One chilly morning, on a day where the clouds did not block the light from the sun for the first time in weeks, the sound of whirring star ship engines echoed through the forest.
Henry sighed as he leaned over the sink in the kitchen. He closed his eyes. He didn't want to believe it was them.
At times, travelers would make landfall around the farm either to take pictures in front of the destroyed AATs and dead droids out on the battlefields or to unload their trash into the wild. Perhaps it was one of those.
But he knew that wasn't the case. The whine of the engine brought up untouched memories. He'd first heard it during the initial battles nearby. It was a distinctive high-pitched whine combined with a gritty low-pitch hum that sat beneath the many metallic sounds of the engine. Like that of a star fighter.
He took a deep breath and sprinted out, throwing open the doors and leaving a mess of unwashed dishes behind him.
"Todd! Todd," He called out.
"What!? What?!" Todd responded, jumping up from his spot on the porch. His eyes wide and red.
"They're here! Get the blasters! And why were you sleeping?!" Henry yelled at him.
"It was on accident!" Todd replied, sprinting into the house.
"You were supposed to be keeping an eye on Johnny!" Henry looked around the fields with wild eyes, "Johnny! Johnny!"
He spotted the front door of the larger barn ajar. He made it halfway to it only to slip in the mud, still fresh from the nights non-stop rain. The entirety of his legs turned brown and the rest of his coat was stained with blotches of mud. He slipped his way back onto his feet only to freeze as he glanced back over to the farmhouse.
A squadron of Imperial soldiers, dressed in their standard black and gray trench uniforms marched their way from the rear of the old barn to the farmhouse.
"Johnny!" He said, whisper-shouting.
A series of steps thumped against the dirt from somewhere within the barn. Henry finally made it to the door just as Johnny rounded the corner.
"Yes?" Johnny asked, reeling back from being in such close proximity to Henry.
"Do you have your blaster with you?" Henry said, his eyes were wide with fear, the rest of his face sagged, the years of his life visible in every wrinkle.
Johnny surmised something was wrong, "Yes, what's going on? Are the bears here?"
He reluctantly pulled the blaster from his holster.
Henry sighed, running a hand through his hair, "It's not bears, Johnny. Worse than that. It's the Empire. Hide in here," He swiped the mud off of his jacket and pants, "If you hear shooting, come find us in the house"
Henry moved to leave but Johnny grabbed him by his arm, "I will go with you"
"No, no, you can't. I might be able to persuade 'em to leave us alone with the credits we've got. If they see you, there's no doubt they'll start shooting"
Johnny's CPU began to overheat. On one hand, he wanted to fight, protect his new family. On the other, he wished to stay as long as possible on the farm and abandon all thought of fighting.
"I will do as you say," Johnny said after a short silence.
"Good, good. Just don't worry about us. We'll keep them inside the farmhouse," Henry said hurriedly. He ran out the door, hanging on to the walls of the barn this time around as he skidded through the mud.
Johnny leaned against the metal walls of the barn with a soft clang. His fingers scraped three wide scratches into the wooden grip of his blaster pistol in his hand.
'Why can't they leave me alone? Leave me be,' Johnny thought, the sight of white armor taking up his view, 'If I get rid of...' He cut himself off, 'It doesn't matter, they're here now. They'll always come to ruin things, won't they?'
He reminisced on the brief year he'd spent with Henry and Todd. Their hospitality, so foreign to him but greatly appreciated. Their lessons, his mind devouring every bit of information. The animals, the plants, the woods, the grappler droid-
And now the Empire was here.
A pressure rose through his entire abdomen and a fire burning as hot as the star glowing in the sky along with it.
'It doesn't matter what happens to me, I must protect them,' Johnny brought the blaster pistol up, gripping it tighter as he placed both hands onto it.
He stomped his way through the field of mud with sloppy footsteps, the pools of water combined with the mud sucked his feet in and slowed him down.
He kicked upwards, throwing up slabs of mud and brown water.
As he reached the foot of the steps on the porch, the first blaster shots rang out from inside.
He slammed the front door open, the doorknob embedded itself into the wooden walls of the farmhouse.
The couches of the living were strewn about, with the larger of the three tipped onto its side. The others were left badly burned with smoke still rising from the burning leather.
Footsteps thumping on the creaky wooden flooring sounded from somewhere to his left and right.
Johnny swept the room with his pistol, clearing every corner as he raced into the kitchen.
He rounded the corner of the marble counter. His foot bumped against something soft. He whipped his blaster towards the ground.
Henry was pushed up against the counter, his face contorted in agony as he clutched his thigh. He put a hand up briefly, his blaster on the ground, "It's me Johnny"
"You're injured," Johnny assessed, kneeling to be on his level.
Todd shuffled from his position on the floor close-by, his eyes were shut tight with his arms pressing onto his stomach.
"I don't got a mortal injury, don't worry about me, but Todd," Henry looked over to him, "He's got it worse. Took a shot to the stomach. He's lucky I gave him that bit of armor plating to him"
Johnny shuffled closer to Todd, briefly pulling hands away from his stomach. A black burn mark was etched in a small circle in the middle of his stomach. Some parts of his skin had turned a pinkish red. Todd grunted and violently pushed his hands back onto his injury.
"Are there any medical supplies around here?" Johnny asked, peeking round the corner down the hall towards the old storage unit.
"I'll get them. You go and get rid of those Imperials," Henry said, struggling to get on his feet.
Johnny wrapped an arm around his waist and helped him back up.
"Thanks," Henry muttered, "Go give us some time to recover, I can hold things down from here"
Johnny wasted no time. He brought his pistol back up and marched down the hall.
"Stay alive, Johnny," Henry called out to him.
He turned around, his sensors still scanning for hostiles in front of him, "I will"
Henry steps thumped against the floor as he limped towards his room on the other end of the building.
Johnny rushed down the hall, his sensors failing to pick up any activity on the other end of the house. Inside the old storage unit sat an old and withered window with its white paint peeling at the edges and the wood turning black with rot. He glanced outside. In the immediate vicinity of the farmhouse, the Imperial soldiers dressed entirely in black armor were regrouping around the rear of the barn. Some of them looked to be in pain, clutching at different areas of their body with scrunched faces.
Johnny instinctively turned on his radio to report his findings but there was nobody listening. He slapped himself, 'What am I doing? Focus,' He thought, 'I shouldn't face them head-on like my combat protocols are telling me to do. I must stay alive, as Henry commanded'
He pushed at the window, it creaked and bent under his will but was obviously not meant to be opened.
'Would make too much noise,' Johnny assessed. He paced the living room and two bathrooms beside it. There was no rear exit, at one point there had been but it was blocked off after the storm had kicked in the door with a great gust of wind.
He froze in place, recalling the rain flooding the bathrooms one day when Todd had left the window open by accident.
He entered one of them. His photo-receptors drew a cursory glance at the toilet and shower, wondering what they were for. He corrected himself and climbed through the shower and pushed on the withered window above it. The glass had been left permanently foggy, his hands only served to worsen the damage as more cracks appeared. The pane lifted up and out. Johnny climbed through as soon as the creaky glass had settled open. His skeletal body slipped right through the thin opening.
The rear of the farmhouse was filled with a sea of grass stalks nearly the height of a bantha.
'Perfect,' Johnny thought, crouching at the corner of the building. He peeked around the corner.
The Imperials had begun to advance, pushing inch by inch back towards the farmhouse. A squad of four were out in the open while another squad covered them from behind the barn.
He swiftly moved into position, using the corner of the intersecting walls beside him to stabilize his blaster. He fired a quick succession of three shots directly towards the advancing soldiers. Two of them immediately fell to the ground, writhing in agony. Their armor plating only served to lengthen the pain of their wounds rather than save them as both of them fell silent within a few seconds.
Those behind the barn whipped their heads around, catching the fleeting sight of Johnny's tan skeletal body retreating back into cover.
The two injured soldiers took potshots towards the rear of the house while another two advanced towards Johnny's position. They fired their weapons blindly as they rounded their corner but the red bolts found no target nor was there any indication of where he had gone thanks to the forest of tall grass stalks. A small fire started somewhere in the middle of all the greenery, pushing up a small cloud of growing smoke into the air.
Suddenly the bathroom window burst open and a torrent of blaster fire came with it. The lasers slammed into the shocked faces of both soldiers. Their bodies slumped to the floor as the skin of their faces melted off in a river of red and tan liquid.
Johnny glanced over the dead bodies, detecting the sudden drop in temperature of the two organics before him. He closed the window with such force that more web-shaped cracks formed in the middle of the glass.
His footsteps thumped through the living room as he spotted the rest of the organics nearing the front door. He dragged one of the overturned couches to the front door and blocked the entrance. The glass of the front door broke as he slammed the grip of his pistol into it and stuck the barrel out, firing a few potshots towards the Imperials positions. They returned fire and rushed back into cover behind the old barn, a few slipped and sloshed through the mud. Their black armor was almost entirely stained with splotches of the thick ooze, appearing like brown polka dots on their plating.
Johnny crouched down as the Imperials returned fire. The red bolts briefly illuminating his face. Somewhere back towards the bathrooms, another window was blown out. His audio-receptors were sharpened with the activation of his combat protocols, letting him hear every single hard of glass scattering all across the floor.
He stormed down the hall to be back with the brothers. Henry was crouched over Todd, applying a cream to his stomach.
He glanced over to Johnny, "He's stable, but we'll need to get him to a hospital soon"
"Are there any around here?" Johnny replied, occasionally checking behind them.
Henry sighed and shook his head, "No, they all left a few years back once the war was over. We'll have to go off-planet"
"I'll eliminate these Imperials as fast I can," Johnny assured him. He moved forward.
Henry didn't bother to look back up.
Johnny sprinted back towards the bathroom, his servomotors pushed to their max. As he pushed the window back open, a storm of smoke bellowed into the bathroom, completely obscuring his vision.
He climbed out, using his hands and scanner to create outlines of the environment around him.
It wasn't until he'd reached the foot of the main barn did he realize the severity of the situation. A fire was breaking out just beside the house, Todd was dying with no way of reaching a hospital in time, and the soldiers continued their advance.
'I won't let them take this from me. Henry and Todd will fight, and so will I,' Johnny thought.
He rushed past the frightened animals inside and peered out the front door of the barn. The fields were directly ahead, no longer as colorful at the beginning of the year, and were out in the wide open with little in the way of cover. His long nose poked out from around the corner, he spotted the figures dressed in black now back at the front entrance of the farmhouse.
Johnny burst out and began firing on the squad of four. One clutched his side and went down but the others reacted much quicker this time, most of them dove into cover behind the porch railings.
Another set of blaster bolts came raining in from inside the farmhouse, peppering one of the soldiers that had decided to take cover in front of a window. He screamed in agony, his wails echoed through the barren lands of the farm. Johnny leapt out from inside the barn, over the fields of mud, his coattails flailing in the wind behind him and his hat struggling to grip onto his long head. He continued to fire wildly at the Imperials position on the porch as he pushed forward until he hit the corner of the porch where he could see directly behind the railings. He shot the first soldier in sight as he began to fire back at him. The organic dropped his blaster pistol as he crumpled into a ball, crying in pain. The last of the four kicked in the door of the farmhouse and rushed in.
Johnny could hear sounds of a struggle inside with things being turned over and a few stray shots being fired here and there. He moved to rush in but was pushed back into cover by the remaining two Imperials still situated at the old barn.
The thin walls at his side bent under his hand as he pushed off of it and sprinted to the entrance. The fire on the rear of the farmhouse continued to grow and had now begun to lick at the roof and climb through the open bathroom window.
Johnny leapt over the porch railings and sprinted into the house, he pushed off of every wall he could, splintering some of the wood on the way.
He came to the foot of the kitchen where an Imperial soldier lay dead on the ground with a knife in his neck. Henry was close-by lying on the ground, clutching at his side.
"Are you alright?" Johnny said, falling to the floor beside him.
Henry gave him a pained look, his mouth contorting and eyes clenching tightly shut, "To be honest with you, Johnny, no," He said with a pained laugh, "Listen, there's an old freighter up in the north, it's a hand-me-down," Henry stuffed a hand in his pocket and procured a thick piece of folded up paper. It was brown, wrinkled, and torn at the edges, "Find your way to it using this map, and get out of here"
"I can't do that," Johnny said, taking the map into his hand and placing it on the floor, "You gave me life again, I won't leave you at the end"
Henry smiled, "Todd's dead Johnny, and I'm going to join him soon. I'm sorry, I can't do anything to stop it now"
"There must be something," Johnny's CPU searched through the whole galactanet, reading through thousands of medical documents at a time, desperately looking for a solution.
"It's alright," Henry grabbed Johnny's hands, "I couldn't have asked for a better droid to serve this farm. This place died along with the war. Take all the credits in my room, and make a run for it. The Empire's gonna keep comin'. They know that we're here. The galaxy are real hostile towards droids like yourself nowadays, keep that blaster close to you at all times"
Johnny looked out the window, hearing the distant footsteps of the last soldiers moving about the edge of the farm, "I can get rid of the rest, stop this fire, and heal you I pro-"
"No, no, Johnny," Henry said patting his hands, "It's done"
He couldn't help but notice how weak his voice had become in such a short span of time.
"If you want to serve me as a droid, then leave. You will be the last farmer to have taken part in this little project of ours. I'm proud of you, Johnny. You're like the son I never had. Now go"
Johnny clutched Henry's hands tighter with controlled strength, "I will miss you two," He said, his voice crackling with white static.
"I know," Henry whispered. He laid his head down and closed his eyes with a smile still etched on his face.
He spared a few more seconds holding his hands before he set them at either side of his body.
He slung his body over his shoulder and dragged Todd by his arm straight out of the farmhouse. He fired a few shots towards the old barn as he placed the brothers side by side out in the fields.
The mud sloshed under his feet. He sprinted towards the old barn and lunged out to the rear. The remaining soldiers were busy patching themselves up with bacta and bandages, too preoccupied to hear Johnny's blaster firing two separate shots. Their bodies slumped to the ground.
He burst through the doors of the old barn. The stacks of hay were still in their place at the back. He tossed them to the side and swiped the straw off quick enough to nearly start another fire.
He lugged the generator that had once powered him on to to the grappler's position and stuck the cable into his port, "I couldn't save them, but I can save you"
The crackling of the fire nearby drew his attention. An urge to put it out formed in his mind but he put it aside and listened to his combat protocols for once, 'I need to clear the area first'
There was an electric pulse emanating from somewhere outside the boundary of the farm land. The pulse of a generator, most likely that of a star ship.
Johnny drew his pistol once more and ran out into the forest. He passed the trees near the trail where he'd carried the grappler droid back to the farm. It seemed so long ago, at the beginning of his new life. Perhaps the grappler droid would be there at the end again.
A splotch of gray paint and the glint of metal caught his attention.
He unconsciously steadied himself with one arm on a nearby tree.
There in the edge of the plains sat an Imperial shuttle, it's dual set of wings along with the static center foil were bunched up above the main body of the ship.
He lightened his steps upon reaching a few feet from the outside of the bay doors. With a few metal clangs, he was inside with nothing but the vacant seats staring back at him.
His metal feet clanged against the floor. If he could, he would've flinched at the sound.
The sound of a muffled voice came from deeper inside. His sensors picked up one last organic.
The doors of the cockpit hissed open, a pilot dressed in a boring gray uniform peeked out.
Johnny's finger immediately pulled the trigger. The organic's body fell to the floor as the singular shot he'd fired hit it's target.
His body sagged, the joints of his legs and arms audibly groaning.
He wandered outside, catching sight of the plume of smoke rising ever higher in the sky.
Johnny clenched his blaster tighter, the grip creaked under his hand, 'Why couldn't they just leave me alone?'