Session export: Droids! The Movie
The meeting was a sedate affair. Ostensibly a routine military and intelligence coordination conference with representatives from around the Brotherhood aswell as delegations and briefers from the Envoy Corps, INQ, and Shroud Syndicate. They would be talking about after action reviews of the recent military campaigns and how they would proceed with upcoming operations.
The site that had been chosen was the busy manufacturing world of Zagdar III where the Brotherhood maintained a large ranch as a safehouse on one of the planets larger islands. Kalen and Karracca had been chosen as representatives for Clan Plagueis and the Envoy Corps respectively. They was a few dozen space craft of various types parked in a large field next to a large but modest looking ranchhouse.
“Oh look, they left us a great parking spot near the front.” Reece binked and beeped from the pilots seat as he put the YT 1300 down right infront of the houses large porch.
“You don’t think this spot might have been left for someone important.”
“Uh, yeah, us, duh.” The deranged R3 chirped as he used his rocket boosters to float back down to the deck.
Kalen just rolled his eyes, turned and headed for the ramp.
As they exited, Reece used his thrusters to hover next to Kalen on the walk to the deck where several Brotherhood members and their droids had congregated.
“Oh my gaaawd, did the Plagueian Jedi just steal the Head Inquisitors parking spot? Pffffft.” Someone was overhead saying on the deck.
After doing some pleasantries and perfunctory greetings one of the senior INQ staffers came out.
“We’re ready to begin the briefing everyone. This is classified Zesh 2, so no droids, AI, or recording devices please.”
As he made for the door with everyone else Kalen noticed Reece had landed and was followed him.
“Didn’t you hear the High Inquisitor, no droids buddy, just hang out here okay?”
“I’m not a droid, I’m a free droid.” The astromech emphasized the ‘free’ part.
“Still though, just hang out here with the rest of em…We probably won’t be too long.” Kalen said.
A passing Arconan Intel official remarked, “Yeah we will, these briefings rarely last less than 5 or 6 hours.”
“Oh, yeesh, well uh, just chill on the ship then, or better yet, why don’t you take all your pals out for oils baths.”
“So you want me to babysit a bunch of people’s slaves and take ‘em for baths eh? And who’s going to pay for that hub?” Reece replied snarkily and a few of the other on the deck laughed.
“Ugh! Fine.” Kalen rummaged into his pocket and pulled out a handful of credits as Reece rolled over and whipped open a compartment that the Jedi dropped the chits into.
“Just keep your commlink on in case I need you back here. And don’t go too far.”
“Sure thing bud.” Reece said as he turned and rolled back across the deck while Kalen walked into the house with the door swishing stuck and audibly locking itself.
“Alright, who wants oil baths on Kalen? We can probably fit in some lube changes and axel greasings.” Reece beeped to the assortment of droids spread out across the deck.
“Oh, I do love a good oil bath, but I fear the walk to the nearest town may not be within my battery range.” A short silver B-2S0 protocol droid replied as an R5 honked in appreciation and began to follow Reece.
“Oh don’t worry sis, I got a ride, you can charge your batteries on the Hawk.”
“Oh, your master allows you to pilot a vessel unsupervised? That’s seems dreadfully dangerous.”
“I dont have a master, I’m a freed droid, see that YT-1300, it’s half mine, I was just giving Jedi-boy a lift. And trust me I’m a better pilot than any bio-chemical 'people’” Reece got to the edge of the deck and engaged his thrusters.
“There’s room for everyone, all aboard who’s coming aboard.” He twittered before hovering off towards the ship.
Zinnias had been frantically beeping and whirling by the door where it’s owner had gone.
A small inquisitive beeped was heard at the odd droid’s comment. Then a long trailing beep as it whirled to try to cut off Reece path.
Zinnias zoomed back and forth, sending out binary messages. Something about we don’t leave our owners, what if their owners need them, disloyalty, dishonor on you, dishonor on your chip, dishonor on your-
Reece and other droids that join can pick up that the poor droid has something close to what the people called, ‘separation anxiety’.
“I’m sure we’ll be fine my friend. His owner did tell him not to go far. And you heard the Inquisitor, our owner will be in disposed for several hours.” The silver protocol droid gave the little C-series astromech a reassuring pat on the top of its tapered cylindrical dome. He started shuffling off towards the YT-1300 freighter before stopping and turning back towards the skittish droid.
“My designation is B-3S1, translation and adminstration liaison. What is your designation?”
Esen and Vox had made their way towards the building, the small backpack droid peaked over her shoulder and his censor focusing on anything and everything.
As they got closer she heard the announcement and turned to peek at him out of the corner of her eye. “No droids.” She said melancholy.
His sensor focused on her and he released a series of small beeps.
“Yes I know you could probably be snuck in, but we’d probably be caught. Besides, it won’t be that bad—“ “duuwoop” “-Yes, yes I promise to get you if anything happens.” She knelt down, allowing the backpack droid to climb off her shoulders.
“Look! There’s other droids over there, maybe go spend time with them? Perhaps I should have brought Gonkles too, he needs socializing.” That comment was met with a series of beeps and woops which she giggled.
“Alright, I have to go in, you go over there. Bye, Vox, have a good time!”
The small BD-Backpack droid didn’t move as the Zeltron turned and walked toward the entrance. He watched her turn right as she made it and waved to him before she entered into the building and he lost sight of her. He waited a few moments, and then slowly turned to the direction of the other droids and made the small trek there.
After rolling into the cockpit and quickly prepping the ship for takeoff Reece rolled back over to the entry and was about to close it when a BD backpack skittered up to the bottom of the ramp.
“Well come on then. Seal the…hatch, place, thingy on your way up, will you?” Reece’s memory circuits stuttered and glitched as his processor searched for the proper tone for the word ‘ramp’. The R3 droid made an aggravated honking sound and quickly went into his memory and erased a bunch of old useless flight logs from several decades prior to free up space on his drives.
The old R3 then rolled through the central hub of the ship where the various other droids had congregated.
“Make yourselves comfortable, power sockets are there and there.” He pointed to two wall panels with manipulators as he rolled through towards the angled corridor that led to the cockpit.
“And don’t touch that console, or go into any of the bunk rooms around that corner. Ugnaughts get super ornery when you mess with there Sith.” Reece pointed in two more directions before continuing out of the room.
“Ugnaughts? There are Ugnaughts aboard, this all seems very strange indeed.” B-3S1, OR Besi as her master called her remarked before she shuffled after Reece.
Reece used his thrusters to hop up onto the pilots seat and rammed his probe into the ships systems control socket and started flicking switches and pushing buttons with his armatures.
“I have never seen an astromech who would ever presume to operate a vessel in such a fashion. Do you have proper flight certifications and insurance?”
“ ‘Course we got insurance! We’re not like that deadbeat Kalen who keeps crashing his ride. We got the comprehensive package from Fey'lya and Sons. And as for the the flight certifications…I am the flight certifications.” Reece said with a creepy tone to his binary beeping.
Reece saw the ramp hatch indicator go green, then flicked open the ships intercom. In that moment he decided he would take them all to his old pal Reego. His shop was on a mining colony just a few parses away, and they could get their in less than a half hour in Hyperspace. In his processor, that easily still counted as ‘not far’.
“Buckle up everyone, we, are, outta here.” He closed the intercom, had the ship lift off, and swiftly zoomed them up into orbit.
“My circuits.” Besi exclaimed in horror as she awkwardly shuffled back out of the cockpit and back to the central hub.
“I don’t mean to alarm any of you, but I fear the R3 droid that is currently helming this vessel may be suffering from a rampant processor or other cognitive degenerative disorder! He is taking the ship into orbit!” She fretted in her aristocratic Chandrilan accent.
Reece flicked on the intercom again, “You are aware that I’m tied into the ships systems and can here you right now, right?” He beeped and booped.
HK-72 and DUM-E had been waiting outside for almost twenty minutes before Kalen had shown up, droid in tow. Up to that point, HK had been restraining DUM-E, who had an unfortunately tendency to spray sentients with fire extinguishing foam.
When the other droid suggested going to the older vessel, they had silently followed for the potential cleaning and oiling.
Hopefully, it would keep DUM-E from spraying anyone…
HK-72 let out a resigned sigh at the announcement that the R3 unit was taking them off-planet. They always did have their quirks.
Nemo saw the YT-1300 take off and keyed the life sign scanner. Seeing that there were no organic life forms outside of the usual bacteria, he connected to the ship and said, “Layla there is a ship leaving without any pilot. I think someone has a droid aboard stealing it. Launch and pull alongside it and ask them where they are going.”
The ship launched and engaged its thrusters to full power, they needed to make up a lot of ground, and a YT-1300 was a much faster ship than an ancient Dynamic-class freighter. Layla keyed her comms to ping the freighter as she caught up and said, “This is Layla, pilot of The Argentum Baet, where are you going?” While she might be very cautious with people, she is completely comfortable with any droid.
Nemo let out the droid equivalent of a sigh and said to Layla, “Not like that, more forceful. Like how the pilots of Bolt squadron say it. We are not trying to make friends.” On the internal comms Layla said, “I do want to make friends. Maybe if we make them our friends, they will not steal the ship. Unlike organics droids are reasonable.”
“Just follow them,” Nemo said. The countless timed he had been in a similar situation playing across his memory core. He would need to teach Layla to act more like the clones. Those were some great companions.
Reece heard the comm from the other freighter and opened a channel, “This is Reece, owner and Captain of the Century Hawk, we’re going for oils baths and lube jobs on Tralus 5. Feel free to tag along. Transmitting coordinates now.” The astromech sent over the location of his pals service shop and made the calculations for the jump to lightspeed.
DUM-E bounced in place excitedly in the Main Hold. It would be nice to get an oil bath and lube job; his and HK’s creator had been so busy of late in her forge, working on orders for whatever Mandalorian Clan — their name wasn’t something he particularly cared about, though he did get punted by the rude bucket-headed Meatbags when he tried to help them cool off — lived in the Kiast System.
Meatbags was something his friend HK called sentients and he found it to be an accurate description. The term caused no end of amusement for their creator’s father for some reason that he was unaware of.
Maybe something to do with how many of them twitched and started arguments with his taller friend when HK used the term…
Reece came rolling down the short angled corridor from the cockpit back towards the main lounge area.
“Oh my, if you’re here, who is piloting the vessel?” Besi asked.
“Chill out, I locked in the autopilot for our little hop through hyperspace. We’ll be at Reego’s in about 20 minutes.” The R3 replied.
“HYPERSPACE?” The protocol droid shreiked.
“What kind of auto-pilot? Do you have a Droid Brain 7000 series?” An R5 astromech asked.
“Nah, plain old JP series auto-nav program. I wasn’t going to fork out the 25 grand for some sassy, over engineered AI nav-brain.”
The R5 let out a shrill squeal of concern, “A JP series nav? They’re almost a century old, and have a tendency to fly ships right into the sides of planets and asteroids!”
Reece beeped and booped in as soothing a ‘voice’ as he could, “Calm down bruh! That only happened like 2 or 3 times, and the developers patched that vulnerability out, like decades ago.”
Just then the ship shuddered.
“It’s probably just turbulence.”
The ship lurched again, this time more violently.
“Sith!” Reece babonked as he engaged his thrusters and zoomed back to the cockpit.
“I should have remained on the patio, I knew it. We’ll surely be blasted to bits.” Besi groaned.
After getting back into his seat, Reece saw a red laser blasts zip right above and below the ship. His scanner showed 2 B-4RB fighters on their tail. They were obviously pirates looking to disable their engines and seize their cargo. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence around the perimeter of systems with ongoing Industrial Mining operations.
Reece activated the ship’s intercom, “so, do any of you know how to operate dual or quad laser cannons, by chance? We’re getting attacked by pirates.”
The ship started to move.
……
The ship started to move!? Zinnias let out a very long frantic beep as it started to zoom towards the cockpit. After being lost for several minutes with several run ins with locked doors, it had finally found the cockpit.
At seeing Reece, a mild slight angry beep was heard before hearing the intercom. Zinnias spun on it’s wheels as it started to zoom out of the cockpit, frantically beeping alerts and trying to find a droid that can take over the cannons.
“Oh hey little guy. A bit busy dealing with some pirates right now…” Reece swiveled his and looked but the frantic droid was already gone.
A few seconds later the R5 droid that had been thebfirst to take him up on the offer of an oil bath rolled into the cockpit and chirped, “I can fit in the turret access port but my master has let me fire the lasers a few times in training.”
“Good enough. You’re my new gunner. Plug into to that terminal over there.” Reece momentarily removed one manipulator arm from the controls and pointed to an auxiliary port.
“Take control of the dorsal dual turret, it has an autolock targeting system, just activate that and start shooting buddy.” Reece whipped and rolled the vessel to avoid multiple laser blasts. His manuever were so aggressive they overrated the inertia compensators and every droid aboard momentarily felt weightless and then slammed back down to the deck.
“Hang on everyone, they’re getting closer.” He beeped into the intercom.
“Oh no! I’ve suffered irreparable damage. I’m seeing stars, is this how it ends? I’m doomed.” Desi hollered from the central lounge. The G-forces of Reeces manuever had caused the protocol droids knees to buckle and snap at the joint. Sparks burst from both nearly severed joints; only a few cables and tiny hydraulic tubes were left connecting them.
The Argentum Baet’s hyperdrive was slower than the YT-1300. As it finally entered the system, Layla scanned two fighters harrying the Century Hawk and started transmitting a recording, “This is Commander Hobs Terin of Bolt Squadron,” a male voice came over the comms of the Hawk and of the two fighters, “Twelve E-wing starfighters are about to arrive in the system, I do not normally tolerate pirates but since I am not here for you, you have thirty seconds to leave.”
The two fighters stopped attacking the Hawk and flew towards the Baet. The Baet’s three turrets turned to face one of the incoming ships and fired ripping it to pieces. The second one, not wanting to die, turned and within a few seconds jumped to hyperspace.
Transmitting in her normal voice, Layla asked, “what damage did they cause?”
“Shield emitters damaged, and our Auxilary power unit is fried, but other than that we’re fine. Thanks for the assist Bolt Squadron.” Reece replied through the comm.
After a few minutes the light freighter soared in over a small Doonium mining colony. Reece flew well past the landing field and put the ship down in a vacant lot next to a sand blown row of small buildings surrounded by junk and direlect parts of vessels and droids scattered about.
Reece lowered the ramp and whistled for everyone to follow him as he exited into the dusty twilight.
The plucky astromech rolled around a low metal fence and up towards a dingy looking duracrete structure that looking like little more than an oversized shed. Beside the shed sat two large empty transparisteel tanks each with its own adhoc pulley and crane system.
Above of small nerf hide awning, scrawled out in hand painted words was the sign.
‘Reego and Rax Repair Shop’
The words ‘and Rax’ were much smaller and appeared to be recent additions.
Reece was happy to see his Jawa pal Rax had been promoted to that status off partner in the business.
Along the short path up dilapidated structure Reece saw a beat up looking RX droid and middle aged looking Ewok sitting outside of small hut that looked to be made out of scrap pieces of durasteel and duraplast.
The Ewoks eyes widened when he saw the droid approaching and grunted as he got to his feet. The RX droid was holding a hand written sign that read “Will work for credits, food or transit.”
“Yubyub.” The ewok exclaimed.
“They dont appear to be accompanied by any of their masters, seeking employment may prove difficult.” The RX droid replied to his mottled furred friend.
As Reece rolled up he chirped a greetings to the two. After seeing the sign the droid was holding he stopped infront of the stop of the duo.
“What can you both do?” He booped.
“Yeecha?” The ewok turned to the RX series pilot droid, not fully understanding the binary the droid was speaking.
“He is asking what we can do, I presume for the purposes of employment,” the RX series translated for his companion.
“Yoto do jooom, ba ruutay.” The ewok replied motioning to the R3 obviously urging the droid to do something.
“Yes Master Miklik, I shall. I am F zero zesh I, most call me Fozzy, I am a combat augmented pilot droid capable of serving as a pilot, co-pilot, gunner, or repair tech, and Miklik here is a former member of the New Republic Defense Forces, who is a qualified gunners mate, bombadier, and armoury mechanic.”
Reece and the Century Hawk were in need of of extra crew since Treel was trying to lure away his Ugnaught gunners with promises of ‘profit sharing’, amd Karracca was likely to be busy with his Envoy Corps duties for the next few months.
“Are you willing to work off planet? On a monthly contract basis?” Reeced beeped.
Fozzy turned to Miklik, “If I take his meaning, he is if we are willing to take work for his master on a monthly renewing basis.”
The ewoks eyes nearly bugged out his head and a wide grin appeared on his face for the first time in weeks.
The two had been stranded there for nearly two months, and had only survived due the kindness of Reego and Rax allowed them to set up a small shack and use their water purifying system. They would take daywork cleaning out recently emptied holds of the Doonium haulers that showed up each week. A kind old female Rodian freighter Captain had even gifted the the Ewok a 20lbs sack of lentils because she could tell how hungry the little guy was.
After a bunch of furious jibber jabber aimed at the RX droid the Ewok disappeared into the little hutt and began packing his meager possessions.
“We agree to your offer. Might I inquire who we will be employed by?” Fozzy asked Reece.
“Wait, we didn’t even discuss wages, and I haven’t agreed to anything. And you’ll be employed by me. See that beauty over there. I’m a co-owner” Reece pointed to the Hawk.
“I see.” Fozzy replied.
“Well I gotta go arrange oil baths for everyone, but I’ll think about it.” Reece whirled around and headed of towards Reegos shop.
After Fozzy explained what had just happened to Miklik, the dejected Ewok dropped his overturned hide drum filled with everything he own and plopped down in the dust on his bottom and hung his head, obviously extremely disappointed.
As Reece entered thr shop he saw Reego, a tiny Anzellan, buried up to his ankles in the mechanical guts of a boxy HVAC droid.
“Hey buddy, long time no see.” The R3 beeped cheerily as the rest of the droids followed behind.
“Ah, wha…heeeeeey! Crazy guy, yada Bobby. Hey Rax! Come! Crazy guy is back!” Reego hollered.
“Utinni! Buuba da winka, juda ma shuto.” The Jawa Rax exclaimed as he emerged from a back room and came over and patted Reece on the dome.
“So, listen I need to get out baths for like 10 of us, and maybe some quick lube jobs? Can you hook me up?” Reece tootled.
“Sure thing buddy. Wida worpu, give us 50 minutes to fill uh, da tanks.” Reego replied.
“Sweet, thanks. And hey, what’s up with the Ewok and droid out front?”
“Oh…them…sad.. Very sad. We let them use our water purifiers and live there. No work, company go poof and fired de crews, left them….sad sad.” Reego replied in his broken basic.
“I need crew, should I hire them, you think they’re trustworthy?” Reece beeped.
Rax, the Jawa, came out from the back room dragging a large hose, intending to fill the oil bath tanks. He had heard the whole exchange and interjected, “Singata wirt buna da gene raba wanak businki’(They’re both way to honest and innocent to be hanging around these parts).”
Reece turned his optical sensor back to Reego, and booped, “Maybe I’ll give them a try then.”
After a few seconds Rax came walking back in after plugging the hose into the tank assembly. Again he interjected again, “Utinni, daba sa winga chuppa.(You looking for a new chassis and hardware bud? We got a near new R9 unit with a bad processor we could swap you into)”
Reece way so excited his dome whirled around rapidly, doing two full rotations before he looked to Rax, “Are you kidding me! I was just thinking about how I need a new bod bro. But wait, are my memory circuits compatible with those new units. I’d need a full processor and memory transplant. I got info that can’t be lost, if you know what I mean.”
The little R3 took pride the knowledge about people places and things that he had garned in the half century since his last memory wipe.
“No worry, we do full data dump into new unit memory chips, fancy. More memory, more better. All you, go in new body. Winda poppa.” Reego replied.
“Frack yeah brother, let’s do it. How much?” Reece deployed his manipulators with tools in ‘hand’ and started the process of stripping off his own outer shell to prep for the transplant.
“Uh…for new unit and transplant. One hundred fifty”
“OOTINI! BASHKA SHANGA? (No! Are you trying to make us go broke?)” Rax rushed back into the room after opening the valve to start filling the tanks.
He walked up behind his Anzellan partner and smacked him in the back of the head causing his magnify goggles to pop down infront of his eyes.
Rax picked up a palm device and did some calculations. When he was done he turned the screen to face Reece. The full prices for the new unit, transplant, and 10 oil baths and lubes jobs came out to 25,389 credits.
Reece beeped, “Reasonable,” as he grabbed his credit chit and presented it to Rax who ran through the transaction and returned the chit.
Several of the droids clamouring about, took notice of the large sum, and that fact that the R3 droid, not only had his own ship, he apparently had his own money as well.
“You’re dropping 25 grand on a new body? Maybe I should look into this whole ‘emancipation’ thing.” The Red and white R5 tootled and whistled from near the entryway.
Rax walked back in, “Utinni machini du wanga? (Oil baths ready, who’s up first?)” The Jawa asked the group of droids.
Realizing that he’d be ‘unconscious’ for atleast some of the next hour or so, Reece rolled over to the R5 and whipped out his credit chit, commlink and a tiny blaster he kept in one of his side compartments.
“Here, can you hold on to these for me, while they swap me into a new body?”
“Sure bud.” The R5 chortled back.
Reece went to follow Reego into the back room to get his transplant performed. He stopped at the door and added, “And I know how many credits are left on that chit.”
“Emancipated droid?” Nemo asked the R5 unit.
The red and white R5 droid said as he made his way over to the bath tank, “Yeah, apparently that R3 is a free droid. That was his ship we were riding aboard and I just saw him pay over 25 thousand credits for a new body and all of our oil baths.”
Vox had been silent the majority of the flight and conversation. He hopped his way with the other droids but mainly took in all the sights and views. Observing the details of the surrounding room and speakers.
When the mention of the oil baths being ready he peaked up slightly. Esen surely would like to have that slightly squeaky foot oiled.
Vox stored his question for Reece when he got back. For now, he waddled up to Rax and made a soft beep. Following the way to the bath.
Rax emerged again, this time with a remote control device slung in front of him around his neck.
As he saw the two droids approach the tanks he hollered “Ootini, moowanga.” and pointed at Vox, then pointed at a round step infront of one tank. Then did the same and pointed at the red R5 and then pointed to the step infront of the other tank.
The lillte Jawa then started humming in a vaguely musically fashion as he used the remote control device to swing the ramshackle and obviously old hook cranes to pick up the droids and dip them in the oil tanks.
After about 45 minutes of performing the droid ‘transplant’ a large red warning light flashed across Reego’s diagnostic console. A warning tone accompanied it as the words “Memory dump failure. Encrypted files cannot be accessed or transfered.”
A fraction of a second later a warning tone began ringing out of Reece R3 chassis aswell. Reego quickly climbed up onto the astromech so he could read the status display readout. It said in large red lettering, Security breach of encrypted data detected. Input passcode to avoid data erasure and memory scram.
Next to it, a numbers were ticking away, counting down from 27.
“Oppppa, uh, not good…” he used a fist to knocked on Reece green cranial dome.
“Wake up buddy guy, no code, no dump. Crazy guy! Wake up!” As the counter continued counting down, now from 18, Reego was about to suffer a full blow panic before he quickly made the snap decision to perform an emergency data dump of as much of the non-encrypted memory engrams that were left in his old friend.
Just as the countdown hit 1, Reego ripped out the unlink probe and jumper cable that connected the R3 ‘carcass’ to the new R9 unit. The ‘data erasure and memory scram’ that was warned ended up being quite the violent and destructive event as the R3s entire memory core and all of its circuits exploded from what Reego presumed was some sort of makeshift anti-tampering system that Reece had installed.
After doing some checks, the Anzellan found out that roughly 11% of the droids memory had been irreparably lost, but thankfully it didn’t appear like any of it was crucial data. That being said he didn’t he didn’t know what the contents of all the encrypted data was.
10 minutes later, Reece awoke in his new R9 chassis and immediately worked himself into a panicked tizzy as he fretted over the lost data. After several moments of loud enraged beeps, boops, honks and squeals, and atleast two threats upon Reego’s life, Reece was finally able to calm himself.
“Well I guess it could have been worse.” He said.
HK-73 and DUM-E had been having the time of their lives in the ensuing drama. Whilst DUM-E had cheerfully ran back and forth, ensuring there were no fires that erupted, the HK unit had been heard cackling as he fired the one of the vessel’s guns.
The oil bath and lube job later had been heavenly for DUM-E, though HK had been highly upset when he was reminded that his weapons would have issues if they were too dipped in the oil.
After haggling with Reego and eventually purchasing an old DUM series droid for 1000 credits from the Anzellan, Reece rolled out of the shop and found the rest of the droids looking shiny and clean as Rax was busy lubricating the last few joints on the R5 droid.
The R5 gingerly returned Reece’s property, which he stored in one of his new compartments.
“Everyone done? We should probably head back and get you all home to your masters.” He beeped as if he was addressing a gaggle of schoolchildren.
He noticed the disheveled middle aged Ewok slowly setting up a makeshift pot and pulling out a nearly empty bag of beans, and rolled over to him and his broken down droid pal, “Hey, its me Reece. Got a new body. Cute eh?” He asked.
Fozzy and Miklik both nodded dispassionately.
“So, listen, if you two want jobs. I’ll pay you each 400 credits a week, plus a 20 credit per day per diem when we’re on missions. If that sounds alright with you, we’re going to load up and take off in a few minutes.”
Once the Ewok heard the translation from Fozzy, Miklik jumped his feet and performed an odd celebratory sort of dance before rushing over and hugging the R9 droid.
“Yeeecha!” The Ewok exclaimed before he released the droid and quickly went about repacking his meager possessions.
“Master Miklik agrees Master Reece.” Fozzy addressed Reece galactic standard.
“So does he own you? Or how does yiur relationship work?” Reece asked.
“Technically, I was gifted to Master Miklik when we both had our employment ended last month. Though I fear Miklik may not completely understand or abide by the customary notions of ownership.”
Miklik titled his head sideways as he listened to the exchange and then interjected, “Michta yoduma finnky(You’re not my property, your my friend)”
“Master Miklik says I am not his property, I’m his friend.”
“Thats a good start. He’s obviously more cultured than most of the biological sentients I’ve met. ALRIGHT! BACK TO THE SHIP. LETS GET GOING.” Reece chirped.
As the gaggle of droids and the newly hired Ewok made their way to the Century Hawk the vessels ramp quickly lifted and the ship took of and darted up into the sky.
“Whaaaa…no no no no ” Reece beeped in panic as he deployed rocket boasters and made to chase after the craft.
After a few seconds he realized that his boosters only had a range of about 100 meters and the ship was already much further away then that.
“Mutha! Frackers!” The newly transplanted droid exclaimed as he landed back near the eclectic group of droids.
Seconds later, a Dynamic class freighter came roared towards them, ramp down, as if inviting them almost to come aboard.
The droids all quickly boarded as Layla made an announcement via the ships loudspeaker, “Looks like someone triggered an automated recall. I am not detecting any lifespan aboard the CV Century Hawk.”
The the group of a dozen or so droids all clamoured up the ramp of their would be ‘rescuer’ Miklik dropped his upturned hide-drum that carried his possessions, meager as they were.
He motioned to Fozzy that he needed one moment, and hurried back up the muddy path to the front of the repair shop were Reego and Rax were viewing the commotion.
The dirty, smelly, tired middle aged Ewok embraced each of them and bowed ceremonial before waving and running back towards the hovering freighter. Miklik scooped up his drum/bin and leapt onto the ramp as the ship began to lift off. As he got to the top of the ramp he stumbled and spilled his possessions across the corridor and began to weap as the tears began to flow from his beady brown eyes.
They were the tears of saved and eternally grateful.
<@629429326290485286> 😉
And hour later the freighter slowly landed in a textbook, dead letter perfect landing next to the Century Hawk back at the safehouse where the High level briefing had occurred.
Kalen and several high level Brotherhood officials and functionaries were crowded infront of the patio of the ranch House.
The Plagueian Aedile had his arms out the side, shrugging and obviously trying to plead his ignorance about the whereabouts of his superiors droids. The grandfathered Jedi’s shoulders relaxed when turned around and saw the parade of droids, including Reece emerging from the newly arrived ship.
EPILOGUE
When the meeting at the ranch House had adjourned uncustomarily early, Kalen and several others had tried in vain to make contact with their droids.
In a moment of nervous anxiety, and not hearing back from Reece on his commlink, Kalen had called Karracca amd had the old Wookie activate the ‘slave recall’ program they had installed on the YT-1300.
Since the Hawk was much faster then ‘Layla’, a series of accusations and threat were hurled at Kalen when his ship had landed, empty. The fact that the dynamic class freighter arrived 15 minutes later, with everyone inactive and none the worse for wear, the existential threats to Kalens life seemingly evaporated, though he did still recieve several untrusting glares from several senior folks who had connections to Dark Councillors.
As the shiny clean, and freshly lubricated droids all reunited with their masters, Kalen confronted Reece.
“Insaid to stay close by, where the frick did you go?”
“Reego and Rax’s place over on Borshvati III.” Reece replied.
“Thats 3 and half parsecs away!” The Jedi adminished.
“Yeah. Exactly, you stay close by. And it was only a half hour hyperspace jumps away. Yeesh, Chill out bro, everyone fine. Ih by the way, I hired some new crew.” Reece beeped as he rolled himself towards the Hawk
“Ugh. Bu…yo…ffff…” Kalen just sighed. What was he going to do after all? He’d ‘liberated’ Reece 8 months prior, and it wasn’t like he could give the little rapscallion shit for taking his own ship for quick trip a few systems over.