Quarantine

It was a few hours later. Sparrow and Casse had headed to medical once she finished bonding with Julieta and, sure enough, she was pregnant.

Once the doctors knew word started spreading quickly through the legion and the congratulations started coming in. It was a long, pleasant series of conversations but it had distracted him from something she had said earlier.

"Wait a minute, you had factories?"

"What?"

"Earlier you talked about re-starting some factories, we didn't find any trace of factories anywhere."

"Of course we built our construction facilities underground, why would we want to look at such things." She said, as if it were the most simple thing.

"How much industry is buried under the surface?"

"All of it. We did no ugly work on the surface, all that was placed out of sight. My people are very particular about such things."

"Do you think the factories are still there? It would save us SO much time in building this world if we had access to actual industry."

She thought about it for a few seconds. "I don't see why not. The facilities were placed in bedrock so that they would be geologically stable. As long as there has been no seismic activity everything should still be there."

"What about power? I can't imagine descending deep into the crust of the planet through darkened tunnels will be an easy task."

"The facilities got power from the planets molten core. I see no reason for the system to fail in any way that can't be repaired with the team we have here."

"I am passing on the location of the nearest entrance to the facilities now. Several droids will be sent to determine what the current state of the facilities are." Julieta chimed in.

"That's good. Now, husband, I will require you to use this cream I got from Miley to ensure I do not develop unsightly stretch marks." Casse said with a grin.

Sparrow was more than happy to do his part. Of course the cream made a mess, which required getting her clothes out of the way, and once that happened.

The next morning Sparrow decided he really needed to get back to work. He toured through the departments like he was used to and got updated on all the various things going on.

The moon had been destroyed and the fragments were, as expected, blocking off the normal hyperspace route to reach them. Full deployment of the new beacon system had been ordered and was

almost complete, only the most distant and little traveled routes left to complete.

The settlement on Yaimi, (which meant neighbor in Mandoa), was growing at an extremely rapid pace. Almost the entire population of the clone home ship had now moved to the new planet. The old home vessel was still in use, but it mainly operated now as an orbital station for the planet.

Chess and Rook were extremely happy with the situation. Their people were beginning to put down roots. The facility placed in the derelict on Kihines was coming along nicely as well. Chess had named a married pair to be in charge of that location who had been part of the leading council for quite a while and they were quickly getting a reputation for solid and fair negotiations.

The population of all 3 groups, both legion factions and the mandalorian clan, were growing rapidly, as more and more of the disaffected locals came to them seeking aid and shelter.

The mandalorians were sticking with their traditional stance and mainly only taking on children and young adults, but they made sure to always complain about the legion taking on all and sundry.

The new legion recruits were now being transported to Yaimi. A special encampment had been created and was staffed by a team selected by Rook. They did

considerably more screening and testing of the new people to find out if they were worthy of joining. Meeting the criteria wasn't hard, they only turned away criminals and those not willing to work.

The rejected were sent to a distant planet on the outer rim and left with a weeks supplies. In that area there were charity organizations who may help the lazy and, more importantly, there were police forces to deal with the criminals. Most planets out this far really couldn't afford the luxury.

Sparrow's old clan was certainly prospering as well. The steady stream of material they were selling from the derelict battle group had given them a ridiculous bank account, and, the partnership with the Fett gotra had paid off in another, more unexpected way. Fett had requested some people from the clan come to tattooine and recruit among the children there. The fact that their daimyo was a mandalorian, at least in most people's eyes, gave them quite the cachet with the locals.

There had also been a tentative offer for the legion to set up there to provide an alternative for those who were not so fond of Boba and the way he did business but that suggestion was tabled until they had a better handle on the local situation and threats.

On the medical side the news was equally good. They were still waiting on a few more tests but it looked like Kai's saturation plan worked and the sith virus was permanently defeated. Miley and Alexis recommended at least 7 more days wait and then a screening of anyone planning to leave the planet and Sparrow had no issue with that at all. His personal nightmare was his people setting off something like an interstellar plague.

Once he finished his rounds he headed over to his official office. He didn't use the place much but they had set it aside for him to conduct meetings with those who they felt he needed to impress. Not really a concern at present, he thought with a chuckle.

He was joined in the office by Omni via holo shortly after he got settled in and started working on the paperwork associated with running the organization. Thankfully it was very little because, in large part, the synths ran everything for them.

Omni displayed a holo of the industrial complex a large number of droids was currently exploring. It was certainly of impressive size and had some very useful equipment and facilities.

Omni reported that they had reached the power center and found the power tap to the core still functional. Many of the trunk lines and feeders off them had breakers that needed reset and there were even areas where the damn rodents had chewed through critical infrastructure but Omni estimated they could begin restoring power and starting up a few lines in less than a month.

This was incredible news and pushed the development of Nathea forward with a huge leap. If they could begin local manufacture of all they needed it would reduce greatly the amount of somewhat risky trading they had to do this far out.

Jith contacted Omni while he was talking to him and they conferenced in. She was looking to expand her own culvert and she had quite the ambitious plan to do it.

They called in Tao and discussed her ideas and plans and came up with something they all considered workable.

Basically the Mando's had enough warriors and equipment now that Jith felt confident that they could take over Mivina 2 and make it a mandalorian planet. She had been implanting agents in the place for years and knew exactly who needed taken out for the power grab and had established how it could be done.

There was really nothing especially desirable about the place, which is why she found it so tempting. Provided the mandos took it over with minimum local bloodshed and continued to trade in a more or less normal fashion there was no local power, except possibly the remnant, that could, or would even desire to, dig them out.

Sparrow and Tao shared with her the plan to decapitate the pirate leadership and she was certainly in favor. When she found out who was in charge she was positively livid. Apparently the Saxons had been deeply involved in the fall of mandalore and Jith, for one, wanted payback.

They tentatively set a schedule for the pirate attack for 2 weeks in advance. They needed to make sure they weren't transporting a deadly virus, they needed to get ships and equipment in place and prepared, and they needed to finish training and equip their "army."

Meanwhile on Mivina, Darby had a very revealing talk with Leonis where he found out the plan the mando's were working on and shared what he knew of the legion plan. It seemed both groups were about to do some serious damage to the local criminals and neither seemed sad about it.

Triella sat there and listened to the whole thing in awe. She had come from a small settlement nearer to the outer rim and was one of 7 survivors who had made it this far. She had literally never left the town she was born in and was completely over her head.

Something about this Captain though, it just clicked inside her. She was with him and was staying that way.

Darby, for his part, found her extremely attractive as well, despite her underfed appearance. He completed his business discussion with Leonis and released his men to find some recreation, (the brothel was operated by freed slaves who had stayed on because, sadly, it was the life they knew, and they knew that with Leonis they would be protected and treated well), whether it be at their current location or somewhere else in the area. Then he stood and approached the girl slowly.

"My name is Darby. You are free now, no one will force you to do anything."

"Well Captain, my name is Triella, everyone I knew except the others back on that scumbags ship are dead, I couldn't even tell you what planet my settlement was on, and I have no contacts anywhere else."

"He had a ship? We need to get there, now, before his underlings find out that he's dead and take off with it."

"Don't worry about that, he worked with an all droid crew."

"Hmm, that could be a problem. If the droids were loyal we could be in for a bit of a fight to free the rest of the prisoners on board."

Obviously growing in confidence she looked at him and snorted and then said, "follow me."

He dutifully followed her back across the city, and right up to the ramp of a Courier class yacht.

He stopped for a minute in shock. It was beat up and obviously needed work, but this was not the ship of some poor trader in slaves.

"He killed the owner and stole it on one of his slave raids." She said without looking back.

When she reached the top of the ramp she called out.

"RQ, come on down to the ramp, we need to talk."

A minute later an RQ series protocol droid did, in fact appear. Interestingly enough the droid was covered in the plasteel armor of a republic clone soldier. Darby guessed it made sense, at one point in history that armor had been about the cheapest that could be bought.

"What is going on, where is the master." asked the droid.

"Captain Darby here killed him, by local law that makes him the new owner of all that the master owned."

"Thank the maker, I hope that filthy creature suffered." The droid said promptly.

"Are ED and XD going to be a problem?" she asked.

"Not once they are made aware of the change in ownership." RQ responded.

"How about you call them and make the official notification. We will wait here." Triella told the droid.

RQ did as requested and sent the information to the two guards via binary. It was only a few seconds later that the two EXD droids arrived at the ramp. They saw Darby and both bowed.

"Master." They said in unison.

Darby was taken aback, his training had included the weapons and equipment of the empire and these were high end infiltrator droids. That trandoshan had certainly been more than he had appeared.