Omega twiddled her thumbs. Wrecker had shown her how, and it annoyed Echo. Which was why Omega let herself do it while watching Hunter twirl his knife, because Echo wasn't here.
He hadn't come up from the hold to so much as gripe at Wrecker once for the loud crashes that had sounded about the ship when Wrecker tripped while hoisting Gonky about, and he hadn't come up for "chow time".
Omega flopped back against her seat. "What is Echo doing down there?" she wondered aloud.
"Attempting to fully access the AZ unit's memory banks," said Tech. "I already explained it to Crosshair, and you were here."
Hunter humphed quietly.
"I know," said Omega. "I mean... Why has he been down there so long? And why did he want to be alone?"
No one answered. So Omega made a guess.
"Is it because of... Fives?"
Wrecker shifted his shoulders, and Tech bent almost double in order to focus all his attention on a pair of wires which were, for all intents and purposes, very nicely joined together.
Hunter sighed and patted Omega's arm. "Sometimes when things happen to people, it's...really hard to get over them," he said. "They can act a bit strange - strange to us, at least. Because we don't see everything that pushed them to act that way..."
"Oh," said Omega in a small voice. She sat back in her seat and fiddled with her toothpick while she thought. "There was a soldier I saw once," she said.
"Hm?"
"He was hurt, and Nala Se was working to help the troopers, so she brought me with her to the ward that day. He was in bed crying."
Hunter leaned forward and turned a bit to look at her. Wrecker stilled his pacing, and Tech put down the wires.
Omega shifted and went on. "I tried to talk to him, but he just yelled at me and said things kind of like you did on that video feed, Hunter."
Hunter sat up, cheeks coloring slightly. "What feed?"
Omega twirled the toothpick between her fingers, suddenly feeling very small in all the memories.
"The time you thought Wrecker was dead. When the detonator went off - and that happened." She pointed to Wrecker's face.
Wrecker rubbed the back of his head. "Aw-haw, it was nothin'," he blurted.
"Well, Hunter thought you were dead," said Omega. "And then Crosshair fell off the tower and Tech couldn't get to you? I've watched every video of you all that I could," she explained.
"What became of the soldier?" said Tech.
"He was really angry," said Omega. "I had been trying to sing before that morning, and so I tried to sing to him. He kept shouting, and then he grabbed me and pushed me away. That's why Nala Se..."
"Gave you that headpiece," Tech finished. "I wondered why you wore that when no other enhanced clone did."
Omega nodded. She felt a lot better for some reason, having told them about that. The tiniest things could last for a long while inside her head, bothering her, and she wouldn't know for a long time.
"I remembered because Crosshair reminded me of that soldier," she said.
Hunter bent to look at her face. "Did he hurt you?"
"He's hurting a lot," Omega mumbled. "And now Echo is starting to remind me of that, too... That soldier had lost all of his squad. And Nala Se said that clones aren't supposed to respond that way - breaking down, anyway."
Tech stood and started packing away his mechanical mess. "It is true that the Kaminoan's engineered us to withstand incredible levels of stress - but that does not mean...we do not get affected."
"Like with you and Sullo Pria?" Omega asked.
Tech nodded. "Precisely."
Omega gripped the toothpick, suddenly uneasy. She felt she shouldn't have mentioned it at all. But it had just popped out! And now that she had actually spoken about it...it pushed to the front of her mind.
"Tech?"
Tech scooped up the pile of wires and metal paraphernalia and walked by Omega and Hunter on his knees. He pushed the jumble onto one of the flight chairs and sat down on the free one opposite it.
"Yes, Omega?"
"Tech, we didn't get to give Crosshair his communicator yet."
Tech cocked his head.
"Maybe..." Omega scrutinized the now moist stick of wood between her fingers. "Maybe we could fix up all of his armor for him? His old stuff."
Hunter planted his hands on his knees and tilted his head. "Crosshair's very...particular about things," he said.
"Especially his!" Wrecker laughed.
"Yes, Wrecker, we gathered that," Tech sniffed. "'Fixing up' Crosshair's armor would take some paint - which we do not have enough of to complete the task - and also a place to work without his seeing it." He adjusted his goggles and tipped his head down towards Omega. "I am assuming you wish it to be a surprise?"
Omega giggled and almost clapped her hands, remembering at the last minute to avoid snapping the toothpick. "Oh, yes!"
"Great." Hunter stood and headed into the cockpit. "Guess we'll have a bit of shopping to do once we reach Pantora."
Omega lay on her back, tilting her feet from left to right as she stared at the dead string of lights above her.
The tune she was making up had a solid refrain now - there was only the main melody to decide on. She tried different combinations of notes in her head, but none of them sounded quite right.
Earlier that afternoon, Omega tried combining her refrain tune with a catchy sequence of notes she'd heard Tech humming once while he worked.
Wrecker had heard her humming it and told her to make up a different tune for her song - because the songs from 79's bar weren't always nice.
Omega had tried reversing and mixing the notes from everything she'd thought of, but still nothing came. She gnawed her toothpick and scowled.
There was a soft tapping outside her room.
It was a surprise to see Echo's face appear as Omega pulled aside the curtain. He gave her a smile, which promptly faded as he caught sight of her staring down at him with a toothpick dangling from her lower lip, and climbed up a step higher.
Omega scooted further into her room to give him space to crawl in. Echo perched on the edge of the gunner's mount, eyed the toothpick one more time, then reached his hand to where he had a small container tucked under his scomp arm.
"Brought your Mantell Mix along," he said.
Omega smiled and accepted the treat. "Thanks, Echo!" She offered him some first, but he declined with a politely raised hand, so Omega sat back, set her toothpick on the mattress, and began to pick away at the Mix herself.
"Uh, howth A-thhee?" she asked around a mouthful.
Echo brushed the shower of crumbs off his kama and raised one eyebrow. Omega gulped and swallowed before trying again.
"Getting anywhere with AZ?"
Echo smiled slightly, then looked away and sighed. "Well," he said, "seems the droid's memory banks were purposefully altered. There's no way to access any of his former data."
Omega slumped and looked sorrowfully up at Echo. "Really...? When? How? But he seemed the same to me when I talked with him -"
"AZ's main programming was duplicated to another chip," said Echo. "Certain portions of data were included, but that means there's no way to access anything...before all this," he finished rather limply. "No deleted data to restore. Nothing."
Omega scrunched her nose and thoughtfully chewed another piece of Mantell Mix. "But Echo, if they copied some of AZ's original data to a new memory for him, wouldn't that very connection give you any access to his old stuff?"
Echo shook his head. "Already thought of that. Already tried. Found the pathway, but there's nothing on the other end. It's all at the bottom of Kamino now..."
Omega sat quietly for a long moment. Perhaps not saying anything would be best, but Echo seemed to want to talk. And she knew him well enough to know that he would refuse to give information he didn't want to share. She had wondered about things for a while,
"Echo?"
"Hm?"
"Would you mind if I ask you some questions? About...back then?"
Echo humphed gently. "Why would I mind?"
Omega shrugged. "Just checking."
Echo waited for her to continue, and Omega watched him as his gaze lingered on the toothpick resting by her knee.
"Echo, did AZ see Fives?" she asked.
Echo blinked, apparently caught off guard by the question. He inhaled a second later and nodded slowly. "The droid was involved with what happened."
"What did happen?"
Echo studied his scomp link, tilting his head as if searching the cold metal for answers.
"When I talked to Rex," he said slowly, almost carefully, "he told me that Fives's friend, a trooper named Tup, had a malfunctioned chip. Tup killed a Jedi in the middle of a battle and no one knew why. Remember the transmission that played on the day we met you?"
Omega nodded. She hadn't really cared about what was being said by the Chancellor at the time. She'd been too excited by seeing Hunter and the others there to pay much attention to something she didn't understand anyway.
But now, for Echo's sake, and everyone else's, she wished she had paid more attention. To everything that was happening around her. But Nala Se had rarely taken her from the underwater lab.
Determining she had done everything she could have with the knowledge she had at the time, Omega shook off the sad thoughts and focused on Echo as he spoke again.
"That man, Chancellor Palpatine, lied to everyone. Fives investigated the chips, and when he found out too much, Palpatine had him killed. General Shaak Ti told me everything she could, and so did some files."
Echo spun his scomp link and winked at Omega who smiled back, suddenly feeling very small.
"I'm sorry, Echo," she said. "Is that why you were working all day...? To find more about Fives?"
Echo let out a silent huff of laughter and brushed his fingers over the metal stubs on his scalp.
"Actually, I have enough information to know what happened, to a certain extent - Kaminoan computer's were built just like everything else and can be broken into."
"So why - "
"I wanted to see him," Echo said bluntly. "I wanted to see him, but the last I would have seen from AZ would have been Nala Se drugging him, so..."
Echo cut off and glanced at Omega. "Sorry, 'Mega," he said. "I wasn't thinking."
Omega shrugged and sent him a brief smile. "It's okay, Echo. I know Nala Se wasn't always nice."
It sounded flat compared to the reality, but Echo nodded, supposedly content to let her words be the end of it.
Omega finished her Mantell Mix and handed him the container. "Thanks, Echo," she said.
Echo took the box, then leaned over and plucked the toothpick from the mattress as well.
Omega started to protest. "Crosshair gave me that," she said.
Echo put it in the box and started down the ladder. "I know. But let's just leave Crosshair's things with Crosshair, okay?"
Omega moved to the edge of the ladder, confused.
Echo turned back and tugged the curtain partway closed.
"Good night, Omega. Thanks for the chat."
Omega lay down as Echo walked away, and the scary, squiggly feeling that she hadn't wanted to ever have again collided into her stomach from the memory of Echo's words: ...Nala Se drugging Fives...
The words hurt, and the more Omega thought about what she remembered of Nala Se, the more the words hurt. Because that wasn't her. It couldn't have been.But Echo said, so Echo must know.
Omega hugged her blanket to herself and stared hard at the lights which now seemed even more dead than when the lights were simply off. Now they were off in a way that made them negative dark.
Omega became drowsy despite the strange fear, and as she dozed off, the rest of the melody came to her.
Crosshair lay quietly in his bunk. He hadn't forgotten the dreams when he woke up - they teased his mind despite his attempts to drive them away.
Crosshair sat up and glanced about for a distraction. The motion jostled something near his leg, and he slipped a hand into his pocket and pulled out the round holotransmitter he'd picked up from the floor that morning.
Feeling listless, he switched it on and lazily observed the blue-tinged, three dimensional projection of the Gran, Reeka Mor.
Crosshair blinked and sat back, ducking his head closer to the hologram.
There it was again.
A secondary image was flickering at randomized intervals through the projection. It was binary.
Crosshair squinted, able to make out a few letters at random. Dispite his exceptional eyesight, he couldn't spell out anything definite. The image came and went too fast, and after a few more minutes of trying to follow from combination to combination, Crosshair's eyes were watering.
He turned off the transmitter and returned it to his pocket, certain that the binary message inside the device was not accidental.
Cid had included a message.