PROLOGUE
T3-M4
THE EBON HAWK
INTERSTELLAR SPACE NEAR THE PERAGUS SYSTEM
XAPPYH SECTOR, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES
It took several long moments for T3-M4's memory core to cycle up to ready mode. It took several more moments for his sensors to come online and even longer for his photoreceptors to blink into life. Floods of data crashed into his systems, momentarily overloading them. His processors worked overtime, eventually sorting through the information.
A quick self-diagnostic confirmed what he had already suspected. He was partially disabled, his primary motivator damaged and sparking. His memory core had been partially corrupted. As he processed the grim data, he focused outwards. He was aboard a starship, he quickly surmised, in an access tunnel or corridor. He recognised the scuffed, dark bulkhead across from him.
The Ebon Hawk. He was aboard the Ebon Hawk.
Droids weren't supposed to feel emotions. He understood that. They were supposed to receive regular memory wipes so that their artificial brains didn't develop independent intelligence or personality. Evidently, he'd been allowed to go for too long without a memory wipe because, when he realised he was aboard the Hawk, a sense of relief settled over his circuits.
But there was something wrong. His sensors could detect traces of coolant in the air, erratic energy spikes coming from the ship's EM feeds and power lines. He hooted, his vocorder a little scratchy. He tried moving and scooted forward a few centimetres. His left tractor pod struck something.
Tilting his flat, circular cognition module down, he spied the form of a sentient, humanoid lifeform. He extended a scanner probe towards her but its readout confirmed what he already knew: she was dead. She wore a dark, homespun robe and her craggy, pale face was unfamiliar. Perhaps his memory core had been more compromised than he'd realised, as he felt that perhaps he should recognise her.
Hooting once more, he slid back.
At once, he became more aware of his surroundings. He had moved from the Ebon Hawk's ring corridor into the main hold. The place was a mess. The holotable that dominated the centre of the room had been smashed by a falling girder. Bulkheads had collapsed. In one access hatch, a small fire still spluttered. The temperature had dropped precipitously as well, indicating that the Hawk's structural integrity had been compromised. Air and heat was being leached into the vacuum of space.
T3 took a few moments to search his databanks for clues about what happened. The ship had come under attack, that much was obvious. Unfortunately, those sections of his memory seemed to be corrupted. He squawked in frustration. Wheeling around the old woman's corpse, he made for the cockpit. A blip on his scanners, however, brought him up short.
There was a humanoid aboard, but the vital signs that indicated continued life were weak and fading fast. Something recessed deep in his programming told him that he had to help. Coming about, T3 pushed his actuators to their limits, ignoring the debris on the hold's decking. He reached the ring-shaped access way leading to the aft corridor. The other end of had been sealed off by a blast door, but the gunwell and the Hawk's small medbay were still accessible.
T3 entered the medbay and found a tall, slender human woman lying on the sole biobed. She was naked and clearly injured, covered only by the bed's thin, silvery sheet. IV drips were connected to her, a breath mask looped over her face. T3 trundled forward. The medbay's treatment computer was offline, perhaps damaged during the attack like he had been. Inserting a probe into a socket near the computer's base, he quickly jury-rigged a workaround. The computer came alive and resumed its treatment of the woman.
A moment later, his scanners confirmed that her vital signs were stabilising. Relieved, T3 backed away. He didn't recognise this woman, either. Still, her presence added urgency to his current mission: the treatment computer could only do so much with the limited equipment and resources it had at its disposal and she was badly hurt. He needed to somehow get the Ebon Hawk to safety as quickly as possible.
He resolved to head once more for the cockpit, scooting from the aft corridor through the main hold, carefully avoiding the old woman's corpse, and came around the damaged holotable to the forward corridor. This, he remembered as he quickly perused the Hawk's schematics, snaked around the communications chamber and led directly to the ship's bridge.
As he entered the ring hatchway, he heard a banging from a sealed compartment to his right. Spinning his photoreceptors around to examine the compartment, he found a magnetically sealed cargo chamber. The banging fell quiet. Hooting cautiously, he thought about going to have a look. Perhaps there was someone, or something, trapped inside...
The banging resumed, louder, more ferocious.
Emitting a frightened squawk, T3 scooted forward, right into the cockpit. He considered sealing the blast door behind him but decided against it. He might need to get back out there. The cockpit wasn't as badly damaged as the main hold and there were no signs of other bodies. What, he wondered, had happened to the crew?
From the depths of his damaged memory banks, he remembered the Ebon Hawk being a lively, bustling ship. Seven... no, eight sentient organic crew members, plus a smaller organic passenger, another droid besides him and dozens of hopping, organic non-sentients. What had happened to those people?
T3 put that aside for the moment. He could repair his memory centres later. Right now, he needed to focus on his wounded ship. Most of the bridge's consoles were offline, but the one connected to the navicomputer was still operation. He came to a stop right beneath it and once again input a probe.
The computer was sluggish to respond, clearly recovering from a nasty shock. Through it, however, he was able to link in to the ship's ravaged mainframe. He downloaded a damage report and hooted darkly as he went over the data. The hull was breached in at least three places, though only one of those breaches had ruptured the ship's interior: the starboard aft cargo bay and crew quarters had been exposed to the vacuum of space. A blind hyperspace jump had overloaded the motivator and fried the navicomputer, stranding them in interplanetary space. Worse, the communications array was gone so he had no chance of signalling for help.
He weighed his options. As a utility droid, T3 was programmed to interface with computers and mechanical systems and figure out how best to fix any problems that might arise with them. His resources were limited and he was running out of time. He started with the navicomputer, rebooting the system and dumping any corrupted files. He uploaded files from the untouched, restricted back ups. The navicomputer came alive.
T3 tootled his satisfaction. He checked the records for the nearest planetary systems. The closest was somewhere called Peragus. There was only one settlement in the system, a small mining colony, but T3 realised that they would have adequate medical facilities for the Hawk's wounded passenger. Besides, the little droid doubted the ship's damaged hyperdrive could get it any further.
Satisfied that the navicomputer was functioning, T3 headed aft. This time, he gave the sealed compartment and the old woman's body both a wide berth. He zipped past the medbay, taking a moment to check on the patient, before installing himself beside the sealed blast door. It had shut automatically when the hull was breached, though T3 was happy to note that atmospheric integrity had been maintained in the engineering section. He plugged into a control console, opened the door and headed into the cramped engine room.
The gigantic turbines that dominated the room, one to the left and one to the right, were the ship's sublight engines. One of them had been terribly damaged, though the other appeared to be in working order. The hyperdrive motivator, which sat between the turbines, was cracked and sparking. T3 gave the electronic equivalent of a sigh. He could jury-rig the system but he'd get one jump out of it at most.
That, he supposed, was all he needed. And it was the only hope the wounded woman had.
He got to work, doing everything he could to rebuild the badly damaged hyperdrive. He felt the minutes tick by and extended a sensor arm towards the medbay. The woman's life signs were fading rapidly. He finally reconnected the last power line and the hyperdrive blinked back online. Satisfied that he'd get one last jump out of the old system, he rolled back, into the ring hallway that encircled the Ebon Hawk's rear sections. He went port, looking to make sure that nobody else was aboard the ship. Sure enough, he found only another utility droid in the port cargo hold. Unlike his blue-grey plating, this one was clad in brown-and-cream. He didn't recognise it but his computers identified it as 3C-FD.
It was offline and he didn't think he had time to reactivate it.
Returning to the cockpit, T3 activated the navicomputer. Manipulating the computer, he activated the hyperdrive. The Ebon Hawk shook around him as it plunged into hyperspace. The banging from the sealed compartment in the main hold was getting so loud that the droid could make it out over the roar of the ship's overtaxed engines.
He thought about the sealing the cockpit once again but decided against it: the woman was stuck out there, after all. Before he could head aft to find out what was going on, the ship shuddered again as it came out of hyerspace.
T3 turned his attention to the cockpit's viewports. Droids didn't possess the same sense of beauty and wonderment as sentients, but T3 was still impressed by the vista that dominated local space. Peragus II, the location of the system's sole settlement, had been shattered by some long-ago cataclysm, exposing the planet's inner core to space. An asteroid field glittered around it.
He let out a long, low whistle.
The Hawk's control console came online. T3 beeped his annoyance, plugging in only to find that he was locked out of the system. The ship was being taken into the asteroid field, headed for the Peragus colony.
Realising that there was nothing he could do, T3 went aft... just as the magnetically sealed door exploded open. The droid squawked in fear, spinning around to face the now-open compartment. Flames roared, smoke obscuring much of the main hold. A tall, spindly humanoid droid stepped out of the compartment, clutching a blaster rifle. Behind it was a second droid, though this one was clearly damaged and deactivated. They appeared identical, but while the mobile droid was clad in steel-grey armour, its twin was rust-coloured.
T3 hooted a warning greeting. The droid swivelled its head towards him, red photoreceptors glinting. It lifted its blaster rifle.
And T3's world went dark again.