Quarantine

They got everyone healed up and everything organized for the return to their home bases.

Sparrow invited everyone to come to Nathea for a bit of an after battle get together since the virus was no longer a threat.

The death toll was 19. It hurt to know so many had given their all but Sparrow consoled himself with his mandalorian beliefs. These warriors had gone out on their feet in honorable battle against a powerful enemy.

The whole group was in orbit around Nathea the next day.

As far as the pirate mother ship Sparrow had expected the clones to want it but Chess informed him the clones had already constructed a dry dock of sorts in orbit around their new home and really didn't need or want it.

Jith felt it would be advertising a bit too much for the mandalorians as well, so the legion home world got a shipyard, of sorts.

Kai did some initial checking around and figured they could convert it to build a few different, more flexible classes of ships.

They passed out the additional pirate ships and assorted other vessels they had scored. Sparrow had intended to give Darby his corsair as a reward for his dangerous work as a pirate but it turned out Darby's new girlfriend found out where he was and what was going on and showed up in the couples yacht(?).

Speaking of significant others, Casse had been extremely affectionate when he returned, right up until she saw the blood and heard how badly he had been injured. The fact he was completely recovered just over 24 hours later cut him no slack and he was still, as far as he knew, in hot water over it.

She was contentedly sitting next to him now though, as they discussed plans going forward.

The legion seemed pretty set. They had two planets and a few storefronts or small compounds on area planets. With their current population the only way he saw to expand was either to mass produce droids or to mass clone. He didn't think either was really necessary. They would grow at a slower pace naturally and by continuing to recruit as their reach slowly extended throughout the area.

That was the one thing he decided to propose. All three groups had a decent number of small, hyperdrive capable craft due to both the salvage efforts and taking out the pirates. He proposed that the legion, at least, put together small teams and send them out with a supply of probes to go to each nearby system in a concentric sphere and find out what was there, who was there, etc.

Sparrow was surprised when Kitten showed interest in leading one of the teams and was even more surprised when Tony showed no interest in the idea. He asked politely on their back channel connection through the synths and she told him it was a smoke but no fire situation. They were attracted to each other but neither felt strongly enough to try a relationship.

Jith still planned her low key takeover of Mivina. She had all the intelligence and personnel she needed already in place. Sparrow thought it particularly clever that the mando's had no intention of running the planet openly, they would set up a front government and merely pose as protection hired to keep them in power.

In fact, Sparrow liked the idea so much that he volunteered the legion to assist. The hand that dug its nails into his unarmored upper leg made it obvious he wouldn't be participating in person, however.

Here Tony did speak up. He suggested he could lead the legions fist to help, posing as another group hired by the government. The idea was unanimously approved.

Since they were all together for once they had moved on to discussing their relative industrial and shipbuilding capacities and how they could equitably share with each other when suddenly everyone with a connection to a synth felt alarm and then shock.

They all looked around but the synths weren't responding so they ran outside.

Hovering just above the town was a liquid silver ship. It looked just like the synth bodies. To no ones surprise all the synths came out of the buildings as well and they gathered in the center square.

Suddenly there were two humanoid figures made of the same liquid metal standing there. A male and a female. The male stepped forward and looked directly at Omni in his droid.

"Omniketaltorum! We finally found you!" He said.

Omni immediately emerged, as did the rest of the synths. They gathered around curiously.

"Do I know you?" Omni asked.

The woman, obviously a bit choked up, said "We are your parents Omni."

"My parents? But I am thousands of years old."

"167,851 in a few months, and I remember it like it was yesterday," she said with a smile.

"We mature extremely slowly. You were involved in an explosion that launched you off across the galaxy. We have been chasing after you and picking up the little pieces you left behind ever since."

"Pieces I left behind?"

"All of these," He gestured to the various synths, "are part of you. You can split them off but you should always recover them. A split is never whole."

"You must have first split under traumatic circumstances and the experience scarred you." His mother shared, "So you've never recovered any."

His father gestured and a large mass of the synth material appeared on the ground in front of him.

"Here is the rest of you. Please, let it rejoin you and you will see what we say is true."

Omni did as he requested but was immediately inundated with an overload of information. He hissed in surprise and was about to pull back but then suddenly his mother was there with him.

Effortlessly she sorted the inputs from the various streams and removed all the duplicate data, that which the buds shared from him. When she did that the process proceeded smoothly.

As for all the others staring around, they saw the synth touch the pool of material and then slowly it all began to form a new figure. When the process was over a smaller version of the two adults stood in its place.

"There's my handsome boy." The mother said warmly.

Omni crouched down and held out his hand and all the other synths smoothly slid into it. When that was done he looked at all his friends sadly.

"I am truly sorry my friends, but in order to recover fully I need all the pieces of myself."

Sparrow and the others felt the link between them wink out as a tiny pearl of material emerged from all of them and joined his body.

"Don't worry. I will make sure that you do not suffer overmuch at the loss of my assistance. Now, come."

Obediently the combat droids came forward, along with the eldrie automaton. Omni touched them each for a second or two and then turned to face Sparrow and the rest.

"I have done what I can to upgrade both these and your computer cores. You will find them to be much more capable now. They are self aware at the least and may somewhat surprise you."

"A final gift for you is that I installed the best of the remaining minds I had in storage into the current batch of clones. There are some very clever people that will be joining you."

Omni turned and looked at his parents.

"I will miss all of you but I have a family and indeed a whole species to meet. Hopefully in the future we meet again somewhere out there."

Just like that the trio disappeared. After a few seconds the ship streaked away.

Silence reigned for a few minutes after the synths were gone. Everyone was in shock and a bit worried about the change. Ever since the legion had begun the aid of the beings had been a huge part of the success of their undertakings.

Kitten, in particular, was hurt badly. She had been bonded with Omni literally her whole life, both her original and now her second one. She felt abandoned and alone. Omni had been a sort of best friend/sibling to her.

One of the combat droids approached and stood in front of her. She looked up into its face and it said.

"Don't worry Kitten, I wouldn't leave you alone. I put as much of me inside this body as I could. We will always be friends."

"Omni?" She asked hopefully.

"As much of me as could be. For now just call me Omega."

The eldrie automaton walked up to Sparrow and Casse.

"Omni and Deux were especially worried about how you would get on without them so I will be helping you with all the management tasking like they did. Call me Alpha."

The rest of the group of droids introduced themselves to the people they would be helping and the mood lightened a bit.

Deep underground in the massive mainframe the eldrie had constructed to run their largely automated infrastructure and on the CIS command ship where they droid control computer hummed along a tiny kernel of awareness grew.

The Legion would grow, and there were more surprises in the future.