God Save the Queen Book 2: Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Gem of the Sands

“Spacious enough for you?” Anakin asked.

“It’s so big.” Schel stretched her arms out like she was trying to touch both walls of her quarters. “How many am I sharing with?”

“Nobody,” Anakin replied. “This is all yours for the rest of the trip.”

It was a standard cabin. Anakin had just flagged down a quartermaster once he’d heard that Schel’s ship had already left the system. She didn’t seem too broken up about it.

“Ha.” She let her arms fall back to her sides. “So, three?”

“Schel, you’ve seen how big the ship is.” Anakin shrugged. “They’ve got a kriffload of rooms.”

She turned towards him, corners of her lips tilting down. “The last time I had my own rack was when I could still fit into the nook behind the water reclaimer.”

Anakin hummed.

“This is like…bigger than Cap—than Duke’s cabin on the Second Deal.” Schel shook her head. “Who did you suck for this?”

“Suck?” Anakin shook his head. “I—what are you talking about? This is your bunk ‘till Serenno, ‘cause no one wants to stick you in the barracks.”

Schel glared at him for a moment longer before walking over to sit on the bed, arms crossed.

He held back a laugh. “You got your confidence back.”

“Something about almost getting my head cut off by a laser sword,” Schel replied. “Lasers shouldn’t be swords.”

“I said sorry.” Anakin patted the hilt of his lightsaber. “And it worked, didn’t it?”

Schel grumbled, hunching in on herself. “See how you like it…”

Things had been a bit messy in the sand crawler. He wasn’t sure if Schel would have survived jumping out of it, but luckily Padme and Master had been there.

“Anyway, finally got a new commlink. Here’s yours.” He tossed his old one and Schel snatched it out of the air. “I’ve already put in my frequency, so you can raise me if you need help getting round the Gunga.”

“It’s so big,” Schel replied. “Barely feels like we’re in space at all.”

“Is that good?” Anakin asked.

“Kriff if I know.” Schel shrugged. “Beats the sand.”

This time Anakin did laugh.

He waited for her to keep talking, but Schel seemed content to poke silently at her commlink. Anakin had put it together himself, salvaged partly from his old one. It wouldn’t interfere with any of the local comm traffic, and he’d needed something to do while waiting to ship out.

After-action took longer than the actual action, it felt like.

“What’s wrong?” Anakin asked.

Schel didn’t reply right away, but Anakin caught a line of tension running along her shoulders. She’d been given a spare uniform, with the rank and insignia removed. It made her look…thin.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she said.

“C’mon, you can tell me.” Anakin leaned against the wall of the room. “We just stormed a sand crawler; that means we can’t lie to each other.”

“…Is that how it works, wherever you’re from?”

“Never attacked a sand crawler on Tatooine,” Anakin replied. “Jawas are vicious.”

“Sure.” Schel shifted. For a second, Anakin thought she was gonna leave it at that, but after a moment she said, “What happens on Serenno? To me.”

He blinked. “Nothing? Your crew got let off clean—”

“Lucky bastards,” Schell muttered.

“So you don’t have anything to worry about,” Anakin continued. “If you want to stay on Serenno, I’ll talk to Padme and we’ll get you set up.”

“How do you even know her?” Schel asked. “She’s…she’s an admiral.”

Anakin grinned. “Rear admiral, actually. But don’t let the crew hear you say that.”

“I never thought I’d meet an admiral.” Schel shook her head. “And…and she’s just gonna ‘help me out’?”

“Of course. You did help me take out those slavers,” Anakin replied.

“I was dead weight,” Schel said.

“You disabled the sensors,” Anakin said. “I appreciated working with someone who knows a hydrospanner from hand wrench.”

“…Not a lot of mechanics in the Jedi?” Schel asked.

Anakin shrugged. “There are slicers.” He’d learned a lot at the temple, but the order viewed technology as just one more tool. “Either way, you should be fine. And if you want to go somewhere else, that should be fine too.”

“I’d be fine never getting on a ship again,” Schel said. “If you’re not lying to me, then Serreno will be capital.”

“C’mon now. We stormed a sand crawler together,” Anakin replied.

“Right. We can’t lie.” She turned her head, and Anakin felt Schel’s attention land fully on him. “Can still dodge questions though. You haven’t told me how you met Admiral Amidala.”

“Rear admiral,” Anakin said.

The weight of Schel’s attention grew heavier.

Anakin shrugged. “It would…take a while to explain.”

“Apparently, I don’t have anything to do until Serenno,” Schel replied. “Or do Jedi just know admirals? Is that a Jedi thing?”

“A Jedi thing.” Anakin rolled his eyes. “If you really want to know, it started when her ship hot landed on Tatooine.”

“This thing?” Schel sat up. “It survived reentry? Are we sure it’s still sound? Did they—”

“Not the Gunga.” Anakin waved a hand. “That came later.” Slowly at first, then with more ease, he told the story of how Padme Amidala walked into Watto’s junkyard looking for parts, about the pod race he’d won, about the battle against the trade federation.

Schel listened attentively and at the end, “No way.” She shook her head. “What happened to no lies?”

“All true, I swear on the Force,” Anakin said.

“I don’t believe you.” Schel folded her arms decisively. “Humans can’t pod race.”

Anakin snorted. “What do you know about pod racing? You’ve never been off a ship before yesterday.”

“I know that Duke loses whenever he bets on other humans,” Schel replied.

“I am a Jedi, you know.” Anakin patted the hilt of his lightsaber. “We come with these fancy laser swords. Heard that they can take people’s heads off.”

“Lasers shouldn’t be swords,” Schel muttered again. “S’why I didn’t think Jedi were real.”

“Thought we were some spacer’s tale?” Anakin leaned back. “What, like angels?”

“No!” Schel frowned at him, a hand twitching up towards her blindfold. “Angels are real. I’ve seen them.”

Anakin grinned. “So have I.”

~~*

The door to my quarters beeped.

I looked away from the holoprojected window, and a quick tap showed that Bo was waiting outside. “Enter.”

The door slipped open. I nodded to my Praetorian standing in the hallway—a precaution given the number of prisoners we’d taken on board. Bo-Katan stepped inside, and tapped the door shut behind her.

“Have a seat.” I waved to the chair across from me. One thing about Lucrehulks was that they had a lot of space. My quarters were almost comparable to Royal Apartments back on Theed. “Wrapped up everything planet-side?”

A discarded report pad sat on the table by my elbow. Unfortunately, my earlier estimations of Captain Ohnaka had been borne out. He couldn’t be tied to the slaving operation in any meaningful way. In the face of his direct assistance, we’d been forced to release him and the rest of the smugglers we’d first found in orbit.

In return, we’d lost three praetorians and one speeder to a lucky turbo laser hit.

I killed the part of myself that considered those losses ‘light’ each time I reread the report.

Still, the mood was high, and I’d handed command off to my captains as we made preparations to be underway. We’d taken out a ring of slavers in the outer rim: the first group of many, if we were to accomplish Naboo’s stated goal of stabilizing the Triellus Hyperlane from Tatoine to The Wheel.

Bo-Katan slipped into the chair across from me, her narrow face pinched. She’d traded her armor for a loose robe and tailored leather, but somehow looked less at ease.

I turned my gaze back to the holo display in my ‘window.’

After a minute, Bo blew out a huff of air. “You’re insufferable, sometimes, Al’verde.” (commander)

I raised an eyebrow. “Is there something about my performance you find dissatisfying?”

“Once, but no longer.” Bo laughed, tossing a small metal case onto the table. “That besom(mannerless rogue) gave me this as a ‘gift’ before he left.”

“Smugglers.” I moved a hand over to the case, pausing until Bo nodded. “Trying to make a sale?”

“More than that,” she muttered.

Inside the case sat a half-circlet of metal, shattered from something larger. It shimmered a faded gold, and the edges were worn smooth, but when I tilted it, it almost looked like the top of a visor. Tested my thumb against an edge. “Beskar. A faceplate?”

“Yes, old,” Bo replied. “Ohnaka implied he could get us more.”

“Why are you bringing me fragments of an old war mask?” I raised an eyebrow. “What, is it the Mask of Mand’alore?”

She did not reply.

“You can’t be serious.” I leaned forward. “It was lost millennia ago.”

“Mand’alore the Preserver recovered the mask three thousand and nine hundred years ago, during the days of the Old Republic,” Bo said. “Clan Kyrze has many of Clan Ordo’s records from after the War.”

I assumed she spoke of the war between the Mandalorians and the Old Republic. The Republic had lost a great deal of its history since then. Before becoming a Mando’ad myself, I’d known only the broadest strokes of that period.

“The Mask of Mand’alor is mentioned in conjunction with Mand’alor the Preserver and his successors until a gap in the records.” Bo shrugged. “When another clan ascends to Mand’alor, there is no mention of the mask. From that point, several Mand’alor make claims to the original mask, but it is assumed to be lost before that time. Shattered.”

I turned a significant look towards the fragment sitting in a small metal case. “You know a great deal of our people’s history.”

Bo snorted. “I betrayed my sister because I believed in the ideals of the Death Watch.”

She’d done her research, she was saying.

“And this Pirate tried to sell you the Mask of Mandalore,” I said. “Along with one of the moons of Kuat, or was that a separate offer?”

“Of course not.” She crossed her arms. “The pirate offered me a separate source of Beskar. That was a sample.”

“I understand why he came to you with that offer.”

Bo-Katan waved her hand at the shard, as if to say ‘and I brought it to you’.

As the wielder of the Darksaber, Bo-Katan Kryze was the de facto ruler of the clans, apart from the New Mandalorians. As queen of Naboo, however, I had my own influence. Of the lost clans and lone Mando’ad who had returned to us since the battle of Naboo, many regarded me more favorably than Bo-Katan. Clan Kyrze and Clan Wrenn alone outnumbered the once lost, but it was a poor ruler who ignored potential threats to their rule.

Securing her own supply of Beskar for new armor would also secure her position and attract new converts.

Finding the Mask of Mand’alor on the other hand…well, there was a reason neither she nor I nor Satine had ever made a claim to the title of Mand’alor.

“Why do you think it’s part of the true mask, then?” I waved a hand. “And not just another lost fragment of armor, which already stretches my belief.” The Mando’ade did not own every scrap of Beskar in the galaxy. It made far more sense for this to be a lost scrap that looked like a mask.

“On Mand’alor—”

“The planet,” I clarified.

Bo-Katan glared at me.

“I just want to be sure we’re speaking of the right Mand’alor,” I said.

“In the vaults of the Sundari Royal Palace, we have many relics of our history,” Bo continued. “We had one such fragment in a display case, the same burnished gold. As a child…my sister and I used to pretend it was a fragment of Mand’alor’s Mask. I can’t be certain, but I’d swear to the ancestors that fragment fits perfectly here, at the temple.”

She traced a finger over the metal.

“And why a matching fragment would end up here?”

“Our people fought many wars in the Outer Rim.” Bo leaned forward. “And there is Beskar in the sand.”

“What?”

“That is what caused the interference, the sand here, much of it contains traces of Beskar, worn down over the ages. Other metals that couldn’t be mined in that place,” she said.

“Was there a battle?” I asked. “A settlement?”

“I’ve learned that there are rarely simple answers in history,” Bo replied. “The indigenous species are still nomads. I would be surprised if their oral traditions stretched back more than a few hundred years.”

I tilted my head. “We don’t know the length of their generations. Anakin suggested they were force sensitive.” Such races usually lived longer.

“And we can’t communicate with them, so it’s meaningless.” Bo waved a hand. “What matters is that there are enough ‘relics’ here that someone decided to retrofit a sand crawler to trawl the desert and contacted a smuggler to move their spoils.”

I let out a slow hiss as I made the connection. “Because of my Beskar program.”

“Naboo buying all the Beskar we can get our hands on makes a find like this worth piles of credits,” Bo replied.

“So they set up an operation, find a few intact bits of armor, one of which Ohnaka tries to sell to you. A fragment that you swear is a perfect match to another fragment the Sundari vaults.” I sighed.

And all of this because Anakin crashed on an unnamed planet in the Outer Rim. Impossible was just a word to the Jedi.

“What would we even do about your hunch?” I asked. “Duchess Satine still hasn’t responded to my request for a pilgrimage, and she certainly won’t to either of us claiming we’ve discovered the kriffing Mask of Mand’alor.”

“I can convince her to extend an invitation,” Bo said.

“Something you haven’t done…” My brow furrowed. “But now that we’ve found an old metal fragment, that changes?”

Bo met my gaze, and I blinked at the fervor burning in her eyes. “What if I’m right?” She swept her hand out to the side. “Even if only matches that mask fragment, it is a piece of armor thousands of years old. Who knows how many more sets of armor we could find under the sands?”

“I’m sure the local population will be happy,” I replied. “When we pick up where Ohnaka’s scapegoat left off. When we can’t even communicate with them.”

Bo-Katan met my eyes. “I’m sure you can come to an arrangement.”

“I’m sure we have bigger problems.” Then, I sighed. “…But we do need more Beskar.”

Translators, a survey team. If the amount in the sand was high enough to be worthwhile, I could justify trading a great deal for mining rights. I fought back a grimace at the thought.

“What do you want from me, Bo?” I asked. “Aid? Advice? Because it seems like your mind is already made up.”

“My mind is.” She stared at me for several seconds. “Pre wouldn’t have cared about the indigenous. The raw materials, the potential for artifacts dating back to the Old Republic? He would have cut a deal with Ohnaka.”

“And you’d prefer that?”

“Once, perhaps. As I said.”

I blinked at that, before remembering her earlier words. She’d once had problems with me, but no longer.

“What changed?” I asked.

“What I want,” she said, “is a command.”

She placed a hand on the mask fragment and pushed it towards me.

I stared.

My commlink beeped before I could respond. I turned, flicking my thumb over it. “Amidala.”

“Admiral.” My XO saluted. “We are prepared to make the jump to hyperspeed.”

I nodded. “Take us back to the hyperlane at your discretion.”

“Understood, your majesty.” The comm flickered off.

Still Bo-Katan sat without a word.

I leaned back in my chair, letting the thrum of the deck vibrate up through the soles of my boots as the Otah Gunga jumped into hyperspace. It was a massive ship, filled with people loyal to me, loyal to Naboo, loyal to themselves. A ship required those people, more even that it required an admiral, and running those people required more than a crown.

And yet that was exactly what Bo-Katan was offering me now.

This wasn’t even about the mask itself. I knew how the game was played. If it matched the fragment in the Sundari palace, and perhaps even if it didn’t, this burnished piece of metal would become the Mask of Mand’alor, right out of the bloodiest era of galactic history.

Unlike the peoples of that nameless dessert world, the Republic well remembered the Mand’alor.

“You’re asking a great deal of me,” I told her.

“I would have asked it of Pre Vizsla as well,” she replied. “But he would’ve only seen what I was offering him. That is what I’ve started to realize. That is what’s changed.”

Yes, what a tempting offer: power, prestige, enemies. All things I had in spades. What did I stand to gain, except Bo’s loyalty? I could see how much she wanted this. I could see how much she wanted me to give her the command. I looked into her eyes and saw the type of belief that once let me take over a city. The smart thing to do would be to command her to launch the fragment into the sun.

Or I could take up another crown. In normal times, someone claiming to be ‘the Mandalor’ would be a flash in the pan; maybe the Senate would form a committee to issue a reprimand. These weren’t normal times.

There was a war coming, and a “Mand’alor the Destroyer” would be the perfect figurehead for a Separatist movement.

All of that I saw reflected in this gleaming piece of metal.