Although the conversation stuttered around a topic as heavy as Vader and the crimes he committed against the galaxy, we eventually recovered and moved on to lighter topics. First, it was the type of ships we managed to salvage from almost certain defeat, which led to discussing the Fury's current role above Nirn. When that shifted to Vercopa itself, it wasn't long until they were asking about their brothers and sisters who lived there. Ahsoka happily discussed topics such as the meditation gardens, the Uneti trees that seemed to thrive, and the push for Jedi to live among the people, rather than isolating themselves in one central location.

  "There is no singular Jedi space," She explained with a smile. "We believe that isolating ourselves is one of the major contributors to the Order's fall. There are no Jedi dorms or central meditation spaces. Instead, we have nearly a dozen different parks that are open to the public, with areas for peaceful meditation, of which many civilians are encouraged to join. We have some sparring pits for saber practice, which Clan Syr and the few other Mandalorians frequent, and a lecture hall for meetings and lessons, but even those frequently have civilians or others joining in."

  "Including civilians in many of our lessons has been a fascinating experience," Amescoll admitted. "Already, we have discovered several individuals with minor connections with the Force. Though not nearly strong enough for more standard teaching, their existence and ability to touch the Force through meditation suggests that a connection to the Force might be more common than we ever considered."

  "That is... incredible," Cere admitted, Cordova nodding in agreement. "This sounds significantly more substantial than what we were creating in Jedha. There we were, a simple waypoint for the Hidden Path. We feared growing too large would attract the attention of the Inquisition or worse."

  "Our goal is to help as many as we can, so that when the Empire is finally defeated, we may start again with something new, something that was born from the ashes of the old order, better and wiser," I explained solemnly. "With any luck, we will build something stronger, more resilient."

  "When we first met, you said a Jedi Master gave you a mission to help and gather the Jedi together," Cal asked. "What was his name?"

  "Grand Master Yoda," I said with a sad smile.

  All the Jedi at the table spoke up at once, all asking a variation of the same question. I wish I could have given them better news, but I could only shake my head.

  "I'm sorry, he passed away recently, within the last month," I revealed. "He was on Nirn, with us, when his health took a turn. He held on as long as he could, but it was his time."

  "What happened? How did he survive Order 66?" One of the older Jedi sat at our table asked.

  "Yoda was on Kashyyk when the order came through," I explained, leaning back in my chair. "He fought off the nearby clones, before the Wookies whisked him away. From there, he snuck back to Coruscant with Master Obi-Wan to disable the Temple's emergency message, which was calling the Jedi home."

  "I remember when the message changed. Warning us to stay away," Cordova said, shaking his head. "Explaining that it had finally happened, that our end had arrived? It was devastating."

  "Cordova had several visions of the end of the Jedi Order," Cere explained, resting her hand on his shoulder. "No one listened to his warnings, claimed the Force was too clouded for his visions to be trusted."

  "They didn't listen to a lot of the signs, unfortunately," I agreed with a frown, letting out a short sigh before continuing. "Once the signal was changed, Obi-Wan and Yoda split. Obi-Wan went to confront Vader, while Yoda went straight to Palpy."

  "Were they both defeated?" Cere asked. "Our strongest…"

  "No, Obi-Wan actually defeated Vader, but left him for dead. Palpy used Sith Alchemy and painful technology to drag him back from the brink of death. His suit is not armor, it is life support," I explained, shaking my head. "Only Vader's rage and depth in the dark side let him function as he does. It's honestly why I think he is so strong. He is barely a man anymore, just a wound in the Force, pulling itself forward under its own rage. Hard to stop something like that."

  "And Yoda?"

  "Unfortunately, he was soundly beaten," I responded simply, before elaborating. "He underestimated his opponent. If I had to make a guess, he anticipated a stealth, statecraft, and subtle type, and was instead presented with someone who, in all honesty, has an impressive array of skills. In the end, he barely escaped with the help of Senator Bail Organa, but the damage was done. He was wounded, and already at the end of his species' natural life span. But he knew he might be needed in the future, either to teach, to serve as a warning, or to make one last play. So, he hid himself on Dagobah, a world with a strong, dark presence. There, he could pull on the Force to slow his death to a near standstill."

  "How did you find him?"

  "Obi-Wan, after defeating Vader, left and hid on Tatooine. He later found and started to train a young Force-sensitive," I explained, sanitizing the facts to keep Luke's name out. "He later sacrificed himself, becoming one with the Force to save both Leia Organa, Bail's daughter, and the budding Jedi from Vader's clutches. That young Jedi, whom both Ahsoka and I helped train for a short while, later received visions of meeting Yoda for more training. We brought him to Dagobah, and after a month of training, we brought Yoda back to Nirn, so he could spend the last of his days with the surviving members of his people. Luckily, Nirn had a strong enough presence in the Force that Yoda could still slow his death considerably, but he could not stop it. He passed surrounded by friends, honored by he city. His last words of working together, and of hope."

  "...That is… How do you know that?" Cere asked, most of the rest stunned by my retelling. "Surely you were not there for most of that. Did he tell you?"

  "Deacon has a reputation for knowing things he shouldn't, sometimes even couldn't," Ahsoka explained. "It's something most come to just accept."

  "Before you ask for proof, I will admit you and your group are... absent from a lot of my knowledge," I admitted. "Convenient, I know, but that's the nature of these things."

  "Well… regardless of your seemingly impossible knowledge, I would have to say Master Yoda was right," Cordova volunteered, looking at Cal and Cere. "I believe going with Deacon is the right direction for us. The Force clearly agrees, tell me you feel it too?"

  "I do, a lightness that flows toward them, pulling us closer," Cere agreed. "It seems as if we finally have a new home."

  I couldn't help but smile, holding my hand out to each of them.

  "Welcome to the party. I look forward to working with all of you."

  "How exactly do we do this?" Cal asked. "We have a few ships, and it would be a shame to leave them behind."

  "We don't have to, but you should probably figure out a chain of ownership or something," I pointed out. "We-"

  "Wait, what do you mean?" Cal asked. "Do you not want them?"

  "I mean… we could probably use them for shipping and merchant stuff," I guessed. "But they are your ships, not ours. I suppose we could buy them off you, and you could split the credits as you see fit among your people. Does that work?"

  "I… I'll ask around, see what people think. Greez won't want to sell the Mantis but…"

  "For now, we should focus on getting your people to safety on Nirn. We can worry about who owns what then," I pointed out. "For now, we will set a course for our security checkpoint, which should take two days. With any luck, the Hope will be available to help, since it will have more room, but we could also use the Forge. You land a ship, I interview the people while my people scan the ship's interior for anything like trackers or beacons. After all that's done, they can leave, and it's rinse and repeat. Once all ships are clear, we can make the jump to Nirn. I'll warn you, you may have to live on our Lucrehulk for a week or so while we build some new homes…"

  If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  "You don't have enough room?"

  "We never have enough room," I admitted with a defeated groan. "I've doubled the construction team's resources twice, and they still struggle to keep up. Granted, that's more the fault of our rapid expansion than anything else."

  We went over the general plan before the decision to join our group was finally announced. The subsequent cheers came from both sides, and it was hard not to chuckle at everyone's eagerness.

  The gathering, now a celebration of new friends and allies, continued into the afternoon, as we had planned to leave early the next morning. Once the party had fizzled out, labor droids cleaned out the mess, while we took turns standing watch both inside and outside the ships.

  The following morning, Cal and his people were eager to get moving, the once nomadic group craving a place to call home. Once we were ready to leave, 1st Group escorted the Jedi nomad into orbit, where we calculated the jump to the security checkpoint. Unfortunately, the Hope was not back from its mission, meaning we had to work out of the Forges hangar, which was significantly smaller.

  Still, we eventually got everyone and everything scanned and confirmed safe for Nirn. When we finally arrived home, I couldn't help but smirk at how the nomadic group was silent for quite a while, their ships pointed at the planet, taking it all in.

  We ended up directing them all down to the planet's surface, despite our earlier plans for them to live on the Fury. Instead, they landed in the very corner of Vercopa's plateau, where they set up a simple temporary camp. They only took up a small part of the area, and they were all happy to live out of their ships for a while if it meant they could be on solid land. As they landed, a good chunk of the city came out to greet them, including most of our Jedi. Meeting some clones was a bit of a tense moment, but Cal had explained the unfortunate truth of Order 66, so nothing hasty was done. They would likely take some time to get used to each other, but that was better than open hostility.

  Once the new Jedi were settled, I went on my usual tour around the city before going back up to the Fury to inspect the ships collected so far for 5th Group. A total of three had been grabbed during the almost two and a half weeks that we had been gone, traveling around the galaxy, hunting down CIS leads, and then meeting with Cal and his friends. Stepping off the shuttle into the massive workshop hangar of the Fury, I stopped at the bottom of the ramp, eyes wide in surprise.

  "How the hell did they manage to grab two of those?" I asked, looking around, trying to find someone who could answer my questions.

  There, lined up along the hangar, were three ships. One, and TWO. The CR90 was a classic, and so common among pirates, criminals, and slavers throughout the galaxy that I was honestly surprised we didn't already have one. We had a CR70, the Nautilus of 2nd Group, but no classic Blockade Runner, until now at least.

  The Marauder-class was a ship I recognized from before, but I couldn't actually say why, at least from before. More recently, they popped into my vernacular since they were the perfect pocket warships, basically exactly the kind of ship we liked. They certainly had a memorable design, with the swooping wings, and they were big, almost two hundred meters long. They were heavily armed, had a decent-sized cargo and hangar bay, and could easily land and deploy a sizable amount of troops.

  After I had finished gaping at our newest additions, all three of which were currently being attended to by repair droids and engineers, I spotted Miru standing next to Orbor Fakkiv, head of the repair crews. Both of them were poring over a large data pad, looking between it and one of the Marauders. I quickly made my way across the hangar, reaching Miru right after Orbor left to boss around her people.

  "Miru! Hey, how do they look?"

  "Deacon! Welcome back!" Miru said, giving me a one-armed hug and a big smile. "Did your mission go well?"

  "About as well as you could hope," I respond. "Cal and his people are down on Nirn, living out of their ships until we have homes built for them. So… What about all this?"

  "Pretty impressive, right?" She said, sounding very excited. "The CR90 is in pretty good shape, 2nd Group snagged that from a couple of pirates harassing a mining company out on the Mid Rim. Managed to snag a few starfighters, too, not that we would use them. We've already started sourcing its upgrades, it should only take two hundred thousand to get to our standard."

  "And the Marauders?"

  "Well… one of them is in okay shape," she explained with a wince. "It's going to take about… five hundred thousand credits to get that up and running how we like it, but it sounds like side profits from that mission worked out to around that much anyway. The second one… well, from what we can tell, it was grounded for a few years and used for parts. It's gonna take a full million. We've been holding off on any major repairs in case you wanted to sell it instead."

  "No, absolutely not, these are exactly the kinds of starships we need," I explained. "Big enough to throw a considerable punch, but small enough to fly under the radar. With our starfighter stacking racks, they might even be able to hold two full squadrons each."

  "I don't know about two full, unless you're willing to toss the shuttles and cargo barges, but I could definitely fit more than one," She partially agreed. "If you're certain of getting both of them up and running, I can get people started on that."

  "Yes, please do, I want that ship in our fleet," I said, before pausing for a moment, watching my people work to repair the starships before continuing. "...Don't let anyone name the second one."

  "What? Why not?" Miru asked with a frown.

  "Because… I think I might be co-opting it for 1st Group," I admitted, scratching my chin. "I have been considering retiring the Talos Chariot and the Forward Charge, and this seems like as good a time as any."

  "What?!" Miru asked in shock. "Why!?"

  "Don't get me wrong, they are both fine ships that served us well, Miru," I said with a frown. "However… They are also small and not designed to fight larger targets. The Tool Trio, Cuttlefish, and Squid are all set up to fight larger ships, which is why they work where they are. The Chariot and Charge are not."

  "Well… what would you do with them? What about Calima?" Miru asked, suddenly paying close attention. She had worked hard on the Talos Chariot, it was no surprise she was concerned to learn I was retiring it.

  "The Charge would be assigned to the freight fleet as an escort, and I was thinking of stationing the Chariot here, so that you could keep tinkering with it," I said. "Think of it as your own experimental flagship. It might come in handy for smaller, more subtle missions anyway. As for Calima, she is free to do as she wants, but there will always be a place for her here."

  Her eyes lit up when I revealed that she would be able to tinker and customize the ship however she liked, and I couldn't help but chuckle. The Chariot would be the most impressive ship in the galaxy by the time she was done with it.

  "You would still need a replacement for the Charge," She pointed out, after giving me a tight hug. "And you're going to need more ships for 5th Group."

  "It will happen eventually," I said, crossing my arms and watching as labor droids carried armored panels across the hangar. "Between the data core, black box, and our usual effectiveness? I have faith we can fill both needs fairly quickly."

  "That's fair," Miru admitted, before looking up at me. "Should I keep this to myself?"

  "Just for a day or so," I answered. "It's been floating around in my head, but I haven't actually brought it up to anyone yet because we didn't have the proper replacement ships. Now though..."

  She nodded, focusing on her datapad for a moment. After about twenty minutes of watching her and her people work, I convinced her to take a break to get some lunch with me and some of the crew who were also on the Fury.