It was everything Ton could do to keep his focus as he watched the rebel soldiers offload from the top deck viewing area. Hours of sustained drinking had left him groggy and somewhat out of sorts, and while he had just about settled down for a short nap, the yacht had returned to realspace and came to a somewhat bumpy landing inside one of the biggest ships Ton had seen yet. Mon Calamari design, judging by the exterior, engine placement, and bridge tower. Fighters of various types in neat but unorganized rows lining the hangar deck, next to the walls, possibly pointing to a need-based parking system rather than a structured interceptor-fighter-bomber layout common to Imperial vessels. And now, in the middle of it all and yet so out of place, was his yacht. Which - for all he knew - might just be turned into a rebel shuttle, or perhaps even booby-trapped into becoming a bomb.
A bomb which, if they figured out who he was, they may well force him to build.
As the rebels flooded out of his ship, he saw J-3PO assisting them with carrying small items, perfectly willing to help the enemy out of some misguided sense of propriety. Ton had toyed with the idea of calling his droid back onto the bridge and firing up the engines, just to deny them that little bit of extra help. He recognized the move as a petty one. And while Ton Stark was no stranger to going out of his way in a big way to annoy people he didn't like, something - whether it was the booze in his veins or the inability to find his comlink, he decided - was staying his hand. So he simply watched from on high, glaring through the outwardly opaque transparisteel to the collection of terrorists and mercenaries below. Had he been in any sort of state of mind to do so, Ton likely would have been planning his fantastic escape. Had he the hand-eye coordination or even the courage, Ton would have fired up the engines and thrown the yacht through the hangar at full throttle, taking out as many of their haphazardly-placed fighters as he could before the ship inevitably crashed and burned.
But that accomplished nothing. Ton was more than despondent or suicidal; he was angry. He was no fan of being all but forced to give up his ships and his livelihood to help them escape, but they had a point; the government he had served faithfully and diligently for years had made no distinction between himself and those they should have been firing at. They knew who he was, and they knew they were putting him in the same cell as some of them had been in. Ton had tried to justify their actions to himself for the entire flight when he hadn't been throwing insults at his captors. And yet for all his brilliance, for all his intelligence and wit, he could not find any good reason for why he had been imprisoned at all.
Ton wanted to leave. Ton wanted his life back. But more than either of those, Ton wanted an answer, and he knew deep down that it was going to be a hard answer to come by if the Empire wanted him dead.
J-3PO was enjoying himself, despite his master's cold inclination.
The rebels had been nothing but friendly to the protocol droid, minding what manners they had as a group of assorted soldiers could at any rate while alternating between cracking jokes and worrying of their wounded comrade, and the Ithorian in particular had been nothing but downright pleasant for their entire stay. It was still not a situation that the droid was accustomed to. But considering what J-3PO had heard about rebel attacks and the demons that they were supposed to be, he was pleasantly surprised that they were no more or less monstrous than anybody else he had encountered in his operational lifespan.
J-3PO had just set down one of their smaller supply boxes when someone - a Mon Calamari male, about the droid's own height, with large yellow eyes and walking with a gait that implied some form of command - approached the Twi'lek man that the droid had heard was named Ben. The newcomer had a somber look on his face as far as J-3PO could tell, having no real experience in meeting a member of the Mon Calamari species. When he approached, Ben stood and saluted immediately, confirming what the droid had already guessed. And while they exchanged pleasantries - indicating a level of familiarity that J-3PO had never seen between his master and the Imperial officers that occasionally came for meetings - the protocol droid found that the Mon Calamari's voice matched his face.
"Ben," the commander started, "you may want to sit down. If I hadn't learned of your preference for hearing bad news as soon as possible, I'd have waited until you reached your bunk."
"What is it, sir?" asked Ben, instantly taking a look and tone of worry. "If it was worth you coming down here to speak to me personally then I don't think it can wait."
The Mon Calamari closed his eyes and offered a solemn nod, speaking slowly. "We received a transmission from your family not a minute after we saw your yacht on our scopes. It corresponds to a vid that we've seen on old frequencies, also recent."
He paused. "I'm...I'm sorry, Ben. Take whatever time you need."
Without a word, the commanding officer handed now-stiffened Twi'lek a small datapad. The two exchanged salutes and the Mon Calamari started striding towards the woman and the Ithorian, muttering something about debriefing. J-3PO, however, was transfixed solely on Ben. He could not see what the datapad held, but the droid could hear a woman speaking in Ryl, interspersed with the laughter of children. She was telling Ben that they were all doing well, and that things were going great in their village. But Ben did not smile. The droid had expected this; prefacing anything of this sort with a grim apology as the Mon Calamari had done was not something one did when there was good news to be shared. The laughter and chatter was ended by an explosion, loud enough for a few people near Ben to turn their heads, their eyes now falling on their comrade, who was slowly but surely falling to pieces before their eyes. J-3PO could make out the sounds of gunfire as Ben's expression grew more horrified with each passing minute, tears starting to well up just above his bottom eyelid as the scene played out before him before finally quieting. The protocol droid had been making ready to fetch the man a good, stiff drink from the yacht's bar when he heard a sound that froze the current in his circuits, just as Ben's jaw fell agape.
A low whine followed by a loud, sustained blast, which was shortly followed by a more muted blast, punctuated by a low roar as something shot away from the scene of whatever abominable scene Ben had been forced to watch. Ben would likely have no idea what he just heard or possibly even saw, but J-3PO had heard that particular sound repeatedly in the past few months.
And if the source of that final noise was not the Variable Threat Response Platform, then J-3PO was the Emperor.
"Don't mind me, sir."
Ton whipped around to see Jay walking into the viewing room from the elevator, shuffling somewhat more quickly along the floor than he usually would have and making a beeline for Stark's personal alcohol collection. It was a curious move for the droid; he rarely did something outside his routine without a say-so, and Ton had made a point to not drink anything else until his yacht was at least in hyperspace once again. Whatever Jay was doing, it utterly baffled his master.
"I'm gonna venture a guess and say you're mixing me up a pre-flight cocktail? Appreciate it, Jay, but I'm really not in the mood."
"I'm afraid not, sir," the droid responded, "though if you change your mind I would be happy to serve. I'm here on Miss Peprana's behalf. Ben received most troubling news, and unable to speak for himself, Miss Peprana ordered me to get him the strongest drink I knew to make. I believe your personal variant of the Sonic Screwdriver would be appropriate."
Ton would have protested, but between the alcohol still flowing through his veins, the shock of the past few hours, and Jay going as off-script as he was, he was simply too befuddled to care. Nevertheless, a bit of light chatter with an actual friend would be a good distraction from it all, he decided. And if he could get in a few shots at the guy brazen enough to make him - him of all people - implicit with the rebellion and try to spin it as a good thing, all the better.
"So, what's with Ben?" Ton asked, laughing mirthlessly to himself as he got the ball rolling, "I saw him get carried off by that Wookiee. He lose a chunk of money in a bad investment? His wife dump him for greener fields?"
"Well," Jay answered, "depending on one's religious views, yes. From what I was able to discern, his village was destroyed by the Empire down to the last man, woman, and child."
Ton had started to laugh before what Jay said had fully sank in. That was bad news. That was awful news, in fact. Ton didn't much like Ben, but he could not in good conscience make light of something so terrible. He felt empty, like his stomach had been swapped out for air; Ton could not begin to empathize with the Twi'lek, having never had his own village destroyed or family murdered, and he could not really sympathize with him either, knowing he was a terrorist combatant, and he certainly could not under any circumstances understand what he had just been told. But for the life of him and above all else, Ton simply could not find it in him to feel the anger or the hate for the man he was ready to gut just an hour ago. The empty feeling was coupled with a sense of confusion and loss that Ton simply had no way to understand or cope with, in far greater amounts than he had known immediately after being sprung from his cell. He knew what a firefight was, and how those went. But Ton had nothing in his vast social arsenal to counter the devastation that was the loss of home.
"Wow, that's…" Ton started to say before realizing he had no words that Jay had not already thought of, "yeah. Damn. Give him a bottle. Whatever you think he'd like. We should, uh, maybe write him a card or something."
"I'm not entirely sure what good a card would do, sir." Jay responded, beginning to stir the concoction he had been putting together while Ton stood like an idiot on the far side of the room.
"But there is something else," the droid continued, putting the finishing touches on the bright blue drink, "from what I could tell, the instrument of the massacre was carried out by your latest designs for the Empire."
If Ton had not looked like an idiot before, he almost certainly did now. "What?" he asked, almost breathing the question rather than speaking it.
"I did not see the footage myself, sir, but the sound of the armor's thrusters was unmistakable. I believe the admirals were quite eager to test them in the field. It sounds like they work every bit as well as your previous projects, sir."
Jay offered a slight bow as he turned to leave the viewing cabin, leaving Ton unsure as to whether his last statement was a genuine compliment or a scathing, caustic put-down thinly disguised as praise. And as soon as the lift doors closed, Ton collapsed, his mind firmly deciding on the latter possibility. His stomach had returned to his chest cavity, and it felt like it had been punched by a Wookiee. The news that his designs - designs he had repeatedly stressed were for rescue and hazardous operations - had been used to massacre a small village on Ryloth was the final weight that sent the scale that was his sanity crashing to the floor.
The Variable Threat Response Platform had been ordered and designed for a dual purpose; the recovery of Imperial personnel in heavily-fortified enemy-controlled combat zones, and going where even a specialized Imperial stormtrooper was ill-equipped to go. Ton had drafted the armor to handle and counter any threat in the name of saving lives. He had weaponized it and redrawn the specifications at Grand Admiral Candar's request, all in the name of saving lives. He had bolstered their initial power capacity several hundred times over and doubled up on its armor capability, once again in the interest of saving lives. And during the entire process, Ton knew full well the potential of the project. He knew, despite his intentions, exactly what it was he was building, and he continued to do so. All because he wanted to do his part for the Empire. All because he could.
And his delusions, in light of his imprisonment and almost certain fate of execution, came crashing down. Saving lives had been the last thing on Candar's mind. And with Ton Stark out of the picture - having no next of kin or named successor to the company - he could easily nationalize the corporation and turn all its resources towards building more of the damned things. The pieces fell together with crystal clarity, and Ton's mind replayed the chaos in his head over and over, faster and faster, each scene growing clearer and clearer as the facts spun around his mind. He had wanted answers, and now his brain was putting it all together for him at lightning speed in a positive feedback loop of despair.
Ton had wanted to save lives. And now he had the blood of an entire village on his hands. All because the Empire had lied to him about their intentions and - now that he had done his dark work - tried to tie up loose ends. A loyal citizen, treated no better than violent dissidents.
In a flash, Ton's mind cleared up, oblivious to the idea that it may have simply snapped. The whirlwind of facts, logic, and horror stopped in a heartbeat. His stomach was firmly in place, being neither absent nor punched. Turning to look at his reflection in the viewport, Ton saw in his eyes the famous, determined glare he had been known to sport, and felt in his heart not the usual accompanying confident blaze, but a strange grip with a simple and terrible focus; like an inferno concentrated to a single point.
Ton had a plan. It was a mad plan, but it was something.
J-3PO had been doing his best to comfort the inconsolable Ben'kotara alongside Miss Peprana and Ropo when his personal comlink started to crackle. Only one man on this ship had access to that channel, and when last he saw him, the man did not seem especially happy. Perhaps he, too, needed a Sonic Screwdriver? After all, Master Stark had impressed repeatedly how the Variable Threat Response Platform had been meant for rescue missions only, the news of their misuse and the revelation of his hand in the village's slaughter - which the droid had decided not to impart on the Sand Panthers - could not have seated itself well. Despite all outward appearances, Master Stark did have something of a conscience, however deeply buried and however thoroughly silenced. Excusing himself from the gathering of people trying to keep Ben from slicing his wrists, J-3PO stepped away and answered his master's call.
"Sir? How might I serve you?"
"Jay," his master said, sounding much more like himself, "do we have clearance to leave yet?"
"One moment, sir, I'm with the deck officer now, let me make sure."
J-3PO turned towards the Mon Calamari not far from him, who had already been looking the droid's way and nodding, clearly knowing what Ton had been about to ask. "Sir," the droid continued, "it would appear we do have permission to leave. I'll be alo-"
"Don't bother. Stay with them."
The droid was dumbstruck.
"I…", J-3PO said, recovering after a few moments, "you want me to remain here?"
"Yep. You've got records of all my factories and storehouses. Once they're ready to go, get them to as many of them as you can and raid 'em. Whatever they find is theirs. Call it a parting gift."
"I see," said the droid, despite not seeing anything, "am I to take it that you'll be joining the rebellion then? Given your situation, it is not a ba-"
"No." Master Stark's reply was swift and curt. "I'm not big into the whole 'team player' deal, and I'm not in this for their little revolt. But if they want to put the hurt on the Empire, I'm happy to help them out. Meantime, I need to make my way to the factory on Corellia, pick up a few things. I'll catch up with you later."
J-3PO was more confused than ever. His master had been nothing but loyal to the Empire. Given his demeanor over the past few hours, that had not changed in spite of their shared experience with the insurgents. But all of a sudden, he had changed his mind? The man who had given so much to the Imperial government was now turning against them? It was as far out of character as the protocol droid could imagine his master being.
"Sir, I understand that you have been under significant stress and have no love for the rebels, but please, let me contact your therapist at our earliest convenience. If you would just wait for a moment, I-"
J-3PO's third interruption was the sound of his master's comlink switching off. In the distance, echoing through the ship's corridors, he could hear the sound of his master's yacht blasting out of the hangar, carrying him on whatever mad journey he had decided to undertake. All the protocol droid could do was shake his head and return to tending Ben, hoping his master wouldn't go and get himself killed.