Chapter 11
"Greetings." Said a voice from behind him and he realized belatedly that the sounds of metal being worked had stopped.
He turned and faced the speaker.
"Akira, legion armorer." She said calmly, holding out her hand.
He grabbed it in a warriors grip, around her forearm, and she returned it. He noticed the firmness and strength.
"I see you are admiring our adaptation there. It is still not perfect but we are making quick strides in getting something worked out that is deploy-able."
"Why not just use jet packs? The tech is already proven."
"I see you haven't been given the whole briefing on how this works. Come, have a seat." She gestured him towards a seating area off to the side.
As he sat and prepared to discuss things with Akira Kitten informed him she had some other duties to perform but would return as soon as she could. He couldn't resist watching her all the way out of the room and when he turned back to Akira he saw she had missed nothing but had a broad smile.
"She is a good woman." Was all she said on the subject.
Tinker and Kazumi spent a long time going over the arms and equipment in the room with the assistance of Kai, who Gavin learned was the chief engineer here, while he had a long revealing discussion with Akira.
He was very surprised to learn the clones history but that quickly took a back seat to his concern when he learned the current situation regarding Mandalorians in the greater galaxy. The fact there were so few of them left and they had become so scattered was heartbreaking.
In light of the new information, and aided by Akira's clear explanations he began to see the brilliance of the entire legion deception.
He would still need to discuss it with his brother, and Kazumi, (and Kitten, a little voice in the back of his mind informed him), but he was leaning towards joining the legion faction and aiding his people in that way.
If he did join the legion he would, of course, wear the proper armor for the deception. He would not, however, reforge the beskar'gem that had been handed down from his father that way. He decided he would remake it as best he could in the way it had been designed and would keep it in a safe place until the deception could end.
Akira had no problem with that decision at all, and even seemed to agree. Beskar was sacred and she told him she had yet to use it for the new Legion armor.
Kai was from the same galaxy as Kitten, (a fact he still had trouble wrapping his head around), and over there they had made some discoveries in metallurgy that allowed the alloys they were using here on Nathea to provide nearly the same level of protection.
He settled in with Tinker and Akira over the next few days and they renewed and reforged their traditional armor. Tinker added his usual gadgets and improvements, of course.
Akira then aided both the brothers and Kazumi in forging, (well, completing, the blanks had already been forged), a set of legion armor for each of them. She said it would keep their options open since no one knew yet what their tasking would be.
When not in the armory the trio spent quite a bit of time in the gym, getting used to the new bodies and adapting their skills to them. Gavin was surprised to find he preferred his new body to the giant one he had had before. The loss of strength was minimal and certainly more than offset by the gains in flexibility and speed.
They wound up spending two weeks aboard the Pride before getting a call to come to a meeting with Sparrow.
Sparrow had been out of touch since his son was born. He had spent a week bonding with the boy and his wife but was now apparently ready to sit down and come up with a plan for the mando's.
When Gavin arrived at the Commanders office he found a new person sitting there as well. He entered and Sparrow introduced him to Jith. The devaronian was the clan leader and armorer that Akira was copied from.
What followed was a thorough briefing on the status of the space surrounding the holdings of the legion and the mandos. It seemed they had a solid hold on the three planets the forces were based on and at least a moderate hold on a few others where they had located various assets.
The big issue was manpower. They actually were ahead of the game a bit when it came to equipment because of what they had gotten from some pirates they had evicted and a large salvage operation in deep space they had completed recently.
The equipment was to a large extent obsolete when compared to something like the republic or even the imperial remnant but for working against the level of opposition they could reasonably expect to face out here they were at least competitive.
Manpower wise, however, it was a different story. On the actual legion side it was the worst. Between the various types of clones and the pirate slaves they had rescued they only had a couple of hundred effective fighters. They could bolster their numbers with some battle droids they had picked up and were running via a cybernetic control system and with the automatons they were now producing from some underground facilities left behind by the previous eldrie civilization. Neither group was actually intended for the purpose or desired to be.
The mando's were actually in better shape. Jith had been working hard at bringing in foundlings since she had located her clan out here and that meant as each cycle of training completed she had more people to send out to recruit the next group, making each progressively larger.
The best position as far as combat effectives went to the clones on Yaimi. They had liberated enough tanks to keep classes of clones constantly in training. The classes were relatively small, but it allowed them to constantly renew their force. Coupled with the children born from the couples that had formed over the years since they had gone into exile it gave them a slow steady population growth.
None of them had a large enough population to field something like a capital ship and be combat effective or even to conduct offensive operations on any but the smallest scale. At some point, if they were to hold what they had against all comers or, for some reason need to expand, they were in trouble.
Once the situation was laid out clearly Gavin asked what they wanted from him. The two leaders looked at each other and then Sparrow addressed the question.
"We first need to know whether you want to join Jith, join the Legion, or begin to grow your own clan out here."
"Growing our clan isn't really an option yet." He pondered. "We have no ship, no resources, and no real way to obtain either any time soon."
"We also owe your people a debt. You have gone far beyond what we could have expected as far as aid to what amounts to perfect strangers."
"We don't view it as such. You got caught up in another damn cloning disaster."
"Something we have already seen way too many of." Jith pitched in.
"As far as the legion or clan Chek, I had assumed you two would make that decision and let us know."
"We try not to make decisions like that when its not needed. We have our preferences, but, in reality either group could use you and your clan's knowledge and experience."
"If its all the same then, I think for now we will stay with the legion." Gavin said calmly. He was trying not to think of any particular reason he wished to remain close to a certain person.
"We thought you may." Jith said with a smile. "Just do me a favor, if you find an opportunity to get us some more people please do so."
"Any I can't recruit into the legion I will certainly send your way."
"The first thing I would like you to work on is to join Kitten's crew and help them finish the sweep of the surrounding systems. It will greatly aid our security if we know what is happening within several jumps."
"We can certainly do that."
"Do the other two want to work on the exploration missions as well?"
"At least for now. Tinker is working through all the engineering info he can get ahold of and Kazumi the same with medical so at some point they may change their minds."
"Fair enough." Sparrow said.
"Before you leave, I have a request for you. Our people have been watching your workouts and several are very interested in some of your hand to hand skills."
"Ahh, the teras kasi I presume."
"Yes, it is a rare art and you seem to be the only practitioner among any of our groups."
"I can, of course, teach the skill, at least with some degree of skill, although I make no claims on being a master."
"We actually have an alterative request since you will be traveling so much. With your permission we can extract your knowledge of it from your synaptic map and make a course of instruction on it that others can then learn during sleep times, just like any of our other courses."
"That would be excellent! I see no issue with it, although of course further practice and probably one on one training would be preferable for anyone wanting to reach better than a basic competency."
"Of course."
"Since you can train so much faster with these chips I think you should consider eventually opening a school."
"A school? You mean for those outside the legion?"
"Yes, a school would allow you to interact with a great many different planets and peoples in a non-confrontational manner, the graduates would naturally be disposed to maintain a good relationship, and most importantly it could be used as both a first rate recruitment tool and a source of income."
"I hadn't really considered that." Sparrow confessed.
"My buir and I had long discussed the eventual goal of setting up something on a much smaller scale for basically the same reason. Here I would think we would want to begin with older students, possibly even recruits to other organizations or planetary governments. Outsourced basic training, so to speak."
"In the event we wanted to do something like that what would you suggest for a location? One of our planets or something else?" Sparrow was obviously intrigued.
"I would say it would be better to control the location, although personally I don't like the idea of placing it on one of our main holdings. I would think once we make a solid determination on what we would need as far as support and training equipment and facilities we could work out the best solution."
"Please put some thought into just that and let me know what you and the others come up with when you get it fleshed out. I will mention it to some others and see what we could add."
"As will I" Said Jith.
"Perhaps the Legion could even employ a few Mandalorian instructors." She continued, "Just to show it is purely an open curriculum and no politics are attached."
"Something like that could work. Perhaps we set up some type of contest and then employ the winners as trainers."
"I am excited about this, I hope we can work something out." Sparrow told them.
"You know." Gavin mused, "that planet we were on would be a good out of the way location for it once the damage from the explosion heals. Apparently no one wandered by for thousands of years."
"Definitely, or at least a similar planet could be found."
"Either way we should conduct our first few classes with our own people. It will test out the curriculum and procedures as well as provide a cadre for later training groups." Jith suggested.
"For now we need to get the scouting completed, then we can move on to this project." Sparrow concluded.
Nothing more needed to be said so Gavin got up and headed off to find his team.