Bethune took a deep breath and stepped out of the airlock, onto the People's Warship Havana, wearing a smile of pure satisfaction.
He was greeted warmly by the Captain, and he responded in kind.
"Alvarez! Good to see you, Comrade!"
"And you also, Commissar. Your uniform suits you."
"Nonsense. It is too loose. I lost weight. The Bretonians are not interested in feeding prisoners well. War on, and all that."
They began strolling sown the hallway. The Commissar turned to Alvarez.
"Tell me, the man who captured me, is he with the Mongolian yet?"
Alvarez nodded. "Yes. Has been for four hours. Why?"
The Commissar paused. Then the Mandalorian likely still had his limbs. That usually didn't change till the second day. "They will learn nothing from him. Take me to him."
Alvarez shrugged, and led the Commissar to a side corridor and gestured to the third door on the right. "In there."
Bethune looked into the room, grimaced, drew his sidearm and entered. The murmured words "Thank You." could be barely discerned, followed by the sharp retort of the pistol. He left the euphemistically-named 'interrogation clinic', and Alvarez quickly led him down the corridor. The cursing of the Mongolian faded away as they moved farther away from the mess that had just been made.
"I did not know you were sentimental", mused Alvarez.
"I did not do it for him.", said Bethune in a tone of voice which left no doubt that further explanation would not be provided.
Jordan Hett looked into the mirror and adjusted the new Mandalorian tunic which he wore quite loosely.
His apartment was a disaster, not that it mattered. He lived in the capital of Planet Leeds, and if the bad side of town had a bad side itself, and that part had a seedy neighbourhood, and that neighbourhood had an area with a particularly bad reputation, his apartment would be the last choice of domicile there. In any case, he would ship out soon, and was not particularly interested in packing much. Not that he had much.
It had been a month since his father had returned from patrol, and in the dead of night smuggled a man into that apartment, and insisted that Jordan watch him at night, while he watched him by day. The man had not said much at first, and Jordan did not volunteer conversation in any case. Jordan did not know what his father was up to, but knew damn well better than to inquire. He did not even ask their 'guest' his name.
But after a few nights, the man began to speak to him. He told stories about the bygone struggles of the Alliance and the Coalition, in the Sol system. Struggles which were destined to become irrelevant just as they were about to be resolved for good. He told stories of more recent struggles, great battles in the Sirius sector, which continued that old rivalry into the present.
He spoke to him of a very old creed, Communism, and of men with names like Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. The ideal of equality sat well with a young man who had always known he would forever have nothing, in a society which still practiced the aristocracy of lineage, in defiance of the presence of all the other aspects of modernity.
Then one day, about a fortnight ago, his father, tight lipped, left with the man who had been their unwilling guest. He did not see his father again. And he knew, somehow, that he never would.
Yesterday a different man came to the door with news. A Mandalorian, with information about the wreckage of his father's ship, found in the Omega 50 system. The worst was implied. The Mandalorians, knowing that the boy had no other family, offered to be that to him, in accordance with their traditions. The boy had accepted. What other options did he have, in any case?
Jordan Hett knew that there was at least one man out there that knew what had happened to his father. The man whom he only knew as "Commissar".