"Great Ziro, the Corellians have blockaded Ryloth. Our flotilla can't get close."
"Yeah, yeah." The Hutt, Ziro, waved him off impatiently. "Don't pull back yet. Hold position, keep watching, and wait for an opening."
"Yes, Great Ziro."
Ziro might not have been the type to quote fancy sayings, but he understood the logic just fine: if one link in the chain snapped, the next one was about to feel the strain. The moment he received the Zygerrian slavers' plea from Ryloth, he sent reinforcements.
But faced with the Corellian Navy's blockade net, the captains under him didn't have the nerve to run it. They just hovered at a distance, staring.
It was driving Ziro up the wall. To the Zygerrians, Ryloth was just one more hunting ground. To Black Sun, Twi'lek slaves were a mint—pure profit, forever. Ziro absolutely did not want the slavers pushed off Ryloth.
Ryloth had to be reinforced.
At that moment, one of Black Sun's senior operatives leaned in and offered, "Great Ziro. Cut the head off the snake—why not find a way to kill that Max Vizsla?"
"You?" Ziro shot the Falleen a sour look. "You do it, then. If you can put him in the ground, I'll pay you ten million."
"No, no, no." The Falleen jumped back, hands flailing. "Not me. Not me."
"Then stop wasting my time."
"I can't… but I know someone who might."
"Oh?" Ziro's interest flickered. "Who?"
"Since the start of this year, a bounty hunter with the nickname 'Mando-Killer' has taken down multiple well-known Mandalorian hunters."
...
"You're not terrible. You even made me sweat a little."
Hearing the taunt, the badly wounded Tyres Finley forced his head up. He glanced at the wound punched straight through the giant's left chest and gave a helpless, blood-tinged grin.
"Heh… Normally, I win that. Just didn't factor in that you're a freak. Heh."
"Tch, tch." The giant known as Mando-Killer clicked his tongue in amusement. "Are Mandalorians all this pathetic now? Dying, and you still can't accept reality—still making excuses for why you lost."
"I just got careless and walked into your trap." Tyres coughed, blood on his teeth, and still refused to give ground. "Mandalorians who go for the heart like I do are rare. Most of us take the head first. Even if your heart's on the right… you've still only got one head. Heh."
"Oh?" The giant leaned down, arrogantly pushing his helmeted face right up to Tyres. "Do I…?"
Tyres exploded into motion.
In a quickdraw slash, he ripped his beskad from his hip and snapped it up in one clean, violent arc.
The giant's massive head—helmet and all—spun off and sailed away.
"I… won—" Tyres coughed hard, incredulous.
The head hit the deck.
At the same time, clapping started.
The headless giant straightened as if nothing had happened.
Then, from the torn collar and shoulder line, countless tendrils writhed out, knitting together into the shape of a new head.
"Wha—" The movement tore Tyres's own wounds open. He vomited blood in thick bursts. Cold crept through his limbs.
"Wha… you're Durge?" Tyres finally understood who he'd been fighting.
"Heh." The bounty hunter, Durge, grinned wide under his new face. "What, you got me in your Mandalorian history books?"
"Hah…" Tyres spat blood and forced the words out anyway. "Big tough guy. Too scared to come after Clan Vizsla, so you stalk lone wolves like me in the shadows."
Durge snorted. "Pathetic. Your mouth's tougher than your blade. And don't pretend you were outnumbered—I took you alone. You wanna complain, complain to the void. The Mandos I've killed are trash. And you? You're the best of the trash."
"Still… won't go near Death Watch." Tyres's laugh broke into a cough. "Coward."
Durge threw his head back and laughed. "Death Watch?"
"I went to Mandalore. Shame, really—none of the Mandalorians I remember were left. Those so-called New Mandalorians? Cowards. Weaklings. And Death Watch—driven off Mandalore by cowards—are worse than weaklings. Death Watch? They're not worth killing."
Tyres tried to speak—tried to explain that the Mandalorian Civil War wasn't as simple as this monster thought—but his lungs wouldn't give him the air.
Durge stepped closer.
"Don't worry. You won't be lonely on the other side. My next target is your good buddy—Jango Fett."
Tyres convulsed and vomited another mouthful of blood. With what little voice he had left, he rasped, "That short runt's weaker than me. Not worth your time…"
"Tch." Durge's grin widened. "Look at you—brotherhood to the end. Afraid I'll kill your useless little brother after I finish you?"
Durge picked up Tyres's Z-6 rotary blaster cannon and walked over. He kicked the kneeling Mandalorian hard enough to send him tumbling backward, then stooped to retrieve the fallen beskad.
"Nice gun. Nice blade. I'll use your weapons to put down your worthless brother."
He glanced at the armor.
"And your kit's good too. High purity. Add your set to my haul, and I'll finally have enough beskar to plate my whole suit."
As he hauled his prize back toward his ship, Durge's new head kept muttering to itself.
"Freighters are boring. Kill a few more Mandos, buy a starfighter… then buy myself a proper warship."
A soft beep.
"Missed call?" Durge opened his comm.
A synthesized female voice spoke. "Mando-Killer. New contract."
"Same rules as always. I talk to the client first. If they won't do that, I don't take the job. If they agree, have them call me."
PS: Tyres Finley is not a canon character. He's a guest cameo contributed by a reader from the community.
PPS: The bounty hunter Durge appears in the 2003 Clone Wars animated micro-series, and later is canonized in the Doctor Aphra comics. Here's the short version of his history with Mandalorians:
Around a century before the Naboo crisis, Durge was hired to assassinate a Mandalorian leader (a Vizsla). Mandalorians tracked him down and defeated him, only to discover he couldn't be killed easily (he isn't truly immortal—his regeneration is just extreme). So they imprisoned him and punished him with prolonged torture.
Durge eventually escaped, retreated into the Unknown Regions, and went dormant to recover—nearly a full century.
After awakening, he sought revenge. In the material where he appears, there's little evidence of him directly targeting either New Mandalorians or Death Watch. During the Clone Wars, once he learned the Republic's clone army was created from a Mandalorian genetic template, Durge began working for the Separatists and fed his revenge by slaughtering clones in bulk.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🛡️ STAR WARS: THE RISE OF MANDALORE
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🛡️ MANDALORE WILL RISE AGAIN.
A warrior culture divided.
Clans fighting for survival.
A galaxy slowly moving toward war.
And someone determined to ensure that Mandalore will never again bow its head.
Star Wars: The Rise of Mandalore has 100+ chapters ahead available now.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
⚔️ THIS IS THE WAY OF WARRIORS
🛡️ Mandalorians
⚔️ Clan warfare
🚀 Galactic conflict
🏛️ Politics & strategy
💥 Fleet battles
🔥 Mandalorian expansion
🌌 A changing galaxy
Mandalore has fallen before.
It has been divided before.
But warriors remember.
🔥 100+ CHAPTERS AHEAD.
👉 Witness the rise before everyone else.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
🌐 SrMagnusCorp: https://srmagnuscorp.com/
🔥 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/MrMagnus
🐦 X / Twitter: https://x.com/SrMagnuscorp
⚠️ Power Stones help determine future release priority!
🛡️ For Mandalore.