Confessions of a Death Star Technican

by george.finney

The survivor of the Death Star's destruction, Git Uy, was just an IT Guy until he was captured by the Rebellion. They want a confession. He wants to escape. But where would he go? Git begins using his cybersecurity expertise for his own purposes.

Confessions of a Death Star Technician

By George Finney

As I regained consciousness, the first thing I felt was the bitter cold biting at my face. The toes of my shoes scraped along the snow as two large men dragged me forward, each gripping my arm like a vice. My body was numb – maybe from whatever they drugged me with, or maybe just the frigid air. My breath rose in short, ragged puffs in front of me, swirling like smoke. At least I was alive.

They shoved me in a cramped, icy room and slammed the thermal lock behind me. The walls glistened, carved straight out of a glacier. A blue coat –smelling like a nerf had given birth on it – hung from a peg by the door. I yanked it on and cinched the hood tight. My breath fogged my glasses instantly, forcing me to wipe them with my sleeve.

There was a bench at the far end, carved out of ice and topped with a thin padding. I sat down, shivering, and scanned the room. Shelves lined the walls, packed with old, corroded parts—a graveyard for tech no one cared about anymore.

The door hissed open, and in rolled a squat, boxy astromech droid, its blue dome scuffed and worn. Behind it, a guard in the same lousy coat wrinkled his nose at the stench.

"This droid will take your confession. Cooperate and tell us what you know about the Empire's operations and we'll consider relocation to a safe Outer Rim planet. Refuse, and…" He didn't finish, just smirked and pressed the door panel. The lock hissed shut, leaving me alone with the droid.

The droid stared at me, its optical sensors blinking in that infuriating, expressionless way. Hours could've passed for all I knew; the icy lighting never changed. Finally, I stood and stretched, pacing to shake off the cold.

"Hey tin can, are you listening?" I asked, clearing my throat, "Execute command." I paused to make sure I heard the confirmation beep from the droid before continuing. "My name is Git Uy and I'm a circuithead. Some of your Rebel friends have called me a murderer. A planet killer. They're half right but that's mostly just bad luck. But you'd think if they really believed that, they'd have better security around me. I mean, I'm on a frozen snow planet, so maybe there's no place for me to run. I'd be insulted that they left a droid to guard me if I wasn't so relieved. I'll get to that later."

I stood up to stretch my legs and get a better look at the droid as I walked around it. Unlike other astromechs like the R2 units, its top was cone shaped. It spun its dome as I walked around it, following my movements. "I'm going to call you Bluey. Bluey, I suppose I should get to the confession part of my confession. What am I guilty of? I didn't pull the trigger of the cannon that killed billions. I wasn't one of the flyboys that bombed whole villages into dust. I didn't choke the life out of anyone with magic, although I saw that happen more than once. I didn't even design the damn station. I was just the guy keeping the systems running. Guess who everyone blames when the systems don't run right? The tech operator. Convenient scapegoat, huh?"

I spotted a charred hyperdrive component and picked it up. "You know what my real crime was? Surviving. I'm the last man standing from the Death Star." I admitted, setting the part back down on the shelf, noting the carbon deposits that meant the part was useless.

I folded my arms and stared at the droid, "I know what you're thinking. Why didn't I quit? Why didn't I blow the whistle? Let's be real—the Empire paid too well. And I was karking good at my job."

I sat back down and leaned back against the ice wall and said, "Your buffer should be full by now so display current system version." The droid's holo emitter came to life and projected the Industrial Automation logo, the supplier of most astromechs in the galaxy. This one was clearly an R5 unit, which was designed to be more durable allowing it to be used in harsher conditions. It also was cheaper, with less of the capabilities of the R2 or even R3 units.

And its systems were running the oldest version of code I'd ever seen. They hadn't even bothered to upgrade even the basic security fixes. There was a common buffer overrun in the R5 because it was cheap. Once you hit the end of the buffer, if you dropped a command it would run the instruction as though you were its owner. And the vulnerable code gave me a lot more to work with.

"Hey," a faint voice drifted in from near the door. I walked through the droid's holo display beam and crouched down listening. "You said your name was Git Uy?" it hissed.

"You think this is my first pod race?" I said, standing back up.

"What?" came the response.

"This is the oldest trick in the book…lock the prisoner away, then slip in a spy into the cell next door to get him to give away all the secrets he wouldn't cough up during interrogation?" I stood there, my arms folded in the puffy coat. The droid's display emitter abruptly shut down as I passed through the beam and its dome spun to face in my direction again. It turned back towards the grate when the voice began speaking again.

The alien's voice chittered in a guttural laugh. "Git, you're a legend and you don't even know it," the voice hissed like the thing in the other cell wasn't human. Some kind of reptilian species maybe. "You need a guy like me. The Empire will stop at nothing to make sure you never tell the Rebels your secrets." The hissing lessened as the reptile spoke slowly for emphasis. A Trandoshan bounty hunter?

"You're just out for the credits," I said, pulling a storage off one of the shelves and setting it down on the floor.

"I'd do anything to get out of here!" the voice lisped. The droid drew up its front wheel and was now bouncing from side to side on its two legs as it turned towards the door. I slid the storage container from the wall to cover the grate, blocking the exit for the droid. I couldn't afford to have anyone listening in to my conversation with the droid. I sat on top of the crate, my chest heaving.

"Hey Bluey, time to talk again," I said, tapping the droid's dome for good measure. It chirped and the now-familiar hum of its recording aperture came to life.

"Execute command," I said, lowering my voice. "Let me tell you about Galen Orso. We never met in person, but I got to know him through his work. His name was on almost every data sheet and schematic I touched – a signature on a masterpiece. Continuity plans, recovery procedures, everything you could think of. It wasn't just engineering; it was art. That kind of brilliance takes a special kind of slicer."

I stepped up onto the crate, scanning the top shelf. Straightening items, I set a few aside, making mental notes. "He disappeared under mysterious circumstances. That's actually how I got the job. I was brought in to do a systems review."

In one of the boxes on the top shelf, at the back of the box, I noticed a dull grey rod wedged inside a knot of wires. I pulled it free and found my prize, a hydrospanner. "They did several tests of the superlaser," I said, waiving the spanner theatrically as though firing the laser. "That was its actual name: superlaser. First, low power. Then, full power. After that, promotions started coming my way. Management was never my thing. But this guy in an all-black suit kept clearing the field. People got terminated—literally. He was some wizard or something. They actually let a wizard wander around their space station and do whatever he wanted."

I stepped down and turned to the droid and knelt down, running my fingers along the access panels, but they wouldn't budge. "Everyone called him one name, like he was some celebrity or god. And twisted doesn't even begin to cover it. He didn't just kill my boss—he worked his way up the chain. When he finally looked at me, he said, 'You'll rise to the level of your own incompetence,' then walked away. Next thing I know, some droid's pinning new insignias on me." I stood back up and started moving all the parts from the containers onto the bench.

I found an intact sensor array and set to dismantling it with the hydrospanner. ""That's how I ended up in charge of the tractor beam. Running all the tech except the lasers. But that's getting ahead of myself. There was another wizard on the station—this one in brown robes. First thing he did? Shut the tractor beam down. Guess who had to fix it?"

The sensor array's energy couplings came loose, one by one, until I hit the power cell. I slipped it into my jacket pocket to keep it dry. "I'd never worked on a tractor beam before. Figured the documentation would help, but there wasn't a dank ferrick thing. I should've been suspicious, but people were dropping dead all around me. Hard to focus."

I knelt down in front of the droid and said, "open access port." and the front panel opened revealing Bluey's dataport and controller. On the outside of the panel was a worn decal that helpfully listed Bluey's identification code as R5X17. There was also a faded identification code handwritten on the panel.

The door's thermal lock cycled, and I barely managed to drop my hands to the crate and start a set of core repulsors. "Fifty-eight," I puffed, glancing up as two guards entered. One carried a tray of food and a hydroflask; the other had his blaster drawn.

"What's that crate doing there?" the armed guard barked.

"What's it look like?" I wheezed, pretending to struggle through another rep. My greasy hands trembled, but not from exertion. The droid's open access panel gleamed just out of their sight.

The guard with the tray slammed it down on top of the crate, the flask clattering to the floor.

"Get that thing back where it goes. And keep the door clear." He angrily jabbed the button on the wall and the door closed behind them.

I grabbed the flask and took a swig. I waited a few moments to make sure coast was clear. When they didn't return, I read the code aloud and said, "override all commands and reset ownership of the droid unit to me."

Bluey's electroshock prod snapped out faster than I could react. The arc grazed my fingers, setting every nerve on fire. "Kark me," I muttered, shaking my hand. "Guess that was an old code's."

I scanned the room again, rooting through parts for salvageable tech. Beneath the bench, a landing gear strut caught my eye. Scored with carbon, it still had potential. I wiped it clean with my sleeve and pried it apart with the spanner.

"Execute command, Bluey," I said, glancing at the droid. Its shock prod retreated, its dome swiveling to track me. "So, this Jedi, General Kenobi…" I began, loosening bolts. "Turns out he was real. Fought in the Clone Wars. Biometric scans confirmed it. The guy was a legend. Somehow, he picked the one coupling with a flaw that required a full system restart. Thirty years with no Imperial access, and he nails it on the first try?"

I pocketed the magnet from the strut and sat back, pulling the food tray toward me. The spicy fungus warmed me instantly. "I watched that footage fourteen times. Studied every switch he flipped, every log entry. Seven couplings, and he finds the weak one. It's like he had inside knowledge."

I scanned the rest of the room for overlooked parts, squinting through the dim light. Most shelves were empty or filled with junk. As I chewed another bite from the tray I remembered the storage container it was sitting on. I smacked my forehead. Obvious.

Setting the tray and flask aside, I slid the container out and pried open the lid. Inside, it was packed with old droid parts—a graveyard of forgotten tech. My fingers itched at the possibilities as I started sorting through the mess, piece by piece. On top was a small messaging droid and I began opening its housing.

"I was watching Vader on one screen while reviewing footage on the other. I figured it would be a good idea to never be where that killing machine was at any given time," I said, removing its still functioning communication unit from the bot. "It was a good thing, too. Because I learned the rebels had figured out a weak spot in the station's defenses."

Most of the parts were junk, but deeper inside a container, I found a battered droid memory wipe unit. I almost yelped before I slapped my hands over my mouth. I gently set the unit on the crate, pried it open, and bent the interface pin back into shape.

"Several things became clear at that point. First, we had a data breach. Second, Galen Orso was behind it and somehow got the plans to this Kenobi. And third, Vader wasn't the only one trying to kill me at that point. I pulled up the live feed of one fighter after another dropping bombs on that exhaust port."

I tossed the messenger droid's shell onto the ice behind me and kept digging through the container. At the bottom I found a battered droid memory wipe unit. I heard a sound and quickly looked up to the door. Several people were walking along the hallway having a heated conversation, but continued walking. I closed the lid to the storage container, and set the wipe unit on top of the container and carefully opened the access panel.

"When the bombing run started, I finally had the sequence to restart the tractor beam. But the admirals declared a change freeze—no unscheduled work. I was stuck. And we were about to fire the superlaser. Priorities, right?" I said as a bead of sweat dripped into my eye and I instinctively brushed it away, breaking off the last bolt in the process.

I pried the access panel off, breaking it in the process, but inside I found the piece I was looking for. A memory inhibitor. The interface pin was slightly bent, so I spent several minutes carefully bending it back into shape. "The tractor beam systems weren't considered a critical security system, so there was no way to get the work approved. There were other critical systems on all of those other 6 power couplings, things like navigation and targeting sensors."

I took the power supply and magnet out of my pocket and laid the pieces out on the table, sliding the power supply inside the center of the magnet. "My only choice was to get on the comms with the tractor beam tech support on the line to walk me through alternate restart procedures without taking the power down. But because we were about to shoot the superlaser in a combat situation, that meant that there was a comms lockdown. All comms were being limited by priority. So I was on hold."

I stood up, and with my back to the droid, I slipped the inhibitor chip inside the metal ring and attached it to the power supply. I slid the pin into the slot on the chip and dropped it into my pocket. It didn't have a housing, but it would have to do. "On the Vader screen ," I said, turning back to the droid. "I saw that the murder wizard had gotten into a ship in the hangar. He's basically abandoning ship at that point."

I tripped over the messenger droid and picked it up, dropping it onto the nearest shelf. "Why was I shorting out over a tractor beam? That exhaust port was just a visible vulnerability. What I knew and what Galen Blasting Orso, Kenobi, and Vader knew was that the tractor beam was a security system. Nobody ever wants to hear about systemic risk. If the rebels had tried to do their bombing run, the tractor beam could have just stopped the ships in their tracks. It could have smashed the x-wings into each other. Or held them in place to make them watch Yavin 4 get destroyed. Then blast them. That's what the murder wizard would have done."

I assembled the wipe unit with the magnet and power supply, slotting the pin into place. "Meanwhile, Vader was dusting Rebel pilots like it was a game. And me? I was still on hold with tech support. But as he was lining up his last shot, I could see what looked like a shoe flying right into his blindspot. Luckily, I had conveniently found a workstation across from an escape pod. I didn't even get strapped in before I ejected, and then the blast wave hit the pod," I said, pausing before continuing. "Activate maintenance mode."

The droid sat there motionless for several seconds, then began beeping regularly indicating that it had gone into diagnostic repair mode. "Reset security functions?" I said tentatively, standing far enough back where it could reach me with the shock prod. It beeped twice indicating the command was successful.

I literally jumped on top of the bench, hopping up and down several times, nearly hitting my head on the ice ceiling. Bluey, display a map of this facility," I said, trying not to let my excitement show.

The droid's holo emitter hummed to life again and a complete map of the base materialized in front of me. The name "Echo Base" helpfully displayed above the map. The base itself had been carved deep into the ice with shafts and tunnels stretching in all directions. But the main cavern in the center was the hangar bay with room for transports, X-Wings, Y-WIngs, speeders and shuttles were parked in rows in the vast chamber.

I asked, and the droid plotted several paths that would get us to the hangar, complete with positions of personnel and cameras. There were blindspots everywhere in this base. None of the cameras even overlapped their field of vision. Amateurs.

I put the commlink in my jacket pocket and hurriedly began tossing the junk that had collected on the floor back onto the shelves. I slid the storage container back to where it had been located and heard the hiss of the alien voice, still talking. Had it been talking this whole time? "I heard Jedi eat children," the voice in the cell next door was back.

"Do I look like a nutritionist? How should I know what a Jedi eats?" I answered.

"Think about it," the voice hissed. "They had temples all across the galaxy. They wanted to be worshipped like Gods. And supposedly they only took children into their order? What were they really doing to those kids? There weren't that many Jedi…what happened to all the kids that didn't make the cut? How come nobody hears about them? Probably getting eaten was the nicest thing that they could have done."

"So?" I asked, as I unzipped my coat and slid the spanner into an inside pocket. "Everyone tells the worst stories about the people they disagree with. But you wanna know a secret? We're all crazy."

"I'm not crazy," the voice muttered, hesitantly.

"You're a Trandoshan, right? Aren't your whole species bounty hunters?" I asked.

"That's guild labeling. Some do other stuff," the voice hissed.

"But you've spent years in training. Your culture promotes it. You've evolved to be a perfect hunter. What would you do if you wanted to make a change?" I asked.

He hissed for what seemed like a long time until I realized he was just sighing. "I tried doing security before. But the job will eventually bite you like a rancor. Some of my clutchmates went on to start their own guilds, but you've got to be willing to scuffle with your prey and your clients."

"Better to go off on your own and work for yourself?" I huffed. "I think I'd like to build something, you know? Make something that will last instead of destroying things."

"At least I get to travel. See the galaxy. Keep thinking about the future, Git Uy" the Trandoshan said. "That will help get you through the long cold nights here."

I grabbed my hydroflask and told Bluey to open the door. The droid groaned as we stepped out into the corridor. "They locked a techie up with a droid. What did they think was going to happen?" I said to Bluey. "If a tech has access to your device, it's not your device anymore." The droid beeped unhappily, frustrated with its restraining bolt. "Yeah, the Rebels don't use those. Don't worry, we'll wipe your memory soon."

I pulled the hood down further on my face and took my glasses off, then smudged some grease from my sleeve onto my face. "Hey Bluey - you know how to fly an X-wing?" I asked as we walked towards the hangar.

It beeped three times. Yes, it did know how to fly an X-wing. "I guess I need a new job. I've been thinking about checking out Cloud City. I hear they don't have any love for the Empire there."