Siv froze, holding her breath and sending her senses out into the night. Before she could ask the trooper on watch if he’d heard it, too, she was blinded by the brightest light she’d ever seen.
“Attack!” Siv shouted, going for her scythes as she struggled out from under Torben’s huge arm.
“General! Troopers!” the watchman shouted.
Everyone came awake at once, leaping to their feet with weapons at the ready. The troopers didn’t shoot, though, and the Scyre warriors couldn’t see what to attack. As they stood there, waiting, ready to fight, the fight never came. The camp was bathed in the harsh light, and as her eyes adjusted, Siv saw that they weren’t facing more skimmers or skinwolves. Not even humans.
Her scythes dropped to her sides as she realized she was looking at a stark white droid. It wasn’t like the one Brendol Hux had brought from his ship. This one was spindly and rough, a little shorter than Siv herself. It didn’t appear to be carrying any weapons—just a box emitting the blinding light.
“Our prayers have been answered,” it said in a monotone voice that still somehow managed to express excitement. “Praise to the creators! I do hope you’ll come with me. We’ve been waiting for you for such a long time.”
“General Hux, what do we do?” Phasma asked.
But when they looked to Brendol, he alone still lay on the sand. He was unconscious and unmoving, red with fever, and when Siv looked at his arm, it was too far gone. Even amputation wouldn’t help.
Brendol Hux was dying.
“I CAN’T HELP HIM,” SIV SAID. “The fever’s set in. It’s too late.”
“Oh, my,” the droid said. “That does look bad. Fortunately, our station’s medbay is well equipped, and we would be pleased to administer the proper antibiotics.”
Phasma approached the droid with her ax and spear ready. The stormtroopers flanked her with their blasters. “Who are you, and why are you here?” Phasma barked.
The droid cocked its head at her. “I am Teebeethree of the Con Star Mining Corporation. If your companion is currently dying, perhaps we should continue this discussion as we walk back to the station. It is not far.”
Siv checked Brendol’s pulse and found it uneven. “We need help,” she said. “Torben?”
The big warrior quickly maneuvered Brendol onto the sled and hefted the packs himself. But Phasma still faced off with the droid.
“Do you mean us harm?”
“Ha ha ha!” The droid’s laugh was monotone and strange. “It is against my protocols to harm sentient beings. Indeed, my only wish is to serve you. Praise to the creators. As you can see, I am not equipped with weapons of any sort, nor are my brethren.”
“Your brethren?”
“There are forty-seven droids currently functional at Terpsichore Station. I am a protocol droid, programmed to aid the human workforce with languages, statistics, strategies, and basic necessities. Please do follow me.”
No one agreed, and yet the droid turned and shuffled away from them, pointing his light out into the desert. Siv stood from helping arrange Brendol and noted that the droid was walking in its own footsteps, a trail that went over the next dune.
Phasma knelt beside Brendol, looked at his wound, and hissed through her teeth. “You’re right. It’s too far gone.”
“He must be saved,” one of the stormtroopers said. “No matter the cost.”
“Do you trust this droid?” Phasma asked him.
He shrugged. “Looks like I don’t have a choice.”
Hefting his pack, he followed the droid. The other two stormtroopers fell in behind him. Siv and the Scyre warriors looked to Phasma.
“Brendol is our only hope. We don’t have a choice, either.”
Phasma took up her pack and hurried after the troopers, and Torben doggedly followed her, towing Brendol behind him. The droid lit the way. Siv felt as if she were still half asleep, dragging her boots through the sand and gritting her teeth against the nighttime cold. No one spoke, and Siv kept close to Brendol even though his wound was beyond her meager skills as a healer.
Dawn was just beginning to light the sky when the droid stopped before an especially steep dune. His trail had long ago been covered by the shifting sands, but he seemed to know exactly where he was going. Although she didn’t see any gender characteristics in his physicality, something about the droid’s voice and gait struck her as masculine, and so she thought of TB-3 as a him.
“Oh, goodness. The winds are so brutal. One moment.”
The Scyre warriors shared a look of suspicion as the droid dug around in the dune.
“Ah, here it is.”
The wall of sand shuddered, and a layer of gray fell away to reveal an unnatural opening. I know what a door is, of course, but Siv had never seen anything like it. She described it as if the world as she knew it had opened up to reveal a strange mechanical heart. Inside, the gray sand met a smooth white floor with matching walls and a ceiling covered in lights.
“Welcome to Terpsichore Station, the prime mining facility of the Con Star Mining Corporation on Parnassos,” TB-3 said proudly. “Please enter so I can shut the door and keep too much sand from blowing in. We can’t have the mouse droids getting fussy.” As if on cue, a tiny black droid rolled in from somewhere and started busily sucking up the sand that was beginning to swirl down the clean hallway.
Although Phasma usually took the first steps in any engagement, this time she looked to the troopers. Even Phasma was intimidated by entering a building for the first time, when the Nautilus had been the only enclosed space she’d ever known. The troopers walked inside and moved a little farther down the hallway as if everything was utterly normal, so Phasma followed them, but delicately, as if she expected the floor to collapse underneath her worn boots. Once she had crossed the threshold, she motioned for her people to join her, and Siv stepped onto the smooth floor, trailed by Gosta and Torben pulling Brendol behind him. As soon as they were all inside, the droid pressed a button, and the door slid closed.
In that moment, a great sense of terror washed over Siv. She was enclosed, utterly unable to see the sky. Even in the Nautilus, they had a skylight. But here, everything was unnatural and nothing familiar. She wanted to hunch down on the ground, and she felt as if the building might fall on her at any moment and crush her. Judging by Torben’s unsmiling face and Gosta’s shifting eyes, Siv wasn’t alone.
“This way to the medbay,” TB-3 said, leading them down the hall.
They followed, and Siv marveled at the things she saw in the station. There were windows in the walls covered with clear panes to show wonders of the past world that Siv had never witnessed in their entirety. She was a little familiar with antiquities, but she’d never seen an intact table and chairs, much less a computer bank or collection of factory machines. In some rooms, droids stopped to watch them go by, and Siv felt strange, to be stared at by machines with eyes. The hallway twisted and turned, and sometimes TB-3 would push another button to open a new door. Eventually, he led them into an open room filled with machinery.
Three droids waited beside a metal platform, all bulkier than TB-3.
“Please place the patient on the bed,” one said, holding out an arm. “Praise to the creators.”
Torben looked to the troopers, and one of them gave him a nod. The big warrior took Brendol in his arms like a baby and carefully laid him on the bed, arranging his arms and legs so that his body was contained. Stepping back beside Siv, Torben murmured, “I’ve never felt a fever so hot. He’s as good as gone.”
The droids immediately began performing actions that Siv didn’t understand, scanning Brendol and injecting him with fluids.
“Now that your companion is being treated, please come with me to discuss payment options,” TB-3 said. One of the stormtroopers groaned, but Siv didn’t yet understand what was happening.
“I should stay with him,” she said.
“One of us should,” the female trooper shot back.
TB-3 held
out his arms to herd them out of the room. “Please allow the med droids to perform their function. Your companion has a seventy-two percent chance of survival at the moment, but any stress or unfamiliar pathogens could lower his odds. We’ll be just down the hall.”
The droid led them into a room dominated by a long table with several chairs.
“Please have a seat, and I will return with the datawork. Perhaps you would like some refreshments?”
“This is confusing,” Torben said. “Can I kill it?”
Before Phasma could answer, TB-3 hurried from the room, closing the door behind him.
“Droids,” one of the troopers muttered. “They can get strange if they’re not properly calibrated. This one seems a bit eccentric.”
“And why haven’t we seen any people?” another trooper said. “Something’s wrong here.”
The door slid open to reveal another droid, this one squat and rolling, carrying a tray loaded with drinks and food. Siv and the Scyre folk hesitated, but the troopers took off their helmets and began eating and drinking. Phasma took a tentative sip of a drink, and Siv was glad enough to follow her leader’s example. The water was plentiful and cool, and the food was strange, smooth and sweet, and she wanted to go on eating it forever.
“Are we sure this is safe?” Phasma asked, holding up a piece of foodstuff.
“Look at it this way,” a trooper said. “If these droids wanted us dead, they could’ve killed us in the desert. They could’ve gassed us in this compound. Maybe Teebeethree doesn’t have weapons, but there are more of them here than there are of us. Whoever’s running this place must want us alive or else we wouldn’t be.” And then he went back to eating.
When the food was gone, TB-3 reappeared carrying a working datapad. He stood at the head of the table and pointed out numbers that flashed on the lit screen. “Con Star Mining Corporation is pleased to report that your companion is alive, and his infection is under control. Our protocols suggest he remain here, resting and under care in the medbay, for at least two days. How would you care to reimburse the Con Star Mining Corporation for this medical care?”
“Reimburse?” Phasma asked.
“He wants creds,” a trooper said. “Payment. Nothing is free.”
“Correct. Here is the bill.”
TB-3 slid the datapad to the trooper, and Phasma stood to look over his shoulder. From where she sat, Siv could only see endless lists of symbols that made no sense.
The trooper barked a laugh and carelessly tossed the datapad back. “We don’t have creds. Maybe you could send a bill to the First Order, but we’re just soldiers. Not accountants.”
The droid’s head drooped as if he were disappointed to hear this. “Unfortunately, we are temporarily unable to transmit data offplanet. If your companion wishes to leave, either the bill must be paid, or your group can accept positions with Con Star Mining Corporation as laborers. With a sixty-day plan, you can work off this debt while enjoying comfortable accommodations and employee benefits. Praise to the creators.”
“What does this mean?” Phasma asked the trooper beside her.
“To be blunt, either we take jobs to pay them off, or Brendol dies.”
“But we don’t have sixty days. We must get to the ship.”
The trooper looked up at TB-3. “Can we have a few moments?”
The droid inclined his head and said, “Of course. I will return shortly,” before disappearing out the door and closing it behind him.
“Can we fight our way out?” Phasma asked, and the trooper motioned her close.
“Keep it down. They might have listening devices. As it is, we don’t know who’s running this place or where the main control room is, so chances are we wouldn’t be able to get Brendol and escape before they took action against us.”
Phasma considered it. “So we need Brendol whole, and we need to know more. We should accept these positions, gather the information we need, and escape.”
The trooper shrugged. “It’s our only option, really. But there are advantages. They might have vehicles we could use to get to the ship faster. And the general will know what to do, when he’s awake again. He’s a master tactician.”
TB-3 had left the datapad on the table, and Phasma pulled it over and experimented with it, dragging her finger here and pressing there. Her eyes took on a gleam of fascination, and Siv realized she’d never seen Phasma this interested in anything. Phasma looked at everything as a tool, but she looked at the datapad almost as if it were holy.
“Show me how this works,” she said, and the trooper took it and started pressing buttons.
The droid returned and fussily reclaimed the datapad. “Have you made your decision?” he asked.
“We’ll accept your offer,” Phasma said. The stormtroopers looked at one another, but no one spoke against her.
“Praise to the creators! We are all so very pleased. Let us begin immediately.” The droid took their fingerprints and said many things that Siv didn’t understand, and then he announced them to be Con Star Mining Corporation employees.
“And now it’s time for a brief orientation disk,” he said. The lights went down, but not so much that Siv panicked, and a brightly lit moving picture appeared on the smooth white wall, along with the patter of a cheerful woman’s voice.
“Welcome to Con Star Mining Corporation. We’re glad you’ve decided to join us on beautiful Parnassos, where you’ll be part of a unique community of pioneers on this exclusive planet!” The image panned out from a large white box, making Siv dizzy, and the box grew tiny, surrounded by mountains and green and then oceans of crystal blue. “Parnassos is rich with metals and minerals, and we’ve specially designed your habitat to bring familiar comfort to your species.” The image zoomed back in and moved inside the flat thing, the scene changing so quickly that Siv felt her stomach swoop. She recognized the hallway that had led into this very room.
“You’ll be living in Terpsichore Station, situated in a rich valley replete with nature’s bounty. It’s just a short tram ride to the Siren Sea for a day at the beach.” The image showed something shiny and silver zipping along two tracks, cutting through the green. Then a man, a woman, and two children stepped out and waved their arms. The image changed, and the family smiled by the ocean. But it wasn’t the dark, forbidding, cold ocean that lapped at the rock walls of the Scyre and teemed with hungry beasts. This water was light blue and welcoming with a sandy bottom, and the children ran willingly into it, splashing around and laughing.
“This is insane,” Siv muttered to Phasma.
“This is what Parnassos might have been, over a hundred years ago.” Phasma snorted, watching the always smiling people on the green lawn throw a red ball for a four-legged animal with a floppy tongue to chase. “Our ancestors were strange. Strange, and soft.”
The images and booming voice went on and on. Siv learned that the flat thing was a building and the zipping silver thing was a tram. She saw labs, factories, mines, and endless rows of tidy homes with every sort of peculiar comfort provided by machines that were now just bundles of rust stowed in the Nautilus. She learned that there had once been dozens of separate communities on Parnassos, each with its own station and purpose. And she discovered that once, long ago, this sandy desert had been a fertile green valley full of plants, animals, and eerily happy human beings, all brought to the lush planet to work for Con Star.
“And so we welcome you to Terpsichore Station, where your today protects our tomorrow,” the voice boomed. “We’re certain you’ll be very happy here.”
The screen went white, and the light blinked out, leaving them in momentary darkness.
“Do you think,” Gosta said, sounding awed, “that maybe the Scyre was named for the Siren Sea?”
“And why do they keep saying ‘praise to the creators.’ Do they really love whoever made them?” Torben asked.
A trooper shook his head. “I told you. Droids get strange when they’re not kept properly.”
&
nbsp; “It doesn’t matter,” Phasma said firmly. “The past is dead and the droids aren’t our business. Our only aim is to get out of here and finish the mission before someone else can.”
The lights came back up, and a new droid strode into view. While TB-3 looked harmless, meek, and subservient, this new droid reminded Siv of a tool, of something blunt made only to do work.
“Hello and welcome to Con Star Mining Corporation. Praise to the creators. I am Deefourseventhree, and I will assign your tasks. Normally, you would be given a barrage of tests to assign you to the correct position for your abilities, but time is of the essence and quotas are overdue, so you will all be working in the mine. I do hope you find this acceptable?”
“We’re not miners,” one of the troopers barked. “We demand to speak to a supervisor.”
D473 clasped his metal hands, his head cocked in an apologetic sort of way. “I’m so sorry, worker, but we are very shorthanded right now. The supervisor is currently unavailable. It is hoped that reinforcements from the main office will be sent shortly, praise to the creators. Con Star Mining Corporation regrets this inconvenience. Now please enjoy this mining orientation disk. Praise to the creators.”
The droid exited, the room went dark again, and a new image appeared on the screen. Instead of pretty pictures of the past, this disk informed Siv of how mining was performed and what tasks would be required of them. She learned about proper safety procedures, what to do in case of a cave-in, and to always wear a hard hat and carry her Con Star datapad, which would warn her of gas leaks and let her know when rest breaks were allowed. The people on the white wall smiled as they did their work in long tunnels that resembled the Nautilus but didn’t contain the paintings done in blood, or the collections of carvings and ritual objects.
“They’re going to use us to do this work?” Gosta asked.