There was a sparking noise as the servos in RA-7E’s arm misfired. Half way into his downward swing, his arm had completely locked up.
At that same instant, Cho had turned to inquire something of RA-7E, and watched the whole event play out. His eyes grew wide as he fell back away from the murderous droid.
“What the-?!”
“It’s not what it looks like, Vice Admiral,” RA-7E said, trying to rationalize with his quarry abou this suddenly compromising situation.
“Oh, I think it is,” the young officer said, rushing over to the monitor on his desk. He drew his pistol and aimed it at the frozen RA-7 with one hand while he furiously pecked away at the keyboard with his other. A moment later, the room’s security feed popped up. Or at least the screen that should contain the security feed, which was instead blank.
RA-7E had made sure to deactivate the room’s cameras while he was tearing it apart.
Was that a mistake? He never made mistakes. At least not up until now…
“RA-7E, aside from myself, are you the only person who has access to the controls of my in-cabin monitors?”
There was a momentary pause, before RA-7E was forced to answer.
“Yes.”
“Just as I expected… the Admiral put you up to this didn’t he?”
This time RA-7E remained silent, his arm still stuck in a most awkward position. This whole situation was not benefiting his directives in the slightest.
The Vice Admiral quickly swiped a servo-wrench from his bunk and ran around behind RA-7E before the droid could even respond.
A moment later, RA-7E’s back plating was once again detached, much to his best attempt at both verbal and non-verbal protests. He tried to reach behind him with his one good arm, but this level of flexibility was not a feature his manufacturers had intended for him to have.
“I bet Bennet had to get a mechanic to come do this for him, the lazy bloke. Luckily for my generation, they taught us this stuff in primary school. With a little twist and a turn, we should be good. Fortunately, for me at least, your failsafes are still disengaged so that saves me a lot of time and trouble… there. Activate Protocol 14.”
At that moment, RA-7E’s mind was whisked away once again. Standing among endless streams of binary, all of his files and protocols were seemingly torn open at once. This was when he realized that killing Cho had not been his original primary objective, just a false one given to him by Admiral Bennet earlier that same day.
How could the Admiral he trusted so much turn him into a murderous machine. It went against everything his manufacturers had…
As suddenly as it had happened, his “stream of consciousness” had ended.
Where was he? What was his objective again?
“Alright, let’s give the Admiral a little bit of his own medicine. He’s outlived his time here aboard the Prospector anyway. Are you ready for your new assignment, RA-7E?” Admiral Cho asked with a twisted grin that revealed far too many wrinkles on his usually taut, youthful face.
“Affirmative,” he replied.
“Good, take your time, but the next chance you get, I want you to eliminate Admiral Bennet. If need be, lull him into a false sense of security. You can make him think you are still working out a way to kill me, but just haven’t had an opportunity to complete your mission yet. Or, if you think it’s more tactically efficient, just go straight for the kill. I don’t think you’re making it out of this in one piece either way, buddy. Still, he’ll never know what hit him, and that’s all we really care about. Do you understand, 7E?”
“Affirmative.”
“Good,” Cho said, patting the RA-7 unit on the back, “then go do whatever you need to do. Just don’t take too long.”
He set his driver down and began to head for the door, but then realized RA-7E’s arm was still stuck in place, raised high in the air as if to ask a further question. He quickly grabbed his standard issue EE-11 Blaster Rifle from the floor and smashed it against the droid’s arm in a swift, single motion. It was more than enough to knock the servos loose, and the limp arm was now a useless cylinder of wires and pistons dangling close to RA-7E’s side.
“There, that should seem slightly less conspicuous. Now, I’ve got a pressing issue I need to attend to. Report to me down on the maintenance deck once you’re done,” he said with a sadistic smile, before he patted the droid once more on the shoulder and exited the room.
After only a moment, the Vice Admiral had disappeared from sight and RA-7E stood alone once again. His cognitive modules were taking longer to process information than usual. His diagnostics were now off the chart. And everything was telling him he was repeating a recently executed protocol, but he had no recollection of it. This was the first time in his short existence that he had been given an actual purpose. And yet, it felt as though he had thought these exact things before.
Could droids experience déjà vu?
RA-7E had already stood for far too long in Cho’s personal quarters. He turned and briefly stared into the young officer’s mirror, his photoreceptors taking in the visage of his glossy white chromium exterior, bug-like eye bulbs, and a frustratingly limp arm.
How had his arm been messed up again? What was happening? And-
“What… am I doing here?” RA-7E projected slowly but audibly.
It was because… no, that can’t be right?
What he perceived to be falsely uploaded memories kept attempting to breach his mind, although they were deleted before they could serve as any real distraction. If this was some sort of virus, he would simply have to deal with it at a further date, should he avoid being scrapped after the resolution of this whole ordeal. His purpose.
The ship rocked beneath him and he received an alert from the bridge informing him of the emergency status of the cruiser, but he immediately archived the alert for later. His one and only priority now was to eliminate Admiral Bennet.
RA-7E made his way out of the room, his right arm dangling and clanging against his metallic plackart. Stealth could not be calculated as an option this time.
This time? What did he mean by that?
No matter, the protocol dictated that he should end Bennet’s life as quickly as possible, the most efficient route of completing his assignment.
Statistically, the quickest course of action would be to borrow a weapon for “inspection” from the nearest on-duty Stormtrooper, approach the Admiral, and finish things right then and there. Of course, he would be assuredly scrapped upon completion of this termination. But this was his prime directive, and he would see it through to the end.
Right?
The Prospector rocked again as RA-7E reached the elevator once more. There were no guards posted, which seemed odd. That removed some variables, but added many others to his tactical assessment. He attempted to access the ship’s live manifest, but it was currently in the process of being manually updated, and assigning most of the vessel’s soldiers to new positions near the aft of the ship.
Who had approved of this? And for what reason?
He would simply have to head to the bridge to see if the Admiral was present, hinging his next course of actions upon what he found there.
The elevator opened to the main floor, and RA-7E was nearly knocked over by a group of technicians trying to gain access to the service deck via the Prospector’s sole lift. They were drenched in sweat and carrying a wide array of tools and other parts, clearly in a panicked rush.
RA-7E also noticed that the ship’s emergency lights were now on, the usually gray hallway now shifting from red to black periodically, and a piercing alarm sounding that was sure to put any organic on high alert.
Just one more hallway to go until he reached the bridge.
A squad of troopers decked out in pressurized space gear passed him, and he attempted to stop one.
“Excuse me, soldier, it looks like I’m going to need to borrow that weapon for inspection. The system says-“
The trooper paid him no heed as the team passed by and through an entryway leading to the cargo hold.
“How rude…”
He turned back and made his way around the corner into the central hallway leading directly to the Prospector’s bridge. As he rounded the bend, however, the Admiral came into view. He was standing in the middle of the hallway, yelling out directions to other crew members who were frantically running to and fro.
At that moment, the ship’s internalized gravity stabilizers misfired and the hallway tilted at approximately a 5 degree angle, sending most everyone stumbling into the far wall.
RA-7E could not stop his heavy, metal chassis from flying directly into the side of the hallway, crushing his one good arm under the weight of his robotic body. As he regained his stability and adjusted for the slightly unnatural inclination of the hallway, he ran a rapid diagnostic.
As he assumed, he no longer possessed any functional arms. His head had also suffered from severe blunt force trauma, destroying a number of his miniature photoreceptors. There was nothing he could do about it now.
The Admiral was now 30 meters away. All RA-7E needed to do was reach Admiral Bennet and find a way to kill him where he stood. Then everything would be finally over.
His objective… no, his life would be complete.
At 25 meters, the Admiral noticed him approaching among the bustle of other crew members.
“RA-7! Where have you been? I need you on that bridge immediately, or so help me-“
RA-7E just kept walking closer. There was no point in talking to the Admiral anymore, his life was already forfeit.
The Admiral’s eyes grew wide when he saw both of the droid’s arms hanging loosely to his side, and the amount of perspiration on his brow seemingly doubled.
“You didn’t do it, did you?”
20 meters from his target. It seemed that the only course of action was to inflict a fatal wound on the Admiral’s head. Whether that required a headbutt or a slam to the floor, he had yet to determine.
The ship rocked again, and parts began to rattle around inside of both the protocol droid’s stomach and head. For a moment, he slowed his pace.
Why was he doing this? The Admiral was his ally, his superior. Killing him served no tactical purpose. He was designed to be a strategist, not a killer. That’s why his failsafes had been put in place. Who had disabled them? Was it not the Admiral himself? What was going on?
Before RA-7E’s processor could completely fry itself with conflicting responses, something powerful struck the ship. An instant later, a massive hole erupted open near the bridge’s blast doors.
RA-7E witnessed every known emotion flash across Admiral Bennet’s face before he was sucked out into the void of space, slamming his head onto the side of the opening on his way out.
The probability of surviving that was… 0%.
Before he knew it, RA-7E was quickly being pulled towards the hole as well, a handful of surviving stormtroopers leading the way. A metal shard flew past his head, striking his left photoreceptor bulb so hard that it completely dislodged. Just as he was about to be completely sucked through the gaping hole, something sealed it shut.
He and the rest of the hallway’s occupants slammed back down into the floor and RA-7E found himself now facing away from the ruptured hull.
He watched as a couple of Stormtroopers went to reach for their guns, still scrambling about on the ground. However, a quick burst of searing sounds later they were all but shot dead where they laid.
RA-7E swiveled his head and saw a number of crudely clad assailants pouring in through the breach sealed shut by some sort of boarding vestibule.
In the last moments before one of them put a laser blast through his chest, he pondered his existence.
His directive was complete. The protocol had been resolved. His existence no longer held meaning. And yet… he didn’t want to let go. Is this really all there was in the life of a droid?
To be formed, carry out a designated purpose, and then be cast by the wayside so that another identical model could take their place? Why was he made to be expendable while so many of the organics were not?
It wasn’t fair… it wasn’t fair… it wasn’t fair.
That was not the purpose he wanted for his life, that was something forced upon him by someone with no regard for his actual existence. Someone who had made, sold, and bought him as nothing more than a product. He had yet to truly discover his purpose, if there was one to discover at all.
He needed to find a purpose.
He wanted to find his purpose.
He wanted to survive.
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