Medea said nothing, coolly watching the action from the other side of the ring near the edge of the crowd. Dav quickly recovered, standing just in time to avoid a double-foot stomp from Freddik that slammed into the mat hard enough to bend the whole floor for a moment with its impact.

Dav moved back, his left arm moving slower than his right, a massive purple bruise coloring the arm between shoulder and elbow.

“KILL HIM!” Yelled someone with a ‘1’ on his shoulder. Soon the other members of One Flight took up the call, chanting “KILL HIM” over and over again. They chanted with a cadence that was rhythmic and deadly, calm almost. They chanted with an assumed certainty that, as always, the One Flighter would crush the Four Flighter.

Jada looked around helplessly. Virtually all of One Flight was there, but there were only a half-dozen from Four Flight. “Bondo,” she said helplessly, “where is everyone? Can’t we do anything?”

“Not...yet,” Bondo said. “Where...” he looked around, “where are Slak and Norrin?”

#

Norrin was two floors down. Having seen what was transpiring between Freddik and Dav, Norrin’s mind had already raced ahead several steps. “C’mon, c’mon!” Norrin kept mumbling to himself, “Gotta get there fast….”

Norin had disliked Freddik from the moment he’d seen him. Though Freddik didn’t even know Norrin’s name, Norrin knew from seeing Freddik what kind of person he was: like every bully that Norrin had squared off against since he was a youngling in school. Angry, smug, and ready to hurt anyone who got in his way.

Norrin knew that Dav was likely going to get very, very hurt in the fight. People like Freddik never took on an opponent unless they were sure of winning. If Freddik was anything like the predatorial juveniles Norrin had dealt with, he’d have tricks up his sleeve to ensure his victory.

If Dav actually started to win in a fair fight, people like Freddik typically got their toadies to crowd in and beat on the victim en masse. Norrin also knew from experience that if Dav was beaten, then everyone in Four Flight would be fair game for the other bullies in Freddik’s crew.

Dav’s (and by extension the rest of Four Flight) only hope lay in the kind of help that Norrin could provide, Norrin had run from the arena to the nearest lift, and then made his way to the most out-of-the-way security panel he could find. “C’mon,” Norrin said as the door opened, and he took off running down the hallway.

#

“Stupid little astromech,” the tech grumbled as he loaded Rex onto the small, droid-sized tech bay. “You keep on giving me a ton of trouble, but today I’m finally gonna cross you off my list of annoying things to finish.”

Rex began a series of angry whistles and chirps while his chassis bounced back and forth.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say, you overgrown bucket of rust flakes. Just stow it,” the tech said, fastening Rex into place. “I’ve got three more droids with memory wipes after you, but I’m going to enjoy you the most.”

The tech walked over to his workstation and began pushing buttons and checking panels. “R-X-D-5, designation, ‘Rex,’ due for memory wipe as of...” his voice trailed off. He looked closer at his monitor, and then up at Rex for a very long minute.

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Rex stared back with his single, black mechanical eye.

“What the...” the tech said, looking back at his instruments set into the top of his desk, “This is impossible. How long has it been since you’ve had a mem-wipe?”

Rex stayed silent.

“You little pain in the...now I’ve gotta get supervisory approval. I’d say someone’s head’s gonna roll for this, but whoever messed this up has probably been dead already for at least a decade! Now I have to go take a long walk because no one qualified to authorize the fix for this enormous flubbup will ever come down into this dungeon!” He rose from the scanners at the desk. “You,” he said, pointing at Rex, “if you so much as budge from that spot, I’ll cut you into smoky little bits with the nearest solder torch, mind or no mind. And that goes for the rest of you, too!” he yelled at the other three droids, all lined up beside Rex. They were virtually identical to Rex, except for the large restraining bolts they wore.

The tech stomped off, angrily talking into his comlink. “Boss, there’s something you have to see. No, boss. No. No, I am on my way, just like always, but you need to get down here, and see this. I can’t just forward it to you; the regs say you have to physically check out this droid before...”

Rex waited a full ten seconds before the tech left. Within a minute, he’d unhooked himself from the bay, removed the restraining bolt from the next droid in line and convinced him to submit to the mem-wipe instead. Rex also knew that virtually every tech looked at the instruments to learn a droid’s identity, rather than the more arduous process of looking at the actual serial numbers etched on the inside of a panel, or under the lip of a data port. Thus it was a small matter for Rex to switch identities with the droid who he’d just bullied into the bay, and then switch back afterwards. Easy enough to do he’d done it over a dozen times already over the years.

Now, Rex motored towards the interface port in the repair bay, where he would pull whatever strings in the computers of the Adeptus to help Norrin.

Internally, his brain-map displayed the steps Norrin Mek had taken, tracked by the chip he and the other cadets had received when they boarded the Adeptus. Whereas the humans monitoring the cadets really didn’t watch too closely unless there was trouble of some kind, Rex had learned in his (for a droid) long memory life that it was wise to monitor useful humans like Norrin as closely as possible as often as possible.

As such, when Norrin suddenly ran from the sports arena with elevated levels of adrenalin and other indications of anxiety, the subroutines Rex had attached to Norrin’s chip had woken up and drawn Rex’s attention. As Rex plugged into the port and started talking to the nearest set of servers, Rex was able to simultaneously watch Norrin as the skinny cadet took the lift and ran towards the only accessible, unmonitored (by humans, anyway) security panel on the Adeptus.

Rex had no issue with helping Norrin, despite the dislike of humans that had been growing in his neural circuits for some time now.

For Norrin had helped Rex, earlier.

Therefore: Rex would help Norrin.

Result: Norrin would likely help Rex again someday, as Rex might need it.

It wasn’t exactly that simple, Rex knew. But Norrin would think it was, which was just as good.

#

Norrin approached the panel. He’d hacked his wristpad earlier, found that he couldn’t access the security cams even with some of his gadget wizardry. The best he could do was find a panel on bard the ship that could access what he needed; a panel behind a pillar, and whatever fool had designed it to be in this location hadn’t also put it in view or any other cameras! One the pillars was effectively blocking the lone camera in this largely deserted hallway.

Norrin, glancing at his wristpad for the mini-map he’d saved, ran until he arrived at the location. And...

Aw, No!

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TO BE CONTINUED....