Chapter 4
Twelve days later Gavin sat in the pilots chair, comfortably staring out at the star lines. A book on one of the wars fought by the jedi lay open in his lap.
They had been doing their usual training and conducting repairs from the battle damage but all in all the pace was pretty slow. There was no need to rush with the journey lasting another full day.
“Are you doing alright?” Tinker asked as he joined him.
“Yeah, just thinking about next steps and trying to decide long term goals.”
Tinker was a bit confused, “what do you mean?”
“Well, we are doing the freelance scout work for the republic and earning some nice coin doing it but what happens when that well dries up? I’m not really sure I am cut out to be a full time bounty hunter and some of the jobs mercs pull are questionable to say the least.”
“So, what are you thinking of doing?”
“I know what I would like to do.” Gavin said.
“What’s that?”
“I would love to open a school or academy, a place where we could take in all the kids growing up in broken homes or no homes at all and teach them the lessons we have been taught.”
Tinker chuckled a bit, “A school turning out Mandalorian warriors?”
“Maybe, but more like capable, balanced people, maybe even could get a curriculum going for decent tech training. If I could find the right guy to run that part.”
Tinker shot Gavin a look. “You know I’m with you Brother, and the idea sounds good, we just need to…”
He was cut off by a loud, screeching alarm from the hyperdrive. Luckily Gavin had reflexively grabbed the controls because they suddenly dropped into real space. Normally this may have been less of an issue, but there was a ship made of some sort of liquid metal directly in their way.
Gavin jerked the controls as hard as he could but there was simply no avoiding it. As they hurtled towards the ship he cursed. "Poodoo!"
That's when Tinker started screaming like a teen aged school girl.
And then everything froze.
Onboard his parents ship Omni heard an alarm. Curiously he left the room they had kept for him all this time and headed back to the bridge, where a heated exchange was happening.
"What do you mean you engaged the time drive inside the galaxy, what the hell were you thinking!" Mother snarled.
"I wanted to get him home! It's been millenia already!"
"You just wanted to return to your experiments! You're not fooling me you old fossil!"
"Well now we have some of these primitives stuck in our shield like a bug on a windscreen and I am sure our son won't approve of just.."
"Just what Mother?" he asked.
"Oh, crap." said his father.
"Listen Son," His mother began, "I know you have become fond of these creatures but our homeowners association has a strict no pets policy!"
"They are also barely sentient and very self destructive. Maybe later we can get you a puppy?" His father threw in.
"I don't want to keep them." He started, as both his parents sighed in relief. "But why can't we just release them?"
His parents exchanged a meaningful guilty look. "Of course we can, in fact, lets do that." His mother turned towards the viewscreen.
"Wait!" He said, "what happens if we let them go?"
"Given the speed they were traveling when they impacted the shield they will be torn to pieces." His dad confessed.
"Not an option." He said forcefully.
Experimenting around with his new senses and abilities he interfaced with the ship and scanned the area. He found what he needed back towards Nathea and ordered the ship to head that way.
He then inspected the battered shuttle and its passengers. The clone was certainly interesting. He had been slightly altered visually but the really interesting part was the way the organic control chip had mutated, it looked like the chip had become sort of a parallel processor and was actively aiding the clone.
The real surprise was the mandalorian. He found the mind to be impressively honest and forthright. He saw his deepest drives and motivations, Gavins burning desire to create and grow a family, and instantly Omni knew what to do.
"I will need your help with this." he said to his parents.
Together they reached out to Omega on Nathea and planted the location of the planet Omni had selected, along with a bit of curiousity about it.
After they did that he again scanned the planet he chose. He had picked it for two good reasons, 1) it was a close, terrestrial world with a decent climate and well within human standards. And 2) while there were currently no sentients on it at some point there must have been because an area of the surface was home to a crashed cal class battleship.
While the ship was thousands of years old and much too deteriorated to ever fly again he figured it would be a source of materials and supplies.
The final step of his impromptu little plan was to extract the shuttle from his ships shields. This was a bit tricky because movement within the shield actually affected time.
With his parents aid he managed to get the shuttle out just a few years in the past. He figured that was better than the 20+ years they could have been stuck on the planet.
Sensing his parents were growing impatient Omni took the extracted shuttle, pulled out the two crewmembers, and allowed it to crash on the surface near the ancient wreck.
Once the shuttle was down he artfully placed the two Mando's amid the wreckage and prepared to depart.
He couldn't resist though, so impishly right before he left he wrote "Tell Kitten Omni says you're welcome." Onto the side of the shuttle, actually scoring the words into the metal.
Looking around at the scene he decided it would do well enough and returned to his parents ship, which immediately flashed away.
Gavin woke up, smelling smoke. He sat up and looked around. He was laying amid the wreckage of his fathers shuttle. Considering the last he remembered was heading directly for an unavoidable collision he couldn't be that upset about it.
He was reassured further when he saw Tinker lying nearby. At first glance, at least, his brother appeared unharmed.
Actually, he thought as he looked around, that made no sense at all. The shuttle was busted into pieces, wreckage scattered all over. How was it that the two of them came through without a scratch?
And who was Kitten? Who, for that matter, was Omni? As he noted the message scrawled across the panel of the ruined ship.
"Tinker! Wake up!" He wasn't going to get any answers just laying around.
The clone groaned and sat up. He looked around for a few seconds in confusion.
"You are a truly terrible pilot." He finally announced.
"Any landing you can walk away from, and all that." Gavin shot back.
"Speaking of which vod, how are we alive? I swear the ship crashed without us and we were just set down after."
Tinker reached under himself and pulled out a bent piece of their former ship. "I find it hard to argue with that idea."
The brothers got up and started examining the area, being Mandalorian they first located the rest of their armor, then their weapons. Gavin being Gavin they next dug around and located all their food.
It all made a tidy pile, but they knew it wouldn't last long. Gavin climbed up on top of the wreckage and took a long look around. Nothing was moving that he could see, which he found reassuring, and just off to the east he could see a squared off shape rising up above the tall grass of the open area they had been deposited in.
"That way!" He called to Tinker. "I don't know what it is but it has right corners so it's most likely humanoid made."
"Fair enough." Tinker said.
They left their gathered supplies for now and headed towards the thing that Gavin had spotted.
They were initially excited when they realized it was a ship but, as they got closer, it became obvious that wasn't as good a piece of news as it initially seemed. It was positively ancient, wrecked, and nearly overgrown by the prairie.
It remained the only thing they could see worth investigating though, so they continued on. When they reached the downed vessel they located an opening and carefully began to explore around inside.
A few hours later they had mostly explored the hulk. It was surprisingly empty, as if it had been stripped before it crashed,
or at least after. They found some signs of predators but nothing indicating a threat to beings their size. Once they felt they knew roughly what they had they sat down outside in the gathering darkness to discuss the situation.
Tinker messed around with the keypad built into his vambrace for a while and then pulled out a cord and plugged his armor into Gavins. They sat for a minute or two and then Tinkers armor gave a beep.
The clone analyzed the display for a few seconds, hit some keys, scrutinized again for a minute, and then sat back with a sigh.
Finally he gathered himself together and began to speak.
"The mystery deepens." He said, "This is the hyperspace path we were on." A holo appeared above his arm showing the route as a dotted line.
"As soon as the stars became visible I ran a simple pattern recognition program against the night sky. By triangulating with the stars we can determine where we are."
"Okay," said Gavin, "so where are we?"
"Not where we should be." His brother sighed.
A new dot appeared far off to the right of where their path should have taken them. Right in the middle of a big empty portion of the map.
"We knew our route had us crossing wild space and exiting the galaxy in a sense but it shouldn't have taken us anywhere near
here, and, as of the last time I checked before we exited hyperspace we hadn't."
"So somehow we got moved?"
"Yeah, as crazy as that sounds it's the only thing that makes sense, for whatever reason someone or something grabbed our ship from over there and brought it over here and dropped it, then stuck us on top of the mess and left."
"None of this really makes sense but I can see where it could have gone a lot worse. Also, it seems someone expects us to be found, sooner or later."
"What do you mean?" Tinker asked.
Gavin told him about the message.
"So either someone thinks we are a present for this "Kitten" or our ship is." Tinker mused.
"Way to find the rain cloud in the silver lining vod." Gavin shot back without much humor.
"Hadn't thought of that I take it?"
"No, not really."
"I think we should hold up somewhere defensible for the night. A room with a single entrance maybe. I have seen no sign of large predators but I would hate to be lying in the open when I do." Gavin suggested.
"Yeah, lets get us and our food supplies put away for the night."
While the two brothers arranged themselves a safe place to rest, several hundred miles away Kazumi was anything but.
The clone huddled in her cage, watching the masters assistant stab him again and again. Finally, when it was more than obvious the man was dead the deranged little man turned and faced her.
"Now, little flower, we can get down to the real fun. This old bastard had held me back for long enough! Now it's time we see what these formulas can really do! But first, some recreation.."
As the little cretin came towards her, already unfastening his pants, she cursed once again the Arkanian scientist who had made her .