IN THE SHADOW OF THE MANDALORE
A SCI-FI FRIDAY example
CHAPTER SEVEN
A JEDI TAKES COUNCIL
i
“I don’t know what she expects me to find,” Dax said, sitting back in frustration.
He pinched the bridge of his nose before rubbing his eyes, feeling what he supposed was the start of a tension headache. After an hour of searching through the Archives, he was finding it difficult to concentrate. His mind kept playing tricks on him, going over the details as he remembered them. He could see now, how the battle with the drones on the other side of the planet was more than a coincidence; it had been a trap. Even knowing his failure to sense the plot against his father was not a sign of weakness on his part—it was still a mental mistake he was quick to blame himself for.
It was a mistake that had cost Voss his life.
Dax kept telling himself that it wasn’t his fault. He wasn’t the one responsible for Voss’s death. He kept telling himself Master P’oh was right. It had been a foolish waste of life, and there was little either one of them could’ve done to prevent it. That didn’t make accepting his death any easier—for either one of them, he knew.
Still, Dax wasn’t one to admit failure.
His memory of the Mandalorian leaping from Archangel’s loading ramp to the waiting Basilisk War Droid— as well as the sight of his sister holding him tight, screaming—kept replaying in his mind. He was certain her screams would haunt his dreams until the day he died. Then there was the look his father had levelled against him after. As if his failure to rescue her had been his fault, and his alone.
“Maybe you need to look at this differently?” Dyatha-Lun said gently, bringing him back to a reality he had yet to face.
“Why? Does it look like I’ve hit a dead end?” he asked her.
She smiled. “I don’t mean that you should be looking for more reading material, just,” she paused, “different reading material,” she added. “You’re trying to find a Mandalorian living on an ecumenopolis of more than sixty billion beings, and half of them are probably unregistered. If he doesn’t want you to find him, you won’t. If no one sensed his presence here earlier, what makes you think you’re going to find him on record?”
“I’m just doing what Master P’oh suggested.”
“Maybe she just wanted you to stay out of the way for a while?”
“Why?”
Dyatha-Lun sat down on the small stool as Dax stood up, waiting for her answer. He was leaning against the handrail and looked up at the cone shaped building around him. A multitude of lighted walkways crisscrossed each other, and the higher he counted, the more like stars the lights appeared. He lost count thirty floors above him, and the prospect of searching for more information suddenly seemed overwhelming.
He looked at her seated on the small stool. “Why do you think she wants me out of her way?” he asked again.
“You keep saying he’s a Mandalorian,” she said, ignoring his question. “How do you know that for certain?”
“The witnesses all agree on that at least—just like they agree he was a Sith.”
“A Mandalorian Sith?”
Dax heard the doubt in her voice.
“He killed Master Voss.” The memory of the decapitated body was still fresh in his mind, and he tried to block the image.
“Death is most unbecoming at the best of times,” Dyatha-Lun said with a slow shake of her head, “but neither proves, nor disproves, the facts.”
“What facts?”
“Any eye witness account is always multiplied by the same factors no matter how many witnesses you have.”
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“Witnesses will always agree on certain facets of the truth. Maybe I should say, a certain reality of the truth? But as for anything else, they can’t be relied upon.”
“I don’t understand. They were there. They saw it. Mater P’oh and I saw him.”
“They all agree he killed Master Voss. But that’s all they agree on. As for him being a Mandalorian neo-Centurion, a Sith Lord, or a Mandalorian Sith, they can’t tell you because they don’t know the difference. Therefore, what he is, and who he is, is speculation. It’s up to you to determine what the truth is, and what’s speculation.”
“How am I supposed to do that?”
“The first question you should always ask yourself, should be why,” she said. “Why did he attack the Archangel? What was it carrying that made him desperate enough to go to such lengths?”
“Based on what the witnesses said, or claimed—and from what I understand—he was after an artefact.”
“An artefact?” Her head snapped up and her eyes bored into him. He noticed the small antennae on her head twitching, and smiled at her.
“It was a page of manuscript, I think. Master P’oh reasoned that if I can trace the artefact, or the page, I may be able to find who’s looking for it, and then I can forward the information to her at the Jedi Temple.”
“Do you know what’s on it? Assuming it’s a page, I mean.”
Dax shook his head. “Except... someone heard something about a Talisman.”
“A Talisman?” She looked up at him once more and he could see the obvious tightening of her jaw. “What sort of a Talisman? It’s very important that I know what sort of a Talisman it is.”
“I don’t know. My father didn’t say much more than that, and no one knows enough of what they were talking about to help us get the full story. My father isn’t saying much at the moment.”
Dyatha-Lun looked at him with a slight tilt of her head, and then just as quickly looked away. She was silent as she stared down at the floor, concentrating, and Dax found himself caught up in her excitement.
“What do you think it is?”
“There’s only one artefact that’s ever been referred to as the Talisman,” she said.
“What’s that?”
She looked up at him. “The Myrn Talisman.”
He sat back and smiled. “I thought that was a myth.”
“Every myth has some basis of truth.”
“And this one?”
“Is real enough.”
She shook her head slowly and stared down at the floor again, then looked up at him, forcing a smile. “Instead of trying to look for a trace of an unknown manuscript, we need to broaden your search.”
“Broaden it? How?”
“It might be easier if you looked at his armour,” she said.
“His armour?”
“It’s Mandalorian. So? Where’d he get it? He can’t have brought it in. There’s a distinct possibility he may have bought it from a collector.”
“A collector? You mean private?”
“Luckily, everything’s registered. Unfortunately, there’s a lot to go through.”
“And how many museums do you think are on this planet?”
“If I were to hazard a guess? More than ten million.”
“More than ten million? What about War Memorials? How many of those do you think there are? I don’t even want to think about private collectors.”
“But everything is registered.”
“So what does that matter if we don’t know where to start?” he asked.
“What? What do you mean? Of course we know where to start.”
“We do?”
A sense of defeat began forming in the back of his mind as he reminded himself they hadn’t even begun yet. Dyatha-Lun looked up at him and shook her head. Forcing herself to stand up, she looked up at him and explained what he had to do.
“It’s not as difficult as it sounds,” she said.
“No? I don’t see it that way. You work here. You know all the ins and outs of the place. Me? I’d get lost just leaving the room.”
“You don’t have to leave the room,” she laughed.
“No?”
“You can identify him through his armour, tracing it back to whatever museum, or collector, may have owned it before; then follow it from there.”
“I don’t know what kind of armour it was. All I know is it was Mandalorian.”
“They marked their armour individually. With Clan names. That’s what I meant when I said it’s not as difficult as it sounds.
“And I’m supposed to know the Clan names?”
“This is an archive. We have droids that do all of that.”
“Droids?”
“You really are lost here,” she said with a smile. “Alyssa was the same way, until I showed her the way.”
“You’re going to have to do a lot more than just show me the way,” Dax grinned. “You’re going to have to take me by the hand and lead through.”
“We’ll take it one step at a time.”
“Okay. That I can do.”
“Luckily, there are videos everywhere.” She punched in co-ordinates for the crash site, and in a moment Dax saw Archangel breaking atmosphere. There was a streak of light behind it almost a second after the larger craft broke atmosphere.
“There! Did you see that?”
“I did,” Dyatha-Lun said nodding. She adjusted the focus, and brought the smaller craft into focus.
“That’s the Mandalorian ship I destroyed.”
“Isn’t it nice to find out they always have a back-up plan?” she said with a smile.
“That’s what Master P’oh said. It felt good destroying it all the same.”
“I’m sure it did. Now, I’ll just fast forward this a little bit, and we’ll wait until he gets out of his ship.”
“The ship has a call sign,” Dax said excitedly.
“And I passed it through the system. I’m almost certain someone in SecuroCom must be checking it out, so it shouldn’t take long to find it. But I’m glad to see you’re picking up on the details.”
“SecuroCom? I thought this was a Jedi matter?”
“The Jedi are not a police force. Why would you think they are? Investigations of this type — well, any type really — are still done by SecuroCom.”
“Why don’t the Jedi investigate?”
“Would you trust a Jedi to interrogate a suspect? No. And why would you?”
“But he’d be able to get to the truth,” Dax said.
“He would. But if he was involved in the case, he’d also be able to make the suspect say whatever he wanted.”
“I suppose I never thought of it that way.”
“I suppose you didn’t. Now, if this man’s a true Mandalorian, his armour will reflect that. He wouldn’t go to all the trouble of tracking it down himself if it didn’t mean something to him. Once you find the Clan name, in no time at all you’ll have the man’s name.”
“And where do you find the Clan name?”
“It’s on the arm.”
“I don’t see anything.”
“We’ll find it.”
“And when we find it? Then what?”
“He may have approached a collector looking to purchase the armour. If not, he may have stolen it–but again, only this specific kind—”
“Of suit that has his Clan name.”
“Yes. It’s the same with the Basilisk. A lot depends on luck, and you’re lucky enough to have surveillance cameras.”
“Cameras? What are they going to tell me?”
“If you can read the Clan name off the man’s armour, you should be able to read it off the Basilisk’s side. Mandalorians are, by nature, vain and arrogant, so why should this man be any different?”
“Why do so many museums and War Memorials have Droids and armour? I thought the Mandalorians left when the Mandalore was killed.”
“The war ended with the Treaty of Coruscant, not with the death of the Mandalore. Mandalorian and Sith troops continued policing the planet until Revan, Malak, and the Revanchists took it back. When the end came, most of the Mandalorians were killed; those that weren’t, fled the planet and become mercenaries, bounty hunters. Remember, the food riots were beginning at that time—and there was still the Rakghoul Plague, even though they’d managed to confine it to the planet’s surface. The Sith agreed to withdraw according to the Treaty, but they left their drones behind to plague the space lanes. They also took a great many slaves with them. That’s one of the reasons Revan and Malak chased them into the Unknown Regions. They wanted to destroy them. Instead, they were lost to the Darkness.”
“So how do I find a suit of armour, or a Basilisk War Droid, in all of that? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
“I told you, the surveillance cameras.”
“What floor is that on?” Dax asked, looking up at the crisscrossing walkways overhead.
“You really do have to pay more attention. You don’t have to go to another floor. I told you, you can access information from any terminal here,” she said. “You really don’t have the first idea about solving a mystery, do you?”
