke up on Life Day to my ‘pad blinking with messages from Esse. She’d send a whole collection of datafiles—some were books from several different Alderaani who’d had interactions with Mandalorians over the centuries, but one set…” He waved a hand in a circle between Kal’s stomach and the body of the speeder. “Apparently, four or five generations ago, one of the younger children of the then-Queen was given to the Jedi for training, and for their sibling’s later Coronation, they sent a full copy of Mand’alor Vizsla’s journals to Alderaan as their gift.”

“And she sent you a copy?” Kal questioned, raising an eyebrow within the confines of his buy’ce.

“I had told her at some point during that late-night conversation that I was interested in reading them, though I’d never found a surviving copy of them,” Jaster told him with a shrug. “I’ve found references and quotes, of course, but I couldn’t find a copy of them that had survived the Dral’han anywhere in the Mandalorian Sector, and the Jetiise haven’t responded to my inquiries yet. But Esse remembered the Alderaani copy, and apparently she requested that it be digitized this year, and she sent me a copy.”

“So what were they about?” Kal asked curiously.

Admittedly, Kal knew very little about the lengthy history of Manda’yaim, especially who was perhaps the most famous of Mand’alore, beyond the typical tidbits Beings the galaxy over who knew anything about Mandalore knew, or the parts intertwined with the cultural practices of Mando’ade. Part of it was how late he’d come into things—he wasn’t adopted until he was nearly the same age that Jango was now—and another part was the focus of his education after that; his education had been focused on the now of things, the kinds of things he’d needed to immediately know and use, rather than the long, drawn-out education of a formal school program, as the nomadic nature of his buir’s Tribe hadn’t left a lot of room for that kind of sit-down education—the long hours of hyperspace travel were typically filled with arms training and other important lessons like maths and reading; anything else was a spare-time occupation. And that really led into the final part: Kal had simply never been terribly interested in the minutiae of their cultural history; he was content with the broad strokes and moved on to the more interesting things like chemistry and anatomy. But don’t get him wrong: he could, and had, on numerous occasions, listen to Jaster talk for hours in any language; he just wasn’t interested in finding that information himself.

“The journals were written throughout Mand’alor Vizsla’s life,” Jaster explained. “The first few journals cover Mand’alor Vizsla’s childhood, from what seems like the time they first picked up a writing utensil until they were deployed during the Last Sith-Jedi War. There are three journals that cover the years of the war; the last one covers that final year alone—and the information on the Reformations it contains… but I was most interested in the two journals that follow. The first runs from the year after the war, 1 A.R.R., to the year after they became Mand’alor, 7 A.R.R., and the second follows immediately after, running until 15 A.R.R.”

“What was so interesting about those journals?” Kal asked as he pulled up to the shipyard’s Gatehouse. He waved to the verd on duty and drove through the gate.

“To start, Mand’alor Vizsla didn’t set out to become Mand’alor,” Jaster explained, watching the ships pass as they went deeper into the shipyard. “They simply defended themselves and their people, and the end result was a title.”

“Sounds familiar,” Kal teased as he pulled up to their berth and stopped the speeder at the edge of the landing pad. He tapped a few buttons on his vambrace and the cargo ramp on their retrofitted personnel carrier dropped so he could drive in. “And the second one?”

“One of the first projects Mand’alor Vizsla had built new after the restoration was a Temple for the kara’tsad,” Jaster explained, leaning forward against Kal’s back as they went up the ramp. “The second journal was about the whole process… including the coordinates for the site.’“ He grunted as Kal came to an abrupt halt at the top of the ramp, just barely inside the cargo hold of their ship.

“Actual coordinates?” Kal questioned, twisting to face Jaster even as he awkwardly walked the bike farther inside.

Jaster shrugged as he dropped his feet to the ground. “They’re written in Mand’alor’s Code, but yes, actual coordinates,” he explained, waiting for Kal to get a hold of himself and turn the speeder off before getting off. He stepped to the side and stretched his arms over his head. “Of course, trying to gain access might be a problem, but Mand’alor Vizsla left another coded message to an access point that might still be accessible.”

“And that’s what we’re looking for?” Kal asked, throwing his leg over the speeder and turning to sit facing Jaster, elbow resting on the edge of the controls.

“And that’s what we’re looking for,” Jaster confirmed.

• • Shebs: butt

• • Cyare: sweetheart, beloved, darling; terms for a romantic partner

• • Ni su’cuyi, gar kyr’adyc, ni partayli, gar darasuum: lit. I’m still alive, but you are dead. I remember you, so you are eternal; Mandalorian belief regarding death

Part 1:

• • Mand’alor: sole ruler; in this case, the elected War-Leader of Mandalore

• • ade: children, typically aged 3-13, but also generally in the ‘my children/children of—’ kind of way

• • beskar’gam: Mandalorian Armour, made of a special alloy called Beskar that can only be found in the Mandalorian System

• • verd: a soldier/commando

• • ad: child, singular

• • buir: parent

• • strille: plural of strill; a smelly, tawny coloured, six-legged canine-esque animal endemic to Mandalore. Typically used for hunting or as a tracker, but also make great pets and medical assistance animals, as is the case here.

• • buy’ce: helmet

• • yaim: home, or compound; Vau’yaim, for example, is the family compound of the Vau family.

• • Jetiise: Jedi

• • Dral’han: the Mandalorian Excision; the destruction of Mandalore perpetrated by the Republic as a ‘precaution’ against an empowered Mandalore becoming a problem, often described as having Jedi involvement, but if you actually asked the Jedi… well.

• • kara’tsad: lit. Star Group; one of the many terms for the Force-Sensitives of Mandalore.