The moonyard thrummed like a living thing. Steel skeletons of starships stretched into the cavern's dim, cavernous heights, cranes moving like arthritic giants as swarms of construction drones stitched armor and systems into place. Shepard walked the length of a slipway with a measured step, eyes taking in the scale of what his people now built: Infinity-class supercarriers, long-range frigates, escort corvettes and drone tenders a layered fleet designed to project Mandalore's will across the stars.
Today's focus was a new trial: FTL trial burns for the first support frigate class. The Infinity carriers themselves didn't need the test; their drives were born of the same designs and would change the meaning of power projection when they launched. But frigates were workhorses nimble, numerous, and the backbone of fleet maneuvers. If their jump drives could hold steady, the carriers would be unstoppable.
Shepard stood on an observation catwalk with Chief Engineer Rhal, holo-readouts flickering between them. "Initiate the resonant field," Shepard said. The engineer's gloved fingers danced across the console. The frigate's engines woke with a soft, hungry whine. Power bled from the moonyard's distributed cores, funneling into the primaries. The drive ring glowed, then flared in a silent pulse as the test burn executed.
No coordinates flashed on the displays the test was local, a short, controlled slip of space-time yet the ship's jump signature read clean, the hull stresses within nominal limits. The frigate blinked out and returned a heartbeat later, systems green across the board.
Rhal exhaled, the corners of his mouth lifting. "Stable. Drive efficiency at ninety-seven percent on this iteration."
Shepard allowed himself a small, satisfied nod. "Begin serial production throttling. Send the run-data to the slipwrights. If these perform in squadron numbers, an Infinity with escorts will be a force the galaxy must reckon with."
That evening the Clan Council convened in Sundari's great chamber. Leaders, elders, the heads of industry and agriculture, and the commanders of the Spartan brigades took their seats. Holos displayed the week's metrics: harvest yields from Concordia, water-table recovery rates, and most celebrated a steady climb in birth rates across Mandalore's settlements. After decades of attrition and exile, the clans were growing again.
"Fertility clinics report a thirty-two percent rise in live births this quarter," announced Dr. Isha Vel, Shepard's chief civilian administrator. "Child wellness metrics are strong. Immunity programs, coupled with improved nutrition, are holding."
Merchant leader Korr Valis tapped his datapad and a trade flow hologram flared to life. "Markets are healthy. Trade convoys from the Outer Rim bring rare alloys and fabrics. Our Prowler teams have secured supply lines and premium nodes. The matter engines keep our printers fed; the moonyard runs at an efficiency our ancestors would call sorcery."
A murmur of approval crossed the chamber. Shepard watched faces: hopeful, hungry, wary. He steepled his fingers and addressed the assembly.
"Our growth is not just statistics," he said. "It is the proof of survival. We must ensure prosperity does not breed complacency. Ship production continues; planetary shields must be perfected; the Spartan training program expands to include civic defense. We are Mandalorian we will never abandon the blade but we will wield it to protect the flourishing of our people."
Outside the halls, Keldabe hummed with the rhythm of prosperity. Market stalls overflowed with grain, engineered fruit, and ship components traded openly. Children chased each other between stalls while apprentices learned metallurgic arts under calm masters who once would have taught only strategy and warcraft. It was a strange, beautiful thing: armor polishing benches beside bakeries, holo-scribes recording trade contracts while warriors exchanged tactical reports over cups of steaming tea.
Old veterans who had once expected nothing but endless campaigns paused, stunned, at the sight of laughing families and public gardens flourishing where cracked stone had once been. The change arrived in stages farms, then schools, then health and the people adapted, pride swelling into a quiet, defiant optimism.
Arla Fett The Sister in Shadow
Far from Mandalore's surface and two years into a dangerous long game, Arla Fett moved like a ghost in the halls of a growing Confederacy outpost. Younger sister to Shepard and sent as a child to weave herself into rising circles, she had become a consummate infiltrator: fluent in rhetoric, in trade law, and in the subtleties of court intrigue. Her mission had been simple when it began — gain trust, learn intent, and, when the time called, act.
Tonight Arla stood in a private antechamber, mask of composure flawless, a subcutaneous comm embedded behind her ear. A smugglers' lord, warmed by artificial wine, lamented tariffs and sang praises of the Confederacy's nascent unity. Her eyes took it all in: routes, contacts, the names of ships and captains. She wrote none of it down; instead, she encoded it into a phrase and transmitted it in a burst to a secure node Shepard maintained for her.
A sliver of light in her palm pulsed — the confirmation that the message had reached home. Shepard's reply would be compressed, tactical: new directives, a request for materials, sometimes a cold command to burn a contact if they compromised the mission. She had been alone among them for years, and yet the work gave her purpose.
She thought briefly of the market stalls on Keldabe, the laughing children, the farmers. It steeled her. "If they are to threaten Mandalore's peace," she told herself softly, "they will not live to do it."
Shepard watched the moonyard's distant glow from his council balcony late into the night. Infinity frames rose, frigates blinked across the docks, and his sister's coded dispatches arrived with the steady rhythm of a heartbeat. Industry, family, and shadowed strategy wove together into the tapestry he had longed to create.
Mand'olor was building an age of iron and life and in the quiet, hidden places, blades were being sharpened to keep it.