RZ-7 Shot

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“Without him,” RZ-7 said curiously. “That would never happen. I am devoted to my master and would never leave him or—”

But before he could finish, the officer unholstered his blaster, clarifying what he meant.

“Oh,” the droid emitted. “Now I understand.”

Karr tried to explain that there was a misunderstanding. “I’m telling you, I don’t know anything about Skywalker’s whereabouts. Or about any map. I only recently even heard of him!”

The officer slowly raised his arm and pointed the blaster at Arzee. Karr’s words quickened. “I’m telling you the truth! I’ve told you everything I know. There’s no reason to shoot Arzee.”

RZ-7 interjected on his own behalf: “If I may, I can vouch for Master Karr. He is an honorable—”

But when the officer didn’t lower his arm, Karr resorted to an old tactic. “Wait!” he yelled. “Don’t do it! I have a condition. I get these headaches, and Arzee is the only medical droid who has the knowledge and the expertise to help me. Please! I need him.”

The officer paused, finally lowering his arm. “I’m sorry to hear that, son. Because we both know he isn’t really a medical droid. And that means you’re a liar.”

The blast that hit RZ-7 sent him across the room, separating his arm from his body. “Arzee!” Karr shrieked. Without a second thought for himself, he leapt out of his chair and dropped to his knees at RZ-7’s side. “Why did you—How did you…know?”

The officer stood up from his chair. “We know a lot of things, kid.”

He turned his datapad around and pushed it across the table. With a couple of taps on the screen, the officer brought up a holo—and it began to play.

[...]

The officer exhaled heavily through his nose. “Let’s get out of here,” he said to the stormtrooper.

The trooper used his blaster to gesture over to Karr. “What about him?”

“Leave him. He’s not worth anything.”

As the intimidating men left the ship, Karr slumped the rest of the way to the floor. All this commotion and still nobody cared about the Avadora. He might as well take it for good, fly to the other end of the galaxy and keep going. After all, what was left for him at home?

Karr tried to swallow, but his mouth was very dry. Maize had ratted him out to the First Order!

His stomach felt hot and his eyes felt hot and his face felt hot. He was embarrassed and angry. It’d been stupid, hadn’t it? Stupid to think that the cool new girl at school was really his friend, and that she really believed in him and his mission.

He wanted to curl up into a ball and die, but he didn’t have the luxury of that option. He had to attend to his droid.

“Arzee, you’re still in there?”

“Nowhere else to be, sir,” he replied, a whisper of static breaking up the words.

“You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay,” Karr insisted to himself as much as to the droid. “I can fix this.”

“Not to doubt you, sir, but the odds of fixing me with what you find on this ship are approximately two thousand eight hundred twenty to one. In fact, it’s the first time I can say with complete conviction that I’d stake my medical reputation on it.”

Karr gave a weak laugh, more for the droid’s benefit than his own. “Arzee, I promise you’re going to be okay, but I want you to know something.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re my best friend.”

If droids could smile RZ-7 would have, but instead his eyes just flickered on and off as if he was pleasantly taken aback by the announcement. At least, that was what Karr chose to believe. But he would not get the chance to confirm it.

The floor was covered with parts of his friend, and he knew that his only hope of rebuilding him was to collect them all. He was so overcome with emotion, however, that when he reached out to grab part of the droid’s casings, he forgot he wasn’t wearing his gloves.

A vision, sharp and loud, went pealing around in the space between his ears. He heard nothing else. He saw nothing else. Not RZ-7 or the interior of the Avadora, clean and bright and sterile.

He saw his parents. At home. RZ-7 was powered down and sitting in a corner like a discarded toy, and his parents were talking with the casually anxious ease of people who are worried about many things—but not being overheard.

His mother was at her sewing machine, which had been hauled out to the kitchen table for a large piece of work. She shook her head. “One day, he’s bound to find out. If not from us, from someone else. Maybe we should just tell him.”

“No,” his father replied. “It’ll only fuel his obsession.”

His mother didn’t quite sound cold, but she sounded tired when she said, “It’s still our job to protect him.”

“And that’s exactly what we’re doing.”

The vision swam, and Karr missed a few words, but he caught the last bit. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“True,” his mother responded. “But it might just drive him mad.”

The edges of the vision fluttered and melted, and Karr felt many things all at once. First he felt stupid. It had never dawned on him to touch RZ-7, because they were practically inseparable. What the droid saw, Karr saw, and what they didn’t observe together they shared with each other. It hadn’t even crossed his mind that RZ-7 could witness something without noticing it. Second he felt confused. What were his parents talking about exactly? What would drive him mad? Did he have a tumor? But most important, he felt angry—angry that he was being lied to about…something. Something big. And he intended to find out what.

Karr’s stomach was in knots, but his eyes became steely as he stared at the empty pilot seat. He had learned a lot in the past few days, but had he learned enough to pilot the ship home by himself? He sat in the chair and buckled himself in.

Hell, yeah, he thought. In fact, there were a number of things he was about to do that he had never done before.


- Force Collector, Chapter 18


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The trade school was a long way away from his parents, who barely knew how to speak to him anymore. It was a long way away from Maize, too, and he never wanted to see her again after what she’d told the First Order.

Karr sat on his bed and tinkered with the still lifeless body of RZ-7. The droid was almost back to his old self, courtesy of a new set of circuitry and a plate that didn’t match the rest of his finish but held all his electronic guts securely where they belonged.

He was just about to switch the droid on when he heard a scratching sound at the window. He didn’t look to see what was making it, although he had his suspicions.

[...]

She waited another minute or two to see if he’d change his mind. When he didn’t, she gave him one last pat—a little harder than necessary, in Karr’s opinion—and left the way she’d come in.

He went back to working on RZ-7. Despite the complicated mechanics required to bring droids to life, he found their relationships the most simple. He meant it when he told RZ-7 that he was his best friend, and he smiled at the thought as he switched the droid’s power back on.

“And you are mine, sir,” the droid said, responding to the last thing he’d heard before losing power days earlier.

Karr laughed for the first time in a while. “Good to have you back, pal.”


- Force Collector, Chapter 19


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