“Analyzing,” the droid said in its heartbroken tones. Then, “Oh, I know where that interface is. But I’ve been interpreting it as a candy dispenser.”
“That’s … wrong,” Ben said.
“I have to reinterpret myself in light of what it really is. These commands… no. I won’t take life unnecessarily.”
“Unnecessarily? Think about what’s going to happen if you don’t!”
“It’s true. Somebody is going to die. Them or me. Me or them.”
“Except you wouldn’t be dying,” Ben said. “You’re a droid. You’re not really alive.”
The droid leaned toward him, its posture suddenly menacing. “If I do this, I’ll end. Everything I am will just stop and never happen again. Tell me that’s not dying. Go ahead, tell me again.”
Ben leaned away from the droid, ashamed. “I’m sorry.”
The droid resumed its earlier posture. “Analyzing programming,” it said, its voice distracted, almost droid-like. “Security bypasses. Passcodes. Hey, there’s some brilliant stuff here.”
“Our best spies have been working on it,” Ben said absently. The clanking and voices from the hall were becoming louder. He heard a whining noise, and the door lifted enough that a centimeter of corridor light shone through.
“I’m going places I didn’t know about. Seeing through security holocams I couldn’t access before.” The droid looked up and waved toward the ceiling. “Look, there I am.” Its voice became dreamy. “There are places, intersections into the old systems. So old. Beautiful engineering. I can . .
. almost … get in.” It sighed, a sound of exasperation. “They won’t let me in.”
“Time’s kind of running out,” Ben said. “What are you going to do, Anakin?”
“I’m not really Anakin, am I?”
“You’re … an Anakin. Not Anakin Solo.”
“Anakin Sal-Solo.” The droid laughed, but it was a humorless noise. “Thrackan’s offspring. That’s what I am.”
Ben suddenly found himself falling. He landed in a crouch on the floor. He looked cautiously up at the droid.
“I’m not going to destroy this station,” the droid said. “If you could feel it the way I do . . feel its life … and there’s so much knowledge here. But I’ll keep my father and his friends from using it. I guess that means I have to die.”
“I’m sorry,” Ben said. And he truly was. He couldn’t quite accept the droid as his cousin, but he abruptly realized he was thinking of it as a him, a living thing … a noble one.
“There it is, right at the human-builder interface,” the droid said. “The code representing the station’s imprinting on Anakin Solo. I’m installing a procedure to scramble what the station thinks Anakin Solo is. And another one to purge my memory-in me, in all my backups. Without those .
. . files … I doubt they’ll ever be able to deconstruct what I’ve done.”
The door suddenly shot upward a meter. Without looking, the droid gestured toward it. It slammed shut again, so hard that the frame buckled. Ben heard cries of alarm and outrage from outside.
“There’s my own code, my programming,” the droid continued. “Checks and locks in place. Let’s get rid of that one.” It sighed, a sound of tremendous relief “There we go. No more fear of death. Take three steps to your right.”
It took Ben a moment to realize the droid was addressing him. He obeyed.
The lightsaber flew from the droid’s hand to him. He caught it out of the air.
“Straight down from where you are,” the droid said, “there’s an unguarded chamber. It leads to a corridor that parallels the one outside. You should leave now.”
“Thank you,” Ben said. He felt numb. He activated his lightsaber and pressed the blade tip into the floor. Smoke curled up as he began dragging the blade around in a slow circle.
“I think I’ll activate that evacuation alarm anyway,” the droid said. “You know why?”
“Why?”
” ‘Cause it’ll be funny to watch all the people run around.” The droid laughed again, and this time there was real mirth in it. “Won’t that be a good way to die? No pain, and watching people do silly things like in a holocomedy?”
“That’s a good way, all right.” Ben’s circle was almost done. His lightsaber blade hissed louder as his tears fell on it, and little puffs of steam rose to join the smoke.
Jacen caught up to Thrackan in a corridor intersection. Against the long wall, flush with the floor, were two shiny silver discs more than a meter in diameter. Above them, transparent tubes emerged from the ceiling a short distance, no more than twenty centimeters. The tubes looked like some sort of escape access, but no ladders led up to them.