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With only the beskar spear in hand, Din walked up the ramp of the Slave I after Boba and Fennec. His grip was white knuckled on the spear beneath his gloves. The world around him was blurred, like he was watching a holo vid that stuttered between slowed and sped up. He felt disoriented, but stubbornly clung to his stoic facade. The ship’s entry bay was familiar and alien at the same time. Metal grating, rusted ladder. Not his ship.
Boba took off his helmet and turned to him, his expression grave. He could feel Fennec’s gaze move to him as well. He was still reeling from the whiplash of the enemy turned ally. He was grateful for her help, but still couldn’t fully fathom her motivations. It made him uneasy.
“Where do we need to go?” Boba asked.
To get my kriffing kid. He wanted to roar, but didn’t. His nostrils flared.
Din considered his options. Moff Gideon had the child.
Grogu was g-
He cut himself off of that train of thought almost violently. Moff Gideon’s cruiser. His only chance of getting the kid back was tracking that imperial cruiser, somehow. Any imperial contacts he’d had or paid off in the past were out of the question now; after the murder of The Client and his destruction of the Imperial base on Nevarro, it was likely that he was known and wanted. He needed an ex-imperial that he could bribe or goad… that had nothing to lose.
Wait.
The hut'uun he’d left imprisoned on the New Republic prison ship… Ran had said he was an ex-imperial sharpshooter, he probably still knew his codes and protocols… but how… Cara. Cara was a New Republic marshall now, she could get him access to this guy. She wouldn’t like it, but he would convince her.
“Nevarro.” He finally answered, gruffly. “There’s a city in the southern hemisphere, I need to meet a contact there. They can help.”
Boba simply nodded, replacing his helmet and turning to climb up the ladder to the cockpit. Fennec eyed him a moment longer so he stood stiffly in her gaze, meeting her eyes through the visor head on. His entire body was tense, ready to fight.
He still didn’t trust her. Or Boba Fett for that matter. But Fett was Mando’ad, and a foundling no less. He clearly understood the value the Tribe placed on their children by his decree to help. However, something was off… his instincts were screaming that there was some other motivation he just wasn’t seeing yet.
But he couldn’t afford to be picky at the moment; his ship was obliterated. His kid was gone. The simmering rage beneath his determination was keeping him standing in this moment, staring down the former assassin as she sized him up. He’d accept their help because he needed to get Grogu back, at any cost. If they turned on him, he’d have to deal with that when it came.
Fennec’s eyes weren’t hard though. After a tense moment, her expression softened at the edges, as though she’d come to her own conclusion.
“I’ll be with Boba in the cockpit. This space is yours, do what you will. There is a bunk and a fresher one level below.”
Din simply nodded mutely. Despite its clearly heavy modifications, he had been inside a Firespray-class craft before. Fennec just nodded back and turned to climb up the ladder.
Then he was alone.
Well and truly alone. The familiar weight of the kid against his hip was missing. His ship… his home… was utterly destroyed. Everything he’d ever owned was gone. His covert was gone. His Tribe scattered or dead.
Slumping down into one of the cabin’s seats, Din simply held the beskar spear tight in his fist and stared down at the durasteel floor, dazed.
“You think he’s gonna be alright?” Fennec shot Boba a sidelong glance as she booted up the passenger controls, flicking up the switches that unlocked access to the weapons array. Didn’t hurt to have a second pair of hands ready, in case they ran into trouble on their tail.
Boba shrugged, hands on the steering controls as he piloted them out of the atmosphere.
“His child was taken from him. Nothing will be alright until he gets him back.”
Fennec raised an eyebrow at him as she calibrated the twin blaster cannons that jutted out the front of the ship.
“That’s... unusually sympathetic for you.” Boba just grunted.
“I know what it’s like for father and son to be separated, that’s all.”
The assassin smirked and tossed him an amused look.
“You wanna talk about it?” She asked sarcastically. She knew he didn’t, and for her part, she didn’t want to listen. Their partnership was amiable and it worked, mainly because it was all business.
“It was a long time ago.” Boba groused, his way of dismissing the topic.
Surprisingly though, Fennec could tell that the man still seemed distracted… distant. His grip on the controls was white-knuckled, his gaze into the stars unfocused as they flew. She realized belatedly that the ex-bounty hunter hadn’t even entered their coordinates for the trip to Nevarro yet. Snorting to herself, she leaned over to tap them in. Boba didn’t even seem to notice.
Her raised eyebrow turned into a full grimace of incredulity at the man. Finally noticing her staring at him, the man’s eyes flicked to hers and he seemed to come back to himself. He scowled.
“Mind your own business.” He growled at her.
Fennec just smirked and shrugged, going back to her weapons calibrations, then eventually she started dismantling and cleaning her blaster pistol on her lap. It, and her rifle, had gotten plenty of use today, and it helped pass the time.
It had been not even an hour into their trip when the tense, heavy silence of the man beside her started to grate on her. She’d already been forced to listen to the Mandalorian pacing below in the passenger bay since they’d entered hyperspace, the soft clang of his boots against metal echoing faintly up into the cockpit. Back and forth. Back and forth. But then Boba had started bouncing his knee beside her, his heel tapping against the grate with a nervous energy. She grimaced visibly at him, but he seemed to take no notice.
Not 10 minutes later, there was a loud clang below, as though something metal had been dropped, and then a heavy thump of something else dropping to the floor.
“Oh great maker, I can’t take this anymore.” Fennec cried, throwing up her hands. She turned bodily to the older man beside her, face livid. “Boba, go talk to him. Whatever is… going on with you right now, I’m sure another Mandalorian will understand.” She motioned testily to the cockpit’s ladder down to the passenger hold, lips pressed into a thin line. “And he’s obviously a mess, so someone ought to go check on him. I certainly don’t know what to say.”
Boba jerked out of his stupor at her shout to lock dark brown eyes with her sharply, glaring. Fennec glared right back.
For a moment she thought he might brush her off and she’d have to shove him down the hatch herself, but to her surprise, the ex-bounty hunter cut off his glare to look back down at his hands, realizing he was gripping the controls to the point of his joints aching. Slowly, he unclenched his fingers from the steering controls, looking down at his palms. Frowning at himself, the unhelmeted Mandalorian just nodded and stood, pausing to motion at the pilot’s dash before he stepped down.
“Man the controls while I’m gone.”
Fennec scoffed and flipped her braid back over one shoulder. “Or something like that,” she tossed back at him. Boba just grunted and disappeared down the hole.
At least the tap of his bouncing knee and clang of the other Mandalorian’s pacing had both stopped. Fennec breathed a sigh of relief.
When Boba’s boot hit the floor of the passenger bay, he turned to see the other Mandalorian on his hands and knees, one gloved hand shoved under a passenger seat, grasping desperately for something beneath it. The older man watched curiously as the armored man pulled away to reveal a small, spherical shift knob gripped between the fingers of a visibly shaking hand. Noticing the other hunter staring at him, the Mandalorian started and got hurriedly to his feet, body tense, while one hand quickly shoved the little sphere into a pouch on his belt.
Boba stepped forward and cocked his head slightly, eyes now on the closed pouch.
“What was that?”
“Nothing.” The younger man’s voice was clipped and hard. Boba huffed a breathy laugh then sat in one of the bay’s chairs, facing the silver suit of beskar.
“Right.”
Silence reigned and the Mandalorian just stood, tense, hands fisted at his side, staring Boba down like he expected to be challenged at any moment.
Instead, Boba said, “He’s going to be okay, vod.”
Din froze, surprise quickly giving way to a bitter scoff. “You don’t know that,” he growled.
“You said they wanted him for some lab experiments, right?” Din had breathlessly provided an extremely brief background on the kid and their history on the threesome’s way back to the Slave I. Boba figured there was more to the story, but he got the jist. “They won’t kill him if they need him. We’ll get him back.”
Din’s anger boiled, heart racing. He was furious at himself more than anything. He clenched his fists so hard the leather creaked.
“They could be doing anything to him. Hurting him... I didn’t stop them. I wasn’t fast enough.”
Boba considered him. Then the jetpack that rested against one of the seats.
“And what would you have done, if you had gotten to him in time? Fought off an entire light cruiser of Imperials with your gun and a jetpack? Fennec and I are a force to be reckoned with, but even we know when we’re outgunned. There was no scenario where you won on that hill.”
“I shouldn’t have left him alone up there in the first place!” The Mandalorian hissed angrily, starting his frustrated pacing again. On his third pass, the younger man savagely flung out a fist at the wall with a roar, loudly punching the vented metal panel above one of the seats. Boba didn’t even blink, watching the Mandalorian evenly.
“Hey, watch it,” a voice called down from the cockpit in annoyance. “You break it, you buy it!”
Breathe.
Din reigned in his ragged gulps of air, swallowing down his rage, his agony, his loss. His knuckles throbbed in pain but he didn’t bother to assess if he’d broken something, glaring down at the floor again as he slumped back into a seat. He noticed distantly that his hands were still shaking… they hadn’t stopped since he’d boarded the ship. What was wrong with him?
Boba continued to watch him, then the older man leaned forward, a hard, determined look on his face.
“You will get your son back, vod. It is like a game of Sabaac: sometimes you have to sacrifice a piece to gain a better position on the board." The seasoned hunter sighed. "What happened… it was the best possible outcome given the circumstances."
The other Mandalorian scoffed darkly and Boba glared at him.
"Your boy was not shot out of the air, or murdered on the ground, he was taken by those that want him, so he is surely alive. Neither were you killed in an attempt on the light cruiser. If he is alive, then he can be rescued. If you are alive, then you can rescue him. All the pieces are now ready to be played." Boba paused. "So, Mandalorian, look three steps ahead. What’s our move?”
Din shook, and breathed, and ached. But he had already been formulating their next steps in his mind from the moment he plucked the little durasteel sphere from the Crest's ashen remains. He looked up at Boba and clenched his jaw tight.
“You're right. I have a plan.”