Chapter Text
That injured Agorian Moose would be such an easy target , the Mandalorian thought, And I’m starving . Perched in a tree with light green leaves, her black armor stood out like a sore thumb, but she remained still, waiting for an opening. Through the foliage she had a clear view of the large quadruped, a gash on its face contrasting the green landscape with a stream of crimson.
Just nock the arrow Laan’i , she thought, eyes locked on her prey as he drank from a stream, facing just the right way…
Nayc , she thought, returning her arrow to her quiver. Nu ijaa o’r pakod lenedat . She took a syringe and sedative out of the small medkit she kept on the back of her utility belt. Without hesitation, she leapt from the tree onto the moose’s back, injecting the sedative as she landed. The moose bucked and bolted through the woods, losing Laan’i in the brush along the way.
She staggered to her feet and tracked the moose with the ease of an experienced hunter, using every clue to her advantage. The trail of disrupted brush and occasional smear of blood led her to the edge of the woods. The stream widened as the trees disappeared into a vast prairie, muddy ground making hoof tracks much clearer. She found the animal lying in the grass not long after.
With a sigh she began cleaning the open wound with water from the stream. Then she cut off the dead tissue with her vibroblade and cleaned some more. Ideally, she would have stitched it up and been done with it, but seeing as she only had what she could carry, bacta patches would have to do. If she was going to do something, she’d do it right, so the Mandalorian used bandages to secure the bacta patches around the moose’s antlers.
I’ll have to check up on this guy later , Laan’i thought. I just need a way to find him again . She decided to take the brightly colored, glow-in-the-dark fletching off of one of her arrows and tie one feather on each antler. Even if her eyes didn’t pick up on it, her HUD definitely would; she’d calibrated it so she can track her arrows across battlefields after all. You’d better be worth it for me to be down an arrow. Shabla ijaat, haar’chak .
She finished just in time to remove the syringe from the animal’s hide as he stirred. She watched from several paces away as he righted himself and stumbled off across the plains.
Time to find this shabla bounty… hopefully some food, too.
“Pretty planet. Pretty boring, that is,” Fives chuckled lightly at his words. Echo shook his head, eye roll on full display for the lack of his helmet.
“It was Cutup who was good with jokes; not you,” he spat, continuing to walk as Fives faltered a step.
“Rude!”
“Let’s just do our job, yeah?” Echo asked flatly. Fives jogged up past him, turned, and walked backwards to fully face his vod.
“What’s your problem? I was just talking.” Fives spread his arms out saying, “This whole field is visible and the only thing in it is that moose, so I don’t see any harm in chatting a bit while we make our rounds.”
“That is the problem. This is our first mission as ARC troopers, we actually have to do the job right. Gotta uphold our reputation.”
“Reputation? We’ve been ARCs since Taungsday, we don’t have a reputation!”
“So we’d better make it a good one,” Echo said, his features softening. “I just wish the rest of the squad was here too.”
Fives turned so he was walking beside Echo. So that’s what this is about , he thought. Approaching the treeline, he recited a saying he knows all too well,“ Nu kyr’adyc, shi t – oof!”
Echo only heard rustling in the tall grass before the world spun and went black.
---
Echo groaned as he tried to get up, his neck and shoulders protesting the movement, not to mention his pounding head. Then adrenaline took over, he remembered what happened and jumped to his feet.
“Fives!” he called, pivoting to look for his brother. He found him a few feet away, sprawled out in the grass, a rope encasing his torso and arms. Echo then realized that he was detained in a similar fashion. Ah, this is my fault for starting an argument. How long have we been out? he wondered, poking the limp body of his brother with his boot.
Fives snorted, and muttered something resembling, “ five more minutes .” Echo gave him a firmer kick and Fives woke up with an incomprehensible string of grumbled Basic.
Echo knelt down in the waist-high grass next to Fives, who was looking the other way. “Hey Fives, this way. I don’t know who knocked us out but we need to make an escape plan.”
“Yeah, I dunno about me but you still have your blasters and we’re in the middle of a field. I think we can just walk out of here and shoot whoever did this,” Fives said, cracking his neck.
“True, but we don’t know how many of them there are. I can’t reach my blasters anyway.”
“Our helmets are gone too.”
The two clones jumped when they heard the grass rustle again. A parsec later they were staring up at the white Jaig Eyes of a black Mandalorian helmet.
“I see you boys are awake,” a tinny, feminine voice quipped.
Echo and Fives instinctively stood up and reached, unsuccessfully, for their sidearms. The Mandalorian crossed her arms, taking on a confident, relaxed posture.
“What do you want with us? Where are we?” Fives growled. The Mandalorian tilted her head to the side and put her hands on her hips.
“Saw you out on the plains and figured you could help me find a bounty,” she answered simply.
A few beats of silence passed before Echo asked, “Are you gonna tell us more?”
“Like, maybe who the bounty is and why you have us tied up like hostages?” Fives added.
I’m gonna regret picking up these two chatterboxes, aren’t I , Laan’i thought with a groan. “Here’s the bounty,” she said, showing them a puck that projected a Twi'lek who wore a headdress inlaid with jewels and ka’rtase , the hexagonal pieces on mandalorian chest plates. “Rata, she steals anything valuable, buys weapons, and sells them to the Seps for massive markups. Wanted dead or alive.” She took her buy’ce off, letting straight brown hair frame her face, her narrow, icy blue eyes sizing up her acquaintances.
Just the target we were scouting for , Echo thought.
Fives’ eyes widened comically, but he collected himself enough to ask, “Well why does a pretty Mandalorian like you need help with a job like this?”
The Mandalorian snarled, “ Tion’gai ru’ne’sushi? This chick is wanted in half the galaxy. You think I’m the only bounty hunter after her?”
Seppie arms dealer on the same planet we were deployed to in order to gather intel on possible experimental Separatist weapons? Echo thought . Maybe this kidnapping will be beneficial.
The silence she was met with told her she made an impression. Now they’re down for business.
“Well, Mando, how can we help you if we can’t use our hands?” Fives asked. The Mandalorian then strided over behind the clones and undid the knots holding them hostage. She handed a coil of rope to Fives and kept one for herself.
“You look like you’re good with a lasso,” she said, and although Fives had never used a lasso before, he felt compelled to impress this bounty hunter with his nonexistent skills.
“Not to brag,” he drawled, earning an eye roll from Echo, “but I’m the best lasso-er in the 501st.” He tossed the loop of rope at a tree stump, overshooting by a few feet, but reeling it back until he caught the stump.
The Mandalorian blinked. “Awful technique but it’ll do. Let’s get moving, she won’t be at these coordinates for long.”
Fives and Echo got their helmets back, received a run down of a sorry excuse for a plan, and followed the Mandalorian.
After a couple hours of traipsing through bright green landscapes, the small group arrived at a ridge in the woods overlooking a separatist camp just in time to see a top-of-the line speeder flanked by two large utility speeders pull up to the gates.
“There she is,” Fives noted upon seeing a blue Twi’lek dressed in black step out of the lead speeder, guards surrounding her. Echo hummed in agreement from behind a fallen tree..
“Mando, I’m not sure your ‘plan’ is gonna work. Look how many droids there are.” Echo motioned to the battle droids milling about the camp.
“That’s not our problem, as long as mir’shab over here can rope two of the guards and you can hold up on your end. We just need to drag ‘em to the speeders and high tail it out of here. I get my beskar and you get your pick of the weapons. Now let's move .” She vaulted over the log, Echo and Fives not far behind. They switched to internal comms.
“Are you sure we should be doing this? I know she has the same goal as we do, but we’re working with a third party. And how do we know we can trust her?” Echo said.
“Vod, there’s not only a separatist leader in that building, but also a kriffing arms dealer. Two condors in one stone! Hey, we’re ARCs, we can go off the beaten path a bit,” Fives enthused. “Plus, she’s a Mandalorian, if she wanted to kill us she would’ve by now. I must just be that charming, eh?”
“Not sure I’d call you charming , vod. Jackass is more like it,” Echo teased back.
“Well since we’re clones, that’d make you a jackass too,” Fives retorted, successfully getting a laugh out of Echo.
They made it to the fence, and Laan’i used the hand signal for “go”. The three scaled it, and once perched at the top, threw their lassos. Laan’i caught two guards in one go, but Fives caught the speeder. A tense silence replaced the focused one the group previously donned. The other two bodyguards spotted the team, and Rata fled to the safety of the building as they began shooting.
Laan’i tied the rope to the fence, and stood to her full height, signaling for Echo and Fives to follow Rata. Their armor clacked with their rough landing, and as they ran, they caught glimpses of two long projectiles just centimeters from their helmets, silent unlike the blaster bolts they were dodging. They raised their own blasters to shoot the guards just as the silent bolts pierced their enemies with a shunk.
The blast doors were sealed with who-knows-what on the other side. Echo and Fives used their plasma cutters to crack open the doors, sparks flying everywhere. Over the buzzing they heard two more thwacks followed by footsteps. Then each planted a thermal detonator on the weakened doors. The blast was rather impressive, the sound nearly deafening. With the cover of smoke, the three ran into the building, mangled, scorched metal all over the place. They ran as a unit, shooting and being shot at. The sound of blaster bolts echoed off the durasteel walls.
Adrenaline fueled the chase, a glimpse of blue here or a clink of beskar there alerting the team to Rata’s whereabouts. They’d just made it to the other entrance when they saw her. Four magnaguards surrounded her.
“Three against four, Mando,” Echo whispered.
The Mandalorian made a fist and tiny glowing spikes protruded from her vambrace. “I can take ‘em.” she said. With the flick of a wrist the green spikes flew off and whistled around the magnaguards, slicing them up until their momentum was spent and they fell to the floor with a clink.
Whistling birds , Echo thought. Impressive .
The group wasted no time shooting their way through the magnaguards, hearing the metallic footsteps of battle droids approaching. Laan’i put a flustered Rata in a chokehold, and while she was distracted, Echo snuck up behind, and went to stun her when she headbutted the Mandalorian, making her lose her grip. Laan’i and Echo ran after the escaped bounty. At the same time, Fives ran out of ammo, opting to hold off the droids with an electrostaff. In his moment of vulnerability, a droid landed a shot on his shoulder, burning a hole through his pauldron. Echo was already running back as Fives cried out in pain.
Holding off the droids and trying to evaluate his brother was impossible, so he shouted for the Mandalorian.
Laan’i stopped short just feet away from the thief. “ Shab ,” she sighed. “ Ijaa ori’shya waadas .” Reluctantly, she let Rata get away, but not before retrieving a holo-drive off the floor.
Laan’i pushed Fives into a sitting position behind a metal support, working quickly. She gave him a painkiller and a bacta patch, since it was all she had to give him. Helping him to his feet, she gave him a push to let him know he could run ahead.
“Let’s get outta here, we can still take the speeders!” she shouted. Echo nodded and they ran, finding the speeders still parked at the entrance. Laan’i and Echo each piloted one, zooming across the plains and into the woods, eventually slowing down once they were sure it was safe.
“So… you gonna follow us back to base?” Fives gritted out, cradling his shoulder.
“Gotta drop you off somewhere,” she replied.
“I see you have Jaig Eyes.”
“Yes.”
“How’d you get them?”
“None of your business.”
A moment of silence passed before Fives said, “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Comin’ back for me. You could've captured Rata if you left us behind.”
“Well I didn’t, and now I’m down on credits, arrows, not to mention all the beskar I could’ve gotten.”
Then the Mandalorian pulled a thin stick of transparisteel and metal from one of the chains around her kama and passed it to Fives. “Found this, thought you might want it.”
“Do you know what this is?”
“No.”
“Echo,” he shouted, “We got what we came here for! We got the intel!”