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Mayfeld doesn’t have time to explain it to Mando, not that it really matters. ISB logs every single user that accesses every single terminal every single time. They’re not monitored live, no one has the time for that. He’d been counting on having hours, probably days before anyone noticed his ugly mug in a file somewhere, and by then he’d be safe and cozy back in the loving arms of the New Republic prison guard droids. But with Hess there, there’s no way. If Hess notices him, Mayfeld would be lucky if Hess just shot him dead right then and there.
ISB does not take a gentle approach to those they say are traitors.
“It’s not gonna work. In order to access the network, the terminal has to scan your face. Let’s go.” Game over. They tried. They failed. Now they just had to get out.
But Mando grabs the data stick and before Mayfeld can figure out what else to say or if he should just deck him right then and there, Mando is walking into the mess.
He’s not cool about it. He moves like he’s scared, which he should be. Mayfeld just watches, overwhelmed by morbid curiosity about what the hell Mando thinks he’s doing. He goes up to the terminal, and of course it doesn’t work. Mayfeld swears under his breath. Hess is looking at the terminal. Looking at Mando. They’re dead. The terminal’s going to lock down in response to unauthorized access, the whole damn base is going to lock down, someone’s going to notice real fast that they’re not supposed to be there.
Mando takes his helmet off.
Mayfeld stares. It’s like watching someone casually pop their head off their shoulders. Mando has hair. It’s just about the dumbest thought Mayfeld’s ever had, but, look, when you’ve only ever seen a guy in full armor, that’s what they are in your head. Yeah, he’s always known there’s a person under it, but it’s weird. It’s like popping the processor and vocalizer out of a droid and just having it talk to you like that: you know that’s what’s doing it all along, but it’s uncomfortable.
He kind of wants to look away, but before he can, Hess calls out to Mando.
In his head, Mayfeld swears in at least five different languages.
Forget looking away. He gets there just in time, and the whole thing is ridiculous. He doesn’t know who this guy with a face is, but it’s not the same Mando who managed to flip things on him and Burg and Xi’an. This guy is radiating fear. This guy doesn’t belong anywhere near violence. This guy needs a hug and a cup of cocoa and a teddy bear.
He can’t think of a name in time. “We just call him Brown Eyes,” he tells Hess, slinging his arm around Mando’s shoulder, because — well, hell, Mando’s got brown eyes. Now he knows what color Mando’s eyes are, but not his name. The galaxy is a strange place.
Either Hess buys it, which is possible because Hess was never particularly bright, or Hess knows and is toying with them, which is possible because Hess was always a power-hungry dick. He was the type of officer who always let shit roll downhill, who was somehow never to blame when things went wrong. It was always someone under him. He’s been drinking, a frequent vice, and Mayfeld is glad to smell the liquor on his breath. Mayfeld would be pissed, normally but they need every shred of help they can get, and Hess’s three-cocktail lunch is very welcome.
There’s no other way out. They sit down. Mando looks like he’s going to fall over dead. The man is going through something , and the more it goes on, the less Mayfeld wants any part of whatever it is. He wants nothing to do with Mando’s crisis of faith or breakdown or whatever’s happening. He wants to do the damn job and get out alive. Whatever it is, it’s turned him into a goddamn ghost, just sitting there in silence.
“How ‘bout a toast to Operation Cinder?” Mayfeld blurts. It pulls Hess’s attention from Mando, who has apparently forgotten how to speak entirely. Mayfeld doesn’t exactly mean to say it.
Operation Cinder is the last goddamn thing he wants to talk about.
But he said it, and now he’s got Hess’s full attention, and he feels bile rising in his stomach. Operation Cinder.
“I had to make many unpleasant decisions,” Hess says.
As if he had to put something back on the shelf when he didn’t have enough credits at the store. As if torching a city with an entire division still on the ground was —
All heroes of the Empire .
How many times had Mayfeld heard that? How many goddamn times? How many of those TIE fighters on Karthon had been flown by heroes of the Empire? Shit, how many of those TIE fighters still had the ashes of heroes of the Empire ground into the seats? Why was every single hero of the Empire dead?
Hess maintains it was a noble sacrifice. For the cause . Hess is a true believer in the cause . Mando’s a true believer in his cause, whatever the hell that is. Or maybe he’s not anymore. Maybe his cause is his kid now. Doesn’t matter. Mayfeld doesn’t trust believers.
“Was it good for them?” Mayfeld asks.
He’d never felt any particular way about the civilians. Just about everywhere he’d gone, they were there. Everywhere. All the same, every shitty city on every shitty planet. Mostly pathetic. Sad people, hungry people, scared people.
People who just wanted food to eat. Their kids to be safe. To kiss the wife goodnight and know you’d wake up to kiss her good morning.
Months after Burnin Konn, Mayfeld had gone and seen Twain’s wife. They’d met before, between deployments. She was pretty, sweet. Whenever they came back from a rotation, she’d always be there to meet Twain. Usually she’d bring a case or two of ale, the good Corellian stuff that was hard to get outside of the Core, and something to eat, knowing they’d always be starved for decent food. He never got why, what was in it for her to be so nice to this pack of stinking and sweaty and stained men, but she was always nice. But that last time, when he had gone to her, it had been awkward. Neither of them had had much of anything to say, but she’d hugged Mayfeld and softly kissed his cheek and thanked him for coming. She’d said it was sweet of him.
They’d all hassled Twain about how hot his wife was all the time. About what any of them would do to get a kiss — or more — from her. It had felt like acid on his cheek.
Hess talks. He’s pleased with himself and his decisions and positions. He’s going to make Burnin Konn look like nothing. He’s going to prove to those sad, desperate people that they need the Empire. That they love the Empire. He raises his glass, to the Empire. To the order they bring.
Mayfeld remembers the careful tension in Mando’s voice on the way to the prison job, how the air had chilled the second they’d all seen the kid. Little green guy. Big ears. Brown eyes. Just like his dad.
It feels good to shoot Hess. He doesn’t see it coming. That’s fair, because neither does Mayfeld. But it happens: he pulls his pistol and shoots the officer, who is instantly dead. No more unpleasant decisions for Valin Hess, who would no doubt be rotting in hell.
There’s three witnesses in the room. Mayfeld’s taken two of them out before Mando even moves.
It's time to go. Really, really, really time to go.
Mando without his helmet — without a helmet, it apparently doesn’t matter so much what helmet — is useless, so Mayfeld grabs the driver’s helmet and shoves it at him. They need to get out, and he can’t drag a half-catatonic Mando behind him.
“You did what you had to do. I never saw your face.”
Finally, he’s able to look away. To stop seeing Mando’s face, to stop seeing that he has longer hair than Mayfeld would have guessed and brown eyes and a mustache and stubble. He waits for the other man to take it, to put it on, to become Mando again. Mayfeld doesn’t get it, but whatever the helmet does for Mando is something big, and he needs to put the damn thing on if they’re going to get out.
He does.
And, like that, he’s Mando again, and they’re shooting their way out. There’s no way they get out the front, so out and up will do. It’s a hell of a climb, and Mando is shouting at him to move faster, as if sixty seconds ago Mando hadn’t been mute and frozen in fear.
He barely makes the leap onto the ship; he’s in midair for long enough to imagine plummeting to his death, and the idea fills him with a calm anger. Not now. Not after everything. The Empire has had its last chance to kill him. They didn’t take the shot when they had him.
He doesn’t think about what he does next. He just sees the rifle and asks for it. Mando hands it over without hesitation, so he takes aim, not at any of the troopers on the ground. They’re just more pawns in the game. It’s a bad day to be them, but the men like Hess outnumber them. The men like Hess always outnumber the pawns after the battle ends. They’re the ones who inevitably survive, who worm their way out of whatever rubble is left.
He takes his shot.
The refinery is gone. It’ll be a while before the smoke clears, but with that much rhydonium inside, all that’ll be left is a crater filled with rubble. Some of the masonry may survive. Small scraps of metal. The explosion is big enough and the fire will burn hot enough that there won’t be any armor left, no ID tags or bones.
Just like at Burnin Konn.
“Nice shot,” Shand says.
He feels — something. He doesn’t know what.
“We all need to sleep at night,” he says, and he’s pretty sure that even his bunk back at the prison is going to feel a little more inviting. He moves into the ship and straps in.
Fett takes them to the other side of the planet, scans to make sure no one is following them. No one is, and it’ll be hours before anyone comes to find out why there’s suddenly no signals coming from the refinery.
Mando locks himself into the crew cabin as soon as they’re on the ground and emerges as Mando, not whoever the brown-eyed guy in trooper armor was. His posture is relaxed and confident, the way it should be.
“Thank you for helping,” he says.
That’s more than Mayfeld had expected, and he’s not sure what to say. They’re not going to talk about what happened in the mess hall, not ever. None of that happened.
“Good luck getting your kid back,” he says, because the galaxy is full of people who just want to their kids to be safe.
Mando doesn’t respond to that.
“All right, officer. Take me back.” He knows Dune and Shand were the ones on the ridge clearing off the roof, and he has to admit that both of them can shoot. Drop trooper or not, she did the job.
“That was some nice shooting back there,” Dune says.
“Oh, you saw that?” He shifts his weight. A compliment from a former rebel drop trooper and marshal of the New Republic. Who’d have thought? “Yeah, that, uh. That wasn’t part of the plan. I was just gettin’ some stuff off my chest.”
Everyone needs to sleep at night.
Dune looks at Mando. “You know, it’s too bad Mayfeld didn’t make it out alive back there.”
“Yeah. Too bad.”
Mayfeld looks between them and for a quick second, thinks Dune is going to execute him. No, she’s had her chance if she were going to. And that’s not her style, he’s sure. “What are you talking about?”
She looks him dead in the eyes. “Looked to me like prisoner number three four six six seven died in the refinery explosion on Morak.”
Again, he looks between them. Like he’s going to get anything from Mando. Whatever that moment had been, it’s incinerated now. “Does that mean I can go?”
Neither of them say yes, but Dune doesn’t say no, either. She kind of smiles.
“Huh? Cause I will.” He takes a couple steps, testing her. She doesn’t make a move. “All right.”
He looks, again. They’re both just standing there, watching him like he’s stupid.
“Okay,” he says. It’s exactly what he’d proposed — he does the job, she lets him go. Fair is fair.
He doesn’t look back again, just walks into the woods. He doesn’t know Morak, but he know it’s sparsely populated. It may be a few days until he gets to a village, and longer until he can get off this rock. But he will, and then —
He has no idea. Something’ll come next. Something always does. He’s got skills that are always in demand. This time around, he’s going to be a little more choosy about what jobs he takes.
There’s plenty of good work. The galaxy’s full of people who just want their kids to be safe.