by Ben Acker
Jo finally noticed Mattis, but all he did was echo the droids. “Return to your barracks.” He snorted and dragged AG away from them. The sentry droids circled in front of Jo and AG. Cutting off the rest of the group. “You let my brother loose, Jo, or I’m gonna—I’ll…I will throw one of these droids at you.”
Mattis didn’t know what to do. He felt light-headed, like all of space was zooming in on him. “Jo,” he said. “Where are you taking Aygee?”
AG struggled against Jo’s grip, but Jo didn’t relent. “I’m gonna wipe this droid,” he said. “Make a soldier out of him, since I can’t make one of the rest of you. Maybe then you’ll learn something.” And with that, Jo turned and dragged AG along with him, heading toward the droid maintenance site.
Dec roared and charged after them. One of the sentries ejected a small electro-prod from its chassis. As Dec tried to bust through the droids, it pulsed him with a quick shock. Dec was thrown back. All Mattis remembered after that was flailing after Dec as he took another run for his brother, the sound of another pulse, and then darkness.
MATTIS WOKE UP SLOWLY. Klimo’s hot breath filled Mattis’s nose, and the bumps of his skin grazed Mattis’s face. The Rodian was watching him very closely, which was only slightly more unnerving than not remembering how he’d gotten back to his bunk.
“Oh, good, you’re awake!” Klimo shouted. “Now go to sleep. We are going to be in so much trouble tomorrow. You’ll need your sleep! Jo will make us do oh so many push-ups. My arms will probably fall off. Too bad about those Hubbard pies, but oh well. Good night.” He hopped down and into his bunk.
Mattis lowered himself to the ground slowly to see if everything still worked. It did, but everything was sore. He put his boots on gingerly. “Best friend?” Klimo murmured from under his covers.
“I can’t let him wipe Aygee.” Mattis realized his conviction as he said it.
“What can we do? There’s a sentry outside our door, Jo’s our squad leader, and…” Klimo trailed off.
“And?” Mattis pushed.
“We’re just us.” Klimo sighed. “I want to save him, too. Aygee is funny and nice to me, but I’m just me and you’re just you. What can we do?”
Mattis had never thought of himself as just anyone. He was a hero. His parents were heroes. He’d taught kids at the orphan farm to stand up to bullies. He’d stood up to bullies himself. He wasn’t a “just.” He thought of the time he’d beaten Fikk on Durkteel. He showed that bully a…Wait. Mattis realized that he hadn’t beaten Fikk. He hadn’t shown that bully anything. He had escaped Fikk. He’d bravely run away. He’d looked danger in the eye a few times and hadn’t flinched, but neither had danger. Well, this time he was going to stand up. This was for AG. “I’ll show you what we can do, just us,” Mattis answered Klimo. “Come on.”
Mattis opened the door and found himself face to face with a sentry droid. His skin itched, remembering the shock he’d gotten—however long before that had happened.
“Please return to your quarters,” the droid said in a monotone, opening the compartment that held the electro-prod.
Klimo whimpered and tugged at Mattis’s sleeve. “We’re just us.”
“Please return to your quarters,” the droid repeated.
Mattis thought of AG speaking in a monotone like that. AG in droid-face, with no alternative. No, Mattis thought. No doshin’ way. He was thinking like Dec, which was good, because Dec could have talked his way past the droid, and that’s what Mattis needed to do.
“Hey, droid,” Mattis said, drawling a very little bit. He realized what Dec might have done, and he was going to give it a try. “Your directive was to, what? See us to our quarters? Keep us here?”
“Affirmative.” The droid didn’t sound suspicious of Mattis, but only because suspicion was outside of its programming.
“Well, you did it! We were kept here for—I don’t know how long, because I got zapped. Klimo? How long have we been kept here?”
“Thirteen epicycles, best friend!” Mattis didn’t know how long that was, because Klimo never stopped using Rodian measures of time, but it didn’t matter.
“So. You have achieved your directive,” Mattis said, clapping his hands onto the droid’s shoulders like he was congratulating it. “Would you like a new directive? I’ve got one for you. Here it is. Escort us to droid maintenance. Right. Doshing. Now.”
Klimo smiled as well as a Rodian could.
Mattis felt pretty good about himself until the droid responded: “Negative.”
“What?” Mattis cried.
“The directive is incomplete. The directive is to keep you here until morning. It is not morning. Directive incomplete. Return to your quarters or be returned to your quarters. Please comply.”
Mattis commanded the version of Dec that had set up camp in his brain to think of something else. He was about ready to throw Klimo at the robot.
“I wish we could amend the directive,” Klimo said with a sigh, accidentally saving the day.
“Klimo, that’s it!” Jo may have given the droid its directive, but although he was squad leader, Jo didn’t hold official technical rank over his squad, not as far as ordering droids was concerned. They were all cadets, and though the higher-ups might trust Jo more, and though the squad was supposed to follow his orders, to an automaton, all cadets were ranked equally. Including Mattis. “Amend directive,” Mattis commanded in a strong voice.
“Please enter amended directive.”
“Keep us in our quarters until…what do you think, Klimo?” Mattis asked.
“Ten micro-epicycles from now!”
“In Basic, Klimo.”
“Thirty seconds, best friend!”
“Thirty seconds then,” Mattis ordered the robot. Exactly thirty seconds later, the droid retracted the electro-prod and scooted away to engage in its automatic directives.
Mattis and Klimo snuck through the corridors toward droid maintenance. It felt like a mission. Mattis and Klimo watched each other’s backs, and their assignment was to avoid detection and save an ally. Klimo’s antennae twitched, and he pushed Mattis back into a shadow. “Someone’s coming!” He didn’t quite manage to whisper, but it was closer than usual.
“Klimo?” Sari popped her head around the corner.
Mattis shushed Klimo before he could yell. He waved Sari over.
Sari asked if he was feeling all right. “You took quite a shock,” she said. He shrugged. She continued, “Jo posted sentry droids at all our doors. How did you get past yours?”
“Amended its orders. Klimo’s idea,” Mattis said. Klimo blushed a pale blue.
Sari beamed. “Good one. I came up with an override code. I’ll have to show you sometime.”
“Those will both work, but in a pinch, you can always pour a cup of water on its head,” Dec said, appearing out of nowhere. “Sentries can take the cold vacuum of space but a cup of water? No. They tried ’em on Ques. Didn’t last two seconds. Humidity in the air took ’em right out. Couldn’t even use ’em for parts. Now come on. Let’s go get my brother.”
They went in a small clutch, pausing at each forbidden door while Sari sliced them through. Dec got increasingly anxious each time. As Sari crouched and fiddled with the final security lock, Mattis told Dec, “Try to stay…” He was going to say “calm,” but looking at Dec’s rage-streaked face, Mattis didn’t think that would be possible. “Don’t punch Jo,” he said instead.
“No promises.”
The door to the droid maintenance site slid open, and the four of them crowded through the doorway. It was dark in there. A few sparks flew in a shadowy corner, illuminating the room for moments at a time. Soft bleeps and bloops of either droids working or droids being worked on filled the air. The room had the aspect of a repair shop crossed with a mortuary.
Metal tables like slabs, cluttered with robot parts and maintenance tools, filled the room. So strewn with detritus was the site that Mattis didn’t see the G2 repair droid standing on a high cha
ir, tinkering away on a prone chassis. They apparently took the G2 by surprise, as well.
“Oh, hello!” it yelled, its eyes lighting up and its servos whirring. “It’s you! Who are you? I am Geetoo-Peeeye. I was just working. You don’t work here, do you? I’d recognize you.”
“We don’t,” Mattis said, scanning the room.
“We’re looking for a droid,” Dec told G2-PI.
PI swiveled his head in a circle, then steadied it with his hands. “Whoo! Dizzying. Well,” he said. “Not me, I expect. And I don’t know anyone here. But I’d love to. Who are you again? This is a restricted area.”
“Anybody have a cup of water?” Dec asked.
Sari stepped forward, and for a second, Mattis thought she was going to punch or reprogram the G2, but there were more than two ways to slice a droid. “I’m Sari,” she said. “And this is Klimo. I don’t think you two have met.”
Klimo leaped forward with his arms outstretched. “Hello!” he cried.
“Hello!” PI echoed.
“Your work looks very interesting,” Klimo started in.
“Oh, it is!” the repair droid said, excited that anyone would want to talk about his boring, boring efforts.
Klimo’s natural enthusiasm and the G2 model’s innate gabbiness would serve as a perfect distraction for the rest of them to quickly search the overcrowded maintenance site.
They spread out, but they didn’t have to go far. Behind a row of disused robot pieces, Mattis—then Dec, then Sari—nearly stumbled on Jo and Lorica. Jo growled an indecipherable order to another G2 unit. Lorica said something, but her words were drowned out by the G2’s firing up an impact wrench. The G2’s eyes glowed, illuminating its workspace and revealing AG-90. AG was facedown on a slab. He was completely powered down. Mattis had never seen something so animated, so resounding with the stuff of life, rendered so completely defunct. It was jarring. There wasn’t even a word for the way AG’s shell seemed. It was as if it had never contained spirit at all.
“No!” Dec pounced on Jo, who deflected Dec’s blow at the last moment. They both went to the ground, crashing through the junk piled up on the floor.
While they scrapped, Mattis and Sari hurried to AG’s side.
“Turn him back on!” Mattis demanded, not sure if he was talking to the G2 droid or Lorica. “What did you do?”
“We’re too late,” Sari sobbed.
Lorica shook her head—was she telling Mattis that they still had time or was she just disappointed in him?—and turned to join the fray with Dec and Jo. She pulled Dec off, but he kicked, thumping Jo square in the chest. Jo went back down, and Lorica whirled with Dec, tossing him into another pile of debris.
“Sari, help him,” Mattis said, almost off-handedly. He braced the repair droid, grabbing it by its shoulder joints. “Stop whatever you’re doing,” he ordered.
The G2’s eye-lights blinked out. This one was not garrulous and chummy like the one they’d left with Klimo. It happened sometimes: a droid that took too much pleasure in taking apart its fellow droids. Mattis could tell at once that this G2 was one of those.
“I have my orders,” the G2 said, jerking its mechanical hand back at Jo.
“Ignore your orders!” Mattis felt something—the Force?—swell inside him. He wouldn’t allow harm to come to his friend.
“I would,” the G2 sneered, “but the current is already running.” It held up a pair of cables that were wired to AG’s insides. The other ends disappeared into a control panel in the room’s wall. The G2 droid made burbling noises that were meant to emulate a cackle.
“Dec,” Mattis called, desperate, not knowing what to do.
Dec stopped struggling against Lorica.
“It’s already happening,” Mattis told him. “There’s no way to shut it down.”
Dec roared again as something primal erupted within him. “Sari,” he shouted. “Get them away from me.”
Sari grabbed Lorica, picking her up in a hug. Lorica kicked and wriggled to free herself, swearing in both Basic and Zeltron, as if that would help.
Dec looked around desperately. Finally, his eyes fell on a corner of the room, toward the ceiling. The incident power switch-off: a hard-to-reach toggle placed in every command room in case of emergency. Every building, every light, every computer would be shut down. It was meant to be used only in a kay-one-zero base abandonment scenario.
“Heck with it,” Dec said.
He bolted for the switch-off, and Jo ran to intercept him. If Jo was successful, AG’s memory would be wiped. Mattis’s first friend on the base, Dec’s brother, would be gone. But if Dec shut down the base, they would surely be expelled from the Resistance. Not to mention the other trouble they might cause. What if they were attacked? Any base shields would be gone if Dec turned off the power.
Those moral calculations took place in Mattis’s head in a split second, and he decided there was no decision to make at all. As Jo lunged for the sprinting Dec, Mattis leaped out at Jo and tackled him to the ground. He was only successful because he had surprise on his side; Mattis could never have taken Jo down in a fair fight. But there was nothing fair about any of this.
Dec tore for the corner. Sari, seeing how high the toggle was, tossed Lorica aside, and fell into step behind Dec. As they reached the corner, Sari lowered her hands like a platform. Dec stepped on, Sari raised him up, and he punched the toggle.
The result was immediate. The lights in the maintenance site blinked out, plunging them all into darkness. The only light came from the eyes of the various droids that surrounded them. All over the base, they heard lights, computers, generators, and machinery shutting down or grinding to an unintended halt. Voices came next. There were muffled shouts from the corridors and echoes of people calling out in confusion across the base.
In the dark, Dec scrambled to AG’s side, knocking over tools and parts of other droids. He switched his brother back on and turned him over. A whirring noise, followed by a thick clanking, filled the dark. In the shine of the maintenance droid’s eye-lights, AG sat up. Had they succeeded? Had they cut the power in time?
They waited. One tense, silent moment ticked by, then another. AG just sat on the slab table. He was still. He was quiet.
Dec whispered, “Aygee? Brother?”
AG swiveled his head stiffly. In the powerless silence, they could hear the lenses in his eyes dilate.
The G2 that had been servicing AG pointed at each of them. “You’re all going to be in a great deal of tr—” AG shoved the droid off its high stool.
AG clicked the lens of his right eye shut and back open, winking. He held his left hand over his right and wiggled his thumb.
Dec sighed in relief.
“Aygee-Ninety, you had me worried!” Dec exclaimed, slapping his brother’s back.
AG replied with a series of beeps and whistles. He sounded like an R2 unit. Everyone was completely surprised, but none more than AG himself. He pointed at Jo and chirped angrily.
“You altered his language settings?” Dec demanded.
“Worry about yourselves. You really are in trouble,” Jo began. “All of you. This isn’t some sort of—”
Mattis didn’t know why Jo stopped talking until he heard what Jo must have. Incoming. An attack? Now? J-Squadron may have doomed them all.
“I got Aygee,” Sari said, hoisting the droid over her shoulder. She was first out of the maintenance center, with the others right behind.
When they got outside, they realized they weren’t in danger, just trouble. So much trouble. Ships were incoming, but it wasn’t an attack. It was the X-wing squadron back from its extended mission. The pilots were coming in for a landing on a tarmac that was pitch-black.
Mattis, Dec, Sari, AG, Klimo, Lorica, and Jo huddled outside the command center, watching the red and white lights of the X-wings veer dangerously close to each other, their pilots undoubtedly trying to gauge where the night sky ended and the landing strip began. Their astromechs’ navicomputers couldn’
t help them. The Resistance base was a dead zone when it came to technology. The lead X-wing swooped down at too high a speed, then abruptly pulled up, the tail of the ship smashing over some ground equipment. The other fighters followed suit, heading back into the sky.
They’d find a way to land, Mattis was sure. They had to. They were expert flyers, the best of the best. They’d figure it out.
Mattis believed everything would be okay, hoped the pilots would know what to do, but Jo took action. He called each of their names and threw them emergency flares. The ground crew passed them out with determination and speed. Everyone on the base worked together to guide the pilots to the ground safely.
Mattis was determined to help. He stole only one look at Jo, whose expression reinforced what Mattis knew to be true: once everyone was safely back on base and the power was restored, Mattis and his friends would face punishment for what they’d done.
KLIMO WAS BOUNCING so fast that he shook the entire bench. Mattis, Dec, and Sari sat with him, and his energy felt like an insistent, impatient pulse. Like a tribal Ewok drumbeat heralding some terrible event. That isn’t much of an exaggeration, Mattis thought. A terrible event was both behind and ahead of them, the former of their own doing and the latter at the hands of Admiral Ackbar.
The Resistance leader was shaking with frustration. The whole room seemed to be minutely convulsing with the pent-up energy they were each sending off. Even Lorica didn’t know what to do with her hands. She fidgeted as if sending signals then finally put them in her pockets. Standing between her and AG, Jo stared coolly ahead, tapping his foot to some unheard rhythm.
It hadn’t taken the Resistance leadership long to discover who had activated the incident power switch-off. The group had been immediately separated and held in different rooms that felt like prison cells. It seemed as if they were being quarantined to keep them from agreeing on a reasonable story, but to Mattis, the most reasonable story was the truth: AG had seen Jo do something he wasn’t supposed to in that communications center, so Jo had tried to wipe AG’s memory. Jo could pretend all he wanted that he was attempting to make AG a better soldier. The truth was, Jo was covering something up.