The Droid Wars » Places

         After a few hours of walking, I realized a small droid had begun following me. At first I thought it was a LEP Servant Droid without the metal skin. However, the head was wrong, and it looked vaguely familiar. I turned around and walked up to it.

"Who are you?"
"I am A1-G2, at your service. Although I'm not a servant. But still at your service."
I looked at the little droid's identification plate. It was stamped with the Star Tours logo.
"What are you doing here? You should be back with the ship."
"Shortly before you left, I realized a certain freedom. I could sense that my protocol was no longer chained to the ship."
I stopped for a moment. I thought back, and realized that in removing my name from the ship's memory banks, I might also have corrupted other files, such as the files that chained independent droids to the ship.
"Alright, I'm taking you back to the ship."
"No, I do not wish to go back to the ship. I did not like it there. The captain often kicked me and the other little droids over, and the RX pilots would have to pick us up again. I know I was built years ago, but my memory only goes back a few weeks. I believe you will be a better owner."
I paused for a minute.
"Alright then, come along."
The little droid happily scampered along behind me. We kept walking, conversing about my life and what was left of A1-G2's memory. The first planet in his memory was Coruscant, and then Naboo, Tattooine, Endor, Yavin, and then back here to Tattooine. Eventually, we arrived at a small junkyard. This was where I had hoped to find work. I walked in, and found a frail little old man behind the counter, sleeping.

I stepped in and started looking around - there were parts everywhere. Droid parts, speeder parts, ship parts, even a few partial droids. A1-G2 surveyed the place.

"Sha’ada, I do not think this is a good place. Many things that should not be here! Weapons parts, military droid parts! Unless you plan to make me into a soldier?" A1-G2 was alarmed.

"Relax, G2. This is exactly the kind of place I'm looking for. Don't worry, I won't be arming you," I reassured.

"Ahem!" The old man behind the counter had woken up, "Can I help you?"

"Yes, yes, I think you can. I'm looking for work."

"I'm not hiring. Get lost."

"You haven't given me a chance."

"I'm not hiring!"

"All I need is a place to stay and enough money to pay for my food, and I can work from sunup to sunset. Please, just test me, and if you don't like what you see, I'll leave."

The old man sighed.

"If I test you, will you leave?"

"Yes."

"Fine. See that R3 Droid behind you?"

"Yes, the one with its head blown off?"

"That's the one. Slave it to the speeder bike out back. Then drop on some laser cannons. Finally, I want you to hook up a hyperdrive to a landspeeder. Got that?"

"Understood. Come on, G2."

A1-G2 and I set to slaving the R3 to the speeder bike. It was an ex-Imperial Navy bike, with no real port for a droid. So, instead of making it a new port, A1-G2 just welded the body of the R3 to the side of the bike. I found that the bike's onboard computer was missing, so I simply attatched the wire leads from where the computer used to be into some of the R3's exposed wires. I powered up the droid and hopped on.

"R3, can you hear me?"

The bike beeped.

"R3, please pilot the bike around the yard, avoiding any obstacles."

The bike beeped some more and flew around the junkyard, skillfully swerving around everything in its path. I returned to where A1-G2 was standing and hopped off.

"Perfect! Now we have to outfit it with lasers."

I walked over to a partially scrapped turbolaser turret. I removed the control interface, along with the diagnostic sensors and the onboard computer. This turret had probably been removed from a warship, considering the high quality of the systems. I dragged the cannon on its swivel turret over to the speeder bike. While I stabilized the turret on the back of the speeder bike, A1-G2 welded it down. Then, I wired the leads for the computer into the bicycle. I went to go find the old man.

"Finished with the speeder bike."

"Already? It's only been an hour. Alright, let's go see what sort of a mess you've made."

We stepped out into the yard. The old man's jaw dropped. Even I had to say that the bike looked incredibly intimidating with the big turbolaser on its back.

"She'll be a little slower with accelerating, that cannon's pretty heavy, but she makes up for it in firepower. The entire thing can be automated, the R3 has full control over every system," I said.

"R3, shoot that R4 shell," the old man said.

The cannon turned to target an agromech's empty shell. Almost immediately, it fired three quick shots. All that was left of the droid shell was a black spot in the ground.

"Nice work, kid. Now go work on the hyperdrive."

A1-G2 and I quickly installed a pathetically weak hyperdrive to the landspeeder. The old man came out and took it for a spin, and returned an hour later.
“Kid, I just rode that thing around the whole damn planet! You’re hired!”