Chapter Text
When Jango finally found the Jetii, his first reaction was a pang of disappointment, because he looked dead: strung up by the wrists in a containment field, completely limp, half-dressed in filthy rags, with a small puddle of blood forming underneath him.
It wasn't exactly surprising. The Sith were nothing if not vindictive, and during just the three weeks that Jango had been aware of his existence, the Jetii had burned a trail of chaos across the spinward edge of the Sith Empire. Jaster's spies had since determined he'd been left behind to cover the retreat of a group of his fellows on Trobranta, but what a bunch of Jetiise had been doing so far from Republic space in the first place was as yet a mystery.
Jango had first learned of him two weeks after said abandonment, when his forward scouts reported that the Landis Sector shipyard (the one that churned out a steady supply of small-to-medium-sized cruisers for Darth Sidious’s spinward fleet almost as fast as he used them up) had suffered a series of catastrophic equipment failures, resulting in the destruction of two docked frigates and one half-built heavy cruiser. Which wasn't particularly significant in the grand scheme of things, given the size of Sidious's fleet, but it became a hell of a lot more impressive when you considered that the sabotage had been caused by a single sentient — a single sentient, moreover, who had by all accounts recently escaped a brief bout of captivity, was alone, unarmed and unarmored, and who must have been improvising.
Sith Inquisitors had swarmed to the area, and from there to the nearby colony on Corida IV, a small moon in a system rich in mineral resources, but otherwise largely uninhabitable. Most of the ore used by the Landis Shipyard was mined there.
The colony had then promptly erupted in an impressively successful slave rebellion.
By that point Jango had been interested, and had actively sought out news of the Jetii. He got a slew of universally positive first-person accounts from former slaves, and a handful of grainy security recordings that still managed to be very impressive. Among other things, the Jetii had personally killed at least half a dozen of the Inquisitors before making it off-planet.
Jango wasn't embarrassed to admit the Jetii was the reason he'd once again postponed his planned rotation back to Manda'yaim. At first it had only been to take advantage of such a convenient distraction — not to mention the convenient concentration of high-value targets — but after the reports from Corida IV, he'd started entertaining hopes of catching up to the wayward Jetii before the Inquisitors inevitably ran him down.
The Ka'ra knew there was no other reason to capture this decrepit, obsolete dump of a long-range sensor outpost, rather than blowing it to scrap from the comfort of his flagship. But he'd received reports that the Jetii had been brought here after Darth Maul had recaptured him sometime within the last five days. Which meant that a successful retrieval was a longshot, even if the intel was reliable.
Still, the Sith were vindictive, which meant they liked to draw things out, and that blood was still dripping. Jango switched his buy'ce's filter to infrared. The results were promising: if the Jetii was dead, he was very recently dead.
"Clear the rest of the level — I'll deal with this."
Myles didn't bother acknowledging him with more than a quick salute, hand to heart, before leading the rest of the verde further down the corridor. That didn't mean Jango wouldn't hear about it from him later; Myles had opinions about the Jetii.
Jango picked his way over the bodies of the guards towards the prisoner. Up close, he could verify the being matched the description they had of the Jetii: human or near human, male, slim build, pale skin, and reddish-brown hair and beard — or at least it could be, underneath all the blood and grime. The bulky Force-blocking cuffs wrapped tight around his wrists — one of which was swollen, clearly broken — cinched the identification. His face and part of his chest looked burned in a way that seemed less like deliberate torture and more like he'd gotten caught too close to some sort of explosion. His left eyebrow was missing altogether. Lower down, he had a large, hastily-closed laceration across his throat, and then a varied topography of overlapping wounds all over his torso that definitely were deliberate torture.
But he was still breathing, and Jango was happy to note that nothing looked immediately life-threatening. Though it would probably be prudent to be careful.
He easily located the shut-off for the containment field, set it for a thirty second delay, then quickly moved to brace his prisoner. The Jetii flinched and tensed at the first touch of Jango's beskar'gam. He did his best to shush at him soothingly, but it's not like there was anywhere Jango could hold him that wouldn't hurt, even if that had been a priority. He did make an effort to smoothly guide the bound loop of the Jetii's arms over and around Jango's buy'ce, in deference to the broken wrist. The Jetii still groaned and whimpered a bit, but didn't try to fight him, and passed out altogether when Jango leaned over to pick him up properly. Probably for the best.
All in all, it was a great way to cap off a successful campaign. They'd gained six new strategically significant star systems within as many months, and the Landis Shipyard itself was a major prize, even if it was currently a little disabled. And the newly-instated government of Corida IV was smart enough to realize they wouldn't be able to maintain their independence for long without help, and all too happy to swear fealty to the Mand'alor in exchange for protection and some help with the clean up. Jango would let Myles finish handling that — he and his new Jetii would be going home.