Chapter Five The Droids
CHAPTER FIVE
The Droids
When the Starfarer was empty, I could hear it breathe.
Obviously the ship wasn’t really breathing—it was the ventilation system moving air in and out of the ducts—but there was a sort of life to this place, the kind you could only really hear when its belly emptied of all the tourists it ferried to faraway stars.
My footsteps echoed through the corridors, rebounding to me in whispers.
Every so often, the ship groaned as it settled its old bones, and electricity whirred through the bulkheads as thumps played through the pipes like a heartbeat.
I knew this ship like a second body. I knew its quirks. I knew its habits.
That was what happened when you spent your entire life on a ship. You figured out all its little nooks and crannies before you ever learned about yourself.
This was my home—the only place I belonged.
I headed down the corridor to the main body of the ship.
Since the CR90 was a civilian vessel now, it had been completely refurbished to house guests and keep the crew hidden.
The first, or bottom, deck housed the crew quarters, laundry, storage, cargo, maintenance, galley, and launch bay, which fit a lander for excursions.
From the midship turbolift, the next floor up held our guest quarters, with rooms remodeled to add an air of elegance to our hundred-guest tours; three public refreshers; and administrative offices.
But it was the third deck that had changed the most from the old CR90 layout.
The conference chamber had been turned into the main chamber, and the operations forum became the mess hall.
There was also an entertainment room, the med bay, engineering, and the bridge.
These two decks were themed to reflect an old warship, complete with blaster holes and fake vents and rust-colored blood splatter, just to sell the story. Dad loved a good story.
The fourth—or top—deck held the captain’s quarters, which was once the stateroom suite, and a few operation hubs that kept the ship running, like the power systems, generators, and offline weapons. I rarely went up there. It was always so cold and drafty, anyway.
On the bottom deck, I put my stuff in my room on the way to the galley.
It had been my room for as long as I’d been alive, so the bulkheads were pinned with flimsiplast posters and marked up with paint, souvenirs from different places around the galaxy hanging from shelves, fabric draped across the ceiling.
I did anything I could to make my room not look like every other one on the ship—honestly, I tried to make it not look like a ship room at all.
I hung my satchel on a hook on the bulkhead and placed the fluorescent blue datatape on the shelf next to the others, an array of jewel-toned colors. Kotti would laugh at me if she knew I wasn’t going to read it, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the ending.
Besides, I had bigger, more distracting things to deal with. Like the saber. It rattled when I picked it up, like something deep inside it was broken. My thumb snuck toward the discolored button on the side. What color was the saber? Did it give off heat? How did it sound?
Sian said it was broken, but that could mean anything, really, and what was the harm in trying to turn it on?
I’d never seen one before. I heard that their blades hummed and gave off impressive heat, and I wondered if you could feel the hilt vibrate with the power of the blade, or how it turned all those different colors.
I held out the instrument, saber spout pointing away, and pressed the button.
The saber fizzled.
I frowned, shook it—only for the insides to rattle some more.
I tried again.
Nothing.
I guessed it really was broken. What a letdown.
It was too worn, too scuffed to be new, and even though the saber didn’t activate, something soft and alive was humming inside.
I could feel it, gentle and warm, like a heartbeat.
It wasn’t mine; it didn’t belong to me, but it didn’t mind me holding it, either.
It just…
It wants to go home.
That idea startled me.
Did sabers have feelings? Or was it my imagination carrying me away?
A beep sounded somewhere else on the ship, drawing me back to the present. I put the lightsaber in the top drawer of my clothing trunk, underneath my delicates, because it was quite possibly the safest place on the ship.
Then I left for the galley.
It was three doors down the hall, at the very end. I knocked before going inside, more as a courtesy than anything else.
At first glance, the galley looked empty.
VB-35 was usually at the cooktop, magicking up some new recipe. A bolt of dread coursed through me—
Had they found Sian already?
Panicked, I hurried inside, thinking up enough excuses to fill an entire hull.
Luckily, Veebee was sitting at the scratch table, deliberating over a game of holochess.
The protocol droid—well, she was part protocol, part security, part whatever I could find on the cheap—slouched in a chair, head in her hand, staring dejectedly down at the game in front of her.
Her opponent was the ship’s astromech, N2-0.
Veebee had yet to win against N2-0, but as she often put it, “Every droid needs something to aspire to, and I aspire to make them lose.”
It was going about as well as it did every other day.
N2-0 used a tiny arm to move their piece into position. Then they gave a triumphant bloop.
Veebee frowned. “You cheated.”
N2-0 beeped accusatorially.
“Fine.” Then Veebee turned to me and tilted her head. “Oh, he sent you. Good. Don’t look so panicked, it’s just a pinky.”
Did I look panicked? I cleared my throat and went to the counter, where I unrolled the soldering kit. “It’s just been a weird day.”
“Oh?” Veebee pushed herself to stand. “Would it have something to do with this?”
And then she tapped the button to the pantry door.
It slid open to reveal a dejected-looking stowaway sitting cross-legged on the floor, his hands tied behind his back with cooking string. He had a dishtowel shoved into his mouth to muffle him.
I stared at him. He stared back.
“I don’t know who that is,” I lied.
He argued behind his gag.
Veebee tilted her head to the other side.
He argued a little louder, squirming against his bindings.
I wilted. “He already told you I helped him sneak aboard, didn’t he?”
“He did, then I gagged him,” she confirmed, watching as I went into the pantry to set him free.
Once I pulled the cloth from his mouth, he snapped, “That defective droid said she’d filet me!”
Veebee didn’t disagree. “I’ve always wanted to try cooking humanoid meat.”
I unbound his wrists. “I told you to stay in the crate.”
He winced, rubbing his freed hands. They were a bit red from the string, though it was much easier to see on his pale, pale skin. In the bright, unforgiving light of the galley, he had the coloring of frost on a window, or moonstone. “I was gagging on the smell.”
N2-0 beeped a question, and Veebee answered, “No, of course the captain doesn’t know about him. Why else would she have smuggled him in through the pickled fleek eels?”
“And we’ll keep it that way?” I suggested.
Veebee debated. “What’s in it for me?”
My eyebrows shot up. “Really? You’re going to resort to blackmail?”
“I could use some new knives,” she went on, motioning to her belt of tools.
“So you can just cut off another pinky?” I asked.
She inclined her head, and I sighed, motioning for her to go to the counter so I could fix it.
“I’ll tell you everything while I put your finger back on.
C’mon.” I pulled the tools from my little work pouch: a soldering iron, a desoldering pump, wire strippers, and tweezers. They gleamed in the harsh galley light.
Being a hodgepodge of droids, Veebee was tall and awkwardly built, so she had to duck in and out of every room, and her limbs were long and scratched from firefights she’d never been in. She grabbed her pinky finger from beside the game board and handed it to me. “It better be a good story.”
“It’s a great story,” Sian suggested, looming over my shoulder as I went to work. “What model are you?”
“Oh? Do my complexities stun you?” Veebee asked.
“I just haven’t seen”—he motioned to all of her—“the likes of you before.”
“Vee is one-of-a-kind,” I said, preparing to solder the wires between her hand and pinky back together.
It was a difficult process, and even more so with someone leaning over to watch.
I wouldn’t normally mind, but for some reason I was all too aware of how he towered over me, which just reminded me about that tiny hiding spot in the alley, pressed against him, our heartbeats too loud and our body heat too warm.
I pulled on my glasses, then asked, “Do you mind?”
He blinked at me, confused. “Oh, right.” He eased back a little.
That was better. But not by much—especially since he smelled rather strongly of pickled fleek eel.
With a little more room, I got started. “When I found Veebs, she was pretty messed up. Her last owners had tossed her into a junk heap, so I patched her up with a weird E-series model I’d never seen before and dragged her out of the junkyard before the Hutts found me. ”
“It was probably a defective model,” VB-35 noted dryly.
“Probably,” I agreed.
While Veebee had adapted to her body, it seemed her programming still had issues with physicality in space, so she was all banged and scratched up.
Once, she thought she had cleared an airlock but it turned out her right heel hadn’t.
So I had scooped up the heel of another droid—spare parts really were everywhere—and soldered it on.
Standing about as high as Sian, she was just as broad, a mismatch of bronze and scuffed silver parts, with two long tapered antennae on the sides of her head that looked, from a distance, like pointed ears.
Veebee was made up like a patchwork quilt, a little bit of all the places we’d been.
I told her that once, and Veebee had gone quiet for a long moment.
“I don’t mind that, I don’t think,” Veebee had replied earnestly. Which would have been a perfectly good answer if she hadn’t ruined it a second later with, “But can’t you at least match my parts?”
Which, you know, fair.
Because he was not allowed to hover over my shoulder to watch, Sian wandered the galley instead, poking his head into cupboards and shelves, making himself right at home. He took a handful of nuts from a bag and ate them as he wandered. “So, you really have lived here all your life, huh.”
“On this ship? Yeah.”
“Sounds awful.”
Veebee studied him. “I don’t think I like you.” His eyebrows shot up, but before he could respond, she asked me, “Why did you smuggle him in?”
I could have either made up another lie or told her the truth—but frankly, VB-35 and N2-0 were two of the most trustworthy people on the ship, and come to think of it, maybe they could help me hide him.
So I told them what had happened. About finding the little shop in Spindlehub Square and finishing Mom’s serial collection and meeting the old Rodian shopkeeper. They knew about Mom’s trunk. They knew I kept it in the storage room down the corridor, in a crate labeled extra blankets.
Sian commented, surprised, “You were there for an obscure romance serial? Then you left?” His eyebrows furrowed in confusion. “What made you go back?”
The celestialabe. I’d never had the chance to return it to the shop, though I had no idea what use it would be at this point. “He accidentally gave me something I didn’t pay for, so I went to give it back.”
“You wanted to give back something you got for free?”
I fished out the last wire to connect the pinky to Vee’s hand. Really, he didn’t have to sound so full of disbelief. People had knowingly risked their lives for less, surely. “I know it’s silly. You don’t have to rub it in.”
He must’ve realized how he sounded, because he quickly shook his head. “I don’t think it’s silly—”
“I do,” Veebee interrupted. She flicked her gaze to Sian and studied him for a long moment. Noola popped her head out of the neckhole of his jacket, blinking sleepily. The droid looked back at me and said, “This is a terrible idea, Ardent.”
“I know,” I admitted, “but it’s just until Alderaan—”
A long low beep sounded over the ship’s intercom.
Our guests had arrived.