It was silent in the massive building off the coast of D’a Mola. The construction was a hulking thing, squat and stable, built to last with no thought for aesthetic and aimed towards function alone. The coastline sun shone off the ocean and reflected onto the gray material, casting flickering shadows in the noonday heat.

Inside, the building was strewn with rubble. Most of it was open space, with several areas where the ceiling had caved in. Doors and passageways hugged the outside of the main room, leading to who knew where else.

Covering the ground in an endless sheaf of glittering beige metal was an army of droids.

They bore as much beauty as the building they were housed in, lifeless steel corpses from a lost war. Some still held blasters in loose grips, while others bore their weapons in their own limbs. There was little variation between the models, but they all had the same purpose; inevitable death.

On the other end of the colossal room was the hangar. A great hatch, long since sealed by age and rust (and a well-placed bomb), lay angled across the floor, allowing sunlight to stream through.

The sunlight didn’t quite reach the vulture droid’s limbs.

It consisted of a sleek, narrow main body with two slanted red eyes. Four long, rigid legs protruded from the sides, legs which allowed it to walk on the ground and, when set to the proper position, soar through space. Hiding behind the ends of each leg was a pair of blasters, intended for ship-to-ship use; a formidable opponent under any circumstances.

The vulture droid didn’t know why it was active.

Standing there in the rubble of the warehouse, it stared blankly outside at the sunlight. No orders were coming in from the command station - there wasn’t so much as a ghost of a signal. Without orders, without an objective, the droid may well have been so many pounds of metal.

It didn’t move for quite some time. It had nowhere to go, and it didn’t need rest.

What was it supposed to do?

It could remember the war it’d originated in clearly. A vicious series of battles between Vultures and clones, droids and wizards, steel and flesh. It had been… shot down? There had been a crash, but it had not been irrevocably damaged. It had been deemed fixable.

And then… nothing.

Repairs had taken longer than expected. The droids couldn’t have lost the war, not with so much of an advantage in numbers. Orders would come. Production would… production would not continue.

With no war, there would be no more droids. Such an expense would be unnecessary for mere peacekeeping.

The vulture droid, for better or worse, realized that it was almost certainly unique.

It had no idea what to do with that information.

Its protocols had no pre-arranged orders for what to do when there were no orders. It felt nothing but the vaguest of disappointment that it hadn’t been present for the certain victory. Who was it fighting for?

If there was no one to give it orders, and there were none set in place, then… that meant that everything was possible.

Before, the Vulture droid had simply been waiting for something to happen. Now it was paralyzed with something akin to silicon panic. With infinite potential options came the necessity of infinite potential decisions.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It could do anything. It could blast everything in sight. It could fall over. It could try to pick up a rock. Hundreds of thousands of pathways opened up, aiming in every direction from where the droid was at that moment, and all of them seemed equally alarming.

Psych suppression kicked in, and the droid’s panic was funneled somewhere else, to be opened up and analyzed later when it was in a better frame of mind.

No orders were coming in. That was a number one priority. So… it needed to find a command post. It had almost no information to base its actions on, which meant it had to limit itself to what it had.

Turning, the Vulture observed the warehouse it’d found itself in. The building was solidly built, but almost entirely ruined. The walls were beginning to crumble and the ceiling had long since given way. None of the other droids seemed to be functional, which raised the question of why the Vulture was working.

Alright. An objective had to be set. There had to be something it could do, but doing something meant making a decision, and the Vulture was far from confident that it was equipped to do such a thing.

It found itself distracted by something in the distance. A trail of smoke, the thinnest of lines in the sky.

Something to do?

The Vulture droid found itself mildly annoyed at how difficult it was turning out to simply move. That annoyance was what finally fueled its decision to head towards the smoke. It had to be more productive than standing here.

Standing on its rearmost legs, it lifted its front pair and fixed them into flight position, then took off with a metallic hum.

The ground dropped away as it flew for the smoke, intent on finding whatever the source was. What would be nice is if it turned out to be a group of droids, or a Separatist outpost. Whether it would be successful in that assessment would be… to be seen.

From such a height, it was much easier to see the surrounding terrain. Rolling hills meant potential ambushes, places from which to mount artillery. Flatlands off to the distant left meant soft land, but easy potential for building factories. Unfortunately, it lacked materials and assistance, which… somewhat limited its ability to set up a forward operations base.

It didn’t have fingers, or hands, or even arms. How exactly was it supposed to repair anything…?

Smoke often meant population. Population meant potential work force. Ergo… it could create its own work force! The Seperatists had been made of insurrectionists, rebels and every man and woman who wanted a better life. What better place to start a Seperatist faction than a new batch of fresh faces?

Encouraged by the thought, the Vulture accelerated towards the smoke. As the terrain below blurred by, the Vulture noticed further signs of civilization. It hadn’t been given any information regarding surrounding territories or species, but based on the fields of crops dotting the countryside, it was refreshing to know they were smart enough to start fields.

Pinwheeling about, it flipped into standard formation and began its descent. The air shrieked around its limbs and head, a background distraction reserved for non-essential timing. The Vulture could clearly see a small series of buildings; not even a town, just a single farm as far as it could tell. That was alright; everyone had to start somewhere.

Slowing as it approached the ground, the Vulture adjusted its limbs into landing formation with the appropriate timing and touched down on the grass, not leaving so much as a mud trail. The farm consisted of a central one-story concrete domicile, two large barns to one side, and an array of fenced enclosures for livestock. Several farmhand droids ambled about, pulling weeds and tending to heavyset animals in paddocks. The paint on everything here was not new, but far from the tarnished condition the warehouse had been in. For that matter, it was probably cleaner than the Vulture’s exterior.

All in all, it would make an excellent forward operations base. One of the barns could be converted to a munitions and infantry factory, and it wouldn’t be too hard to bring some equipment from the warehouse for anything else the Seperatists might need. As for the domicile, well, any organic assistance would need a place to stay.

Part of the Vulture wondered if anyone here would have some orders they could give out. It would be nice to finally relax and just do what it was told.

The front door of the domicile, a remarkably well-carved slab of wood, was forcefully thrown open as someone came outside. It was a female Twi’lek wearing dark green cotton clothes, a visage of deep-seated frustration engraved in her face as she hurried from her home.

That frustration drained into an entirely different expression as she saw the Vulture, the blood draining from her face and tinting the navy skin to a much lighter shade.

The Vulture, in wordless reply, stared down at her.

It found itself unsurprised as she passed out.