Children of Mandalore: Red Fang

CHAPTER THREE

KUAT SYSTEM, GALACTIC ALLIANCE FLOTILLA, 40 ABY
FIVE DAYS AFTER THE ATTACK ON TORYAZ STATIONARY

Rixa clenched his jaw as his X-Wing came out of hyperspace a few hundred meters from the hull of an Imperial-II-class Star Destroyer. It had been several hours since he had talked with Aru and he hoped she had managed to get him a pass through the security flotilla. He couldn't help but notice all the turbolaser batteries bristling along the triangular hull of the ship.

"Unidentified X-Wing this space is a secure military zone, state your name and purpose for entering the system." A voice thick with a Coruscanti accent said over the commlink.

Still a bit paranoid after the incident on Toryaz I take it, eh boys? He thought. "Rixa Numeck, I am here to meet with my sister-in-law, Aru Numeck. She should have secured authorization for me to pass through the flotilla."

"One moment." The voice said.

Rixa tightened his grip on the flight controls of his X-Wing as he waited for the controller to clear him. Security had sure been increased after the incident on Toryaz Station a few days earlier. He just hoped that he didn't wind up jinking and juking around a flight of GA starfighters as he was chased out of the system. Rixa couldn't stop but think that maybe this was some kind of elaborate trap laid out by Tyran to get the message across that he didn't want anything to do with Rixa or the family on Mandalore. He squashed the thought, Tyran did his intimidating in person not through the massive impressiveness of a fleet of Star Destroyers.

In all honesty Rixa was more afraid of Tyran than he was of an entire Galactic Alliance battelgroup.

"Rixa Numeck, you are cleared for landing." The voice said. "Proceed on your current course. Any deviation will be treated as hostile and dealt with accordingly."

"Roger that." Rixa said as he increased his throttle slightly. Some relief flooded through him as his ship passed over the hull of the Star Destroyer.

He took his X-wing down the designated flightpath and dropped into Kuat's atmosphere. His wife's R2 droid did the communicating with the tower controller as he neared the spaceport without any further incident with the military. Rixa considered contacting Aru to let her know he was in the system but figured she probably already knew. No calls had been stored on his commlink while he had been traveling through hyperspace, so he was sure that nothing had changed concerning the situation his older brother was in. Aru would have called him if there had been some kind of development.

Rixa set the X-Wing down in the designated berth and grabbed an equipment bag from the storage space behind the seat. Aru didn't want him showing up in full Mando gear, that was fine with him he'd do as she wished. He was fully aware of the careful story that Tyran and Aru had concocted to shield their son from the fact he was a Mandalorian. A hangar assistant appeared with a rolling ladder and attached it to the side of the X-Wing as Rixa opened the cockpit. He climbed down the ladder and was met by an older man in an expensive navy-blue tunic holding a datapad.

"How long will you be staying?"

"No more than two days." Rixa said.

"Your docking fee is two-hundred and fifty credits. You will be charged another hundred for every day afterward."

Rixa didn't bother arguing with man and gave him the required credits and walked over to the public 'freshers and climbed out of his armor and flightsuit. His father had given both him and Tyran a piece of advice that both of them had heeded in their careers.

"Make sure you're always wearing pants under your flightsuit, you don't ever want to have to make a quick escape in your underwear." Ruima Numeck had told his sons.

There must have been an entertaining story behind that little gem of advice but Rixa had never bothered to ask. He suddenly wondered if Tyran ever had and decided to ask him about it. Rixa tucked his black flightsuit and armor pieces away into the equipment bag and returned to his X-Wing and shoved the bag behind the seat before climbing back down and activating the security system on the ship. If anyone touched it before he disarmed the system they would receive a near lethal electric shock to their nervous system. His wife's rusty colored R2 unit rolled up beside him and tweedled.

"No I don't have any clue where Tyran is Domehead." Rixa said patting the droid affectionately on it's aforementioned dome shaped cranium as it rolled along beside him. "Hopefully Aru can give me something to go on, the last thing I need is to be working two jobs that have me looking for someone who doesn't want to be found." There was no question that if Tyran was actively avoiding being located no one was going to be able to find him.

The droid tweedled and they both made their way out of the hangar berth and out into the busy streets of Kuat City. There were speederlanes and skylanes just like on Coruscant, just not on the same scale. He flagged down a taxi and secured his R2 unit in the luggage compartment and gave the driver the location he needed to get to. Through some research he had done years ago, in one of those I-wonder-what-they're-up-to moments, Rixa knew where his brother and sister-in-law lived and that they worked for a government organization called the Office of Domestic Security. A little further digging had revealed that they worked directly for a woman named Neada Tash.

He knew where she lived as well and found himself amazed that his sources could get intelligence on highly classified government files but nothing on a simple terrorist named Red-Fang. Maybe Red-Fang wasn't the simple terrorist that Rixa had been lead to believe. The taxi dropped him and his droid off at their destination, a block from the main building of the ODS. He wanted to scope it out before actually approaching, just in case. To his veteran eyes it appeared to be exactly what it was: a high functioning government building. A few blocks up from it was the apartment his brother and sister-in-law shared.

"Rusty, go to Aru's apartment and do a scan for any living lifeforms inside, send me a message on my commlink when you finish the scan. After that I want you to find a good spot and hideout there until I come and get you. Foreign droids aren't usually welcomed in intelligence service buildings like this one."

The droid tweedled again and motored off to the apartment of Tyran and Aru Numeck. Rixa let out a quick breath of air and walked over to the ODS building. The main lobby was made of solid and highly polished black marble with silver inlays of the Kuat Family crest every ten meters on the impressive ceiling. He approached the desk where a burly looking human was seated eying him over apprehensively. Rixa suspected he would have done no different than the guard if a two-meter tall, two-hundred and thirty pound man, decked out in black clothing and tattoos was approaching him.

"Can I help you?" The guard asked.

"I have a meeting with Aru Numeck." Rixa said as officially as he could.

"Name?"

"Rixa Numeck."

The guard stared at him for sometime before picking up a commlink that was connected to a receiver on his desk.

"Ma'am I have a Rixa Numeck here to see Aru Numeck...Yes...Yes Ma'am." He put the commlink down and looked up at Rixa. "Take the turbolift to the third floor, last door on your right."

"Not going to search me for weapons?"

"No point, you're a Numeck." The guard said. "You're a walking weapon. Director Tash has a slew of your type on her payroll who'll see to it you're dead long before you even reach for a weapon."

Tyran, it seemed, had made quite the impression on the folks who worked here.

Rixa stared at the guard for a few seconds and headed to the indicated turbolift and hit the button for the third floor. Rixa in fact had no weapons on his person, it was true he didn't need them being well versed in Corellian Ground Fighting and the ever classical Mandalorian Street Brawling. He could go toe-to-toe with most enemy combatants, except his big brother. The turbolift came to a halt and He walked out into the hallway. For an intelligence gathering service there seemed to be an awful lot of inactivity, the hallway was as barren as the radioactive zones on Raxus Prime. He entertained the idea once again that he was being set up but continued down the hallway nonetheless.

He stopped at the last door on his right. There was no palm scanner, door chime or external cameras or anything to signal the occupants on the other side that he was out in the hallway waiting. He was on the verge of just reaching out and knocking on the durasteel when the door suddenly swooshed open and he was face to face with a man he hadn't seen in a very long time.

"Dyir!" Rixa said completely caught off guard by the presence of his old friend. "Rumor had it that you were dead."

"Yeah well who do you think started that rumor?" Dyir said as he walked out into the hallway. Two guards materialized from out of thin air behind Rixa. "Relax, we just need to pat you down." Dyir said as Rixa tensed his body for what he thought was a double-cross. "Hold your arms out and spread your legs."

Rixa did as he was told. "So you got your eye fixed?" He said flatly.

Dyir nodded. "Robotic implant, I see you got your scars covered up with some artwork." His voice was just as frosty.

"Just the arms, still got the ones on my chest and back."

The guards stepped back and nodded at Dyir. "Why are you here Rixa?"

"Aru asked to meet with me."

"I don't believe that." Dyir said. "She knows how much of bad mood seeing you will put Tyran in."

"She wants me to find Tyran." Rixa said. "Apparently he is missing."

"He'll turn up, always does." Dyir said. "Him and Aru aren't getting along very well and he goes and blows off steam every once and again."

Rixa looked at him suspiciously. "You know where he is, don't you?"

"Go home Rixa," Dyir said threateningly. "Tyran doesn't want to see you anymore than he wants to see Aru right now. Let things cool off between them and let them work it out in their own time."

"Does Aru know you know where Tyran is?"

"Like I said, Tyran doesn't want to see her right now." Dyir deflected the question. "Get on your ship and go back to that worthless mudhole you call a home on Mandalore."

"Dyir! Let him in." A voice said from the room behind Dyir.

"Director I don't think that's-"

"I said let him in." The voice was soft but there was no mistaking the authority in it's tone. "Now."

Dyir exhaled in frustration and slowly stepped aside. Rixa shouldered past him, glaring daggers as he did so, and walked into the room. A woman with deep red-hair was sitting behind a very expensive desk with her fingers meshed under her chin. She was staring at Rixa intensely.

"Well, well the family resemblance is quite astonishing." Neada Tash said as she took in Rixa Numeck. "Aside from the tattoos and scars, I would have believed you to be twins."

"Yeah we get that a lot." Rixa said dismissively. "Where is Aru?"

"Currently she is watching over my daughter and her son at a birthday party for one of my fellow directors, but as you can see I'm too busy to attend it myself."

Now that Rixa was standing in the center of the room he could see that the woman's hair had been pulled back into a quickly, and messily tied tail and her clothes were somewhat ruffled. He glanced over his shoulder at Dyir and noticed his appearance was just as disheveled.

When Tyran's away the grown ups will play. He thought to himself. "Yeah, you look rather busy." Rixa said.

"I'm-"

"Neada Tash, Director of the Office of Domestic Security for the last decade, mother of one ten year old girl named Vyndra and you live in the hotel across the street on the four-hundredth floor." Rixa said. "I know who you are."

"Impressive."

"How do you know all of that?" Dyir said marching forward. "That's all classified."

"The name of her child and her occupation aren't, but everything else can be found out one way or another." Rixa said with a smug smile. "I do thorough background checks on all my targets."

Neada's eyes narrowed and Dyir had a hold-out blaster aimed at Rixa's head in an instant.

"Relax," Rixa said. "I'm not here to kill anyone, a couple years ago some Hapans called me and wanted me to off a rogue commando but in my research I discovered who she was and who was protecting her and turned the job down. Conflicting interests and all."

"You could find out my personal information but yet you couldn't come up with anything on this Red-Fang person? Interesting." Neada said motioning for Dyir to lower his weapon. "But considering how hard it was for my people to get their hands on that information, I'm not surprised."

Rixa felt his eyes go wide. "You have my intel?"

"Yes, but I can't give it to you until Tyran is present. The three of us will need to discuss something beforehand."

Rixa took in a sharp, frustrated breath. "How long until Aru get's back?"

Neada checked her wrist chrono. "An hour, Dyir will escort you to their apartment for the time being."

"I don't think that's a good idea Neada." Dyir began. "Tyran won't like it."

"I don't care what he does and doesn't like." Neada said. "Tyran is my employee and thus should be in this office right now doing his job, if he feels he can jeopardize my safety by leaving a hole in my security staff then I'm not going to have any qualms about letting his estranged brother into his house. So do as I say or go find another place of employment."

Dyir looked livid but nodded his head. "Yes ma'am." He managed to squeeze between his very compressed lips.

"And come right back after, me and you have a discussion to finish." Neada added quickly.

Dyir opened the door and waited for Rixa to walk out. The turbolift ride was as silent as it was tense as the two Mandalorians stood shoulder to shoulder. Rixa began laughing. "Must have been some discussion you were having, you've got some pretty nasty bite marks on your neck there Dyir." Rixa said amused.

Dyir clamped his hand on his neck instantly. "You tell no one about this."

"You think that my brother doesn't already know?" Rixa said with a raised eyebrow. "I'd be very shocked if he didn't."

Dyir looked suddenly unsure of the strength of his secret.

"So do you want to get me out your hair all the quicker and just tell me where my brother is or am I going to have to search this city top to bottom?"

"I'm not telling you where he is." Dyir said flatly. "Tyran doesn't want to be bothered by anyone right now, least of all by you."

"Fine." Rixa said. He was starting to get a suspicion that he knew where Tyran was, or at least the type of place at any rate. Until he talked with Aru and narrowed down his suspicions a little more he would play Dyir's game. "I'll look for him myself."

Dyir walked him out of the building and down the street to Tyran and Aru's apartment. Dyir entered a quick series of digits into the keypad next to the door and hit the palm scanner. The door swooshed open and Dyir turned towards Rixa.

"You cause any trouble, any at all that could damage what me, Tyran and Aru built here and I promise you I will personally ruin your career."

"I'm perfectly capable of ruining my own career." Rixa said. "If you don't mind I'm going to make myself at home while I wait."

With a final glare from Dyir the door slid shut again and Rixa was left in the open confines of a very spacious and lavish apartment.

DERAL'S CANTINA, NAL HUTTA, 40 ABY
FIVE DAYS AFTER THE ATTACK ON TORYAZ STATION

"Iman Vitrix." Dain Dolvo said coolly as he read over the classified intelligence profiled cascading down his heads-up-display. "Seems to have a knack for dirty jobs."

He was sitting at the back of the cantina in a private booth with his feet up on the duraplast table while he read up on a potential employer. The Colonel had requested a service that all Dolvos had participated in over the centuries: Numeck Hunting. The only problem with that was the Numecks had participated in Dolvo hunting for just as long, and were just as good at it.

For generations Numecks and Dolvos had been at each others throats and the reason for the long running feud was lost to the invisible waves of time. Dain's father Giel had killed Tyran and Rixa's grand parents, earning the ire of their father Ruima Numeck. Ruima had made quite a reputation for himself during the three year hunt he spent tracking down Dain's father ultimately killing him in a one-on-one confrontation where it had all started: outside the Oyu'baat. It had been easy for Dain to hate Tyran and Rixa after that but truth be told, unlike the previous generations of Dolvos and Numecks, there was very little bad blood between Dain and the Numeck brothers. Probably because they had fought together against the Yuuzhan Vong.

After losing a man on a rescue mission Tyran had put aside their family feud and asked him to fill the spot in his roster and he had accepted. Tyran was very similar to Dain in a lot of ways, they were both cursed with the impressions their fathers had made in the Mandalorian Community. Tyran had gotten lucky with having to live up to a man who had a stellar reputation, Dain's father on the other hand had put a very negative impression on the people of Mandalore with trying to get his own cell of the old Death Watch group up off the ground.

It had been an unpopular move in the time of the Imperial Occupation and it remained to be unpopular even in the current Mandalorian environment. As horrible as the Yuuzhan Vong war had been Dain had taken advantage of it and had proved himself to be more than just the son of a failed Death Watch commander. He had worked well with Tyran liberating Katna Major and defending Caluula. He wouldn't go as far as to say he was friends with Tyran and Rixa, but he felt safe saying he trusted and respected them and hoped they felt the same. Now during hard times when jobs that paid big credits were few and far between Dain found himself with a tough decision to make.

The mission wasn't exactly an assassination, not yet at least, Vitrix just wanted him watched to make sure the younger Numeck didn't discover some dirty secrets that would put certain Alliance officials in an awkward position if exposed to the public. Dain had no problems with how a politician made his off-the-books money, he'd be paranoid if he was dealing with a politician who wasn't skimming creds off some government agency or another. Vitrix found this particular quality of his rather reassuring and was willing to pay handsomely for it. Dain supposed he was fortunate that he wasn't being asked to keep tabs on Tyran Numeck.

Despite the similarities the Numeck brother's shared they were worlds different when it came to their skills in counter-surveillance. Tyran would know within minutes that he was being watched by someone and would take potentially lethal actions to ensure he wouldn't be watched any further. Rixa Numeck was as lethal as any other Mandalorian Supercommando, but he was much more lax in his own personal security. It was the outcome of not having the same violently spectacular reputation that his older brother enjoyed, it meant having less enemies. It was advantageous for Dain.

He sent an encrypted message to the comm code he'd been told to contact after making his decision and removed his helmet to order another drink.

"Rixa, here's to hoping you'll keep your nose out of other peoples business." He said as his drink was placed in front of him. "That way I don't have to kill you. That way I wont have to face your brother."

KUAT CITY, KUAT, 40 ABY
FIVE DAYS AFTER THE ATTACK ON TORYAZ STATION

The interior of the heavily, but discreetly, armored landspeeder was quiet as Aru navigated through the busy sky and speederlanes. Tyran's unusual absence was a heavy weight on the shoulders of not only her but also her son, and by extension Vyndra as well. Vyndra and Ijaat were seated in the back of the car, the little Hapan girl was trying to cheer her friend up with silly jokes that she seemed to be making up on the spot. Ijaat felt responsible for his father's absence since it had been after they had talked that Tyran had left the apartment early in the evening.

When Aru had called Dyir to see if Tyran had shown up for work the next morning and he had told her Tyran wasn't there Aru knew that the time to make the choice between Kuat and Mandalore was approaching. She let Tyran get away with far more than he should have by clinging to the false hope that he might change. Aru knew Tyran better than anyone and she of all people should have known that Tyran never changed for anyone. The only reason she hadn't pulled up stakes and returned to her homeworld that very morning was Ijaat begging her, pleading that they just wait another day or two.

"I don't want Dad to think that I hate him." Ijaat had pleaded with very real tears in her eyes. "I want to apologize before leaving."

Aru couldn't say no to him even though she felt that Ijaat had nothing to really apologize for. She had told Ijaat to go to his room and had made the call to her brother-in-law, once again giving Tyran the ability to let down his family again by hoping he might come back and decide to put in a real effort into not only their relationship, but the non-existent one he shared with Ijaat. Asking Rixa to keep the fact he was a Mandalorian a secret was another way Aru was trying to avoid angering Tyran further, just in case he really did come back with with good intentions.

She was hoping against hope though, and she knew it. Sooner or later she was going to wind up back on Mandalore.

"Do you think he's home yet?" Ijaat asked suddenly through the reinforced permaglass that separated the driver's compartment from the passenger compartment. The sound of her son's voice cut through the dark fog Aru had been in and pulled her back into reality.

"What Ijaat?" She asked looking up into the mirror to see her son sitting closer to the permaglass.

"Dad? Do you think he might have come home?" His voice was hopeful and fearful at once.

Aru sighed heavily and shrugged. "I don't know Ijaat, I hope so, but I really don't know what's going through your father's mind right now."

Ijaat looked down and melted back into the passenger compartment next to Vyndra who smiled at him slightly, looked out the window and pointed at a bright red landspeeder and promptly, and playfully, punched Ijaat on the shoulder. It promptly launched the two children into a common traveling game where they would gently punch each other depending on whether or not they saw a certain colored landspeeder. Soon enough Ijaat was laughing somewhat as he called out a foul, which Aru had not known existed in that particular game.

"That speeder wasn't red it was pink." Ijaat was saying.

"So," Vyndra said smugly. "Pink is a lighter shade of red."

"It doesn't count." Ijaat continued.

"Does so."

"Mom!?"

Aru smiled, at least her son's mind had been pulled from worrying about Tyran for the moment. Vyndra was a clever girl to use Ijaat's knack of sticking explicitly to the rules against him in order to make him think about something else. "Sorry Ijaat, pink is a shade of red and therefore does count."

"Aww come on." Ijaat threw up his hands in protest.

"Sorry but Vyndra didn't break any rules this time."

Vyndra stuck her tongue out at Ijaat who adopted a sour look. "Cheater."

"Am not!"

"Are to!"

"Am not!"

"Are to!"

And so it continued for the next twenty minutes as Vyndra blatantly threw out all disregard for the rules of the speeder-punching game to keep Ijaat from thinking about his father. As she settled the armored speeder into the usual parking space Aru wondered why she had yet to hear from Rixa. Traveling to Kuat from Coruscant wasn't a particularly long trip and she had secured his entry into the system through the temporary military cordon. She decided to give him another hour before calling to see what was keeping him.

The two children continued to argue over who was a cheater and who wasn't as Aru herded them back towards the apartment. Aru marveled at how much Vyndra must have cared for Ijaat that she would rather have him angry with her than sad and depressed over his father. Yes there was probably something between them that would blossom and flourish as they matured and Aru entertained the idea of having half-Mandalorian, half-Hapan grand children. Both cultures had no small amount of fighting spirit, Aru had seen her fair share of Hapan Commandos in action during the War and they were almost as dangerous as a Supercommando.

Almost.

Aru would never accept that Neada operated on the same level as she or her sister or any of the other female Supercommandos who had fought, and died, during the War. It could have been because of her jealousy that her husband spent more time with Neada than with her, or the fact that Neada was even more of an absent parent to her daughter than Tyran was to Ijaat. Or it could have been simply because of both those reasons why Aru disliked Neada Tash and refused to believe they shared any common ground whatsoever. She liked the prospect of Ijaat and Vyndra ending up together, but wasn't fond of the idea of having to become family members with a woman she absolutely hated.

Aru pushed her simmering thoughts aside as she opened the apartment for the two squabbling kids but saw the man in the living room too late to react. Ijaat took one look at the man rising up off the couch and took off like a rocket in the man's direction.

"Dad!" He yelled as he impacted the man like a stun round wrapping his tiny arms around the man's large waist. "You came back."

Aru felt as awkward as her brother-in-law looked.

"Ijaat," Aru said softly. "That's not your father."

Ijaat had seemed to work that out for himself though. The man's muscles weren't the same and now that the tunnel vision had faded Ijaat could see the swirling tattoos covering the man's large arms. The man's hair, though the same shade of black as his father's but was shaved close to his head. There was a week or two of dark stubbly buildup on the man's chin. His eyes were a deeper shade of blue than Ijaat's father's eyes. But their faces were almost identical.

Ijaat backed slowly away and then ran behind his mother who laughed.

"Aren't you going to shoot him?" Vyndra whispered up at Aru as she hid behind her bodyguard.

"It's okay Vyndra, he's a friend of mine from the military." Aru said before looking at her son. "I asked him to come here and look for your dad."

The two children eased slightly but didn't move out from behind her. Aru walked into the living room an embraced her brother-in-law for a long while.

"How did you get in here?" She asked as she pulled away from him with a smile.

"Dyir let me in." Rixa said. "You didn't mention he was here with you guys."

Aru shrugged. "That's how he wanted it."

"I met his boss as well, she's a real piece of work." Rixa said sourly. "She could use a good smack in the back of the head."

Vyndra scowled and kicked Rixa in the shin. Rixa looked down with a raised eyebrow at the small girl.

"Don't say mean things about my mom!"

"Sorry but I call them like I see them." Rixa said with a laugh. "Whats with the girl?"

"Tyran and Dyir protect Neada. I protect Neada's daughter Vyndra."

Vyndra glared up at Rixa making him think that the little girl could handle herself pretty well. "Tidy arrangement."

"It works." Aru said with a sigh. She patted both kids on their heads. "Go get cleaned up before dinner. Me and Rixa need to talk about some grown-up things."

Ijaat looked up at Rixa. "You're going to find my dad right?"

Rixa looked at Aru, who gave him a sad look in return, then looked back down at Ijaat. "I'm going to try."

Ijaat sighed and walked away to his room while Vyndra went to hers. When they disappeared into their rooms Aru laughed quietly and hugged Rixa again. "It's good to see you. How's my little sister Jaya?"

"She's doing good, Jaiden's got himself a girlfriend now, they're getting pretty serious. Oh, Lin and Ryia had a set of twins a month ago."

Aru gasped happily. "Really!"

"Girl and a boy named Kelsi and Velsu."

"Oh that's wonderful, I should call her and see how she's doing."

Rixa nodded and inhaled slowly. "I'd love to sit and catch up but I am here for a reason."

Aru beckoned towards the door. "Lets talk outside away from prying eyes."

Rixa looked over his shoulder in time to see two child size heads disappear back into their respective rooms. He laughed and followed Aru outside to talk.

"So tell me what's going on."

Aru went into the events that led up to Tyran's disappearance, how he had missed Ijaat's school event, how she had threatened to leave him and called him a bad father and how the conversation between Tyran and Ijaat had been the final straw. Rixa listened intently without interrupting her as she spoke but it became very clear he wasn't pleased at all with how his brother had been treated as his face descended into a deeper scowl the longer she went on. When she finished he looked like he was going to give her a decent thrashing.

"It appears to me that you crossed a very big red line." He said after a few moments. "You have a lot of nerve calling him a bad father. Look what he built for his family, you have financial stability that I couldn't even dream of having, your son is getting one of the best educations in the galaxy."

"He is a good provider but when it comes to raising Ijaat I may as well have done it on my own." Aru said.

"Do you think it's easy for Tyran to separate himself from the two of you for so long?" Rixa asked. "Do you think he likes being away?"

"No of course not but-"

"But nothing, I'm going to take a guess that all you do is argue with him when he does come back right?"

"We argue a lot yes."

"Did it ever occur to you that he might just want to hold you for awhile because he misses you? Instead he comes back and you're in his face instantly and Ijaat locks himself away in his room because he's upset. Instead of enjoying him while he's home all you do is scream and avoid him. Not to mention the fact his own son thought it would be a good idea to have a new father, a notion I'm sure he picked up from you I assume?"

Aru stared at Rixa not knowing what to say.

"I'm going to find my brother, I have an idea of where to look but I'm going to tell you this." Rixa said pointing a finger at her. "Don't you even think about taking Ijaat from here and bringing him to Mandalore. If you do, I'll bring him back. Tyran didn't build this for you or himself." He indicated the massive apartment building next to them. "He built it for that boy."

"What if he doesn't want to come back?"

"He's coming back." Rixa assured her. "I'll make sure of it."

"Thank you." Aru said.

"Don't thank me." Rixa said as he started walking down the pedwalk. "Just answer a question for me."

"What?"

"Do you love him still?"

"Of course."

"Tell him that when I walk him through that door." Rixa gave her that signature sinister Numeck grin as he turned and headed away.