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~*~
The next morning as the three of them got ready for the day, Quinlan made a suggestion.
“I’ll make contact with Tholme alone. You two stay here with Mereel. It’s safe enough using Shadow contact methods and locations. That way, no one can try to claim we’re trying to bail out on our promise to help with Death Watch,” Quinlan pointed out.
Obi-Wan and Cody both frowned at him for a long moment.
“I don’t like separating,” Obi-Wan began, tone heavy with resignation, “but I think you might be right.”
Cody shook his head. “You both should go. Tholme might have additional questions about your vision or might think of something you two didn’t. I’ll stay.”
Quinlan considered that.
“It’s not a bad idea, Obes” Quinlan agreed. “Tholme may well have questions about the vision that I couldn’t answer. I know how to explain what I see with my gifts but yours are something different.”
Obi-Wan’s frown deepened.
“I don’t disagree that he may have questions. I just…” Obi-Wan hesitated. “I don’t like the idea of leaving any of us here alone. I’m not worried about Jaster or even young Jango, but that doesn’t mean we can trust all of their men.”
Cody shrugged.
“At the risk of sounding like an arrogant ass, I could take any of them,” Cody pointed out.
Quinlan smirked and Obi-Wan leveled him with an unimpressed look.
“Do not,” Obi-Wan scolded.
With a huff, Quinlan muttered, “You never let me have any fun.”
Obi-Wan rolled his eyes at Quinlan before focusing back on Cody.
“In a fair fight, darling, I don’t doubt that at all. But we have no way of ensuring it would be a fair fight,” Obi-Wan countered.
Inclining his head, Cody replied, “True, but I can stick close to Jaster. And it’s not like you two would be gone for more than a few days. I will be fine.”
Reluctantly, Obi-Wan agreed.
Before they left their borrowed quarters, Quinlan asked, “So, bets on how many Mandos try to convince Cody to leave us while we’re gone?”
Obi-Wan hummed. “Too many to be worth betting on. I think one or two of the older ones want to adopt him. That might be a more interesting bet.”
Ignoring them both, Cody headed for the mess hall.
~*~
Cody remaining behind did indeed soothe any concerns Jaster Mereel might have had about the two Jedi leaving.
“We need to report in about my vision,” Obi-Wan explained over first meal. “There were things I saw that we need to relay immediately, as they tie into investigations that are already ongoing. It shouldn’t take more than a few days but there are procedures we need to follow.”
Cody hid his amusement behind his caf mug when he heard a few nearby Mandos muttering about karking bureaucracies. He agreed with the sentiment with his whole being given some of the utterly unnecessary bureaucratic nonsense he had to deal with as a Marshal Commander. He should only have to fill out a report once. If three different departments wanted the information in it formatted differently, that should be their problem, not his. He had a damn war to fight.
“And you wouldn’t be expected to be with them?” Jaster asked Cody.
Shaking his head, Cody assured, “My assignment doesn’t require check-ins the way theirs does. Their check-ins trigger a status update to the Rangers essentially saying that yes, I’m still engaged in this mission. That’s all my superiors need to know. I only went back to our headquarters last time because the updated mission brief triggered the armor upgrade protocol, despite my protests. If not for that, I wouldn’t have needed to do an in person check in.” Grinning, he continued, “Even these two and their trouble finding ways should be safe enough just checking in with one of their own.”
Jaster smirked into his caf as Obi-Wan heaved a long-suffering sigh.
“You wound me, my dear. Absolutely wound me,” Obi-Wan informed Cody.
Cody toasted him with his caf mug.
“You should stop and get yourself some more tea while you’re checking in,” Cody pointed out. “We forgot to do that last time, and we all know better than to expect you to function on caf for more than a few weeks.”
Obi-Wan grinned. “Now, Cody, are you saying I’m not at my best unless I’ve had my tea?”
That was a trap the size of a sector, but Cody just grinned and walked right into it. Springing the trap was one of their specialties after all.
“You are the one who said it, not me,” Cody teased.
Quinlan cackled as Obi-Wan threw Cody a faux wounded look.
“You are both so cruel to me,” Obi-Wan lamented.
Laughter broke out among the Mandalorians around them in the mess hall.
Jaster just shook his head in amusement and murmured to Cody, “You certainly have your hands full with these two.”
Cody grinned. “You don’t know the half of it.”
Obi-Wan made a show of turning back to his meal and ignoring them both entirely.
~*~
By late morning, Obi-Wan and Quinlan were on their way, leaving Cody with the True Mandalorians.
“Want to join in today’s training session?” Jaster asked as they watched Obi-Wan and Quinlan’s ship depart. “I want to see you really let loose.”
Wincing, Cody replied, “Then find me some Death Watch to fight. I don’t want to hurt any of your men.”
Jaster raised a brow. “You’re that concerned?”
Cody nodded.
“I was trained not to hold back, at all. I don’t have to worry about it when training or sparring with Jedi. Given my relationship with Obi-Wan and Quinlan, that’s who I do most of my training with these days. Except when I went back for the armor upgrade given the updates to our mission, I haven’t sparred with a fellow Ranger in a long time. The longer a training session goes, the less likely I am to properly hold back,” Cody admitted.
Jaster scowled. “If we happen to come across those who trained you that are still alive, I promise to help you rectify that situation even if your Jedi don’t agree with it.”
Quietly, Cody replied, “Thank you.”
Jaster nodded sharply and started leading Cody down the corridor towards the bridge.
“As for finding you some Death Watch to fight instead, I was going to mention a lead our scouts picked up. How badly are we both going to get yelled at if I take you into a fight without your Jedi here?” Jaster asked.
Cody shook his head.
“They won’t like it, but they know we can’t just sit on our asses while they’re gone. Not if there’s something to work with,” Cody replied.
Jaster led Cody onto the ship’s bridge.
“Here’s what we know so far,” Jaster said as they came to stand at a briefing table. A few taps brought up a holomap of a plant a few sectors away. “It looks like a small Death Watch cell. Too many to be scouts but could be a couple of squads on a job.”
Cody studied the projection.
“I don’t see any ships,” Cody pointed out. “Are they in orbit? Hiding in a nearby sector to bring in reinforcements?”
Jaster zoomed in on the map. “We see a couple of landing craft, but no troop ship. Our scouts report no larger ships in the system or the neighboring one.”
Cody frowned heavily.
“And that doesn’t seem suspicious to you?” Cody asked.
Shaking his head, Jaster replied, “No, it doesn’t. This wouldn’t be the first time Death Watch dropped men to do a job and left them until it was done. Especially right now, they have fewer drop ships and troop carriers than we do. Sometimes they have no choice but to double up. My bigger concern is what they’re doing.”
Cody studied the map as he considered Jaster’s words.
“This planet isn’t inhabited. What do we know about its resources?” Cody asked.
Jaster picked up a datapad from the holotable.
“Nothing particularly remarkable. It has some useful minerals and such, but our scouts didn’t see any mining equipment,” Jaster explained. “So we think it's either training, or they’re scouting it as a possible base. The region they’re in has a hospitable enough climate to be a base or an outpost. It’s the only habitable planet in the system, which I assume is why no one has bothered with it.”
Cody nodded. “So, activity here would go almost unnoticed. And with its distance from the worlds you know Death Watch likes to haunt…”
Jaster nodded, seeming pleased with how quickly Cody put it together.
“I lean towards the thought they’re scouting it as a potential base, yes. Somewhere remote enough that they could avoid detection generally but still close enough to known Death Watch strongholds for resupply. Our scouts only found it because a malfunction in their nav computer forced them out of hyperspace early. We might never have known it was there otherwise,” Jaster admitted.
Gesturing to the map, Cody replied, “Then let’s hunt.”
“Oya,” Jaster replied with a knowing smile. “Briefing in an hour. We should be fighting them by this time tomorrow.”
~*~
The fight the next day was…underwhelming. Cody almost felt disappointed at how quickly they’d overpowered and overcome the four squads of Death Watch on the planet. Instead, he found himself feeling very, very suspicious. He wasn’t sure if it was paranoia or reasonable concern. He liked to think he wasn’t prone to the former but given the state of everything he was no longer sure it was unreasonable to assume the worst.
“You’re right,” Jaster said as he came to stand at Cody’s side, drawing Cody from his thoughts. “You don’t know how to hold back. I particularly liked it when you took the blaster rifle from the one man and used it to hit the one next to him across the face.”
Jango practically materialized at Jaster’s other side, interrupting anything else Jaster might have said. And Cody got the feeling Jaster had more to say, but his son’s arrival diverted the conversation.
“I think you took out nearly a third of them yourself,” Jango declared. “I’ve never seen anyone that good.”
Cody shrugged, trying to downplay his impact and resolutely not thinking about the conflicted feelings Jango’s praise caused. “Their fighting was sloppy and undisciplined. I’m not surprised they were sent out on a small mission to a backwater planet. And that move is always unexpected, making it highly effective.”
The teenager was not so easily swayed.
“Well yeah, people expect you to shoot them with a blaster, not hit them with it,” Jango pointed out. “Maybe we should train for it…”
Cutting off further chatter from Jango, Jaster gestured towards the nearest Death Watch ship.
“Let’s see what we can get from the landing craft,” Jaster suggested. “Maybe we’ll find out for sure what they were up to here. We can discuss additional training tactics later.”
Cody could not shake the feeling Jaster wanted to say something else, but wished to do so without an audience. Not for the first time, Cody hoped it wasn’t his enhanced abilities that came back to bite them. He could only hold back so much and even this performance had been him holding back. He wasn’t exaggerating that the Death Watch soldiers had poor discipline. He was sure even Jango could have taken out a dozen of them on his own. But the True Mandalorians, Jaster especially, wouldn’t see that. Maybe Cody could add to his story, claim the possibility of some non-human ancestor on his mother’s side that meant he was mostly human but stronger than average? He and his Jedi should have considered this issue and he cursed himself for not.
A few hours later, Jaster’s slicers confirmed that Death Watch was scouting the planet as a potential base. Jaster, Cody, Jango, and a few of Jaster’s most trusted stood around a holo table.
“They know you have the upper hand,” Cody concluded. “They want to find any tactic or location you wouldn’t see coming.”
Jaster grimaced. “I can’t disagree with you.”
Before they could say anything further, Cody’s comm chimed with an incoming call.
“Obi-Wan,” Cody greeted as he answered.
“We’re going to be a few days longer than expected,” Obi-Wan reported. “The…revelations from my visions paired with some interesting developments in the ongoing investigation here. It’s all going to take a bit more time to go through.”
Cody nodded. “Better to be thorough than to be quick with this.”
Obi-Wan made a face, but nodded. “Quite right. You’re alright?”
Cody smiled.
“Of course, I am,” Cody assured. “We’re just reviewing some information one of the scouting groups sent back.”
“Then I will let you get back to it. I’ll comm you when we have an idea when we’ll be back,” Obi-Wan replied.
They said their goodbyes and Cody ended the call.
Jaster raised a brow. “You didn’t mention today’s little…adventure.”
Cody shook his head.
“I was absolutely not telling him about that over comms. Besides, I didn’t even get a scratch. No need to worry them. It’s fine,” Cody replied quickly.
Jaster, Jango, and the other Mandalorians all chuckled. Cody didn’t blame them.
“I think I’ll make myself scarce when you have to fess up when they get back,” Jaster declared.
Cody couldn’t blame the man for that one bit.
“We’ll worry about it when they get back,” Cody replied. “Now, as for this data….”
~*~