Learning Curve

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Lilaena shouted orders in Mando'a at the Mando'ade that were gathering just outside their encampment. Her newest acquisition, a black furred Orryxian slave girl, walked down the ramp behind her, large eyes blinking in the sunlight. After the Mando'ade leapt into action, quickly setting about the task of emptying the freighter and carting the weapons into camp, she turned to the girl.

"This is your new home."

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha felt very small as she took her first steps on the alien world of Onderon. The freighter had settled down at the edge of a clearing in some primordial rain forest, and if she didn't know better, she might think she'd returned to the jungles of her homeworld of Orryxia except for the alien smells.

Before her lay a village of pre-constructed sheet metal and duracrete shacks bustling with humans, many of them in full or partial armor that resembled the soldiers who had crewed the freighter. It looked like some kind of army - and yet there were children, too. Off to one side, Akasha saw two human cubs scarcely half her age sparring with staves under an adult male's keen eye.

"Who are these people?" she asked.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"These are the Mando'ade, a fierce group of warriors. They are brought together by their adherence to the Resol'nare or the Six Acts."

Lilaena ticked them off on her fingers as she led Akasha into the camp. "Wearing armor. Speaking Mando'a. Defending themselves and their families. Raising their children as Mandalorians. Helping the clan succeed and care for itself; when Mandalore calls them to arms, to rally to his cause. Or hers," she added.

"Orinally the Mando'ade were Taung from Coruscant, but that was over a millenia ago. These Mandalorians are what grew from a stranded remnant that was left here thousands of years ago. They may be primitive when compared to their more modern brethren, but they are fierce warriors and not to be underestimated."

She clapped her hands, and one of her honor guard, Granoi, drew close. "You will be under the care and supervision of Granoi, Akasha. She will supervise your physical training for the first few weeks, and you are expected to do as she says as though she were me." Lilaena turned and looked at the felinoid. "Do you understand?"

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha understood. Didn't like it, but understood. She was being fobbed off on an underling to prove herself worthy of her new master's attention.

"Yes, master," she said, and then she glanced over at Granoi's impassive visor with the light of challenge in her eyes.

And then Granoi reached up and removed her helmet. She wore her silver-streaked hair in a tight bun. A few flyaways hung around a face with lines so deep at her eyes and mouth they looked like they must have been carved there - but Akasha would never have dared to call her wrinkled. A handful of scars stood shockingly pink on her weather-tanned skin. Her narrow, flint-like eyes smiled at her new charge, and not kindly. Akasha felt some of her bravado give way.

"I'll find out what she's made of, Mandalore," Granoi said.

The Orryxian girl couldn't help wondering how literally to take the sentiment.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

"Good," said Lilaena. "I hope it isn't too soft."

The two women shared a chuckle at the slave's expense. Then De'Ville was called away to make sure the rifles were properly stored, and Akasha was left alone with Granoi.

The older woman stared at the slave, and then grunted. "Follow me." She led Akasha through the camp, a few half naked children following them.

[Akasha Khan]

Without a word, Akasha followed. She held her chin high, but she let her eyes wander freely about the ramshackle settlement that would be her home for the foreseeable future. Everyone she saw was busy, carrying water, scrubbing laundry, carving up animals into slabs of meat, honing weapons. Everywhere she saw the same intensity, the same determination, the willpower of a people forced to carve out a living from an unwilling homeworld. The Mando'ade.

The feline girl followed until she realized Granoi had stopped. Her ears flicked backward toward the small cluster of children now fanning out behind her like an audience. She stared evenly at her Mandalorian governor, awaiting instruction.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Granoi gestured to a hill that stretched before them. The central well for the settlement was on the other side, and it was just outside the well protected area of the Mando'ade. "Go get me a bucket of water. And run, girl."

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha bristled momentarily, then checked herself. It was time to be patient, she told herself. And yet she took a little more pleasure than necessary in asking, respectfully, "And where may I find a bucket, Mistress?"

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Granoi reached down, accepting a sturdy wooden bucket from one of the children. Then she shooed them all away, leaving her alone with the cubling. She tossed the vessel to Akasha, and folded her arms, regarding the girl sternly.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha snatched the bucket out of the air and made a leisurely turn down the path. Then she started jogging up the side of the hill toward the well. No sense in dragging out this nonsense any longer than necessary.

To her surprise, as soon as she crested the hill and started down the other side, the noise of the camp faded away almost completely, and the noise of the wilderness - droning insects, chittering birds, and something in the distant woods howling for blood - rose all around her, threatening to envelop her. She realized with chillnig clarity that it would not take much straying at all to lose the camp completely.

Akasha made a face when she found the well lacked even something so rudimentary as a hand-driven pump. She kicked aside the safety that held the winch in place, dropping the pail into the water below, then cranked it back up again and poured its contents into her bucket.

Moments later she returned to Granoi, sloshing as she went, the front of her tunic unavoidably wet.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

Granoi greeted her with an impassive face, and merely pointed to a large metal tub that she had apparently dragged over to her. "Fill it up."

The bucket of water managed to cover the bottom of the tub, but there was a long way to go.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha stared poisonously at the tub, then at Granoi, then turned without a word and padded back down the path toward the hill.

Once out of earshot, she began snarling under her breath at the dirt and grass and insects around her. "Damn her eyes. Damn her feet, damn her hands, damn her tongue, damn whoever put the thrice-damned well too far from the damned village... Gods know she needs a bath..."

The Orryxian girl returned with another bucketful of water and dumped it unceremoniously into the tub. She scowled at it; the water level scarcely seemed to rise at all.

"Bring me a second bucket," she said to Granoi.

[Lilaena De'Ville]

A second bucket was procured by a grinning youngster (who lost the smile and ran away as quickly as his little legs would carry him when Granoi scowled at him).

The Mandolorian female stood like a statue, giving no reassurance or encouragement as the felinoid girl continued filling the tub. After it was full and the cubling exhausted, Granoi dismissed her to get something to eat and to bring back her evening meal.

Akasha was to eat with the other warriors in training, most of them her same age or younger. Everyone ate as quickly as possible, each burdened with their own tasks to complete before it was time to turn in for the night.

[Akasha Khan]

Akasha ached as if she'd been beaten, and her paws were so scored from the rawhide bucket handles that she could barely close them. Asking for two buckets? That had been a brilliant idea. Next time, she'd ask for ten buckets and a hoversled - or else she'd drag the damned tub to a river and watch it sink.

Dinnertime found her shuffling in a line of two dozen human cubs, everywhere from toddlers to teenagers, waiting to have her pewter bowl filled with rice mash and some sort of meat bathed in a pungent red broth. It was simple food, but the scent of the meat was torturing her nose and making her stomach rumble.

Once she had her food, she stole off to a secluded patch of grass in the shade of a concrete shack and crouched down to eat. But she'd just dipped her spoon in the rice when she realized she'd drawn a crowd - a small pack of Mandalorian teenagers, male and female, all of them staring at her with measures of suspicion and disdain.

There was no question who was the Alpha - a broad-shouldered boy with bronzed arms and a face chiseled from a mountainside. The others gravitated around him like planets around a sun. "This is our place to eat," he said. "Find another one."

Akasha laid back her ears, but she didn't move. "I didn't see a sign on it."

The young man raised his chin imperiously. "That's why I'm telling you instead of dragging you away by your tail."

The fur began to rise on Akasha's neck and shoulders. She was tired, hungry, and sore, and she didn't want a confrontation, but this was too much to be endured. The Orryxian girl bared her fangs and spat, "You're welcome to try it, human!"

He stepped toward her, and she lunged with claws extended, determined to teach him a lesson he would never forget. But a girl on her right intervened, hooking one of her feet with a boot and sending her sprawling facedown into the dirt. Before she could recover, three more of the pack were on her, pinning her limbs down with ruthless efficiency.

Akasha howled in rage, but there was nothing she could do - they'd twisted her arms so all the force of her resistance went straight into her joints. She managed to turn her head so one eye could glare murderously at the young man. "Five against one?" she grunted. "What kind of honor is that?"

The alpha male crouched beside her as if to study her. "It's the honor of fighting alongside friends," he said. "But you? You're not one of us. You have no place here."

"I was brought here by Mandalore!" Akasha snarled.

"So were all of us," he replied. "You want to survive among the Mando'ade? You'll have to earn your place."

The teenagers holding her released their grip, and she scrambled to her feet, chest heaving and eyes burning. But she knew she was no match for all of them.

The girl who'd tripped he stooped and gathered up her bowl, which had lost only a little broth in the scuffle, and pressed it into Akasha's arms. "Over there," the girl said, "is where the children eat, the ones who are not yet part of a fighting squad. You can eat there until you prove yourself."

Akasha glowered at the girl, but she had little choice if she wanted to eat. She took her stew and padded off.

[Akasha Khan]

Night fell quickly on Onderon, as if heaven had thrown a shroud over the sky, but morning came slowly, like an old, seeping wound. Dawn was just a silver haze bleeding through the fog when Granoi shook Akasha awake.

Sluggishly, the Orryxian girl began to uncurl herself on her cot, then stopped partway, violently sucking in air through her clenched teeth.

"Owwwwwwwwwww."

"That's what you get for not stretching properly last night, silly girl," Granoi chided her. "You have five minutes to be up and ready for exercise."

Akasha opened her filmy eyes just enough to spear the woman with an acrid glare, but she was already walking out the door.

Granoi had taken the Orryxian cubling into her own house, which, like all the Mandalorian abodes, was spartan above all else. The walls and floor were concrete, though both were covered liberally with woven straw mats to help keep the heat inside during the chill nights. There was a cot opposite Akasha's where Granoi slept, and a tub that had to be filled from a rain barrel, and narrow table against one wall that was scarcely more than a workbench. The only thing in the hut that even suggested modern technology was a bio-locked safe that displayed her armor and weaponry behind a pane of transparisteel. Even now, the helmet's eye slit glowered at Akasha as if it had imbibed the spirit of its master.

Much as she wanted to defy Granoi and burrow back into her nerfskin blanket, she didn't want word passing to Master De'Ville that she was lazy, dull, or soft. She reached down and rubbed her stiff legs furiously as she stretched them out, muttering curses against her sore muscles, and then she propped her paws against the head of the cot and twisted her spine one hundred eighty degrees, relishing every tiny burst of pain as each vertebra popped in turn. From there, she moved to her arms, her wrists, her paws, her neck, down to her feet, toes, claws, and tail, scrupulously attending to each part of her that moved. Stretching was more than comfort to an Orrxyian - it was an act of worship toward one's own body, the divinity of bone, sinew, muscle, and nerve.

Didn't stretch properly, my tail!

Akasha pulled on her shabby tunic and stumbled out into the thick mist that had settled on the village. She was surprised to see a line of a dozen children - between ten and fourteen, if Akasha had to put an age to them - standing expectantly before Granoi like a regiment at arms.

"Mando'ade," Granoi barked, in a tone that throbbed on the foggy air, "this is Akasha Khan. She will join us for our exercise today. See that she does not fall behind. Now, follow!"

Granoi turned and began jogging briskly into the fog, and the line of young Mando'ade quickly matched her pace in single file with military fervor. Akasha was still rooted before the hut in open-mouthed disbelief when she realized that one girl had not yet left - the sandy-haired girl who had tripped her the previous day. But there was no malice or smugness in her eyes, only urgency as she rushed and took Akasha's paw firmly in her hand. "You heard her, vod'ika - come on!"

Akasha found herself at a dead run behind the Mandalorian girl into the fog, out of the village, and into the wilderness of Onderon.

[Akasha Khan]

The sky bled pink when Akasha and the sandy-haired girl bounded out of the jungle onto a grassy hilltop where Granoi and the Mando'a children had gathered. Well - the human girl bounded. Akasha spilled out, as if she'd been poured from a bucket, and tried not to trip over her rubbery legs as she stumbled after her guide. The speed and agility that had made her deadly in Trakkin's fighting pit didn't translate into long-distance endurance.

The others stood in two ranks like statues facing the dawn. As Akasha clumsily found her place beside the sandy-haired girl, she realized to her chagrin that they'd all been waiting for her.

Granoi suddenly brought her fists together and pressed them against her chest. The children did the same. "Mando'ade!" she barked. "Kidos kar'tayl'ij! Resol'nare jorhaa'ij!"

Akasha didn't understand, but her ears twitched at the familiar word Resol'nare, which the children recited lustily:

"Ba'jur, beskar'gam,
Ara'nov, aliit,
Mando'a bal Mand'alor—
An vencuyan mhi."

Granoi prowled the first rank of children like a hungry wolf. "Mandalorians," she said, "tell me what it is you have sworn. Koval!"

A boy in the front row, the smallest of the company, shouted, "To learn and teach the ways of Mando'a!"

"Shuli!"

A dark-skinned girl standing beside him said, "To wear armor!"

"Rotan!"

"To defend ourselves and our family!"

"Jariel!"

"To aid our clan!"

"Bastan!"

"To speak Mando'a!"

"Lanai!"

Akasha flinched as the sandy-haired girl beside her shouted, "To serve Mandalore and rally to her cause!"

"Training, armor, defense, clan, language, and leader," Granoi replied. "These help us survive. There is one among you who has heard the Resol'nare spoken for the first time this morning."

Let's play 'spot the alien,' Akasha thought contemptuously. Until she realized that not one of the children had turned to look her direction. In fact, she was the only one not staring straight ahead in strict military discipline. For a moment, she was embarrassed to be caught out of line - but what did she care about these cublings and their make-believe army? And how in Maiur's name did learning a silly language no one else spoke help you survive?

"Last night, she was an outsider," Granoi went on, strutting down the line. "This morning, she is newborn. And tonight, she will be your sister."

The Mandalorian woman stopped, as Akasha knew she would, directly in front of the Orryxian. It wasn't even worth rolling her eyes at such pointless ceremony.

But then Granoi produced a set of binders and grabbed both Akasha's paw and Lanai's hand at once. Akasha saw her own expression of shock and dismay mirrored on Lanai's face as Granoi locked their wrists together.

"I give you your new sister!" Granoi proclaimed, raising both girls' arms in the air. "You will come to know her as she comes to know herself - in exercise, work, and combat. You will teach her to be one, as we all are one. And so shall she become Mando'ad herself."

"How is this training me?" Akasha blurted - and Lanai gave her a murderous glare, yanked on their mutually bound limbs, and hissed, "K'uur! Shut up!"

"You would think she had two mouths to talk so much," Granoi said. "Let us begin."