Chapter Five

It was tempting.

She stood before a small clinic. She wouldn’t have known that it was any sort of medical facility if it wasn’t for the sterilized interior and the fact that she caught a bandaged up man walking out of the clinic. Her robot friend had filled her in as soon as she asked and pointed the place out.

She had a feeling that she could be helped there. It was a temptation that was growing every minute she waited. Her missing arm throbbed, fingers that were long gone itching to grab and squeeze.

A few of the people, human and otherwise, that she had crossed had prosthetics. Not many, but enough that she had noticed. And those that she had seen were advanced, way beyond anything she could have gotten in Brockton Bay, barring the help of a Tinker.

Her want wrestled with her practicality, but she decided to step into the clinic. At the very least she would get an idea of the price of that sort of device. Having a new arm would be handy.

She decided not to speak that pun aloud. The last thing she needed was for her robot friend to put his mechanical brain to work looking for puns, of all things. “I’ll need your help figuring out how to get a prosthetic,” she said.

“Acceptance: Of course, my lady.”

Poking at the biggest button next to the door, Taylor watched it slid open with a woosh and release a bit of air that was merely boiling as opposed to the scalding mid-afternoon air outside. She slipped in with alacrity, her friend on her heels.

The inside was clean. Or at least cleaner than anything she had seen so far. A long counter split the room in half, the top part of a robot standing behind it and babbling to her in a gravelly tone. The few benches around were all empty, and the flies she sent around the back didn’t find anyone, at least not anyone alive. “Is this place automated?” she asked.

She wouldn’t have expected something like medicine to be handled entirely by robots, but it made a sort of sense. Her robot friend took a few steps towards the counter while she looked around at posters with writing she couldn’t begin to understand. He beeped and booped away at the reception robot, sounding like an old modem trying to establish a connection.

Taylor took that in stride. It was probably faster than any language a human could speak.

“Comment: This place is indeed automated. It is the property of Nimas the Hutt. She runs one of the local slave cartels. This clinic was built to serve her minions, not the local population.”

Taylor felt her brow furrowing. “It doesn’t help the slaves? Do slaves have any rights, any kind of... protections?” She felt dirty just considering it, but maybe there was a system in place to protect even those that were enslaved, like laws to protect pets on Earth Bet. She shuddered.

“Sarcastic Statement: Of course, my lady. Protecting their disposable slaves and keeping them healthy is one of the primary concerns of the Hutt crime lords. You would love their retirement plan.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yeah yeah. No need to be an ass.” She pointed to the ever-patient reception robot. “Could they do anything about my arm?”

Her robot turned to the reception bot and screeched at it some more. He turned back and she had the impression he was rather smug. “Statement: Yes.”

“How much? When could they do it. What kind of arm would I be getting. Exercise a little creativity, please.”

“Statement: Gladly, my lady,” he said before turning back to the reception robot and talking at it some more. The robot behind the counter backed away a little. They chatted for a little while, Taylor bouncing on the balls of her feet the whole time. “Statement: They can operate on you immediately. For free. The quality of arms they have in stock is rather lacking, unfortunately.”

“That sounds far too good to be true,” she deadpanned.

“Statement: I may have used some creative encouragement. There is nothing to fear. The medical droids are unable to purposefully cause any harm.”

“And when their owner comes around and finds out they operated on me without permission? How long would the operation take, anyway?”

“Answer: Less than one standard hour. Suggestion: The Jawas should be leaving before nightfall. You could have your new arm and be out of the area before the equivalent of authorities are alerted.”

“Are you trying to get me killed?” she asked.

“Sarcastic Statement: I would never.”

Taylor snorted, then gestured towards the door leading off towards the operating theater. It was little more than a strange chair with quite a few complicated machines around it, but it tickled her sense of what the kind of machine that could give someone a complex prosthetic should look like. “Well, lead the way,” she said.

At the very least she would be able to see what she was dealing with. She was also rather confident that she could deal with a couple of hooligans on her own.

She had a good feeling about this.

***

HK-47 was feeling, in so far as his motivators allowed him to feel, a little bit like a man denied his pleasure. Oh, certainly his new master was quite interesting. The little Sith lady was as clueless as she was violent. All the same he wanted a change of situation. The restraining bolt tagged to his chest prevented him from murdering all of those sand-brained Jawa meatbags and generally got in between him and his amusement.

So he hatched a plan. He would see his new master put in a situation where she would, in all likelihood, die horribly. If she died in this little backwater than he would be put in the possession of the local hutt overlord. Not much of an improvement, but a better place to be than in a Sandcrawler for months on end. From there he could find a way to get rid of the damnable bolt.

If the little Sith lady lived, then he would get to witness some proper carnage and destruction the likes of which he had not seen in centuries.

It was his favourite kind of plan, the sort where he won either way.

His master walked ahead of him, head hardly moving and yet he knew that she was able to see everything around her. Some sort of sixth sense that he attributed to her strange Force powers. It, of course, did not apply to droids.

Superior creations such as himself could not be swayed so easily by the mysterious powers of the Force.

“This all looks rather complicated,” the lady said as she walked into the operating theater and looked around.

HK-47 scanned his environs too, finding plenty of things that could be used to incapacitate, kill or encourage people to talk. Medicine was the strategic application of pain, poisons, and dismemberment to improve the living conditions of a patient. It was so terribly easy to turn a patient into a victim.

A few medical droids were lined up against the walls, all of them looking the worse for wear and in dire need of a bath in oil and some proper maintenance. He wondered how his new master would fare under their ministrations. “Observation: the medical droids are ready to operate, my lady.”

“Right,” she said as she eyed the droids. “I can’t see anyone around the building.” She bit her lower lip, his dictionary of body language suggested that she was wrestling with temptation. “This is such a bad idea,” she muttered before she began to remove her shirt.

The appearance of the wound where her arm had been suggested that the limb had been lost and cauterised, possibly by a powerful beam weapon or a lightsaber. He filed that under her history file and turned to the droids. A few orders creatively mixed in with threats had the machines moving towards his master.

She sat down at the gestured prompting of one droid and watched, fascinated, as they began taunting and scanning her stump of an arm.

“Observation: The droids will now administer a sedative.”

She shook her head and reached out, grabbing the retractable arm holding a needle out towards her. “No. Better not.”

He relayed the order to the droids and when they protested, quoting some programming about avoiding pain while operating on filthy organics. He overrode them. If his new master wanted to scream and flail around then he would sit back and enjoy it.

The operation began a moment later. A spray of disinfectant over the stump, vibro scalpels moving into position, probes preparing to dig into flesh to find nerve endings.

HK-47 watched his master’s face as it twisted into a wince as the first knife dug in. Her breathing grew erratic and she twitched a little until all the droids stopped. He did not even need to tell her that movement would only prolong the operation. Her jaw clenched and her other hand dug into the material of the seat she was on.

It was fascinating looking at her angry glare as she watched the medical droids take apart her arm. Soon enough the end of her stump was opened up, held that way with clamps and needles through her flesh. Each tiny nerve was held to the open air by minuscule tweezers.

A third droid rolled into the room, a prosthetic arm held in two clamps.

“That’s my arm?” she said. The disgust in her voice was obvious.

The arm in question was simple. A rotating joint for the elbow, a simple set of pistons between elbow and wrist and a hand that was really just a few actuators controlling three fingers, each one a flat nub. It was utilitarian at best, covered in durasteel plates. A perfect replacement limb for a slave doing heavy labour.

“Advisement: The arm can be modified to increase its combat potential.” he said.

“Yeah, I bet,” she grumbled. Her eyes widened and she looked off to the side, as though seeing through the walls. “Tell them to move faster,” she said. “We have guests coming. They don’t look happy.”

HK-47 nodded and relayed the order. The medical droids paused for a moment as they recalculated and then started poking and prodding at her faster. “Query: Are those coming here hostile?” he asked.

“Well, they’re armed,” she said. “And I’d guess that they’re unhappy. Can’t imagine why.”

“Sarcastic Assertion: It cannot possible be because we are stealing from them.”

“They’re slavers, right? When it comes to morals I think I have the high ground.” She tensed a little as the droids started sending jolts of electricity down each nerve, then connected them to minuscule probes. “Hey, go call out and ask what they want.”

Hk-47 moved closer to the doorway. He could hear three or four potential casualties moving closer. He shifted his translation to Huttese and raised the volume. “Statement: My master wishes to know what you want before she perforates your filthy flesh sacks and uses your corpses as trophies proving her might and superiority to the degenerate bantha you serve.”

Judging by their reaction, they were more than willing to cooperate with his plan. How nice.

***