Useless, ungainly end, Cato thought. The agony in his leg was finally subsiding to a piercing, aching throb. Despicable way to die. Nothing done, nothing gained, a couple of scum-butchers dead and little else accomplished. A life half-spent chasing lost ghosts to avenge the dead, living from one soul-hollowing contract to the next. Always dissatisfied, compromised, riven with insecurities where there should have been iron-clad certainty. But he’d lost faith with the status quo. The Resol’nare offered no protection to their own vulnerable and the station of Manda’lor was forever tainted. He avoided his own kind now, anxious at what even a chance meeting might incur. Who was he for? Who was he against? The civil war had given the Old Guard license to infest their zeitgeist with ideals of corrupt worthiness and whomsoever failed to measure up were not only unworthy to bear the armour, they were to be labelled dar’manda and exiled appropriately. Or just outright killed in the streets.
But you weren’t sure even prior, Cato admitted. The rainfall had lessened to a drizzle. His face felt very cold and very wet. He wanted just to sleep now and let the dreamlessness swim him along for a time. You’ve always wrestled with the Manda. Are you worthy? Have you been true? You’ve admitted to yourself you make for a bad Mando’ade. Clanless, friendless save for supposedly ‘honourless’ aruetiise, preferring their company over your brethren for at least you know you may sit at ease and not have to rise to defend your integrity at the drop of a shell-casing. Each line of the Resol’nare damns you. Useless, disloyal, a black mark on the clan name. Because you took a bullet for a woman accused of slaughtering thousands and allowed kinslaying to unfurl. Because you refuse loyalty to the Manda’lor. You build nothing, strengthen nothing, do nothing that brings either honour or resource to your people. When they need your strength of arms most, here you are, ready to rot apart on the bottom of a speeder canyon.
He reached and found his sword, planting its end into the stone to push up off his back. Pain flared bright and new. Hobbling on one good boot, Cato lowered his sword aside and gazed heavenward. For Mandalore! Rallying call. In the wake of the civil war, through the rearmament phase and the purges, it defined purpose and drove them back to the ancient crusades. But Ra, Yasha, the others couldn’t or wouldn’t perceive the rot plaguing the innards of their people. Whatever that was wrong could be solved by a return to roots. Plunder, conquer, leave their old enemies trembling and bring fear and respect back to the image of Mandalorian armour. They contemptuously kicked at the galaxy like a mangy alley-strill, only for the mutt to turn, bear its teeth, and rake claw and fang across their throats. Inevitably, the regime once more dissolved. Their armies backpedalled, bruised and black-eyed and humiliated, just to find their so-called ‘allies’ in the Sith invading the homeland and occupying the sacred beskar mines. It was only as the Empire itself underwent weakening collapse did they gain enough breathing room to mount insurrection. Supposedly there was a new Manda’lor. And an accompanying Death Watch determined to re-instill old mores, reaffirm their status as the galaxy’s premier killers. Eventually, as the Watch refused to bend knee and the Uniter running out of options to reconcile, maybe a fresh internecine conflict would brew and spill over. The Union would melt away, the diaspora would remain, and the banner of honour would snap raggedly in the wind. ‘Mandalorian’ was fast becoming a byword for something calcified and myopic. A quaint people soon bottled up on their homeworld as outside governments hedged around their system edges, hemming them in.
Would that be enough to bring the Old Guard staggering out of ‘retirement’ or whatever it was that kept them occupied? Cato couldn’t help a bleeding snarl. Oh, yes, the Old Guard, bastions of proper glory, so irreverent and severe and critical, blunt-toothed men hiding away on sprawling ranches and farmsteads pretending at humility. Watching the gates of ‘mando-ness’. Preaching against the so-weak and insidious aruetii. An inferior enemy. The foe that deserved crushing. And yet the foe that paradoxically posed a nigh-lethal threat to the very essence of their culture. Honourable and loyal, so long as they held the reins and were lavished all-due honours and respects, quashing whatever they found aberrant. The whole practice had stunk of blind corruption and a worship of power more than honour. It’d made being Mandalorian, something in theory that was plain and whole, into an uncomfortable juggle of political sensibilities.
