Chapter Twenty-Five

Taylor resisted the urge to press a hand against her newly acquired facemask. It was an annoying but necessary piece of equipment on Anoat.

They had landed two days ago. Two days of searching somewhat fruitlessly for a lead.

The first day had passed in a flurry of purchases. Some basic equipment, including her new mask, some clothes that weren’t from Tatooine and some basic essentials. Now she was kitted out in simple but tough clothes that gave her good freedom of motion and a nice pocket-lined jacket, all in deep blacks. A cowl to cover her face and hair, as was common in the local fashion later and she could pass for just another human in the crowd.

A human being escorted by two battle droids and a menacing protocol droid look-alike, but a human all the same.

They were in one of the deeper recesses of the megacity, in a place filled with bars and shops tucked into the corners of buildings and where the sun above was barely visible through the maze of catwalks, bridges and the haze of thick pollutants in the sky.

A form darted out of an alley and came to walk by her side, just barely outside of her range of control.

“Anything?” Taylor asked.

A masked face looked at her, the see-through front revealing Qarry’s rather pretty features. “Maybe.”

Taylor nodded and pointed to a small stand off to the side of the not-so-busy street. There were hundreds of such stands, reminding her a little of those that popped up around the Boardwalk on Earth Bet.

Then she noticed the squid-like robot behind the counter and the fact that the food was all served in plastic containers meant to keep the pollutant outs and the nostalgic feelings were dashed.

They sat, the droids standing guard behind them and probably discouraging anyone else from joining at the stand.

Taylor pushed a pair of cred chits across the counter and pointed to one of the more palatable meals on the menu before gesturing for two. The robot warbled at her and started warming up two meals, the chits disappearing in a blink.

“So?” Taylor asked.

“The presence of slaves is confirmed. Even their locations. They’re all housed in one of three large bunker complexes around the factories. Two for manual labourers, one of slaves with technical skills.”

“Okay, good,” Taylor said.

“The factory runs all through the night. There’s always a shift out working.”

Taylor sighed. “Not so good.”

Qarry hummed. The woman was certainly proving her worth as one of the more competent members of Taylor’s crew. “There’s a group that protests slavery here. Lots of rich backers. Mostly young students from the richer families.”

Taylor noted that. It was surprising but not quite. Slavery was, she hoped, viewed as cruel across most of the galaxy. “Do they do anything to help the meatbags?”

“No.”

She snorted. “Useless, then.”

“Maybe not,” Qarry said. “Could provide support. They have bodies.”

It was an idea, certainly, but she didn’t want to throw kids into a battle against a corporation that was probably owned by their parents. Or something. The help didn’t sound reliable to begin with. “Underground?” she asked.

Qarry shook her head. “Skarsk Nek knows more. Probably a bad idea. They need the city to work. No slaves, no work, they lose.”

Taylor ground her teeth, but couldn’t deny the twisted logic. Two meals were placed before them, steam escaping the plastic tabs on their boxes. The machine behind the counter made a shooing gesture.

“Suggesting: Let my master eat in peace or I’ll leave you in pieces,” HK-47 said amiably.

Taylor rolled her eyes and flicked another chit at the droid who caught it and moved further back.

She ignored it and started eating after lowering her mask and opening the lid to release fishy smelling steam.

As she ate, she considered her options and actions. Destroying the factories here was going to ruin an entire industry and probably cost Czerka millions, if not billions of credits, not just in lost slaves, but in equipment and infrastructure.

It would lead to the entire planet suffering a huge blow to its economy. Czerka was the biggest corporation on the world, it held a lot of sway and power and removing it would probably lead to a collapse of the entire planet’s infrastructure.

Was that such a bad thing?

It would leave lots of normal, otherwise innocent people in deep trouble, would destroy lives and homes and would have effects that she couldn’t even imagine. And yet if all those things depended on something so glaringly evil, she couldn’t let them continue, even if that meant the suffering of others in the short term.

HK had been teaching her a little, in odd moments of free time, about the philosophy of the warriors and rulers he called the Sith, those from whom her new name came. He explained that freedom itself was their greatest treasure, and the power to stay free their greatest asset. Maybe it was time to spread some freedom around.

She had been thinking too small, expecting that this world’s slave trade was no bigger than what she had found on Tattooine, not an order of magnitude more complex. Nimas the Hutt had been a trader, but most of the slaves the Hutt moved had never entered her facility or even landed on Tatooine.

Here, the slaves were kept alive as long as possible, or at least as long as they were usable. It was the sort of cold efficiency that made Taylor sick to the stomach. Unfortunately, the ships that brought new slaves only carried a few hundred each, they didn’t have room for the thousands on Anoat.

She had to shift her plan, a lot.

“Qarry,” Taylor said as she finished her meal and pushed her container away. She focused on finding the right words in Basic. “I need new information. Learn for me the planetary defences. The way the place defends for war. The local army and all that. Then we learn who the leaders are. We’re going to make... replacements.”

“Statement: Oh, master, please forgive this old droid for ever doubting you.”

Taylor rolled her eyes.

“I understand,” Qarry said. She bowed from her seat which had her head dipping into Taylor’s range. The amount of respect she received from her crew was at once too much and too little at times. She hadn’t done nearly enough to earn it yet.

“Get to work. HK, we need to plot more.”

Taylor stood and started moving again, her robots forming up behind her. “Query: Where are we going now, master?”

“Czerka’s head office. The security is supposed to be rather lax. I want to verify what Xarly learned and plan a way to break in. Can you break into their systems if you’re in the same building?”

“Statement: I can indeed break into most secured systems, though I am not built with that purpose and won’t be as fast as some other droids, I’m afraid.”

Taylor paused in the street. “Then we find a droid that can.”

***

R3-C2 scanned the streets outside of the shop's windows with a glance. Six organics, two droids, one fauna in the form of a bird that their databanks considered common on the upper tiers of Anoat.

The astromech turned around and made another slow circuit of the platform they were on. It afforded the droid a good look at the rest of the showroom.

Seven R2 units were lined up in a neat, shiny row next to the main window, each one wobbling in pre-programmed delight when an organic showed interest in them. Some R5s floated on repulsor lifts that slowly turned them in circles and displayed them to any customer entering the shop.

R3-C2 knew from self-compiled data, the frequent complaints of returning sapients, and the occasional malfunction witnessed live, that the R5s were temperamental at best and prone to malfunction.

Shop-Owner Bzell was--according to R3-C2’s social programming and prediction software--trying to entice customers into buying the more expensive and less disaster prone R2 models.

R3-C2’s route continued and their sensor package deployed completely at the predetermined location to reveal all of the tools and utilities they had tucked away. It also allowed them to scan the deep end of the shop where additional parts and upgrades were for sale, as well as defunct older models like the C1 series droids.

A GNK-Droid moved out from the backstore and approached each droid at the front in turn, deploying a power injector from its forward casing to top off any batteries. R3-C2 scanned the placard hanging from its side and noted that the price on the droid had lowered by another hundred credits.

When the GNK-droid honked at them to know their power status R3-C2 merely whistled a negative in return.

The shop was well lit and clean for an establishment visited by so many sentients. R3-C2, having sliced into the shop’s mainframe, knew that it was the best Industrial Automations sales point in their sector of the galaxy, though not because of the droids they sold on the main floor but thanks to the large number of ASP-series worker droids that were sold to local factories.

But Shop-Owner Bzell was aiming higher still. It was why R3-C2 was there, to entice local militia officers into purchasing even more droids, perhaps even those like R3-C2 that were specially made and crafted to be as near-perfect as a droid could be.

The door buzzer whistled. A sound too high pitched for most organics to notice. R3-C2 sped up their circuit of the display area so that they could see the newcomers.

There were four of them, three droids and a single sentient at the fore. Her social programs analyzed their positions relative to each other, the posture of the sentient and the quality of their equipment and clothes.

The two droids at the back were a relatively recent model, though they had been repainted to a flat, non-reflective black with yellow highlights around their armoured chassis. Their weapons were standard mass produced pieces but they seemed new and well maintained.

The other stand out droid was of a make and model that didn’t match up to anything in R3-C2’s databanks. There was a glitch as the scanners the astromech was equipped with tried to designate it as a non-combative protocol droid, but that classification didn’t match up with the other evidence present. The long rifle on its back that had parts matching a common snub-fighter’s cannon, the twin blasters in hip holsters, and the single vibroblade magnetically attached to the base of its back in a sheath made to look like a powerpack.

There were enough glitches in the scan and parts of the droid’s body that were shielded that R3-C2 suspected there were other, non-visible weapons hidden on or in the droid.

The last potential customer was a female human. Age indeterminate. She had a black mask with a built in rebreather and filtration system and a pair of golden-lensed goggles on that masked part of her face. Her clothes all seemed new. Baggy, with many pockets.

R3-C2 found three weapons on its first sweep, and two more on the subsequent scan. Not counting the hundreds of smaller, insectile lifeforms congregating around the sentient and moving in distinctly abnormal patterns.

Shop-Owner Bzell moved to the front, hands wringing together as he greeted the potential customer with a socially appropriate greeting.

The woman ignored him and moved towards the R2 droids while the false protocol droid began questioning Shop-Owner Bzell about the slicing potential of the droids currently being sold, as well as their capabilities in and out of combat.

Shop-Owner Bzell answered everything with an obsequious smile, then gestured to the R5 models behind him.

The protocol whipped out a compact blaster rifle from its hip holster and shot the R5. The droid exploded quite spectacularly. The gun turned and aimed towards the R2 models who waddled on the spot and panics as one of their numbers was blown apart.

The rifle turned to aim at R3-C2.

The astromech fired its thrusters and took to the air, arc-welder deploying along with its miniature buzz-saw. The protocol droid was a threat attempting to eliminate R3-C2. As a non-organic entity, R3-C2 would be justified in attacking it back.

The droid dodged with agility that didn’t match the physical characteristics of the droid. R3-C2 added a note to its databanks.

“Stop.”

The droid stood back straight and reholstered its blaster. Show-Owner Bzell stood up from his crouch and the R2s peeked around from the corner.

“Tell me about this one,” the woman said as she pointed to R3-C2.

Shop-Owner Bzell smiled, but his other physical queues suggested her was nervous. He explained that R3-C2 was a showpiece, not meant for individual sale.

“We’ll take it.”

Shop-Owner Bzell did not protest overly much and R3-C2 noted that while the customer had paid the full purchase price for an R3-unit, they weren’t charged for the other units.

What a strange and curious new master.

***