A Match for the Mandalore

Canderous



The little bitch is a jetti! The idea buzzed around in my head, maddening and humiliating. I had actually started to like her. I mean, really like her. Sure, she’s skinny, and short, and tiny; she looked like she’d blow over in a strong wind. But I had seen her fight, and knew her strength. She wouldn’t break easily, even with someone like me.



She even made me laugh, in front of people. She had made me feel good, not out of place as I felt with the pack of idealistic hero-types I had found myself with. Like someone appreciated that not everyone had to be charming to be worth a shit.



She had seemed to like me.



I’m the Mandalore, I reminded myself. I don’t need to be liked.



It was perfectly true, as far as that went. I didn’t honestly care if I was liked by anyone, even my own men. Respect was enough, my honor was my self-worth. I was content, even happy, with the way I looked at things.



She’s a damned jetti.



Here I thought I had found nearly the perfect woman: brave, smart, strong, one hell of a fighter, and funny to boot. I even, I admitted to myself, had thought about her in a permanent way, a mate. I’ve known her about eight hours, and she’s an outlander, and she’d never look at me that way. But for a moment, I had wanted it.



And it’s all an illusion, jetti tricks to make her better than she was without them. She couldn’t take me in a fair fight. I had a sneaking suspicion I was wrong about that, but shoved it aside savagely.



Tired of thinking about it already, I stomped out of the Ebon Hawk, wanting to walk off my rage. Better yet, find some slimy bully terrorizing a local and kill him. A cantina brawl would be even better.



As luck would have it, I wasn’t allowed to go alone. Bao Dur had quietly slipped out after me, and was matching my pace without effort. He didn’t say anything right away. It was one of the reasons I respected him more than most of the others; he knew when to keep his mouth shut. He didn’t speak unless there was something to say, and generally it was worth listening to, even if I didn’t agree with him. Unlike Atton, who spoke sometimes just to hear his fool voice, and Disciple, who was so earnest and eager I could hardly be in the same room with him. I had seen him handle a light saber though, and I knew where it counted, he was a good man. Same with Atton, although it stuck in my craw to admit it. Disciple at least kept out of my way, while Atton seemed to delight in irritating me. He was brave, I’ll give him that; he never let my temper make him back down.



After about six blocks of brooding silence, which I was just as happy to continue, Bao Dur said, “Jennet’s quite a woman, isn’t she?”



To the point. That’s what I like about Bao Dur, yes indeed. He could go fuck himself. I snarled something deliberately incomprehensible and unflattering. But I didn’t hit him. Give me some credits, here.



Unflappable as always, the Iridonian actually smiled. I scowled back, and continued my stomping. Okay, I knew I was bordering on childish. I didn’t care. I kept stomping. Threw in a few creative curses too, just to break up the pattern.



“Pretty, too.”



I stopped stomping, but continued my pace. I refused to say anything about Jennet’s attributes that didn’t involve deceitful, crafty, annoying, smart-mouthed, or jetti in the description. I added a few more filthy adjectives to my opinion of her. Bao Dur smiled some more. I hadn’t stopped scowling, so I didn’t bother to change my expression when I looked at him.



“And,” he continued as if hadn’t said a word, “I’d love to see this ‘incredible fighting’ you mentioned. If it got your attention, it must be unbelievable.”



I stopped for a moment, remembering her dance of death in the cantina. “Yeah. It was.”



Then I snapped my mouth shut and started walking again.



“Too bad she’s a Jedi.” Bao Dur commented.



“She’s not a jetti,” I growled without thinking.



And that stopped me again. The first thing she had said when I accused her of it was “Nope”. And she had meant it.



“Exactly.” Bao Dur would have sounded smug, if he wasn’t talking to me. I don’t like smug from other people.



“You got a point?” I snapped.



“Hey, that was almost civil.” He smiled as I snarled again. “It’s just that I wondered…what did she lie about?”



“Being a….” I stopped. “Oh.” Well, point one for her; I was an idiot. If I was going to be totally honest, which I wasn’t in the mood for, she hadn’t at any time claimed to be jetti. I tried to regroup my forces. “But that fighting…she couldn’t be that good without the Force.”



“Possibly not. But…she has these abilities, and uses them to hone her skill, not create it. She can fight, and learned to, just as you did, with practice and training and sweat and skill. The Force just enhances her ability to use it, that’s all. She’s not a fully trained Jedi, and by her own words, doesn’t want to be. Do you stop learning new ways to fight, just because you’re better than most opponents as you are?”



I hate being wrong, or worse, having to listen to someone tell me I am. But I am honest, and what he said was reasonable. I didn’t want to say so, though. I was steeling myself to do the honorable thing and admit it, when Bao Dur, who usually says maybe a dozen words a day, rattled on. Well, hell, it saved me from having to say out loud I was wrong; might as well listen.



“Let me ask you something. Why do you hate Jedi?”



That took me by surprise. I had expected a speech. “I don’t hate jetti.”



“Good to know,” he made a gesture at his own light saber. “All right, maybe the better question is: what do you have against Jedi?”



“How long do you want to stand there and be insulted?”



“Try me.”



“They’re arrogant, think they know everything, and act like they’re better than everyone else.” There, let him argue that.



He did. “Hm. Doesn’t sound like anyone else I know.”



Yeah, sonny-boy, go ahead, just say it. I would rather let a kath hound chew my arm off than admit I knew who he was talking about it.



But he didn’t press the point, simply continued, “Well, I can’t argue that some of them were. But can you honestly say that about the ones you do know well?”



“Kreia,” I said flatly. “And another one I knew a while back, Bastila.”



“Kreia is in another realm altogether, and we know for a fact she’s a Sith. None of us liked her, not even the General. I’ve heard of Bastila; by all accounts you’re probably right. We met some of the Masters before Kreia killed them. At least one of them would fit your description. The other three, not so much. Arrogance is a failing of a lot of higher-up Jedi. But…there aren’t any more higher-ups anymore.”



I mulled that over for a while. Yep, he had just agreed with me. I felt better, good enough to actually talk some more.



“I respect them as fighters; I can’t argue the results, and I’ve seen many of them beat odds that would have brought my own men down. But they fight well because of the Force, not because they worked at it.”



“Fair enough, from your point of view. Let’s use me as an example, though. I just became a Jedi. I fight better now, that’s true. But I work hard to improve, just like you do. Jedi skills aren’t just ‘open up to the Force and get all these powers’, it’s a lot of training to learn to use them, and use them in a way that doesn’t hurt anyone, or yourself, without meaning to. It’s exhausting, believe me. And a lot of responsibility. You agree to be a Jedi, and you agree to have a lot of people believe you know what’s right, even when you don’t. It’s being a leader on a scale that’s staggering. You are the leader of your people, you understand how it is.”



Hell yes, I did. Amazing how many people think you know everything just because you’re strong enough to get people to follow.



But then I realized that Bao Dur had done exactly as he had meant to; I wasn’t angry anymore. I even was starting to feel a bit of a jerk of how I’d behaved. Only a little bit, mind.



But I did want to make one more small point before going back to the Ebon Hawk.



“You want to know, really, what I have against jetti?”



Bao Dur nodded, still smiling.



“They beat us.”