Aftermath: Empire's End (Star Wars: Aftermath #3)(47)

Bones recalls him, too. Friend. Boy. Temmin.

MASTER.

Though the boy is not his master because of how he is programmed. Temmin is the droid’s master because Bones knows the value of gratitude. Bones has lived many lives. All of them except this one are now ended. To be given life again—even as a patchwork quilt of identities—is a special thing. Rare and precious, and Bones knows that Temmin is his Maker.

And so, Temmin is his Master. It is only fair.

Bones, above all else, cares about fairness. About loyalty.

About friendship.

His friend’s face swims into his matrix-mind. Embers of data in the darkness bloom like mechanical synapses, and Bones remembers Temmin—panicked—giving him one last set of commands: Launch and get to Jakku. Find Mom. Protect Mom!

Mom. Mother. Temmin’s mother.

NORRA.

That is her, there in the dark. A newer, fresher image hits the droid’s memory banks like a concussive explosion: the image of blaster bolts clumsily dissecting him. Bones struggles to extend his matrix-mind outward to his limbs, but none of them respond. Diagnostic checks cascade through him and all of them report back: DESTRUCTION. All four limbs are detached and unresponsive. The droid’s head, too, is partly detached—its socket lies ruptured, but the metal skull remains connected to the torso by a telescoping cable.

Woe darkens the matrix-mind. Despair is not merely a human condition; droids know the doom of existence and the end of things. And Bones worries suddenly—a deep, hungry worry like a slick-walled pit one cannot escape from, a pit where even light is swallowed whole. He worries that he is dead. That he will not be able to fulfill his mission. That the life his Maker and Master gave him has been squandered, ended now on the floor of this desert, near to the Maker’s own mother.

The droid wills this to be untrue. Bones struggles against the fear that all his lives have led to this one worthless moment.

But! The restraining bolt that the trooper put upon him—his diagnostics return and inform him that though his limbs are gone, so too is the lock. And then, in that revelation, a new memory surfaces. Or, rather, resurfaces. That memory brings with it three letters: ARM.

Three letters that stand for three words:

Autonomic.

Repair.

Mode.

YES.

Bones is often getting into trouble, but the anatomical framework of a battle droid is quite simple. And so begins a self-repair routine: The cable connecting the droid’s head to his torso suddenly retracts—vvvvvvipp—and the socket, though damaged, telescopes open and once more embraces the stem of the B1’s neck. Bones shifts his head down. His serrated beak digs into the dirt and cinches shut, moving him forward.

He does this again and again. Each time, it moves his frame forward by a few centimeters. It is slow and arduous. But it is progress.

When he closes in on the nearest arm, he again digs the front end of his raptor-skull robot head into the ground, but instead of moving it up and down he swoops it from side to side. Servos whine and grind. Again, it is enough to move the body to the right—centimeter by centimeter until the torso taps the disconnected arm waiting there. Tink.

ARM, autonomic repair mode. The socket at the side of the torso thrums as it magnetizes. The arm judders on the ground, twitching as if suddenly and independently alive. It slides swiftly toward the body. Ball joins with socket. Metal claw-clips fix it in place.

Bones sends a ping down the length of the limb. Fingers move. The arm bends. I HAVE AN ARM AGAIN. That arm is a vital tool that allows the droid to—like a dead thing reanimating to life—lift himself up off the ground, where he sees his other three limbs. Two legs. One arm.

He begins to reassemble himself.

Piece by piece. Appendage by appendage. Buzz and click. Durasteel talons pin wires inside joints. The droid readjusts a few bent rib bones. His hand functions as a wrench—enough to tighten his spine, but not enough to fix the bowing, bent posture. The left arm is not fully functional. The right leg isn’t fully functional, either. External repairs will be needed.

But the droid now stands in the dark by Norra’s cage.

This is Mister Bones.

—

In the blackness of the Jakku night, Norra stirs. Her eyes bolt open. Something’s off. Something’s wrong. No— Something has changed.

She swallows and it’s like choking back broken blast glass. Everything feels dried out, and when she blinks the grit is only ground deeper into her eye. She winces, reaching out, pulling herself to standing.

The shape of the droid’s parts in disarray is gone. Bones…

They must’ve come for him and taken him away after she fell unconscious. Once more she feels dreadfully alone.

Out there in the darkness, someone screams. That scream is cut in half. Moments later something rolls out from behind the kesium rig wells. Something that tumbles up to her cage with a clong.

A helmet. White, mostly, though striated with finger marks of Jakku dust. It belongs—or belonged—to a stormtrooper.

Blood soaks the sand beneath it.

Out there, another piercing scream. Blasterfire fills the air just after, lighting up the dark. Something moves in the shadows, and Norra presses her face against the cage to see two more stormtroopers running toward the shape—they disappear behind the kesium well, and that’s the last Norra sees of them. But she hears their cries. Their bleats of pain.