371 Astronomical Unit Beyond The Mandalore System
The weary arms dealer sighed as the slipspace portal collapsed behind him. It was a two week journey from the Milky Way to this far into the core of Andromeda. He had stopped along the way, but nevertheless he didn't like it. However, he did have to admit it was good money.
It would be another week for him to cool his ship down and ghost into the system; apparently the resident authorities in this sector didn't take too well to people arming their militaristic cousins with out of this world weaponry.
He cracked open a case of water from his minifridge, the massive profits he'd reap were the only thing keeping him from going AWOL. The pirates and backwater governments he typically dealt with filled his pockets, but the risk to reward just didn't cut it.
After downing his drink, he leaned back in his chair and let the freighter's dumb AI handle the rest.
Mandalore
"Buir, why did I have to kill him?" Boba asked.
"Ner ad, in life, you must make difficult choices. Remember what I taught you, show the same amount of mercy that you would receive. If Death Watch found you wounded, they wouldn't have hesitated to do the same." Jango explained.
"Ni suvarir."
The pair kept on walking through the forest, followed by a platoon of True Mandalorians. After his maiming by Mace Windu on Geonosis and rumors that Death Watch had come back, Jango decided to quit bounty hunting and returned to Mandalore in order to finish what he had started decades ago. The last skirmishes had been a learning experience for Boba. The boy was only 11, not yet a man even by Mandalorian standards.
Jango's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an approaching vessel. His platoon instantly ducked down into cover, Jango tackled his son to the ground while readying his jetpack mounted rocket launcher.
If it were a Death Watch gunship, it would spell disaster for the patrol. It swooped out of the atmosphere fast, and high up. They had no warning.
Jango's concern was slightly relieved as the ship flew overhead and roughly landed into a small clearing a hundred meters in front of his group.
The arms dealer was tossed around his cot as the ship bounced him around, until it abruptly ended. "What kind of landing was that? Can't you at least warn me next time!?" He cursed at his ship's dumb AI.
"The landing was in perfect accordance with the last command you issued to me, would you like to hear a playback?" The ship replied, trying to be as helpful as possible.
"No! Where the hell are we?"
"Per your instructions, upon entering the gravitational pull of the planet in the fifth position of the system, I piloted the ship until I found 'wherever the closest buyers are'." The ship played back the merchant's exact words.
"Great. I hope you didn't piss anyone else off with your piloting skills." He grumbled.
The arms dealer lowered the ramp and opened the door. He was met with the sight of 3 dozen armored soldiers pointing 'blasters' at him about 20 meters away.
"Who are you?" The lead one asked, his armor silver with blue accents.
"Uh, I'm an arms trader, and I think you guys are just the people I'm looking for."
Jango slightly relaxed his EE-3, Boba doing the same. The man probably wasn't hostile, probably. "And what makes you think that?"
"I've got a mighty fine selection of weapons. Terran weapons."
Jango and the rest of his men looked at each other and lowered their blasters. They'd all heard the rumors and seen the craze on the holonet about these extragalactic people. Although the merchant in front of him didn't look like much of a fighter, the Terrans were said to have fought a war of survival for 3 decades against a superior foe, and won.
Although anything he had of value was miles away at camp, he wouldn't pass on this opportunity. He'd rather stumble upon a bunch of junk than let Death Watch arm more cannon fodder.
The Terran, seemingly encouraged by the Mandalorians' apparent trust, clapped his hands together and walked back into his ship. Seconds later, a cargo elevator lowered from the bottom of the freighter, stocked high with metal and wooden crates.
Jango's men slowly approached it. The man, who Jango assumed to be a Terran by his odd accent and even stranger ship (which was just a little too ugly, even for a freighter), pulled a crate off the top and slid its lid off.
Jango tucked his rifle under his arm and looked on.
The Terran carefully pulled out a strange looking weapon. "This here is a Morita carbine from the Interplanetary Wars."
The weapon looked impressive, but something was off about it.
"That's a slug thrower, isn't it?" Boba observed.
"It sure doesn't shoot plasma, it's a projectile weapon through and through."
Jango was skeptical, but said nothing.
The Terran looked at him funny. "I know what you're thinking, I've seen that stare before. Look, this isn't your average junk shop contraption, or something cobbled together from starship wreckage by scavengers, this is the cream of the crop. At the time, it was the finest military rifle my people ever made. Hundreds of thousands were killed by rifles like this one, and millions more wounded. It's effective out to six hundred meters and could go through 4 feet of flesh and bone, and this isn't even the newest of what I have. I just happened to come into possession of an old warehouse full of them. Here, take a look at what just came off of Colt's assembly lines, right on my homeworld of Earth." The Terran pulled another box out.
"This here is an AR-15. It's still a popular choice for home defense back in my galaxy, even though the design is almost 600 or so years old." The Terran motioned for Jango to hold it.
Grabbing another rifle, he showed Jango how to make sure the weapon was unloaded.
Jango gave the weapon a once over and shouldered it towards a nearby tree, his men now focused on what he was doing.
"An armor piercing round from that'll put a hole clean through most armor systems in this galaxy."
"What will it do to beskar?" One of Jango's men questioned.
"Beskar?" He asked.
"Mandalorian iron. One of the strongest metals in the galaxy, unique to Mandalore." Jango informed.
"Hmm, no wonder I'm not familiar. I wouldn't know anything about that, but I've done live demonstrations in the past where it went through a few millimeters of durasteel or duraplast like butter… You guys do know what butter is right?"
Beskar wasn't common among Death Watch members, and Jango liked the sound of being able to go through the more common armor materials with ease.
"Talk is cheap. Let's see one of these live demonstrations then."
As if on queue, the clearing started to take fire from all directions.
Jango dropped the Terran slugthrower and fired his EE-3 into the treeline.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Terran duck behind the crates and fish something out of them.
While Jango's men were getting pinned down around the freighter, a Death Watch soldier charged towards them, getting within 10 feet of Boba before a series of loud barks dispatched the man.
The Terran man yelled to Jango. "Cover me! I'm going to my ship!"
"Are you planning on running away?" One of Jango's men accused him.
"I'm going to save all our asses." The Terran let off another burst, taking down another assailant before running into his ship.
Jango briefly thought he was going to flee as well, but a hatch on the top of the freighter busted open to reveal a turret.
With lightning fast speed, the turret let off a stream of fire while sweeping back and forth through the trees, decimating the Death Watch ambush. Within moments, the skirmish was over.
"Kriff! What is that thing?" A Mandalorian exclaimed.
The Terran strode out of his ship, perspiring. "That, my friends, was a twenty millimeter Sawtooth chaingun. Not bad, for a 'slugthrower'."
"Not bad at all." Jango said, looking at a dead Death Watch soldier. The man was mutilated. The entry wounds didn't look that bad but the Terran wasn't lying when he said they could go through armor. Jango turned him over with his boot after seeing the blood pooling under him. The man had multiple fist sized holes in his back.
"Your slugthrower did this?" Jango said, dumbfounded. He'd never seen anything like it. None of the ones he'd come in contact with in the past had even come close to being this devastating.
"That's only a five point five six millimeter round. Wait until you see what the twenty did, the twenty's not for sale though."
Jango wasn't entirely sold on having to learn how to use a new type of weapon, rather than using something he was familiar with, but that 'live' demonstration showed him a weapon that would possibly turn the tide against Death Watch.
"I'll take them, all of them."
A.N.: Hope you guys like this spin-off concept I was thinking about. Next chapter of the main story will be out within 2 months.