Come Together

[Mace Riko]

Susevfi - 11 ABY


The simple life. It was something he had heard that humans, sentients, real people craved. It was the dream that had brought expatriates from the Corporate Sector here a few centuries ago, the aspiration that had helped shape their society. After lives spent drowning in technology and modern conveniences, they had sought something different. Not regressive, mind you: Susevfi might have seemed like an archaic backwater at first glance, but beneath the trappings of agriculture and unsophistication lurked just as much technology as you'd find anywhere else on the fringes of the galaxy. Farmers still relied on vaporators and hydropumps to irrigate their fields, droids for crop harvests, machines for industry. There was medicine, power, and even contact from the outside world, sparse enough for the planet to remain private, but sufficient that they weren't utterly isolated, weren't too far behind the curve of advancement in the galaxy. The forefathers of Susevfi had simply sought the opportunity to engage their own hands in the process of living, to earn calloused hands and dirty fingernails so that the comforts of their life felt somewhat earned.

Mace Riko admired the sentiment of it. If anyone understood the concept of being born into a life that you didn't choose, spending day after day going through the motions of an existance defined and decided long before you were even born, it was Republic Commando RC-1987. But as much as he had not chosen that life, birthed into it by Kaminoan design, and ushered through it under Jedi orders, he hadn't exactly chosen this life, either. Three decades ago he had arrived on Susevfi under orders, accompanying his Jedi Commander, Mandan Hidatsa, and General Gideon Lazuli on a mission to hunt down the lingering vestiges of the Jensaarai. Their orders had been simple: there were Sith on Susevfi, find them and eliminate them. That had been the objective that drove Riko's actions. That had been the path that led him into those woods, through that mindfield, into that blast radius. That had been the life that brought him face to face with that IED, and the shrapnel that had torn through his abdomen and Force knows what else had brought Captain Riko's life to an end.

This was the life he had awoken into, a life defined by simplicity, and yet so utterly complicated. He awoke, not a loyal soldier of the Galactic Republic, but an accidental deserter from the Galactic Empire, left for dead on the battlefield and nursed back to health by the tender care of Mailia, the kindly and empathetic rancher's daughter who had, many years later, become his wife. He awoke to a galaxy where the Jedi he had loyally surved for the entirety of his existence were branded traitors, hunted with the exact same impunity as the Jensaarai he had been sent here to cull. It threw everything into sharp focus, and yet that focus left him lost, adrift. In his bones, he knew that he should return, make his presence known, throw himself upon the mercy of the Galactic Empire. Mailia hadn't let him: not by deliberate design, but with every smile, every stolen glance, every time his name found its way to her lips. Mace Riko did not choose this life: his heart chose it for him.

And so here he was, a Captain of a different sort. He strained against the rudder of his modest skimmer, fighting against the wind and the water to hold the cutter on course. There was a short in one of the repulsor coils, and the port pontoon carving through the surface waves a little deeper than it was supposed to, the friction constantly nudging the cutter off course. Still, despite the constant effort, despite the way it tugged and twisted on the tangles of scar tissue in his gut, despite the way the salty air bit at his skin and scorched at his brow, he couldn't help but smile as the sea spray peppered his cheeks, and the pure air filled his lungs.

"Watch those nets!" he barked at his First Mate, more cheerful than he would have if he'd been throwing orders at his old squad. His companion here on Susevfi was a clone of a different sort. "That's our lunch in there."

[Kit Riko]

"I know, Dad!"

If Kitty hadn't been so occupied with tying lines and securing the nets that contained their catch her eyes would have rolled as hard and dramatic as absolute possible.

It drove her crazy, after everything she had done alongside her father, after a lifetime - short as it was - spent on this boat, that he still felt the need to bark orders at her that she would have done instinctively. Maybe if they were back on Mandalore she could have understood, after all, there she had been the perfect shining example of a novice, a rookie. But here? On these waters? With these tasks? Yes, an eye roll was the least that it deserved, but the teen couldn't be arsed; there were more important things to do.

"Just lunch?" She questioned at the weight that was already apparent within the nets. It wasn't an obvious difference, but enough of one that Kitty had learned. They had a good haul today, a damn good one as her father would probably later admit.

'Pretty sure we got at least enough for supper and then some!"

Kitty loved this, though. True, she never felt like it was her proper calling, she'd felt more right when she had been just a few years younger, too young by her mother's reasoning when the family had been called and she had demanded she be allowed to answer at her father's side in her brothers' stead. They had their own parts to play but she had always been his right hand when she could be, ever since she had been old enough to understand just what that would mean.

Sadly, that also meant returning home. Returning to the hum-drum life that she had known when excitement and adventure had just been... there?! Augh, it was too much to accept! Too much to stand! And the armor she had been granted just sat tucked away and instead she was just... Here!

It wasn't a bad life. She knew that. And even right now, as they were hauling in the morning catch? Yeah, it was pretty damn great. But Kit wanted more. So much more. But then again, didn't everyone her age?

[Mace Riko]

Mace Riko had been blessed with three children: Saesee, Agen, and Kit. Their names were no accident, no random combination. When Riko had first asked Mailia to be his wife, she had declined: not because she did not wish to, but because she refused to marry a man with only one name. Choose another for yourself, she had said, So that I can take your name when we wed, and pass it along to our children. It was a sentiment that Riko had never comprehended until then, the notion that names were a fragment of a person, an aspect of them that was able to live on as part of their legacy. It was something he was not bred to think about, and legacy was not something he was supposed to consider himself part of. It was a strange thing, to know the specific moment at which your life changed, at which your sense of self changed, but for Riko that was it: the unspoken certainty that marriage, and family, and a future was in store for him, rather than just survival from day to day.

There had been no question that Riko would be the name he gave to Mailia, and to their children. It was a name that identified him alone, but there was no legacy for him to feel part of, and so it made sense: if a name would be the preservation of his existance after he no longer was, then there was nothing else it possibly could be. Choosing a forename for himself however, something to distinguish him from the others who would bear his name, that was harder. He wished to choose a name that would honour someone he respected; and yet it felt wrong to steal the name of fellow clones, involuntarily depriving them of that one precious thing which helped make them unique. That left the Jedi, conflicting a notion as that was, given the way they had been twisted by the lens of Imperial propoganda. He could have delved deeper into history, true, but as the Jedi proved: history could not be trusted. If he was to take a name as a sign of respect, it would be someone whose deeds he himself was qualified to corroborate. But how to choose, from within the ranks of so many? Names such as Obi Wan Riko were too obvious, while Gideon Riko or Inyos Riko did not, Mailia had informed him, sound right. Riko hadn't understood at the time - was it the cadence, the rhythm, the letter combinations, the syllables? - until he had realised that it was not the name that he uttered, but how he uttered it that Mailia referred to. It was not until he had toyed with the name Mandan Riko that he understood. It was not simply a name for him: it was a person, a resonance, a memory, a feeling. Too many feelings, in fact, as catchy as Dan Riko might have sounded.

In the end, it had been Mace Windu whose name he chose to take, not just for his deeds as a General, but for the unspoken obligation of something to live up to that it provided. It was not simply a historical figure, either: it was a weapon, an illustration of bluntness, one that Mailia had, with a chuckle like birdsong, agreed fit him all too well. When he had held their firstborn in his arms, the name had been far easier to choose; and amused as Mailia had been at the notion at at least you'll definitely want to stop after three, she had graciously agreed. He often wondered why she had done that, why she was so patient, so accomodating, so considerate to his needs and his feelings. A simple soldier was not worth that, of that he was certain, though every day he did his utmost to try and be someone who turned Mailia's mistake into truth.

Mace Windu. Saesee Tiin. Agen Kolar. Kit Fisto. The Masters who had crushed the Crimson Nova. The Jedi who had confronted the Supreme Chancellor. A unit. A collective. A whole. Family was a concept that Riko had struggled with, but through those names he transformed it into something he could understand, and feel part of. Perhaps it was not the best of strategies. Perhaps fathers were not supposed to think of children as their little soldiers, but for Mace Riko it was important. He was not just their father, but also their Captain, and to him that was a solemn promise and obligation. He would always look out for the best interests of his unit, always strive to understand and respect them in the way that they deserved. It was important to him. It mattered to him. To his children? Perhaps not so much.

His sons were a complicated business, varying from resignation to resentment depending on the phases of the moon and whatever other mysterious factors seemed to guide their mood. Grudging, that was the word, for how they felt towards their father's obligations, and conceptions of things. Kit, meanwhile? She just outright rejected it. Mace Riko barked out an order, and she would talk back, in some mixture of cheerful and exasperated, completely refusing to observe the sanctity of the familial chain of command. She was a rebel with a smile, insubordinate to a fault, with eyes that you were lucky to ever see pointed in the right direction, rather than rolled up into her skull in overly theatrical frustration.

Riko grinned. He loved every damned minute of it.

"You're thinking like a farmer!" he scolded, loud enough to be heard over the sound of the waves, but with enough of the familiar playfulness to be sure it wouldn't sound the way it sounded. They had played this game, in infinate variations, almost every day since little Kitty had learned to talk. "We're all soldiers, here: one thing at a time."

He wrenched on the rudder, ducking as the boom arm of the cutter's sail swung from one side of the ship to the other, snapped to a halt by the fibresteel cables of the rigging.

"If we lose that catch, there's still enough day left for another haul before supper. You fumble it now though, and it means no lunch - and I'll be damned if I'm gonna make an effort to be civil if you go dropping my lunch in the drink."

[Kit Riko]

"Have I ever?" Kit retorted along with a grunt of effort to finish securing the catch.

The port side finished she rushed to starboard to repeat the process, grumbling all the while. Maybe if it had been one of her brothers here she could have understood the implication that the job wouldn't get done right, but this was her and Kitty was fairly sure her first steps had been made aboard this very deck.

She knew it was just her dad's way, she could memorize every inch of the Mailia, and he still would speak as though she knew nothing. The truth was she did know the ship, far more than the woman it was named after, at least. But it was her father's ship, and in a way, she would never be able to see it and understand it how he did.

[Mace Riko]

Riko fought against the smile that his daughter provoked. He was no scientist, but being a clone he at least understood the gist of it, how genetics and nature versus nurture played out in theory and in the real world. People - or at least, those old enough to remember, and inclined enough to care - liked to think that the Grand Army of the Republic was full of identical, indistinguishable faces, but the reality was more complicated. Genetic fidelity to their original template was a sliding scale, and for some of his clone brothers it had been a badge of honour, something seen as making them purer than the rest; while for others, complications caused their appearance to stray: and that was even before you let the clones loose to begin customising themselves, dyes and grooming and ink all helping to differentiate the faces that existed beneath the buckets, and various paintworks and gear tweaks - regulations permitting, of course - transposing the same principle onto their armour.

From that perspective, Kit scored low on genetic fidelity. By the good and sympathetic grace of the Force, she got her looks from her mother, rather than her old man, and she was infinitely better off for it. But there was more to a person than looks, as the Grand Army also proved. The ten years between birth and active service allowed enough time for clone personalities to evolve and mutate. Some - particularly those ARC troopers once trained by Fett himself - resembled the gruff and acerbic Mandalorian personality more closely, while others diverged wildly from the established norms of their subspecies, enough to earn a sense of identity and individuality. Yet, for all their differences, there was something about a Kamino clone that just felt familiar. Perhaps it was the voice. Perhaps it was the sense of duty. Perhaps it was the way they carried themselves. It was something you noticed if Stormtroopers ever crossed your path: the variation in the way they moved, something that simply didn't exist within the clone army. While Kitty's voice was more like birdsong rather than his own gruff beast of burden growl, her mannerisms - especially when irked - were more than enough to remind him of the connection they shared. Her brothers might look more like their father physically, but Kit Riko would always act, at least in part, like her father's clone.

Casually, Riko shifted the angle of the rudder, just enough to steer the ship into a slightly unexpected bump with a wave at exactly the wrong moment.

"Sorry," the Captain lied, still wrestling with his grin.

[Kit Riko]

She should have saw it coming. It was a move that Kit had watched her brothers do to each other, or her father deploy on all of them in their younger years. It wasn't meant to dislodge your hard work... Just a wave. Crashing against the side of the ship. That sent a spray of water up perfectly angled against the hapless person standing right where she was.

The sudden blast of water against her didn'tentirely soak her, but it was enough to cause a few droplets to run down her hair and into her eyes. Kitty hadn't exactly learned and perfected the art of glaring so hard that she was sure anyone would back down; that seemed to belong to her father and their clan leader and a few other choice individuals she had met when she had gotten to leave their home and answered the call to go to Mandalore itself.

She was getting there, though.

A breath of air pushed from her lips was enough to blow away the most sopped strand of hair that handled in front of her vision, after all, her hands were still busy with more important tasks.

"Nice. Real nice. I can still let go, you know!"

[Mace Riko]

"No you can't," Riko challenged, a little more of his uninvited smile creeping through. "My little girl is too much like her old man. Letting that catch go means we failed, and you're not gonna let that happen any more than I would."

The Mailia was an odd vessel, if you regarded her from the perspective of a regular citizen of the galaxy. Folks here on Susevfi liked things to be out of the box. Technology was fine as long as it was hands-on, but the more practical the solution to a given task or problem, the better. With fishing boats like the Mailia - keel-trawlers, they called them - that unconventional thinking led to odd quirks that actually worked in a fisherman's favour. Practicality saw the vessel held aloft with repulsorlifts. She'd stay afloat just fine if she lost power, but when in motion, a set of coils provided just enough of a cushion to hoist her up so that she'd kiss the surface of the waves. It reduced friction, allowed her to be swift and agile; not traits one usually expected to find in a fishing boat. If you listened to the local stories, that was part of it: the first keel-trawlers weren't intended for that purpose at all, used for transit and transport instead. But sailors had begun to notice something strange, when those repulsor fields interacted with fish just below the surface. Depending on who you asked, they had a different made up bit of technobabble to explain the principle - it baffled their sense of direction, interfered with their sense of direction, whatever - but the result was that fish would eagerly shoal towards the keel of your ship, ready to be easily scooped up in the keel-net slung beneath.

As they had sailed back and forth, skirting the edge of the coral coast, a good weight of fish had collected beneath them - Riko could tell that much based on the way she steered, and lagged against the waves. Next came the tricky part, however, hauling up the net while the boat was still in motion. If they stopped, or slowed down too much, the fish they had scooped up in their nets would swim harmlessly away: it was their ongoing pace that held them in the nets, and it was essential to haul them onboard at just the right pace, in just the right moment.

The boys had more practice at it. Riko knew that; but so did they. They did things their own way, certain that they knew best, grudgingly waiting for the next time when Riko was gone so they could go back to doing things their own, better way. Kitty, on the other hand? She was still at that point where she had something to prove, and her father still qualified as a viable audience. She'd grow out of it before long, and so Riko made a point of savoring it every chance he got.

"You got those lines secure?" he asked, knowing damn well that she already did. "We'll alley-oop on your signal."

[Kit Riko]

Of course her dad called her bluff. He always did. Okay, so she'd learned most everything - bluffing included - from her father, which meant he knew pretty much every reaction she was going to make before it ever happened. But still, he could have let her have her moment!

There was a peace offering though and as the last knot was completed, Kit couldn't help but grin - maybe a bit too much. It was the sort of maneuver that at least one of her brothers hated because it always threatened to bring up breakfast - his at least. Kitty had never had that problem, something she had used as a point of pride endlessly.

It almost made her sad that she was the only one around now. Almost. The complete joy at the fact that she was alone out here on the water with her father overwrote that a ton. Maybe not quite as much as the secret guilt that she wanted to be elsewhere, but that couldn't have been further from her mind at that moment.

"Right, on my count!"

Her arm wound itself around one of the lines, more to secure herself than their cargo - a lesson that had only taken one flop in the drink to learn.

"Okay then, Three, Two, One... Mark!"

She felt the sudden change in direction before it was even made, anticipated it with every fibre of her being. All that was left was to trust in her dad and make her move when the timing was just right.

[Mace Riko]

On Kit's signal, Riko hurled the ship into motion, a sharp swerving turn that carved across their previous turn. An arm hauled back on the sail lines, while the other thrust out against the rudder, feet triggering the pedals that manipulated the intensity of Mailia's repulsorlift coils. The net result, and a helpful cross-breeze, conspired to lean the ship heavily, standing her up on her starboard pontoon as they swung sharply to the right, turning so tightly that the residual wake that had trailed behind the ship quickly came into view.

"Now, now, now!"

Riko barked, with enthusiasm more than command, straining against the boat's controls as Kit scrambled with practiced grace to dislodge the nets that had dragged beneath them as they sailed forward. It was a delicate balance, letting the port side ropes slacken as the starboard side tightened, the underslung piscine cargo skewing to remain beneath the boat's centre of gravity. In his mind, Riko counted down the seconds: an arbitrary number of them, perhaps, but after years of practice with his family on the ropes, it was as long as Riko dared sustain the manoeuvre; longer, and the catch would be lost anyway. The boys usually managed it with about seven seconds to spare. Riko's grin was utterly unrestrained as his daughter worked with swift efficiency. She always managed it with twelve.

Kitty signaled when her work was done, holding the starboard net lines as taught as she could, secured fast against the ship. Riko gave her two breaths to recover, and then reversed the controls, throwing his own weight into the effort to slump the Mailia back into the waves the way that she belonged. There was a crash and a shudder as the port pontoon hit the surface of the water; the other sound was much harder to describe, as a net of flailing fish was dragged the final few metres onto the deck, part catapulted as the boat levered around the starboard pontoon. Immediately Riko slackened the sail, Mailia's headlong rush at the wind's behest slowing, the breeze and creak of the ship in motion subsiding, leaving in its wake the flop and slop of the catch of the day, writhing around on the deck.

Riko tried to dial back on his smile, and failed.

"Not bad, Rookie," he offered warmly. "Not bad."