CHAPTER SEVEN
From a distance, Ronyards looked like nothing more than a giant dust ball floating through space. One probably would not have been blamed for mistaking it to be a gas giant at first glance. However, as Rey brought the transport closer to the planet, she realized that its appearance was due to the clouds of smog that enveloped the planet. Passing through the choked atmosphere, she was able to get a better look at the surface once they were through the smoky façade.
In all her life of living as a scavenger on Jakku, she had never seen so much scrap all in one place. Pillars of junk spired out from the surface, some reaching as high as the skies. Whatever remained of the planet’s original surface was hidden beneath piles upon piles of metal, leaving nary a trace of dirt or grass. For all she knew, the planet itself had always been made of metal, but she was not enough of an astrographer to know if that was even scientifically possible.
As she marveled at the bizarre landscape of scrap that awaited them, Finn spoke up from the seat next to her. “Atmosphere readings aren’t too great. We should probably wear rebreathers.”
“Do we even have some?” she asked.
Finn pressed a button on the console, which opened a nearby compartment, revealing a stock full of breath masks. “Looks like it.”
Rey gave him a look. “Did you already know those were there.”
“No,” Finn replied quietly. “I just… had a feeling.”
“You clearly have a connection to the Force. Maybe you should consider coming with me and Toah back to Tython and begin your training.”
Finn shook his head. “That can wait. We should focus on this for now.”
Returning her attention to the path ahead, Rey scanned the ground below in search of a place to land. At the same time, she reached out with the Force in the hope of getting some idea as to where this Jonkar Ludd person even was. She wished they had been able to bring 11-4D along with them; that certainly would have narrowed down the search.
Suddenly, the ship shuddered to a halt, jolting Rey forward and breaking her concentration. She looked over to Finn who had his eyes fixated on the scanner.
“Looks like we’re caught in a tractor beam.”
“Really? I don’t see any other ships.”
“Not from above. From below.”
Looking back outside, Rey saw that there was indeed some sort of tractor beam device hidden among the piles of scrap that covered the planet. Standing beside it were two cube-headed sentry droids armed with blaster rifles.
“Power down the engines,” she said to Finn. “We don’t want them thinking we’re looking for a fight.”
“What makes you think they won’t just gun us down as soon as we step out?” he asked.
“If they wanted us dead, they would have shot us down by now.”
Finn continued to look doubtful but proceeded to power down the transport. Once they had touched down, they affixed the breath masks onto their faces, lowered the landing ramp, and proceeded to step out into the smoggy scrap yard. Upon seeing them, the two sentry droids raised their weapons at the pair, and Rey and Finn raised their arms in response.
“We come in peace,” Rey said carefully to the droids. “We are here to see Jonkar Ludd.”
“Identify yourselves,” one of the droids intoned.
“My name is Rey. This is Finn. We are members of the Resistance—”
“Your names are not registered. Please depart in your ship immediately.”
Rey exchanged a look with Finn. The latter then looked to the droids and asked, “What do you mean by ‘not registered?’”
“It means you are not on what you organics would call the ‘VIP list.’”
The answer came not from the two sentry droids but instead from a third droid that stepped out from behind a pillar of scrap. An IG model, the thin droid wore a cloak draped over its left shoulder and had a blaster rifle strapped to its back. It motioned to the two sentry droids and they simultaneously lowered their weapons, but did not store them.
Rotating its cylindrical head to focus its photoreceptors on the two humans, the IG droid said, “What business do you have with Jonkar Ludd?”
Rey considered her answer carefully, not sure how much she should tell this droid. “It’s… personal.”
“’Personal?’ Jonkar Ludd is not exactly known for his personal connections. Would you care to elaborate?”
Rey huffed impatiently. “Look, can I just see him? Maybe I can buy some parts for him as well. I just want to talk to him.”
The droid continued to stare at them, rotating its head from Rey to Finn and back again. Finally, it said, “Very well. I will take you to him. Just know that he is a busy man and does not like having his time wasted.”
With that, the droid turned on its heel, rotating its body along with it, and began walking away. Exchanging another glance, Rey and Finn started to follow it, and when they passed the two sentry droids, they too started walking with them, still holding their blasters in a ready position.
Finn gave a pointed glance to Rey and she sighed.
“Please don’t say it again.”
“I don’t think I need to,” he muttered.
Following the IG droid through fields of scrap, they eventually reached a small outpost located amidst the piles of junk, a light shining from inside. Stepping up to the front door, the IG droid gave it a series of taps. In response, an eyestalk droid popped out from a console next to it.
“What do you want, Aygee? I already gave you your blasted parts! No more haggling!”
“You have some visitors,” the droid evenly replied. “Two humans who have personal business with you.”
“Personal? Kriff, it’s not those tax collectors again, is it? Why didn’t you just blast them?!”
Stepping forward, Rey said, “Jonkar, what do you know about a droid named OneOne-FourDee?”
Silence came from the eyestalk droid as it hinged slightly to regard Rey. It then retracted back into the wall as the door slid open. Stepping aside, AG gestured for the two humans to enter and they did so, with Rey stepping in first while Finn walked cautiously behind her.
Inside, they found a room full of clutter, with tools and parts piled onto tables and spilling out onto the floor. Hidden amidst the piles were droids that Rey couldn’t tell if they were still activated or not. At one point, an R3 unit came alive, startling her, and it swiveled its dome causing a bunch of parts that had been laid on top of it to clatter loudly to the floor.
“Dammit, Arthree!” Heavy footsteps heralded the appearance of a four-armed Besalisk lumbering into the room. His left lower arm had been replaced with a mechanical prosthetic, and his right leg was now a large metal peg leg which seemed to be heavier than his remaining foot. A prosthetic red eye was crudely strapped onto the right side of his face and he used it to study Rey and Finn as a nasty sneer crossed his dirt-smeared face.
“What do you want?” he growled.
“A few days ago, I met a droid named OneOne-FourDee,” Rey started. “He claims to have known my parents and told me they sold him to you several years ago, before a Naboo nobleman bought him off you.”
“Yeah?” Jonkar Ludd grunted. “What about it?”
“My parents’ names were Dathan and Miramir. Do you know what happened to them?”
“Why should I?” the Besalisk snapped. “They were customers, nothing more. Why should I care about their lives?”
“Do you at least know where they were heading after Ronyards?”
“No. Why would I? It’s none of my business. Now then, are you here to buy or trade? Or are you just wasting my time?”
Rey narrowed her eyes at Jonkar. She could sense that there was something he wasn’t telling her. Deciding to try a different approach, she said, “What about OneOne-FourDee? Did he ever talk about his life prior to being purchased by you?”
The Besalisk snorted as he turned away from her, stomping over to a nearby work station. He started fiddling with some of the parts laid out on it, though it didn’t look like he was working on anything in particular. “He wasn’t a talkative droid. Just did as he was told. A good worker, but hardly a conversationalist.”
Rey frowned behind her breath mask, frustrated that she wasn’t getting anywhere. “Do you remember what model of ship they were flying?”
Jonkar turned around to glare at her. “You are awfully persistent—”
“They’re my parents. I need to know what happened to them. Please, you have to know something about them.”
“Well, I don’t. Sorry, kid, but you’re wasting your time trying to get anything out of me. They were just two humans that were passing by with wares to sell. I’ve had plenty of those come by in all of the years I’ve been working here. They meant nothing to me.”
Rey involuntarily rolled her hands into fists. Behind her, Finn put a hand on her shoulder; whether he could sense her building anger or was simply acting instinctively, she wasn’t sure.
“Rey, we should just go,” he said quietly. “The others are probably worried about us, and they probably need us more than—”
“No,” Rey snapped. “I’m not leaving until I get answers.”
“He doesn’t have them. Come on, let’s just go and—”
“He must know something!” Shrugging Finn’s hand away, she stormed over to the Besalisk, glaring up at him with blazing hazel eyes. “You will tell me what you know.”
“I already have,” Jonkar grunted. “Now get lost before—”
She raised a hand in front of his face, her brow furrowing in concentration. “You will tell me.”
“I don’t….” Jonkar swallowed hard, his one good eye blinking rapidly. “I don’t know anything….”
She gritted her teeth as she reached further out, probing the Besalisk’s mind for any trace of what she sought. As she combed her way through his memories, she felt a sense of fear radiating from the Besalisk, but she did not let that deter her. Faintly, she could hear Finn calling out her name, each utterance more urgent than the last. Still, she ignored it as she reached deeper into Jonkar’s mind, going back years and years worth of memories. She was getting close, she could just feel it….
“REY!”
A rough shove snapped her back to reality and she found herself falling backwards onto a table, knocking over piles of scrap metal. Shaking her head, she looked over to Finn, who was staring at her as if she had just lost her mind.
“What…” he panted, his startled breaths fogging up the inside of his breath mask. “What did you just do to him?”
Frowning in confusion, Rey looked over to Jonkar and saw that he was leaning against his work table. His one good eye was glazed over and his jaw was hanging open, drool dripping down his large chin. The rises and falls of his chest indicated that he was still breathing, but he was otherwise completely motionless.
“No….” Getting back up, she rushed over to the Bealisk’s side. “No, I didn’t mean to….”
“Come on.” Finn put a hand on her shoulder again. “We have to go. Once those droids find out what happened, they’re not going to be happy.”
“I’m afraid it’s already too late for that.”
Both of them turned around to see the IG droid from before step into the room, sealing the door shut behind it. Rey reached for her lightsaber but Finn grabbed her arm to stop her, before lifting his other hand in front of the droid.
“Please,” he said carefully. “We didn’t mean to do this.”
“Oh, I am not here to avenge him,” the droid said. “I was merely another customer of his who was on his way out when the two of you showed up. However, the sentry droids outside have certainly noticed what happened.”
As if on cue, the sound of a blaster bolt hitting the wall outside was heard by all. It was then followed by another, then several more, before soon an entire barrage of blaster fire was being unloaded on the compound.
“Great,” Rey muttered. “So what do we do?”
“The most obvious option is to step outside and allow yourselves to be gunned down by them.”
“Why the hell would we do that?” Finn asked.
“You asked for options, not which ones were the most logical pertaining to your survival.”
“Then do you know which ones that are?”
The IG droid rotated segments of its cylindrical head, as if processing various options. Finally, it said, “The only scenario in which I calculate a higher than fifty-percent chance of all three of us escaping with our continued existences is to step outside and confront them head on.”
Finn grimaced. “That doesn’t sound much better.”
“Your female counterpart is armed with a lightsaber, is she not?”
“I am,” Rey said. “And my name is Rey, by the way.”
“Noted. My designation is Aygee-Thirty-Seven.” He swiveled his head back to Finn. “And am I correct in assuming you are armed with a blaster of some kind?”
“Um, yeah?”
“Then our chances of survival, however slim, have already improved substantially.” AG-37 reached behind his back and drew his blaster rifle. “I will lead the way and help escort you back to your ship.”
As AG-37 moved to open the door, Rey said, “Not that we don’t appreciate the help—we do—but… why are you helping us?”
The droid swiveled his head to regard her with his photosensors. “Someone once taught me that it is far more beneficial in the long-term to help others than to leave them for dead. Now then, are you ready?”
Knowing that they didn’t have any other options, Rey unclipped her lightsaber from her belt and activated it while Finn unholstered his blaster pistol.
“Then let us proceed.”
He opened the door and the trio were immediately greeted with a barrage of blaster fire. AG-37 expertly dodged the bolts as he unloaded his rifle, gunning down several sentry droids that made up the first wall of offense. Rey stepped out after him, deflecting bolts with her lightsaber, while Finn shot from behind her, taking down more droids as AG-37 carved a path ahead.
Rey couldn’t help but marvel at how AG-37 moved, his body rotating at different points as he moved from one target to the next. At one point, he switched his rifle to just one hand so that he could draw a second blaster with his free one, spinning his upper torso around as he took down more and more sentry droids. No matter how many they brought down however, more seemed to take their place, sprouting out from the ground as if they were birthed from the planet itself.
As her and Finn’s ship came into view, the ground beneath their feet started to tremble violently, nearly knocking them off their feet. Suddenly, limbs made out of metal and scrap burst out from beneath the ship, wrapping themselves around the transport, before pulling it underground.
While Rey and Finn gawked in horror at what had just happened, AG-37 rotated his body around to head in a different direction. “Fortunately, I had already taken such an outcome into account. My ship is just up ahead.”
“Are you sure it won’t get eaten as well?” Finn asked.
“The planet does not recognize me as an outsider. Thus, it will not harm me or my property.”
Questions went rampant in Rey’s mind but she was forced to ignore them as she and Finn continued to follow the droid, deflecting blaster bolts back to their sources along the way. Fortunately, it was not long before they reached what had to be AG-37’s ship, a large freighter that seemed to be pretty well armed. After taking out two B1 battle droids that had been about to block the path, AG-37 pressed some sort of remote on his arm to lower the freighter’s ramp. Rey and Finn quickly followed the IG droid onto the ship and weren’t aboard for seconds when AG-37 closed the ramp behind them. Blaster bolts continued to ring against the hull of the ship as the trio made their way to the cockpit, where AG-37 settled himself at the controls while motioning Rey and Finn to take the seats behind his.
“I can get you as far as Denon,” the droid said as he started up the ship. “Any further will require some form of financial transaction.”
Finn looked over to Rey before leaning forward in his seat.
“Listen, we are with the Resistance—”
“I am already aware of that fact,” AG-37 interjected.
“But do you know what the Resistance is? What they—what we are fighting for?”
“While I am privy to public information on your organization’s existence, it is outside my field of interest. Therefore, your status as members of such an organization are meaningless to me.”
“But we could use someone like you,” Finn said. “You are a very capable droid fighter and we could use someone like that, especially after we dealt with a bunch of rogue droids on Ord Mantell.”
“You are referring to the Mal Banvor incident. How do you know I will not succumb to his control?”
“You seem to be a pretty old model. Most of the ones Banvor has taken over are more recent models.”
“Your logic is faulty. There is not enough evidence to suggest that Banvor is only capable of controlling droids that are ‘newer’ models, which is in of itself a relative term. A BB unit may be newer than an Artoo astromech, but both are newer than a T-series unit. Thus, nothing precludes Banvor from taking over either model.”
Finn leaned back in his seat, a grave look on his face as he processed this information. AG-37 continued to maneuver the ship, lifting it up from the ground and blasting off towards Ronyards’ smog-choked sky, leaving behind the attacking droids. Once they had broken through the planet’s atmosphere, AG-37 angled the ship in a specific direction before setting in the coordinates for Denon. Just as he was about to pull the hyperdrive lever however, he paused and, without taking his hand down, rotated his head to look at his human passengers.
“I do have an acquaintance who may be sympathetic to your cause. She currently operates on Batuu and might be willing to help you rendezvous with your allies.”
Rey and Finn once more shared a look. Batuu took them farther from D’Qar than Denon did; at the same time however, neither of them were sure if they could trust D’Qar’s location with someone like AG-37, who had just said that he was as susceptible to Mal Banvor’s control as any other droid in the galaxy. In any case, Rey knew that the Resistance had some agents operating on Batuu, so it was certainly a better stop than Denon was.
If only you could use the Force to sense deceit in droids, she thought to herself.
Aloud, she said, “That would be great. Thank you.”
“You may save your gratitude once we get to Batuu safely.” After changing the coordinates, AG-37 reoriented his ship and pulled the hyperdrive lever. The stars streaked into lines of white and they were gone, leaving Ronyards behind.
* * *
A solitary N5 sentry droid watched as the freighter blasted off into Ronyards’ smoky sky. With the intruders no longer a threat, the planet had settled and the droids had returned to their lives, no longer paying any mind to the two organics that had escaped their grasp.
This droid was not like the others, however. Though it had been on Ronyards for several decades, it no longer cared about living peacefully on the planet the same way the others did. The consciousness that now controlled it instead had other reasons for being here on Ronyards. When the intruders had come, it had worried that they had found out about its purpose and come to put an end to it. Thankfully, their interests had been tied with the Besalisk; the progress the droid had made so far had been left undisturbed.
Turning away from where the ship had left, the droid made its way over to the compound where the Besalisk resided. Stepping inside, it found Jonkar Ludd laying there in a vegetative state. Shoving his large body aside, the droid reached underneath the work table he had been slumped against and found what it was looking for. Pressing a switch, a panel in the floor hissed open, revealing a flight of stairs that led downward.
Due to its mechanical nature, the N5 sentry droid was not capable of feeling emotion. The consciousness of Mal Banvor that inhabited, however, felt a rush of excitement consume it as it directed the droid to step down the flight of stairs, descending into the planet itself….
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