Finishing the Story

[Wan Min Brightsky]

Wan Min stood on the deck of the Hammerhead-Class RAF Indefatigable and wondered where it had all gone wrong. It had been four years, four years since she and[member="Alena"] had started on their journey together. Four years of hell, she thought to herself as she looked out over the vacuum of interstellar space. She and Alena had started off together, trying to build a life salvaging. Then, it all went wrong when she got wrapped up in the Rebel Alliance. The space battles, the loss of life, the failed revolution, all of it seemed to be a train wreck that stretched back to that day she took the call from the Rebels, the day that she agreed to come in and take command of their fleet.

"I can't change what happened," she thought to herself as she looked, mournfully, at the empty bridge.

The crew she had recruited for the Indefatigable was gone. They finished a salvage operation on the Outer Rim, she paid them, and decided to take her ship, her droid T3-D4, and head out to wherever she could find some peace. All she had found was more space, more death, more misery.

The Rebel Alliance was gone, their ideals evaporated, boiled away like water in hard vacuum. She watched from a distance as the alliances rose and fell, the Republic was gone now too. All she could rely on was her old traveling companion, D4. She had managed to get D4 to program the other droids on the ship to manage functions as best as possible. The fusion reactors, hypermatter core, life support, shields, all of it was run through the bridge. She was alone, spiritually, emotionally, physically, with an old droid as company.

"Beep whoop," D4 said sadly. Wan Min reached down and patted the droid on his dome.

"It's okay little guy, I know. I don't know how I can go on much longer like this," she replied. The droid wheeled itself over to the command console and used his arm to pick up a small framed picture and bring it to her. He nudged her in the leg with it.

Wan Min looked down at the picture, something that she had kept face down on the console since she parted ways with the Rebels and Alena. It was a picture of the two of them after their first big salvage, the Indefatigable. She choked back a sob. She had lost everyone, even the one person who meant more to her than life itself.

"I don't think I can fix what I broke, D4," Wan Min said. The droid let out a long, sad beep.

She traced the lines of Alena's face. She looked around at the empty bridge.

"I have nothing left to lose. If she refuses, then at least I know I tried..." Wan Min said to no one.

She walked over to the communications console and typed up what she knew to be an account that Alena would check, even after all these years.

"Ale,

It all went wrong, and I don't know how to fix what I broke all those years ago. I'm sorry. I don't know what happened. There are so many things I need to say to you. Meet me at the debris field where it all went wrong. I'll be waiting.

-Wan Min"

She hit the send button and motioned for D4 to come over.

"Alright little guy, let's see if she replies. Get back into the database and pull up the location of the debris field from the Star's End. Get us there ASAP," Min said.

The droid went to work, and she sat in the commander's chair and sobbed. She hoped she'd see her there. It was all she had left.

[member="Alena Reckar"]

 

[Wan Min Brightsky]

The ship pulled back out of hyperspace, revealing the slowly drifting mass of the debris field. Ships and bodies, exactly where she remembered leaving them. She could make out, just in the distance, where they had found the Indefatigable, the hole in the debris field that used to house her ship. I’ve come back to where it all started, she thought to herself. The planet in the inner system where the Republic had a base was there as well. The long distance scanners picked up the faint outline of the base and the energy shield that kept the worst of the environment out of the base.

“It’s all as I left it,” Wan Min said. Her companion, D4, beeped happily.

“I know, little buddy, I hope she comes too. I need to try and make it right again.”

Min walked over and threw the toggle to open the door.

“If a ship drops out of hyperspace, let me know D4. I’ll be in my quarters,” Min announced as she walked down the hall.

The almost-clinical white of the walls reminded her of the sterility of her life as it was.

She made her way down the deserted, echoing halls of the old Hammerhead-Class. It was as she had always feared. She was alone, without friends, and had burned every bridge that she had left.

The last job she had run, a salvage operation for a Hutt, had gone well enough. The Indefatigable had been the coordinating point for several other smaller freighters and deep space salvage tugs to salvage an Imperial Star Destroyer from the Outer Rim. She still was not sure when the ship had been destroyed. All that she knew was that the vessel had been ID’d by a deep space scout working for the local Hutt cartel. They decided that they indeed did want something with a bit more firepower. As she was, formerly anyway, one of the top scholars of the Imperial Era and had a strong background in deep space salvage, she was naturally their first choice.

Nothing ever quite rivaled her first salvage job with Ale, the one that got her the Indefatigable. Her final act as a member of the old Rebel Alliance had been to take the Inde out of the salvage yard in orbit of Geonosis. She and Ale had a plan to take the ship and go back to their salvage operation. A few days in, the two of them got into one of their usual fights. She couldn’t even remember what the fight was about. It was bad enough that Ale packed up that night, took a Lambda shuttle that was in the landing bay, and left her alone again. Min did not have the heart to go after her. She went back to her old ways: Living alone or with a hired crew, working salvage jobs.

She had gotten pretty good at salvage. She knew how to read the lay of an orbital path at first glance. She could estimate orbital trajectories, gravity anomalies, and the quickest way to bring a ship out of a planetary gravity well. Min was at the top of her field, or at least that was what she told herself. She’d never have a full salvage yard, nor could she make enough money off deep space scavenging to be comfortable. What little she had left was tied up in the Indefatigable. It was her entire world. She and her droid, D4, and whichever hired crew signed on for the duration of the mission. She hated most of them: Materialistic scavengers who made their living off of the bones of the dead.


“I’m no better,” she said to herself as she laid down on her bunk and drifted off.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


She woke up after a few hours and looked around the room. Nothing had changed. She was still alone, her life still made up entirely of this ship and her faded dreams. Min went to the ‘fresher and cleaned up. She was showered and looked somewhat presentable. She made her way back to the bridge.

“Anything change, D4?” She asked.

The droid warbled a negative response.

“Alright, take us into orbit of the second planet in the solar system. But, do it slowly. On our way through, I want you to run a detailed survey of the debris field and plug it into the gaps in the data left over from the Star’s End. Even if Ale doesn’t come back, we’re going to start mining this debris field for spare parts, extra droids to supplement the crew here. Maybe we can salvage a few Old Republic fighters and shuttles. Got it?” She asked

The droid whooped an emphatic yes.

“Good. While you are doing that, I’m going to be looking over the old logs. Maybe our good ship’s captain can tell us something about the planet and its base,” she said.

Min sat down and got to work doing the one thing she did best: Research.

 

[Wan Min Brightsky]

The pieces of debris, burnt and jagged pieces of metal, drifted slowly, tumbling end over again against a starry field. Hard vacuum and transparisteel separated her from the slowly tumbling debris pieces. Min gazed furtively out the observation port, trying to understand why she had come back here. It was the site of her greatest failure, her biggest mistake. Her idealism had gotten the best of her. The shock of discovering the bioweapons, the realization that her big salvage operation could turn into a nightmare and she could lose the ship she’d been dreaming of salvaging for years. All of it was wrapped around this debris field.

The scanners pinged. D4 beeped excitedly.

“I know D4, I saw it too. Another Thranta-Class, partially intact. Mark it as ‘Salvage Target Echo-1’ in the navicomputer. We need to find a real Sith destroyer if we’re going to make this salvage run worth it. Those artifacts tend to sell for top credit on the black market,” she said.

The droid went back to hi scanning as Min threw toggles and punched buttons. She was totally absorbed in her work. The ships, the wreckage, everything seemed to be a gold mine. It was something that she had let slip from her fingers when she had the crew to pull off a major salvage operation like this. Millions of credits were lying out here, waiting to be sold to a museum or a collector with deep pockets.

Every few moments, she heard the sensors ping off another piece of debris. She had set it to audibly announce any piece of debris that was larger than fifteen meters in size. Given how large the debris field was, and given how many ships had been destroyed or left for dead by whichever fleet came out victorious, it was not a small amount.
She was still confused as to why this battlefield was not recorded in any book or historical vid. With as many ships fighting, and the almost apocalyptic size of the fleets in combat, it made no sense that this was not recorded anywhere. She had run through dozens of historical texts from the era and after. She ran through fleet registers, cargo manifests, she had even tried to use the communiques stored in the ship’s communication system to figure out what happened and why the fleet’s sacrifice went unrecorded. None of it made any sense.
She was determined to get to the bottom of it.

 

[Wan Min Brightsky]

Min sat at the console, the light of an ancient computer monitor illuminating her face against the darkened background of the ship’s bridge. It had been eighteen hours since she arrived in system. While D4 was busy running orbital calculations and logging the location of the interstellar shipwrecks, she had been busy searching the ship’s database and her collection of historical databases that she had downloaded from Coruscant University before she was fired. She scrolled through line after line of useless data for hours, her eyes glazing over until she could look no more.

“I give up, D4. I can’t figure out where these two fleets came from. It’s like they were just scrubbed from history,” Min said.

She stood up and walked to the back of the bridge to get a cup of caff. She could hear the servos of her small army of droids whirring in the distance. They were taking care of everything on the ship, and were in the process of a maintenance overhaul of the ship’s water distribution system. Usually she would have had a repair crew taking care of it, but it made more sense for her to use droids. Crew, as she had found, were tiring to deal with, sloppy with their repairs, and most people now had no idea how to repair millennia old systems. When Rendili put out their newest knock off of the Hammerhead-Class, they updated all of the ancient systems to modern standards and replaced the old electronics. She was still running everything to Old Republic specs. That meant she needed the droids that she had salvaged from the Indefatigable and re-programmed astromech and utility droids she picked up here and there to keep the ship going.

Min leaned onto the console and leaned onto her elbows, holding the cup between her hands, the handle facing out away from her. She took a long, slow sip from the cup and stared off at nothing. In an instant, she knew what she was looking for. She slammed the cup down onto the console.

“I have it!” She declared.

Wasting no time, Min ran to the console and started a new database search.

“I knew that this fleet would pop up somewhere!”

She put her finger down onto the screen and read off a single entry.

“Unknown Regions: Deep Space Deployments of the Joint Republic Special Forces-Navy-Jedi Order.”

She opened the file and scanned through the entries until she found the listing she was looking for.

“Republic Task Force Alpha-Echo-77-Lima and planetary outpost Uniform-Kilo-Foxtrot-9477 declared a total loss by High Command after loss of communication. Due to presence of captured Sith bioweapon designate, ‘Whiskey-Charlie-22,’ it is believed that planetary outpost Uniform-Kilo-Foxtrot was exposed to pathogen and all personnel were killed. Fleet likely destroyed by Sith. No references in current captured Sith databases to victory in system. Continued Sith reinforcement of surrounding galactic sector indicates heavy losses.

Families of Republic families will be notified. Cover story will be created by Jedi Council to suit needs of Republic Special Forces and Naval High Command. Until cessation of hostilities, salvage is not priority.

Addendum 1: Date: ***** [THIS ENTRY DECLARED TOP SECRET, NO DISSEMINATION OUTSIDE OF HIGH COMMAND/JEDI COUNCIL]

Search for fleet survivors, or evidence of fleet survivors negative in extended scan of the Unknown Regions using existing hyperspace charts. Upon entry of system, large debris field discovered. Wreck of command ship, RAF Indefatigable, discovered along with the Sith bioweapon cache still in sealed condition. Decision made by field commander to abandon the wreck and leave all bioweapons in sealed containers for future retrieval. No retrieval of bodies as per Republic General Order 174 due to extended risk exposure of scouts.

Twelve survivors found near Republic outpost Uniform-Kilo-Foxtrot-9477. All spoke of brutal hand-to-hand combat after Sith landings. Sith and Jedi decimated, none alive. Most support troops killed within five days of landing. All commanders killed. Base left intact for future re-activation, but abandoned in place. Fusion reactors put into extended stand-by mode, low power production to maintain base shields to ensure hermetic seal. No extended survey of outpost due to time constraints.

Addendum 2: Date: ********** (14 months after end of New Sith Wars) [THIS ENTRY DECLARED TOP SECRET, NO DISSEMINATION OUTSIDE OF HIGH COMMAND/JEDI COUNCIL]

Due to end of Sith Conflict, Republic scouts returned to the system. Decision was made following sensor echoes of possible Sith remnant forces to evacuate area. Prior to evacuation, system appeared unchanged from prior scouting following loss of contact. All hyperspace communication bands negative for contact in area. No survivors left alive on planet if they remained. Odd readings from sector Alpha-Alpha-1-1-7 on sensor grid. Possible transponder intact and broadcasting.

Addendum 3: Date: ********** (18 months after Addendum 2 logged) [THIS ENTRY DECLARED TOP SECRET, NO DISSEMINATION OUTSIDE OF HIGH COMMAND/JEDI COUNCIL]

Final decision of the Jedi Council and Republic Navy High Command is to suspend all future scouting of system and declare base and fleet a total loss. Because of the Republic Wartime Secrecy Act, it was decided that the bodies of the dead shall not be retrieved and shall be left in place. Furthermore, risk of contamination/exposure of habitable planets or systems to the Sith bioweapon has lead us to find that this fleet and its personnel shall be expunged from all Republic records, all vessels shall be purged from naval records, and all personnel shall be re-assigned to theaters of combat and losses logged with central military database.

Risk of Sith remnants returning to the field and recovering the bioweapon is too great to risk. To avoid possible future discovery and recovery of vessels or crew, any remaining records shall be deemed classified at highest levels and permanently sealed. No listing of their existence will be made in Senate, Fleet, or Jedi Archives. All documentation, maps, schematics, and related materials will be put into file registry and placed into classified archives.

It is the belief of this joint council that the Republic soldiers who died here did so on behalf of the citizens of the Republic and in the name of freedom and democracy. But, their sacrifice cannot be divulged to the people of the galaxy. The risk of uncovering the reasons for the task force’s existence, to bring the Sith bioweapon to the outpost for permanent storage, is too great. Their deaths have already been mourned. To reopen the inquiry is too great of a risk.

Addendum 4: Date: ********** (410ABY)

TO: IMPERIAL SCIENCE UNIT
FROM: IMPERIAL NAVY DETACHMENT K-4779
SUBJECT: SITH BIOWEAPON RECOVERY

Many thanks should be extended to the Imperial archivist who managed to break the Old Republic codes and grant us access to these records. We are on our way back to Imperial space with two containers of the bioweapon in tow. Our Stormtroopers managed to recover the weapon without difficulty. The craftsmanship of the Old Republic shipwrights should be commended, for the decks are still solid and all equipment appears to be in working order. If I had ordered it, the command vessel could have been towed to dry dock and rebuilt.

It is my belief, upon looking at the data in these files and recovered information from the debris field, that this bioweapon can easily be reverse engineered and made far deadlier by our scientists. It should prove a useful deterrent if the Galactic Alliance makes a power play at our remaining systems.

Addendum 5: Date: ******* (424ABY)
EMERGENCY COMMUNIQUE: IMPERIAL SCIENCE UNIT, BIOWEAPONS DIVISION
ALERT, ALERT, ALERT, THEFT OF BIOWEAPON CODENAMED ‘WHISKEY-CHARLIE-22’ FROM IMPERIAL BIOWEAPONS STORAGE DEPOT BY UNKNOWN ASSAILANT. FLED PLANET IN STOLEN LAMBDA SHUTTLE.

Addendum 6: Date: ***** (426ABY)
#%$^%*%&^&$^)**!@ PlaGue OUTBreAk %$##&*^MATCHES SIGNATURE %#$#^$(*&REPUBLIC FLEET SALVAGE@%##$$*&CODE NAME IS ‘GULAG.’ &^%$*&^%$!! RETURN TO SALVAGE LOCATION. UNCOVER &^$%^^(#@! INVESTIGATE CONNECTION TO &%$^##@)( PRIORITY ONE.

Addendum 7: Date: **** (428ABY)
IT BROUGHT ONLY DEATH. MAY OUR CHILDREN FORGIVE US.

Min stopped scrolling and looked at D4. She saw him happily recording sensor data. He chirped now and again, vocalizing his enjoyment of the mundane process. All that Min could do was to stare off into space. This was where it came from. The Gulag Plague. The four centuries of ruin. This was the headwaters. No wonder the Republic had sealed and buried the records. The Imperials, in their foolhardy rush to secure a counterbalance to Galactic Alliance power, reverse engineered the Sith plague and weaponized it beyond its original design specifications.

“D4, take us out of the debris field and into orbit of the planet. I think I’ve read enough,” Min declared.

[SIZE=11pt]The little droid plugged himself into the port. She felt the ship’s engines come to life. All Min could do to keep steady was to sit down. [/SIZE]