Fate Of The Sith

“The Jedi do not believe in killing their prisoners. No one deserves execution, no matter what their crimes.”

-Bastila Shan

“I have a plan, most of it is already in place.” I look up at the Mandalorian “Now I don't suppose I could get you off my bed anytime soon?”

“Not a chance.” she responded with a grin as I sighed.

“Fine, move over.” I said climbing up onto the right side of the bed and laying down intent on getting some sleep.

“Sweet dreams~” she said cuddling up to me. I could hear her breathing softly as I close my eyes.

An insistent beeping woke me. I sat up, thankfully alone, and pulled myself from the bed, trotting to the source of the beeping. It was my personal data pad, I sat down at a table and opened it up.

At least one hundred messages where marked as unread, most of them critical but one was outlined as urgent.

////IN ORBIT AROUND PLANET////

DATA CONFIDENTIAL

BRIDGE CREW WILL REPORT

///END///

The message was short and it was undoubtedly in every slicers hackpad on the ship, still the news was good, now that the ship was in orbit repairs could begin in earnest. Advanced shield systems used to protect electronics from fast spaceflight, propulsion systems and other now unimportant functions could be powered down, letting more work be done in the reactor. The ship slowing down meant more work could be done to repair the outer hull.

All in all it was good news. Dumping my clothes down the cleaning choute I donned a new uniform, a rather crisp and clean one before proceeding to the turbolift.

Entering the bridge I looked to one of the officers on duty, a scruffy looking normal equine with bloodshot eyes and a frown.

“Report, then get to your bunk.” he gulped as he looked up at me.

“We have reached the planet ahead of schedule and have completed a deep scan of one of the continents, not only is it a habitable world but it has rich ore and mineral deposits, it is also a respitory of life forms, on this continent alone we have found a large portion of the land, a forest that looks like kashyyyk’s coastlines.”

“Good, we should find a suitable locations to land then.” I turned as the young officer looked down “What is it?”

“Well captain, the planet does not conform to a conventional description of landmass, we have found three sights that can be used for landing zones but each one will provide resources but prevent us from getting others.” my heart sunk at his words.

“Trade offs? great, and we don't have the supplies or the manpower to create more than one outpost on the planet... what are our options?” he pressed his hoof to a data pad and hoofed it over to me, which I took and looked at the listed descriptions of the best landing sights.

“The natives are hardly a concern, some of them still conform to tribal patterns of behavior and could potentially be used as slaves, however two of the landing zones location are near the more advanced factions on the planet from what we can gather. The first landing zone is high in minerals and close to the surface, a mine in this location would be optimal for gathering the raw materials the land in this area is poor for farming so we can't rely on food but it looks like a few of the local factions have made do. There are some small orchards near their town, the area itself is a huge canyon range many kilometers wide, only a few places allow land based transport and all of them hold outposts for what we are assuming is the dominant faction on this continent. The area is also home to the tribals I mentioned, so we could take them as slaves to aid in our construction efforts.” he paused as I looked over the first landing zone and glanced up at him.

“Not a bad location, but a desert is hard to make sustainable, the others?”

“Well the second location has the worst mineral deposits but also has some unique benefits that might aid us later on, firstly is the abundant biomass, its the forest area so food will not be a problem and an outpost there would be easily sustainable, however mining is not an option in the landing zone itself. However, there are some mountains within six miles that would be suitable for mining, the landing zone is on a plateau with huge crevices around it. The place itself is an abandoned city that I can only imagine was made uninhabitable by whatever tore the canyons around it in the earth. The city itself is made up of five plateau’s, each close enough to allow safe bridge construction with the canyons miles deep, after scanning the area we have found no tectonic plates capable of causing earthquakes anywhere close to there so the damage must have been done a long time ago. The area would be the most defensible choice as well as place us within a five day marching distance to the biggest city on the continent, something that might be helpful later. Setting up a base there would be rather easy as we would only need to clear out a plateau and guard any bridges we build off it it.”

“A good choice for sustainability. However the ship will suffer, the last?”

“Well this place is hardly habitable. It’s located in the far northern reaches of the continent, close to the poles. There is a long mountain range with incredible mineral and metal deposits, any base we create there will be unpleasant to live in due to the extreme cold but might be worth it for the isolation such a location naturally provides. There is a large city closeby that, judging from the architecture it is an independent smaller faction with trade lines to the larger faction. The main benefits to this location are the minerals and isolation, however sustainability is impossible, its just too cold.”

Nodding I upload the data to my personal pad and turn back to the officer.

“And what more can you tell me of the locals?”

“Well from what we can gather, they match the species we have transformed into perfectly, however the striped equines and chimera predator race, like the mandalorian, are in a harsh minority. We suspect that they come from another continent, there are three on this planet. The dominant faction seems to be a mix of three of the equines, the normal, winged and horned. However the outposts of this faction are dominated by the normal equines and the northern faction are almost completely normal equine. It could be that winged and horned variants are a sub race, however more data is necessary for us to understand beyond speculation.”

“Alright, thank you crewman. You are dismissed.” he stood to attention and then turned and left, quickly replaced by a fresher looking mare... I blinked, turning to look around at the bridge before leaving for the med bay, something was wrong.

The infirmary was full of recovering crewmembers, the ones in critical condition where inside Kolto tanks sleeping in a medically induced coma. They would all recover, something that made me incredibly happy, most of the time critically injured crewmen were killed and replaced as it was often cheaper than caring for them. I was actually happy that we did not have the resources to replace anyone right now.

Pushing open the medical office doors I looked to Doctor Ja,vok, the older crewman looked run ragged but he was slumped back in his chair with a satisfied look on his face that I had the uncomfortable feeling I was going to ruin.

“Cant we do this tomorrow Captan? I’m basking in good fortune.” Shaking my head I looked around.

“How are things down here? Supplies holding up?”

“Barely, we are doing our best however poor our medical supplies look, I am just glad we have somepony who can create new compounds that we need.”

“Somepony?”

“What?”

“You just said it, someone and replaced the end with the word pony” he paused as I looked him over and blinked.

“I did didn't I? SITHSPIT we all have!” he slammed his hooves down on the table “Mental alteration, it must be, to subtle to notice without someONE pointing it out!”

“How bad could this be?” he pulled out a glass bottle from the drawer, something I assumed to be extremely off regulation, but I granted him that. To be honest I almost joined him.

“Bad, I don't think this stops with just our language and social ticks, from the reports I have gathered of the planet they are the same races as us, so whatever the force did to us it did so we would fit in, but why? We have technology that is thousands of years more advanced than anything we have seen on this planet...” he shook his head and poured a drink out downing it and leaning back “I will keep an ear out, look into it, but right now there is little I can see us doing to help prevent the changes. Lets just hope they are not too extreme.” Turning to leave I took one last look at the tired Doctor and sighed.

“Just get some sleep for now, our problems will still be here tomorrow.”

I was sat on my bed, my mandalorian guest wrapped around me as I looked over my datapad at the locations to create an outpost on.

Location One

Biome: Desert

Minerals: Moderate

Metals: Abundant

Biomass: Scarce

Geography: Canyon several kilometers squared, few entry points all with settlements as trading posts.

Notes: Three small outposts identified as part of the continent's main faction, a nomadic race (Possible slaves?) and easy to mine rock, little to no opportunity for growing crops.

===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Location Two

Biome: Forest (overgrown plateau)

Minerals: Low

Metals: Moderate (will need transport links to mountains to mine)

Biomass: Rich

Geography: Five plateau’s separated by crevices many meters apart and several kilometers deep, all surrounded by a deep forest.

Notes: Potential predators in forest, two small settlements identified as part of main faction and within marching distance of capital city of main faction (City noted as well defended, located on mountainside) good opportunity for a sustainable outpost.

===== ===== ===== ===== =====

Location Three

Biome: Frozen mountains

Minerals: Abundant

Metals: Abundant

Biomass: N/A

Geography: A belt of mountains with over 110 kilometers of open frozen wasteland to the south.

Notes: Large city belonged to individual faction dominates the region, the outpost must be constructed underground to conserve heat and the landing pad will have to be cut from the rock, high maintenance, good for isolation.

Sighing I tossed the datapad onto the side table and leaned back listening to the soft breathing of the mandalorian, she was almost peaceful. It occurred to me that I did not know her name. Closing my eyes as I thought out the newest problem put before me, I slowly fell asleep.