As always, thanks to LordGoldenArrow, Texas Fett, Mask and everyone else who has helped me figure out these characters and given me ideas for things to do to them. My characters might not always appreciate it, but I sure do. Thanks also go to Tim and Sue for helping me out with those pesky rookie mistakes.

Prologue

A series of beeps cut through Flight Officer Darin Stanic’s sound sleep. He blindly reached out to turn off his alarm, but his hand smacked prematurely into hard metal. He winced and sleepily forced his eyes open while his alarm squawked at him in annoyance.

As soon as he got an eyeful of the white and green R5-D4 droid beside him he realized what had happened. He looked around to confirm his suspicions: yes, he’d fallen asleep on the couch in the pilots’ lounge again, and that was his astromech beeping insistently at him, not his bedside alarm. Thumper rubbed his hand a bit. "Sorry, Botch," he said through a yawn. "What’s going on?"

Botch beeped anew at him, but Darin cut him off. "Wait, wait, wait. Hold up a second." The pilot reluctantly sat up, brushed his dark blond bangs aside, rubbed the sleep from his eyes and positioned himself to get a good view of Botch’s text readout. "Okay, go ahead."

Botch’s beeps, whistles and grunts translated themselves into Basic words on the readout, and Darin read them incredulously. "What? Are you sure?"

An affirmative, plaintive beep answered him. Darin sighed and rubbed his eyes again. "All right, I’ll see what’s up." He grabbed the datapad he had been reading from where it had fallen to the floor, and then he rose stiffly and walked out of the room with his astromech following.

For a brief moment, Darin second-guessed the wisdom of his decision not to memory-wipe Botch. He pushed the negative thoughts out of his mind, though, and reminded himself of all the positive reasons to keep the droid’s memory intact.

For starters, it seemed counterproductive to him and always had. Droids constantly accumulated new information on which they could act in the future, the electronic equivalent of humans learning from experience. Why take that benefit away?

Along those lines, the droid’s interaction with his X-wing improved. That could mean the difference between life and death in a dogfight.

Finally, Darin couldn’t help but anthropomorphize droids. He wasn’t sure why; it might have been something to do with his upbringing or maybe it was just a weird quirk of his, but for whatever reason he saw droids as individuals rather than as just collections of nuts and bolts. Taking away the memory of someone (or something) he saw as a friend seemed flat-out wrong.

But…he reconsidered fleetingly, memory-wipes also avert problems like this.

He stood at a computer console in the repair bay while Botch beeped in annoyance behind him. Darin was learning Botch’s language well enough to know that he was frustrated, and based on what Botch had told him in the lounge mere minutes ago, Darin knew he was upset at Ruby. Ruby was a memory-intact R2 unit belonging to CC, another pilot in the squadron. After arriving at those conclusions, Darin tuned out Botch for the most part as he made his way through the records in the computer.

Sure enough, Botch’s report was correct: somehow Botch had been scheduled for a series of both hardware and software downgrades. Going into another set of records, Darin could see that Ruby was later scheduled to receive the advanced systems from Botch as upgrades. Darin frowned and returned to Botch’s records. He didn’t recognize the name of the person who had approved the scheduled changes, which was somewhat unusual: Darin had thought he knew all the people who could schedule something of this magnitude. Using his authorization code, Darin canceled the orders and added a comment that the technician should see him personally about this matter if there was a need to proceed like it was originally planned.

"There, I canceled the orders. Now someone will have to come talk to me before they do anything."

Darin turned to face his droid. About a week ago, he had performed a maneuver in a simulator exercise that had "killed" Ruby and caused Ruby to think that Darin was personally out to get him. Botch had stuck up for his pilot, and ever since then, Ruby seemed to act differently around either of them, as if Ruby didn’t trust them and was watching their every move. Botch had been beginning to respond in kind, which only worsened the situation until Thumper asked Botch to let it go. Darin couldn’t help but feel that Ruby was paranoid about them, and that made him uneasy. It also reminded him that memory-wiped droids never acted this way. Maybe having two memory-intact droids that were suspicious of one another was just a bad idea.

With all that in mind, he asked Botch, "Has Ruby been doing anything weird around you the last few days?"

His droid’s answer appeared on the text display. No more than usual, but I just discovered that Ruby accessed my system specifications yesterday.

Darin absently chewed his bottom lip in thought. "I’ll talk to CC about it first thing in the morning, okay? But the orders are canceled now, so you’ll be fine. I won’t let anything happen to you."

Botch beeped once, sounding a little happier than before, then Darin continued, "I’m going to bed now. Tell me if you hear anything else about this." Botch beeped again, and Darin affectionately patted Botch’s inverted flowerbox-shaped head before walking out of the repair bay. Once in the corridor, the pilot shook his head slightly in wonder. Never in his wildest imaginings had he ever expected to find himself caught between two feuding astromechs on a Rebel ship.

It took Darin a few minutes to make his way from the repair bay through the winding maze of corridors to the deck where Corona Squadron’s quarters were. At last he had stepped off the turbolift and was ambling down the corridor to his room, where he was looking forward to finishing out his night’s sleep in his bed instead of the old couch in the pilots’ lounge. As Darin approached his door, he reached out and automatically punched in his room’s passcode while he walked by the control panel, barely breaking stride as he completed it and turned into the doorway.

The door didn’t immediately open like it had every other time he’d ever done that, though, and he ended up walking into the closed door as the control panel beeped darkly at him, rejecting his code. His forehead and right knee connected with the door solidly, bouncing him backwards.

"Ow!" He recovered from his surprise and looked at the door questioningly. He shrugged to himself, more embarrassed than anything else, and entered his passcode more carefully.

The door remained closed, and the panel blatted at him again. Darin’s brow furrowed, and he looked up at the room number to make sure he had the right quarters. He slowly and deliberately entered his passcode again.

Once more, it was rejected. Darin sighed in frustration and pressed the door chime. There was no response, so after a minute he pressed it again. This time he was greeted by a groggy voice from inside. "What?"

"It’s me, Quiver. Open up. I’m locked out."

Another moment passed before the door opened to reveal his roommate standing there, obviously just awakened. Quiver studied Darin with the quickly-increasing coherency vital to a fighter pilot’s survival before he asked, "What do you mean, you’re locked out?"

Darin shrugged. "I tried my passcode three times. It didn’t work. If this was a prank, it just backfired on you."

"No, no prank." His wingman stepped aside to let Darin in. "Probably just a glitch. Happens all the time. Get the lights." Quiver climbed up to his top bunk bed and pulled the covers over his head.

Darin turned off the lights and changed into his nightclothes in the dark. He’d figure it all out in the morning.
 
 

Chapter One

The mess hall was always one of the warmest places on the ship, especially during a standard meal time, caused by the heat from the food cookers combining with the warmth of many bodies packed together in one relatively small space. A crewman could immediately tell the difference merely by walking into the room from the corridor, and if that person had just spent a large amount of time in the hangar (which was colder yet), it was even more noticeable.

Quiver loved it. Darin hated it.

Flight Officer Hentil "Quiver" Yanilr was quite comfortable in the warmth of the mess hall, and the constant presence of food and large amounts of people certainly didn’t hurt, either. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Darin much preferred the cool air and wide-open spaces of the hangar, which had the added bonus features of the starfighters and shuttles. It was just one of the many night-and-day differences between the two of them, but as Darin was slowly coming to realize, night and day on a capital ship were subjective things not governed by anything more than customs and chronos, and it wasn’t worth getting too hung up on them because ultimately they didn’t really mean anything anyway. They were artificial divisions. Night and day could always be reprogrammed.

Some things were harder to reprogram than others, though. In the month or so that they’d known each other, the temperature setting was proving to be the biggest irreconcilable difference in their personal preferences, though Darin felt that "irreconcilable" was probably too strong a word anyway. They didn’t become antagonistic toward each other about it, but they just couldn’t find a balance point between their comfort levels.

Darin had been the one who started the thermostat war in their quarters as a result. It was even now on the verge of becoming a game: who could get back to their quarters first and adjust the setting to claim his comfort? Most of the time, Quiver ended up using Darin’s rookie status to trump whatever temperature adjustments Darin made, but Darin was finding that he didn’t mind as much as he’d thought he would, mainly because he knew Quiver well enough by now to recognize that Quiver was just having fun with him.

The "fun-loving mentality" of Quiver’s was affecting Darin in other ways as well. For instance, it was making it very easy for Darin to relax around Quiver, something that honestly surprised him since the death of his former best friend had hurt him so badly and had made him shy away from developing any close personal relationships while with his training squadron. Darin’s wingman had a way of not letting trivial things get to him and of not taking things more seriously than he had to, which could be one reason why the lanky pilot with the sloppy blond crew cut preferred to use his rather odd callsign instead of his real name. Darin wouldn’t have even started competing with Quiver for control of the temperature in their quarters if he hadn’t felt so comfortable around him, so no, Darin didn’t mind it too much when he almost always lost the battles in the thermostat war.

Besides, Quiver was a heavy enough sleeper that he never noticed when Darin lowered the temperature after Quiver had fallen asleep.

It was the middle of breakfast time now, and the mess hall was as warm as ever. Darin tried to ignore the stuffy atmosphere as he made his way from the food line to their usual table. When he got there, he set his breakfast tray down and took a seat next to CC and across from Quiver. It was becoming the standard seating arrangement for those three, and they ate together whenever they could.

Quiver and CC, or Flight Officer Chryse Cerac, had been good friends before Darin joined the squadron about a month ago, and they were being gracious enough to let him into their tight friendship. They made a strange group, but Darin honestly enjoyed spending time with those two. Actually, they were spending enough time together that Darin once thought he heard their commander refer to them as a trio. After losing all he had and being so far from anything he found familiar, it was nice to feel included in something.

As soon as Darin put the tray down, CC reached over and took one of the glasses of juice he had gotten. She’d been stealing his drink since the first time he ate with them, and before long Darin had learned to simply get two to begin with.

The black-haired young woman beside him flowed along with life as easily as Quiver did and laughed just as often. Separately, either CC or Quiver was a fun person to be around, but when they were together they just seemed to amplify each other.

Not that Darin minded.

"CC," Darin asked when she finished with her first drink of juice, "is Ruby supposed to get any major upgrades soon?"

"Well, a good morning to you, too," CC answered. "Quiver, tell your rookie wingman that the first words out of his mouth in the morning can’t be about work."

"Rookie, the first words out of your mouth in the morning can’t be about work," Quiver dutifully told Darin.

"Sorry," Darin answered. He plastered a happy expression on his face and tried to force extra brightness into his tired green eyes through sheer willpower. "Good morning, CC. How are you doing on this wonderful, glorious day?"

She smiled at him. "That’s better. I’m doing very well, thank you."

"That’s good," Darin said genuinely as he dropped his act.

"In fact," CC continued, "I’m doing even better now that I noticed you got some kanna fruit, which I didn’t even know they had today." She picked a few small fruit slices off of Darin’s plate and pocketed them. "Hue will love these." Hue was CC’s pet, and she often brought treats back for him from the mess hall.

"That’s good, too." Darin paused for a few heartbeats, and then asked, "Am I allowed to talk about work now?"

"No," Quiver said. "You should never be allowed to talk about work ever again, especially before we even go on duty."

CC looked dubiously at Darin. "If I say yes, can we get it out of the way really quick?"

"Yeah."

"Then go ahead."

"Ruby? Any upgrades?" Darin repeated.

She frowned as she thought. "Not that I know of. Why?"

"Botch told me last night that he was supposed to get a bunch of downgrades, and Ruby was scheduled to get those as upgrades. I checked the records, and apparently he was right. I didn’t recognize the name of the person who input the orders, and I canceled them. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t out of line by doing that." Darin had recently been assigned the extra duty of the squadron’s "Droid Wrangler," as he called it, which meant he had to keep track of all the droids and coordinate with Maintenance and Procurement to make sure the astromechs were kept in good operating condition. He was still trying to learn what the extent of his responsibilities was, but this certainly seemed like something that should fall within his jurisdiction.

CC shook her head. "No, it’s within the rights of your new duty to cancel strange orders like that, especially for your own droid. They should have gone through you first for something of that significance anyway. I don’t know anything about any major upgrades, but I’ll have a chat with my little R2 and see if I can find out what’s going on. Hopefully it’s not related to their little spat."

"Thanks."

It was Quiver’s turn to shake his head. "I swear, I don’t understand why you two don’t memory-wipe those droids," he said. "This droid war wouldn’t be happening if you did."

"Admit it, Quiver," CC said with a grin. "The only reason you wipe Sonic’s memory is because you don’t want a permanent record of all the stupid stuff you do."

"Why would I need another one? I’ve got you here to constantly remind me. Case in point, the Corellian Incident. You always talk about that."

"I’m not the one who always brings it up, though. That’s your fault. Case in point, right now."

Darin raised an eyebrow. "‘Corellian Incident’?"

Quiver actually groaned, and CC’s beige eyes lit up. "You haven’t heard about that yet?" she asked Darin. "Oooh, this’ll be fun!" She shot a smirk in Quiver’s direction and then turned back to Darin, almost too eagerly.

"The pilot who was unfortunate enough to be stuck as Quiver’s wingman and roommate before you was a guy called Cracker," CC started by way of explanation. Her words had the air of a well-practiced narrative, yet one that still held opportunities for improvisation to tailor to the particular audience. "He was a fierce loner, always keeping to himself, and he’d sometimes get a bit hostile if someone started pushing him to interact on an even remotely personal level. I’ll let you imagine for yourself just how much this annoyed Quiver, since mere words cannot describe it."

"He was never any fun," Quiver muttered.

CC shushed him. "No interrupting. But you see my point," she said to Darin. When the younger pilot nodded in complete understanding, she continued. "One day, for whatever reason, Quiver convinced himself that Cracker was from Corellia. That warped little mind of his saw a way to use this knowledge to get Cracker to like him and do stuff. Can you guess what that plan was?"

Darin shook his head, and CC went on. "Whenever he was around Cracker, Quiver would start gushing about how wonderful Corellians were. Everything he saw or did would end up being compared to the Corellian version, which would always be superior. What Quiver didn’t know, though," CC said as she started to snicker, "was that Cracker wasn’t Corellian and in fact did not like Corellians whatsoever.

"One day, I was walking with the two of them down the corridor to a briefing or something, and Quiver made another praise-filled Corellian comment. It must have been one too many because Cracker finally snapped and told him to quit going on and on about Corellians because he didn’t like them one bit. His language was a bit more colorful than that. Anyway, Quiver quickly realized his mistake, and he tried to backtrack and fix it to save face. He immediately started saying how he had just been trying to make conversation, how he didn’t really mean all of that, and how he really thought Corellians were the lowest lowlifes in the galaxy just like Cracker did, again with more colorful language than that. You know how artistic Quiver can get with his insults." Again Darin nodded in complete understanding.

CC snickered harder at the memory. "This time, what Quiver didn’t know was that a major had come within earshot just as Quiver started his little anti-Corellian tirade. And yes, you guessed it, he was from Corellia and was damn proud of it. When he chewed out Quiver right then and there, that was the most colorful language of the day. You should have seen the look on Quiver’s face when he realized what he’d gotten himself into!"

Darin and CC both started laughing, and Darin was glad he didn’t choke on his mouthful of food. Quiver sighed in exasperation and said loudly enough to be heard, "You almost got chewed out too for not being able to keep a straight face, CC. She didn’t stop laughing about the whole thing for the entire day."

"I can see why!" Darin responded, still laughing.

"And why does the officer’s rank increase each time you tell that story?" Quiver asked. "Last time you told it, he was a commander. I swear he was no higher than a lieutenant."

"Oh, and why does his rank decrease every time you remember it?" CC asked. "Last time you said he was no higher than a captain."

"And a lieutenant isn’t higher than a captain, so I’m still right," Quiver said with a snort. When the other two didn’t answer due to their continued laughter, the lanky pilot rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, yeah, okay, I’ll admit something short-circuited in my brain that day. A little more situational awareness would have greatly benefitted me there, especially since I was lying about hating Corellians anyway and all that could have been avoided. But I’m not going to be the only one laughed at this morning–I get enough of that as it is." He fixed his gaze on Darin. "Now it’s your turn. What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?"

"Nice try," Darin said, his laughter finally dying down, "but I don’t think so."

"All right, it doesn’t even have to be the stupidest thing, just something dumb you can look back and laugh at, and that we can tease you about."

"No thanks."

"Tell you what, Thumper," CC added. "If you tell us one of yours, I’ll tell you two about a really dumb thing I did."

Quiver’s pale blue eyes grew wide. "I don’t believe it. The all-knowing, all-perfect CC actually did something that wasn’t all-knowing and all-perfect?" He whirled back to Darin. "I’ve never had an opportunity to hear something like this before. You’ve got to take her up on this offer. Otherwise you’ll find yourself locked out of our room permanently."

Darin sighed and raised an eyebrow at CC. "And when, exactly, will you be sharing this little story with us if I go through with this? I noticed you didn’t specify that."

CC laughed easily. "Okay, you caught me. I’ll tell it immediately after yours is done."

Upon hearing of CC’s attempted trick, Quiver eyed her. "You are such a sneak." Then he gave a big sigh and said wistfully, "I’m so jealous."

CC smirked at him and then said to Darin, "Come on, let’s hear it–a stupid thing you’ve done. And agreeing to be Quiver’s wingman doesn’t count."

"Of course it doesn’t," Quiver said, "because that’s the smartest thing he’s ever done."

Darin thought back. "Well, if age doesn’t matter..." He gave a small laugh as he remembered. "It’s one of my earliest memories. I think I was five, maybe four." Was it thirteen years ago already? He couldn’t believe the time had passed so quickly. "My best friend Cohen was the same age. The two of us got it in our heads that repulsorlifts were nothing but metal coils, and being the wanna-be pilots that we were, we decided to make the most of that knowledge. We scrounged up some old metal springs, and then I used a ladder to climb on the roof of our shed. Cohen wanted to be the first one to try it, but I kept insisting that since it was my idea, I got to go first."

Darin could tell from CC’s and Quiver’s expressions that they knew where this story was going. "I tied the springs on the bottoms of my boots and jumped off the roof, expecting to fly like a speeder. Needless to say, I didn’t, at least not for more than that split second before gravity realizes you’re doing something you shouldn’t be and steps in to put a stop to it. I broke my arm, Cohen ran and got my parents, and I got rushed to the doctor. I wouldn’t go near that shed for months afterward."

That story was good for a few hearty laughs from his two friends. CC turned to Quiver and said, "Can’t you just picture that? An adorable little five-year-old Darin leaping off a shed thinking he can fly?"

"What I can’t picture," Quiver said, still laughing, "is what his face must have looked like the instant he realized that he couldn’t."

"I’m sure my expression was sufficiently surprised and horrified. After all, one of my fundamental beliefs about the way the world worked had just been proven wrong at an altitude of about three meters. When you’re a kid, that’s a looong way. I learned all about the concept of ‘the point of no return’ that day, too." Darin chuckled a bit more and continued, "That little incident actually prompted my dad to show me how machines worked, probably so I wouldn’t get a similar idea in my head in the future. That’s when he started letting me help with some of the more simple repairs on the speeders and droids. But who knows, maybe it was just his way of keeping a closer eye on me."

To his surprise, Darin actually enjoyed sharing the story with Quiver and CC. It was a treasured part of his childhood, and it was an irrevocable part of him that helped make him into the person he was today. Then, gradually, Darin felt the happy memories of his father and Cohen slowly giving way to sadness, nostalgia and homesickness. Since the Imperial occupation of his homeworld, Craci IV, all of his happy memories seemed to end up that way. He blinked hard and took a deep breath, determined not to lose it in front of the others, and then he focused his attention on his nearly-empty glass and on finishing off his juice. Finally, praying he was in control of his voice, he looked at CC and said, "Your turn." Thankfully, he was.

"All right, Repulsor-Boots," she said with a wink. She settled back into her seat and began, "Well, there was this guy–"

A huge smirk came over Quiver’s face. "I should’ve known. That says it all right there."

CC kicked him underneath the table, and one indignant remark from Quiver later, CC continued. "As I was saying, there was this guy. I must have been fifteen, and he was a couple of years older than me. I found out he liked the color green, so to get his attention, I wanted to put streaks of green in my hair. Something eye-catching, you know?"

She absently twirled the end of her shoulder-length black hair as she went on. "My friend and I got a little impatient with the dye and didn’t read or follow the instructions. After all, why would we think we wouldn’t intuitively know how to do it? How hard could it be?" CC grinned. "Instead of getting some nice green streaks, I got a head full of bright green hair. Plus, the day I picked to do it was the day I had forgotten my parents were taking us to a small reception with my dad’s boss. You know, that stuff doesn’t come out for a few days, no matter what you do to it, and trying to re-dye it black didn’t work. My parents just about died when they saw me."

Darin stared at her and laughed incredulously, trying to imagine CC with green hair. "You’re kidding. What did your dad’s boss say?"

CC shook her head, still grinning. "Nothing, really. He just stared at me for a second and ignored me for the rest of the night. We never got invited back, but I think that had more to do with my older sister’s somewhat-disruptive argument with my parents in the middle of the evening than with my green hair."

Quiver insistently tapped a finger on the table. "You still haven’t told us the most important detail."

"What’s that?" CC asked.

Quiver’s face sprouted a mischievous grin while he said, "If that guy ever noticed."

CC scoffed. "Like I’m going to share my dating history with you." She stuck her tongue out at Quiver.

Not even fazed, Quiver leaned across the table to Darin and said in a stage whisper, "She didn’t deny it, and she’s getting defensive. I think we’re getting close." Then he straightened up and asked CC in a normal voice, "So, what’s his name? How long did you see each other? Was your hair green the whole time you dated? Get to the juicy stuff already."

"And you wonder why I never tell you things like this," CC shot back playfully. "Are you jealous? Is that why you’re so curious?"

Apparently Quiver hadn’t expected that turnaround. "Me? Jealous? Of course not–I’m just trying to make polite conversation while having fun at your expense. Why, do you want me to be jealous?"

"He’s good at being jealous, so be careful how you answer that," Darin piped up. "If you want an example, just mention his old classmate Tenk Larunre and be prepared for an earful."

"Oh, so now it’s a crime to dislike people who have more raw talent than me and don’t even have to work to polish or develop it?" Quiver said.

"Huh. That’s funny," CC said in wonder to Darin. "I never realized that Quiver hated everyone in the entire galaxy."

"But it should give you some indication of why I like you two," came Quiver’s smug response. Then he continued in a mutter, "Blasted Tenk got anything he wanted–newsletter editor position, the best stories, grades on essays that he didn’t deserve because he hardly spent any time on them at all, a date with the cute girl I wanted to take to the dance, and–" He blinked and stopped, then shook his head and said, "Wait, we’re talking about CC’s green hair and her boyfriends, not me."

Darin snickered. "That’s for sure," he said under his breath. Quiver gave him a dirty look and kicked him under the table. "Ow!" Darin protested. "That hurt." He kicked Quiver back.

CC shook her head hopelessly at the immature antics of her friends. "And how many thousands of beings in this fleet rely on us for protection?"

Quiver kicked her under the table as well. "You started it. Don’t sound so high-and-mighty."

"Well, you yourself said I was all-knowing and all-perfect." CC smiled sweetly and batted her eyes in an exaggerated manner.

Darin snickered again, and Quiver just snorted before saying, "What really annoys me is that I don’t have a comeback for that. It’s too early in the morning for the full-scale assault that this requires, especially since Darin’s little glitch woke me up last night. I need my pick-me-up nap. How long until the morning briefing?"

Darin looked at his chrono. "Fifteen minutes."

"Okay. I can wait until then." Quiver settled back in his chair and downed his glass of juice in one large chug. "Ahh." He wiped his mouth with a sleeve of his orange flightsuit and put his empty glass on Darin’s food tray. "Here you go, rookie. Clear off the table for us."

"What? Why?"

"Because you woke me up in the middle of the night, and now you owe me."

CC put her dirty dishes on Darin’s tray as well. "And now he’s complaining about it and I have to sit here and listen to it, so you owe me, too."

Shaking his head, Darin pushed the loaded tray in CC’s direction. "I’m sure your droid had something to do with those downgrades, which is why Botch woke me up last night. Otherwise I wouldn’t have been up at that hour and woken up Quiver."

"Uh oh. I told Commander Mackin this would happen," CC said in a woeful voice. "‘Don’t stick the new rookie with Quiver, sir,’ I begged. ‘It’s just asking for a disaster. Within a few weeks, maybe less, Quiver’s ego will rub off on him and the rookie will forget that he’s the rookie.’" She pushed the tray back in front of Darin. "‘These things start small, sir,’ I said. ‘First he forgets his place, then he forgets his manners, then he becomes insolent, disrespectful and disobedient, and the next thing you know, he’s the new Emperor.’"

Quiver didn’t miss the opportunity to play along. He sniffled melodramatically a few times and said to CC, "Who would have ever thought that the innocent little five-year-old boy jumping off a shed and trying to fly would end up like that? We’ll ask ourselves, ‘Where did we go wrong? Where was the innocence lost?’ And a hundred years from now, historians will look back and say with heavy hearts, ‘It all started one morning at a breakfast table when he forgot he was the rookie and–’"

"Oh, fine, for all the snow in a blizzard," Darin interrupted in exasperation as he stood up. "I’ll take the tray just for the chance to get away from you two right now."

CC beamed at him. "That’s our rookie. The galaxy is saved." She looked at Quiver and added, "I love it when he uses Cracian expressions. It’s strange, but cute. In a strange way."

Darin picked up the tray but paused. "Wait, let me just ask you guys something. I’ve gotten some experience here. I’ve been in a few fights. When–"

CC’s smile disappeared, and she worriedly said to Quiver, "Oh no. The ego’s coming back."

"What? Wait, that’s not ego, I just–" Darin stopped, sighed, and then started over. "When do I lose rookie status?"

"Oh, that’s simple," Quiver said. "When someone of an equal or lower rank and with less experience than you joins the squadron."

Darin’s hopes dimmed. "What? But that could be–"

"Weeks. Months," Quiver finished for him. "Yeah, it’s rough being the rookie, isn’t it?"

"Sometimes you get lucky," CC said reassuringly. "For instance, I was only the rookie for two weeks when Quiver took over that job for me."

"And she was eager for some payback, too, let me tell ya," Quiver added. "Cracker took it over for me about a month later, and he was the last new addition we had until you. In fact, those few weeks after he was killed and before you came, we didn’t have a rookie." He shook his head despairingly. "Those were some dark times."

"Dark times," CC agreed solemnly.

Darin just looked at them oddly before wordlessly leaving to take the tray to the washer station. He could no longer tell if they were being serious or not, and for some reason, he felt it was better not to ask.
 
 

Chapter Two

Another day, another sim run.

Corona Squadron’s morning briefing had led them into this simulator exercise. It seemed like a straightforward-enough mission to Darin: a standard hit-and-run against an Imperial outpost, a monitoring station to be exact. Quake Squadron was joining them. The Coronas were to conduct a fighter sweep and act as a remote escort to keep the Imperial starfighters busy while the Quake Y-wings pounded the station.

Darin’s console beeped at him, indicating five seconds before reversion to real space. He readied himself, remembered to fasten his helmet’s chinstrap at the last minute, and pulled his hyperdrive lever back at the appropriate time. The Quakes would be reverting a few minutes later to give the Coronas a chance to soften up the opposition.

The swirling blue tunnel before him became elongated light, and the elongated light became pinpricks of stars sprinkled on a black backdrop. Darin formed up with Quiver’s fighter, which had reverted immediately in front of him and to the side, and his scope showed the rest of the starfighters present and forming up. The station loomed before them in orbit around a dark red gas giant planet.

Commander Quentell Mackin’s voice came promptly over the comm. "Coronas, S-foils in attack formation, accelerate to attack speed. Shields to full. You know your job, now let’s do it." The other nine pilots obeyed, and the ten X-wings swiftly approached the station.

It wasn’t long at all before Darin’s scope showed the red dots of enemy fighters coming to intercept them. Lieutenant Steen "Snubber" Weas, the Coronas’ XO, reported them. "Lead, we have an incoming squadron of eyeballs." An "eyeball" was Rebel pilot slang for a TIE fighter.

"Copy, Eight," Mackin replied. "Coronas, ready one torpedo each and fire on my mark. We need to whittle those odds down a bit."

Clicks of acknowledgment sounded over the comm. Darin switched his weapons controls over to torpedoes, picked out a random TIE fighter near the middle of the formation and centered his targeting brackets over it. While they were still out of firing range, Darin’s mind wandered a bit. If this was a real mission, that particular Imperial pilot might not live to see another day, all because Darin had chosen to target that fighter on nothing more than a whim–

The steady tone of his targeting computer indicated he had a torpedo lock, and an instant later Mackin said, "Fire."

His focus again sharp, Darin squeezed his trigger. Ten proton torpedoes simultaneously shot toward the incoming TIEs, causing some of the Imperials to break and scatter to evade the warheads. A few tried to shoot the torpedoes down, but many failed. The end results were three TIEs destroyed, a small group not in formation, and the Coronas bearing down on them.

A few words from Mackin were all it took for the X-wings to switch back to lasers and break by pairs to continue the blossoming dogfight. Darin dutifully stayed with Quiver as Quiver went off in search of a target. There were more than enough to choose from. The TIEs regrouped quickly, soon occupying the Coronas’ full attention.

A mere half minute before the Quakes were due to come out of hyperspace and well before the Coronas had much of an opportunity to do any significant damage, Botch blatted at Darin, and only then did the young pilot notice the additional squadron of TIEs launching from the station. Darin chewed on his bottom lip in apprehension: they’d known the squadron capacity of the station, but they hadn’t expected all of the opposition so quickly.

Commander Mackin alerted the Coronas to the oncoming threat and ordered them to switch their lasers to quad-bursts in the hopes of finishing most of the current fight before the new squadron got too close. Then, as if the universe decided all of that wasn’t enough to deal with, a flashing light on Darin’s scope signaled the Quakes’ departure from hyperspace.

One quick glance showed that if the additional TIEs went after the Coronas, they’d be fully engaged with the X-wings before the Quakes were within range. The pressure kicked up a notch. Darin heard Mackin relaying the current situation to Commander Unirt, the Quake’s leader, but he only half-listened. He had other things on his mind, like the large odds the Coronas were about to face and in particular, the two TIEs he and Quiver were chasing. The sudden self-imposed urgency Darin was feeling to hurry up and finish this dogfight to start the next one certainly wasn’t helping, either.

Quiver was keeping fairly good time with the TIE pair ahead. Darin was starting to get the hang of Quiver’s flying habits by now, and he was, in turn, keeping time with his wing relatively well. Darin rolled when Quiver rolled, dove when Quiver dove, jinked when his TIE jinked, spiraled when his TIE spiraled–

Split when his TIE split.

The TIE Darin was chasing veered off, away from its wingman. Darin kept following it without a second thought. It tried to throw off its pursuit, but Darin remained on its tail, determined not to lose it after all this. He fired a couple of times but missed. Chewing on his bottom lip in concentration, Darin pushed his fighter a little harder and fired off another shot. He missed, but not as badly. Just another few seconds and–

"Damn it, Nine, answer me! Where are you?!" Quiver’s frantic voice coming over the comm system snapped Darin out of his fixation.

With a wave of horror, Darin suddenly realized he had no idea where Quiver was. He checked his scope wildly. "Ten?!" Thumper had gotten so focused on that TIE that he’d completely lost track of what was going on around him and, maybe even more importantly, where his wingman was. One unbidden question flashed through his mind: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done? A TIE blew past Darin’s fighter, startling him and making him even more disconcerted. He tried desperately to get his bearings, to figure out where in the fight he was and what the situation immediately around him looked like.

"Come on, I need some help here!" Quiver called.

After what felt like an eternity, Darin finally located Quiver on his scope. They were a considerable distance apart, and Quiver had a TIE firmly on his tail. Darin pulled a sharp 180 and heedlessly punched in his throttle. "Ten, I’m coming!"

It was too little too late. The TIE unleashed a salvo of laser blasts directly into Quiver’s X-wing, and the fighter exploded.

Darin cursed at his mistake, then that too was forced out of his mind when his shields were impacted heavily from behind. He reflexively jerked his fighter out of straight-and-level flight while Botch added a few alarmed shrieks for good measure. More lasers hit his shields, and suddenly they were on the verge of buckling. Darin twisted his X-wing around desperately, trying to lose his pursuit; he saw now that two TIEs were chasing him. "This is Nine, I’ve got two on me. I need help!"

"Nine, this is Five," said Flight Officer Maptoo Moog. The Gran sounded calm even in the midst of the battle. "Six and I are on our way."

One of these days, Darin wanted to figure out exactly how Maptoo could be so laid-back at times like these. Darin put all of his efforts into evading long enough for help to reach him, but that was becoming increasingly more difficult. The Coronas had been unable to down enough of the enemy to be able to disengage and regroup as a whole. Even though a few pairs had managed to temporarily break off long enough to send a few torpedoes into the arriving swarm, it wasn’t enough. The new TIE squadron entered the fray, which more than doubled the Imperials’ numbers.

The next thing Darin knew, and just when he swore it couldn’t get any worse, the Coronas’ hectic dogfight was momentarily interrupted with two distinct sounds over his comm system: a sharp warning tone from Botch and the frantic voice of Quake Six, Flight Officer Welker, over the mission frequency. "A Carrack cruiser just dropped in behind us! It’s starting to–" His transmission abruptly cut out.

Darin felt a surge of panic. He twisted around some more, trying in vain to get away from the enemy that seemed to be overwhelming them and pinning them down. Thumper funneled some power from his engines into his failing shields, and he was glad he did when the TIEs hit him again.

Maptoo and CC, Coronas Five and Six, were at last within firing range near Darin’s ten o’clock position. One of the TIEs chasing Darin veered off to intercept the pair.

While Darin continued to juke his X-wing to stay out of the line of fire of the TIE behind him, for one split second he had the other TIE close to his sights. He saw it going for Maptoo and CC, and he saw it beginning to fire.

Determined to do at least one thing right on this mission, Darin fired a snap shot at the TIE. Unfortunately, he did so when it was beginning to pass the two X-wings, and his quad burst went wide of its intended mark. Instead, his converging lasers were heading straight for CC’s fighter. In the half instant it took for Darin’s laser shot to cross the space between him and CC, he couldn’t even articulate the dread that materialized as soon as he realized what he did.

To her credit, CC had good enough reflexes to jerk her X-wing out of the path of Darin’s lasers. The only downside to that plan was that her evasion ended up taking her into the path of the oncoming TIE. The two fighters ended up colliding in the chaos, both of them exploding in a single huge ball of light.

Darin wasn’t sure if it was the blast from the close-proximity explosions or a shot from the pursuing TIE that killed him one heartbeat later, but suddenly the hum of his simulator fell silent, the windows opaqued and the hatch unlocked, allowing the canopy to rise a few centimeters.

Darin’s first action, after silently telling himself in no uncertain terms how insanely stupid and idiotic he was, was to reach up and pull the canopy completely closed once more. This was as close as he’d be able to come to disappearing into a hole somewhere.

However, Quiver foiled his plan when he walked up and opened Darin’s sim canopy all the way. While Quiver stood there waiting, Darin sighed miserably and wouldn’t look at his wingman. "I know, I know," Darin said. "I’m sorry."

"You can’t stay in there forever, rookie," answered Quiver in irritation. "Come on, join the rest of us here in the afterlife."

Darin chewed on his lip, unfastened his seat restraints and started reluctantly climbing out. Before he did, Botch caught his attention with a few questioning beeps. After glancing at his sim console’s readout for the translation, Darin shook his head and said distractedly, "No, Botch, I don’t know where Ruby went." He didn’t care, either, and the random question was soon gone from his mind, replaced by guilt and embarrassment as he joined his "dead" squadmates. Maptoo was there too; Darin wondered if the blast from CC’s explosion had caught Maptoo’s fighter. A sizeable number of Quakes were also present, victims of the Carrack’s swift, surprise attack from behind, and they were watching the rest of the sim unfold on the monitors with the Coronas. Darin took off his helmet and stood slightly apart from the others, rigidly keeping his attention on the viewscreens and unwilling to look at any of his squadmates.

The sim finally wound down, and the Rebels had not accomplished their mission. The few surviving pilots piled out of the simulators, and everyone began walking to the briefing room to discuss the sim run. Darin was dreading this part as well.

As Chopper and Kalre, two of the surviving Corona Squadron pilots, walked by the group clustered by the monitors, Chopper said, "Better get a leash for that wingman of yours, Quiver."

Kalre, a Rodian, nodded in agreement. "A couple more X-wing kill markers and he’ll be an ace Imperial fighter pilot."

"You sure he’s on our side?" added Chopper.

Quiver immediately shot back, "And how many times have you two killed each other or one of us in the sims with one of your hotshot maneuvers?"

They never answered and just walked out the door. Quiver shook his head hopelessly and looked at Darin, saying, "Don’t listen to them, rookie."

"Why not?" Darin asked. He could tell his face was flushed. "They’re right."

"Are you planning on making the same mistakes again?"

"No. Of course not."

"Then you’ve already proven you’re smarter than them. Come on. Debriefing time."

Darin sighed and silently followed the rest of his squadmates to the briefing room. In spite of the somewhat reassuring words, he could tell Quiver was still upset with him for leaving him unprotected, and he had every right to be. There was no excuse for that. And CC–Darin couldn’t tell if she was upset, but he figured he’d better tread very softly around her for a while. If this had been a real mission, his mistakes would have killed his two friends and himself, and maybe Maptoo as well from the way Chopper and Kalre were talking.

Stupid rookie mistakes.
 
 

Chapter Three

The sim debrief thankfully wasn’t quite as bad as Darin expected it to be. Most of it ended up being a fairly open discussion on possible tactics that the squadrons could use in that situation in the future. Darin’s attempt to will himself into invisibility seemed to work rather well until the time came for each pilot to give his individual input on the mission and ask questions. When it was Darin’s turn, he thought he saw some of the Coronas watching him with expressions containing varying degrees of long-suffering patience, frustration, and a pleading hope that this would be the last time the rookie committed such errors since he should have known better in the first place. Darin was unwilling to make his confessions in public, so he merely asked to speak to Commander Mackin privately after the debriefing.

Thumper felt a little more relaxed once the debriefing was over and only he and the commander remained. Mackin simply listened while Darin gave his input on the mission and told his CO about the mistakes he’d made during it. After asking a question or two to make certain that Darin understood his errors (or so Darin suspected), Mack did something Darin was learning to expect in situations like this, though knowing it was coming didn’t make it any easier: he asked Darin how he thought he could fix the mistakes and prevent them from happening again. There were times when Darin secretly wondered if Commander Mackin did this just to avoid thinking of advice on how to remedy a problem, and one of these days Darin wanted to offer a completely off-the-wall suggestion just to see if Mackin was actually paying attention to the answer.

Today wasn’t that day, though, and Mackin was apparently satisfied with Darin’s response because he simply told Thumper to give it a try, gave him some encouragement, patted him on the shoulder, and sent him off to the rest of his duties.

By the time dinner rolled around, Darin was feeling a little better, thanks in large part to having some time to distance himself from his mistakes that morning. It wasn’t perfect, though: Kalre and Chopper again gave him grief when they passed each other in the mess hall, and Darin’s computer codes began acting up again, too. This time, the computer in the mess hall’s serving line wouldn’t accept his code to deduct the dinner from his meal account, but the mess hall workers knew Darin and let him through with his food.

After the meal, Darin and Quiver headed back to their quarters. Settling down at his computer console, Darin logged in and typed a request to the computer technicians onboard to look into why his authorization code was having problems. Once that was sent, he remembered he had to update a few parts of a report that was due the next morning, so he loaded it up.

The gibberish that filled his console screen a moment later left him stunned and speechless for several seconds. Darin scrolled through the report, but there was no coherent information in it anywhere: the whole thing was ruined. An even more frightening thought struck him, and he hurriedly called up the other report that was due the next afternoon. It was corrupted as well. Darin cursed and desperately began trying every trick he knew to recover the data.

Quiver looked over from where he was lounging at his own desk and reading a datapad. "What is it?"

"Both of my reports got corrupted, and now they’re nothing but gibberish," Darin said in frustration. "They’re due tomorrow. If I can’t recover them..."

Quiver crossed the room to look at the console screen over Darin’s shoulder. "Before you even ask, no, I had nothing to do with this. I don’t do harmful pranks, no matter how annoyed I am at the person for leaving me unprotected in a sim and getting me killed."

Darin paused his efforts just long enough to throw a look over his shoulder, one that he hoped would convey exactly how much he didn’t appreciate that comment, given how bad he already felt about the whole sim run. Quiver must have been able to read it well enough because he relented, saying, "Okay, sorry, that was uncalled for."

Darin worked in silence for another couple of minutes, and at one point Quiver idly remarked, "Computers just haven’t been your friend today, have they?"

"No, they haven’t."

The more Darin worked, the more desperate he got. Nothing was recovering the old data or fixing the existing reports. Quiver walked him through a couple of tricks he knew, but those didn’t help either.

Twenty minutes later, Thumper was ready to give up. "Wonderful," he bit out. "It’ll take me half the night to redo those reports."

"Give Maptoo or CC a call. They’re pretty good with computers, especially Maptoo. Maybe they can figure it out."

Darin shook his head, not willing to ask either of them for a favor after what had happened in the sim. "No, that’s okay. I’ve wasted enough time trying to recover these things. I’d better get started on rewriting them."

"You can ask them for help, you know. They’re not–"

"It’s okay, Quiver," Darin interrupted. "I’ll just redo them."

Quiver looked at him for a few seconds before shrugging. "Okay. If that’s what you want." He returned to his desk and picked up his datapad.

It wasn’t what Darin wanted, but it was what he was going to make himself do. Thumper grabbed a datapad of his own to use so he wouldn’t run into the same corruption problem that had plagued his computer console. He sighed quietly as he looked at the blank screen and tried to remember everything he had written in those reports.

Stupid computer glitches.
 
 

Chapter Four

Darin stifled a yawn. He’d been up way too late last night rewriting those reports, but he’d finally gotten them done and submitted on time with no one the wiser except Quiver. After that and being busy all day, he couldn’t wait to go back to his quarters and take a nap. A glance at the chrono in his cockpit told him that in fifteen minutes his patrol would be over and he’d be able to do just that.

Ten minutes later, a light on his comm system started flashing. Puzzled, Darin called up the communication: it was a text message telling him to stay out there on patrol. Chopper wasn’t feeling well and needed someone to cover his patrol duty for him.

Darin sighed. His nap would have to wait. "Ten," he said to Quiver, "I’m stuck pulling a double patrol. Don’t wait for me to head back."

"A double?" Quiver asked, sounding surprised. "How come?"

"Apparently Three’s not feeling well. I got a message saying to cover for him."

"Well, all right. I won’t say I envy you, because I don’t. See you afterward for dinner, okay?"

"Okay."

Quiver’s X-wing turned back toward their MC80 Cruiser Crescent Star just as Kalre’s lone X-wing emerged from it. Darin stifled another yawn and continued his patrol route, waiting for the Rodian to catch up and join him.

It was about an hour and a half later when Quiver left his quarters to run an errand down at the repair bay. As he was walking out, he noticed Chopper heading into his own quarters next door. Quiver paused. "Hi, Chopper. Feeling better?"

Chopper stopped and looked at him in confusion. "About what?"

"Weren’t you feeling sick earlier?"

"No. I’m fine. Who told you that?"

Quiver was growing equally confused. "Darin. He said he had to cover your patrol because you weren’t feeling well."

The black-haired, solidly-built pilot shook his head. "I don’t know what you’re talking about. I got a message from Darin earlier today offering to take my patrol for me. It said something about needing the practice after that sim run. Who am I to pass up an opportunity to get out of patrol?" Chopper ended the conversation by walking into his quarters, and the door shut behind him.

Quiver just stood there for a moment, puzzled. Finally he shrugged and checked his chrono as he started toward the repair bay. The patrol would be over soon anyway; he’d ask Darin about it when his wingman landed.

"Quiver, have you been guilt-tripping Darin about what happened during that sim?"

Quiver looked up in surprise when he heard CC come up to their usual table in the mess hall and sit down. He put down the holonovel he’d been reading while eating his supper and said, "No, guilt-trips are your territory. I’ve hardly given him a hard time at all, considering what I could do." Something about the scene before him wasn’t right, though, and it came to him an instant later. "Wait, I thought you couldn’t come to supper tonight because you had patrol duty."

"That’s why I was asking about Darin," CC said as she started to eat her meal. "I got a message from him earlier saying he was volunteering to take my patrol because he needed more practice. It went on to mention something like how he also wanted to make it up to me for what happened in the sim, and I felt bad that he felt bad, so I let him do it." CC paused, then she looked suspiciously at Quiver. "Why are you staring at me with that strange look on your face?"

"Because I’m trying to figure this out," Quiver said, deep in thought. "I’d say something’s got to be glitchy with the scheduling system, but that wouldn’t explain the messages going around. The exact same thing happened during the last patrol with Chopper."

CC looked puzzled as well. "Maptoo and I were supposed to relieve Chopper and Kalre on patrol. Are you saying that he took over for one of them too?"

"Yeah."

"So this is Darin’s second patrol in a row?"

"Third. The two of us were on the normal schedule before that. But the reason Darin told me he had to stay out to cover for Chopper was different than what Chopper told me. I was going to ask Niner when he got back in after Chopper’s patrol, but now it sounds like he’s covering for you, too."

"Is there a chance Darin honestly did want the extra practice and just didn’t want you to know, so he made an excuse?" CC asked.

Quiver shook his head. "I can’t think of why. He can fly fine, and patrols don’t really help with anything else most of the time." He leaned back in his chair and couldn’t decide if he wanted to laugh or groan, so he opted for a little of each. "I don’t know what’s going on. He’s going to be so annoyed when he gets back."

CC sighed and checked the time. "It hasn’t been too long since our patrol started. Once I’m done eating, I’ll go relieve him. I didn’t realize he’d been out there for so long already. He must be bored out of his mind."

Stiff. Uncomfortable. Hungry. Tired. Irritated.

Those were just some of the words coming to Darin’s mind that he could have used to describe himself when he finally set his X-wing down in the hangar of Crescent Star. CC had just relieved him on patrol, and from their brief in-flight conversation, Darin got the impression that there had been a mix-up in some system somewhere to cause his triple patrol.

Darin had been more than a little annoyed when he’d gotten a text message from CC a mere fifteen minutes before his second patrol was over. It had said she was in the middle of something she absolutely had to get done, and if he would cover her patrol for her while he was already out there, she’d owe him one. Maybe she’d even forget about that incident in the sim the other day.

When he’d read that last line, Darin had known there would be no way he could refuse the request. He’d stifled another yawn, shifted his weight to find a more comfortable position, and chalked up the hardship to another thing he knew so well, his rookie status. All the grunt jobs always seemed to go to him because of that. He hadn’t been happy about it, but he’d accepted this additional task without complaining aloud.

But now...now CC had quickly told him that something wasn’t right, that she never sent such a message, and she wasn’t sure if Chopper had needed to be relieved either. Now Darin was stiff, hungry, tired, irritated and confused. He couldn’t discount it all being an elaborate prank, but if it was, he knew he wouldn’t be a good sport about this one.

Thumper gratefully climbed out of his snubfighter, stopped in the locker room to take off his flight gear, and then headed to his quarters. He was too tired and aggravated to look into the details of the problem right away when he could instead do the same thing tomorrow with a much clearer mindset. He had some fruit bars stashed in his desk, so he figured he’d have one or two of those for a quick dinner and then finally be able to go to bed.

Darin reached his room and punched in his passcode. The control panel blatted at him and refused to open the door.

The pilot scowled, then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath and chewed on his lip for a minute, willing himself to remain calm and not break something. That did little to relieve the stress inside him, though, so as a compromise he chose to pound on the door rather than serenely pressing the door chime. "Quiver! Open up!"
 
 

Chapter Five

A blaring alarm jolted Darin awake. His immediate thought was to take action, but his next immediate thought didn’t know what kind of action to take. Run? Fight? Freeze? The place was dark, and for a moment Thumper couldn’t remember where he was.

Then he heard Quiver’s voice yelling over the awful noise, "Darin, what is that?!"

Reality flooded back. With his heart still pounding after the initial scare, Darin rolled out of bed and headed toward what seemed to be the source of the alarm, desperate to turn it off. To his surprise, it was coming from his computer console.

After another agonizing minute, Darin was able to shut off the noise, and silence again prevailed. Upon further investigation, he found that somehow a program in his computer that was used to send gentle audio reminders about meetings and deadlines had been set to blare that racket at–Darin checked his bedside chrono, not certain he wanted to know the answer–0241 hours. No, that was knowledge he’d rather not have.

The problem solved, Darin turned around to go back to bed; he was blocked, however, by Quiver, who had been standing directly behind him and who did not look happy at being woken up in that fashion at that hour. "What the hell was that?" Quiver demanded.

"I don’t know. Somehow my reminder program was set to do that."

"How could that happen?"

"I don’t know, Quiver." Darin just wanted to go back to bed. "Either someone logged into my computer and set it up manually, which I find highly unlikely, or whatever glitch corrupted my reports also affected this."

"Why is every computer on this ship out to get you?!"

"I don’t know," Darin repeated once again. "Look, I’m tired. I’ll figure i–"

The alarm blasted through the darkened room again, making both pilots jump. "Didn’t you turn that program off?!" Quiver said loudly once he recovered, putting his hands over his ears.

"Of course I turned it off! I don’t know what’s wrong with it!" Darin called back. He turned back to his console, but now he discovered that the console had locked itself down while the alarm program was still running. It wasn’t supposed to do that, but Darin had given up trying to figure out the computer’s logic.

He quickly typed in his authorization code and password, but instead of allowing him to log in, the computer screen greeted him with a simple message: "Your password has now been changed. Shutting down." The screen went blank, and the alarm continued.

"What?!"

Darin tried to log in again, but he couldn’t call up the screen. The computer–and the alarm program–remained inaccessible. At this point, Darin opted for the brute force method: he punched the computer’s on/off button. The room was once again plunged into tranquility as the whirring of the console faded into silence.

"That does it," Quiver said. "Call Maptoo. Have him come over and look at it."

"In the morning."

"No. Now."

Darin shook his head. "Quiver, it’s almost 0300. I am not going to call him now."

Quiver grabbed Darin’s comlink off his desk and forced it into Darin’s hand. "Yes, you are. This is getting ridiculous. Don’t worry, he won’t be upset. Nothing ever upsets him." When Darin made no move to turn on the comlink, Quiver added, "I’m not letting you go back to sleep until you call him."

"If you’re so adamant about it, you do it." Darin shoved the small comlink in Quiver’s direction. Maybe forcing the dirty work on him would make Quiver let this go for now.

To Darin’s chagrin, it didn’t. "Fine," Quiver said as he took the comlink. Two seconds later he was trying to raise Maptoo.

It took a minute for a response to finally come through. "Flight Officer Moog," said a groggy voice on the other end of the line.

"Maptoo, it’s Quiver. Sorry for waking you up, but Darin’s computer is possessed and we’re having major problems with it."

"Is that what that noise was?"

"Yeah. Can you please come over and take a look at it? Needless to say, we don’t want it to happen again."

"All right. I’ll be there in a minute."

"Thanks." Quiver turned off the comlink and handed it back to Darin. "See how easy that was?" he asked. Darin didn’t answer.

It wasn’t long at all before their door chime sounded. Quiver turned the lights on and opened the door before Darin’s vision had a chance to adapt to the sudden brightness. Maptoo sleepily greeted them both and then asked, "What seems to be the problem?"

"Computers hate me," Darin grumbled.

"Everyone on this deck probably hates you now, too," Quiver added.

Maptoo was still waiting patiently, so Darin tried to swallow his crankiness and said, "I’ve had a lot of problems lately with my authorization code and passcode not working, and at the same time I’ve gotten files and programs corrupted on my console here."

The Gran nodded. "All right. Turn on your computer and log in. We’ll start from there."

Darin looked at the console apprehensively. "Do I have to?"

The push Quiver gave him in that direction answered his question. Darin held his breath and turned on his console, and luckily the alarm did not start up again. The log-in screen appeared, as innocent and peaceful as ever. Maybe, just maybe, it had all been a dream...

Darin typed in his authorization code and password, but after entering the data, the message "Invalid password" appeared on the screen. Darin sighed. So much for the dream theory. "The last time I tried to log in, it said it changed my password and proceeded to shut down."

Maptoo twitched an ear. "That’s strange. Nothing like that should have happened." He sat down on Darin’s shipping crate chair and logged in with his own authorization code; however, the moment he entered it, the alarm began blaring again. It took thirty excruciating seconds for him to be able to access the program and shut it down.

The pilots held their breaths and waited for a few seconds in the sudden quiet, half-expecting the alarm to go off once more. When it didn’t, Maptoo merely exhaled and said, "There. That’s better."

He contemplated the console screen for a short time, and then he turned to Darin. "Have you been experiencing constant problems with your codes and the computer, or does it fluctuate?"

"It’s been pretty constant," Darin answered. "I sent a request to the computer techs to look into it, but I haven’t heard back from them yet."

Maptoo regarded him thoughtfully. "They generally look into things rather quickly since the computer systems are tied so closely to security. When did you send it?"

Darin shrugged. "I don’t know. Yesterday evening sometime. Technically over a day ago right now."

"They should have contacted you by now, even if it’s simply to confirm that they’re working the problem," Maptoo said. He entered some commands and eventually was able to bring up Darin’s messages. After spending a short amount of time looking through them, it was obvious that the message requesting support had never been sent. Darin was baffled. He was positive he’d sent it.

"That’s quite odd," Maptoo said. "Perhaps something blocked it from going out." His three eyes blinked slowly while he thought things over again, and then he asked, "You said these problems were fairly constant. What’s the last thing you did with a computer that went right? We can start there."

Darin was too tired to think properly, and it took him longer than it should have to figure it out. "The first time my passcode didn’t work was two nights ago. Right before that, I had to fix something in the computer regarding the droids, and that went through fine."

"What system was that in?"

Darin gave Maptoo as many details as he could remember about how he usually went about accessing the database for the droids. Maptoo recognized it at last and was able to navigate there a short time later. Using a few commands Darin had never seen before, Maptoo found Darin’s entry in the database regarding Botch’s downgrades from late that one night, and then he went another level deeper into the system.

Thumper could only stare blankly at the lines of incomprehensible information, but Maptoo seemed able to decipher them. Maptoo jumped to another screen, studied the displayed information intently for a short while, and repeated that process several times before finally saying, "I think this is where the problems started." With a meaty finger, he pointed to a line of gibberish that apparently had some special meaning to him.

Seeing Darin’s helpless expression, Maptoo elaborated. "As near as I can tell, there was some kind of spy-and-snatch program set up within the orders about downgrading Botch. The program was designed to store any inputs to the file with the orders and route a copy of it somewhere else. Essentially, this program caught your authorization code when you entered it to cancel the orders." Maptoo shook his head in a manner somewhere between disgust and despair. "I’ll need to tell the computer techs that we have such a blatant security hole."

Darin was still trying to process Maptoo’s explanation. "Why would anyone want to steal my authorization code?"

"There are many reasons, depending on the intentions of the individual doing the stealing," Maptoo answered. He pointed to another line of code farther down. "I believe this data tells us where the captured information was routed. The techs may be able to help us track this down."

Darin hardly heard the last words: he was too busy staring at the last line of gibberish Maptoo had pointed out. Something about it looked familiar, but what? He forced his tired brain to think, to look for patterns, to make his subconscious mind tell his conscious mind what it had picked up on...

Suddenly, there it was. "Wait." Darin leaned closer to be sure he saw the numbers correctly. It was a string of eight numbers, and he was certain he’d seen this particular sequence before. He worked with eight-number identifiers quite often now, ever since he had started working with–

"The droids," said Darin absently. He quickly looked through a pile of datacards on his desk, then pulled out one that could help. Popping it into a datapad, he called up the information. Quiver and Maptoo waited expectantly.

Darin finally found what he was looking for. "There. That eight-number sequence exactly matches–" Oh, no. "–Ruby’s identifier code."

Quiver was silent for a moment, then he gave a short, dry laugh. "I should have guessed as much. So Ruby’s been the one messing with your authorization code and anything else he could get to by using it, like your passcode and computer files and settings. Things are so much clearer now." He opened Darin’s closet, took out a general duty uniform and tossed it at Darin. "Get dressed, rookie. We’re going to go pay CC a visit."

"What? No way. It’s–"

"Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s 0300."

Darin glanced at his bedside chrono again. "Actually, now it’s closer to–"

"You think I care?" Quiver interrupted as he began putting a uniform on over his nightclothes. "We’re going to get this settled once and for all."

Darin sighed, then turned to Maptoo. "Thanks for your help. I guess we’ll, uh, take it from here. Sorry to keep you up."

Maptoo smiled, an expression that always fascinated Darin since it was mostly contained in the Gran’s three eyes. "It’s no trouble. I need to go talk to the techs about this security issue anyway. Look on the bright side–this discovery will make us all safer."

"Yeah, we’ll be safer–assuming CC doesn’t kill the two of us first."

"Well, there will always be danger in everything we do." Maptoo stood. "Good night."

"Good night."

By the time Maptoo left, Quiver was dressed and ready to go. He looked expectantly at Darin. "Well? Let’s go!"

Darin sighed and donned his uniform over his shorts and t-shirt. He’d barely gotten his boots on before Quiver pulled him out of the room.

Darin slouched against the wall and yawned while beside him, Quiver pressed the door chime to CC’s quarters again.

"Come on, CC, open up," Quiver called.

The door finally opened. "About time," Quiver snorted.

From the doorway, CC just glared at him, or as much of a glare as she could muster while squinting out into the bright corridor. She was wearing an old sweatsuit, and her pet Hue lay curled up on top of her head. Darin doubted he would have been able to distinguish between the small, four-footed, black-furred avian and CC’s black hair if Hue’s fur didn’t also have shimmering, multicolored highlights.

Hue squeaked in sleepy protest at the unwelcome interruption, and CC muttered, "That’s right, Huey. Tell this big mean pilot that it’s almost 0330, and that he’d better have a damn good reason for getting us up."

"Oh, he does," answered Quiver, not fazed one bit. "Your mean little droid is behind all the glitches and computer problems that Darin’s been having, and it’s made our night quite miserable. You have to make it stop."

"That’s all?" CC asked incredulously. "You could have waited a few hours. If Ruby’s really the problem then I’m sorry, but blast it, Quiver, it’s too early for this. I’ll deal with it in the morning. The real morning." She stepped back and shut the door.

Quiver sighed in frustration, contemplated the closed door for a moment like he was trying to decide how far he could push things and still walk away uninjured, then turned to Darin. "Fine, it doesn’t look like we’re getting anywhere tonight. We’ll go see Mack or Snubber first thing and tell them what’s going on."

That woke Darin up almost as effectively as the alarm had. "No, we can’t."

A look of complete and utter incredulousness came over Quiver’s face. "Why not?"

"I don’t want them to know."

Shaking his head, Quiver said, "Darin, listen! They can help. They need to know what’s going on with this so it can be fixed."

Darin was growing anxious. He straightened up from the wall and said, "I can’t go to Lieutenant Weas or Commander Mackin! What am I supposed to tell them? ‘Sir, a droid is out to get me.’ ‘Sir, a droid is messing with my head.’ ‘Sir, a droid is keeping me up at night.’ ‘Sir, I’m in charge of all the droids in this squadron, but I’m so incompetent that I can’t even keep one under control.’ Yeah, that’ll really help." Darin stopped and didn’t add the last part, the part he was most afraid that his leaders would hear between the lines if he approached them with this problem: ‘Sir, it’s obvious that memory-intact droids are nothing but problems. Please make memory-wipes mandatory with no exceptions.’

Quiver rolled his eyes in exasperation. "Fine. Whatever. You and CC work it out then. But that droid had better not cause any more trouble, especially tonight. I’m sick of losing sleep over such a stupid problem, especially one with such an easy solution. I’d think you’d be sick of it by now, too, Mister Rewritten-Reports-and-Triple-Patrol." He turned and walked back toward their quarters.

Darin didn’t follow; instead, he closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall again. Quiver was right, and this had to be taken care of tonight before Ruby had the chance to do something else that would prompt Quiver to override Darin and take this to Snubber or Mack. There was only one more approach Darin could try.

With a reluctant, tired sigh, he pushed himself away from the wall and headed for the hangar.

"Ruby."

From partway across the vast hangar, Darin saw the red and white R2 unit stop when he heard his name called. Ruby’s domed head swivelled around, and when he spotted Darin walking straight toward him, he blatted harshly and began to hastily roll away.

"Oh, no, you don’t. Stay right there." Darin started jogging to reach Ruby more quickly, prompting the silver C-3PO unit coming with him to sputter in protest against Darin’s quickened pace.

Ruby stopped and spun to fully face Darin but never let the pilot within arm’s reach. That suited Darin just fine: he didn’t want to be too close to the droid either.

Darin waited while the 3PO droid, Sparks, shuffled up to where the two faced off. "Sir," Sparks said in a plaintive voice, turning his golden, glowing eyes to Darin, "I must remind you that my circuits were not made for such haste. In any event, I simply don’t understand the hurry. What can possibly be so important that–"

Darin ignored the rambling and even cut Sparks off by saying, "Ruby," in his most calm, reasonable voice, which was a challenge at 0330 hours and after all that had happened. The astromech waited for him to continue, and Darin obliged. "Look, we need to talk. This has gone on long enough."

Ruby emitted a couple of short beeps ending with a questioning whistle. Darin looked at Sparks for the translation, and the 3PO said, "Sir, Ruby would like to know what you are referring to."

Sighing in aggravation, Darin said to Ruby, "You know what I’m talking about. Don’t play dumb, and don’t bother denying it–I know you’re the one who’s responsible for all my computer problems these last few days."

Ruby’s response this time was a challenging blat. Sparks sounded a bit confused when he said, "Ruby says it is nothing more than self-defense."

"Self-defense?!"

Ruby’s string of beeps and low whistles was dark and guttural. "Oh, dear. He says you and Botch have shown a clear intent to kill him on at least two occasions, and he has no intention of giving you a third opportunity. He is merely trying to defend himself." Sparks sounded disturbed.

"What?" Darin couldn’t believe it had gone this far. "I have not tried to kill you! Neither--" Darin stopped sheepishly when some passing techs warily looked his way, and then he continued in a lower tone, "Neither has Botch! Look, Ruby, this is ridiculous. Those were accidents! In sims, no less! I am not out to get you!"

Ruby replied with an astromech’s equivalent of a huff, and Darin could almost guess Sparks’s translation before he heard it. "Sir, Ruby says that’s exactly the kind of response he expected from you, and he doesn’t believe you," Sparks said.

"And why’s that?"

A few lights on Ruby’s panel flashed, and a shrill whistle accompanied the beeps this time. Darin could only associate the reaction with Ruby laughing in his face, and he tried to push the image from his mind. Maybe he was taking this anthropomorphizing thing a little too far.

Ruby’s answer was rather long, and when Sparks finally turned to Darin to translate, he spoke a little more quietly than he had before. "Oh, my. Ruby says...that he knew you wouldn’t openly admit to trying to kill him. He’s not so stupid so as to expect humans to come out and say when they are trying to harm another. Instead, they lie and make excuses to cover it up to protect themselves and their goal. He says you’re lying."

Darin was quickly losing his patience. "Oh, for all the snow–fine. If you don’t believe me, I can’t help that. But this has gotten completely out of hand. You’ve got to stop messing with my computer and my authorization code and everything associated with it. I can’t keep pretending it’s not happening, and we know it’s you. I’m actually doing you a favor by talking to you now and giving you a chance to stop. You’d better. I can’t–and won’t–protect you from the consequences forever."

A set of short, harsh beeps and whistles, the most abrasive sounds emitted from Ruby thus far, met Darin’s ears. The message was clear: No. Ruby wouldn’t stop as long as he was in danger, and he certainly didn’t believe Darin of all people was doing him a favor or protecting him from anything.

Darin didn’t even wait for the translation from Sparks. Fed up, he took a swift step toward Ruby, causing the astromech to wheel back out of reach, and blurted out, "Listen, you Force-forsaken hunk of scrap metal, let’s get one thing straight here: if you don’t stop this damn nonsense right now, you’ll find yourself in a few million parts scattered across a few million star systems. I’m sick of losing sleep and having my life messed up because of you! Understand?!"

An eerie stillness settled over the small group. Slowly, Darin began to realize what he had just said and how he had said it, and there was really only one way Ruby would interpret that outburst. Darin’s anger at Ruby started to be replaced by dread, and that same unbidden question flashed through his mind: What’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever done?

He wished Quiver had never asked him that question. Ever since then, he’d kept generating new answers to it.

One light started flashing on Ruby’s panel, slowly, thoughtfully, accusingly. In desperation, Darin hurriedly pleaded, "Wait, Ruby, I didn’t mean that. I’m sorry. I just–"

Ruby gave one low blat to cut him off before quickly rolling away. Darin watched helplessly as the droid disappeared into the forest of landing struts. This was not good.

Stupid rookie mistakes.
 
 

Chapter Six

Darin climbed out of the sim, feeling fairly good about the exercise they’d just concluded. In spite of being tired after the rather eventful night, both he and Quiver had survived the mission, he hadn’t made any horrible mistakes, and he’d even gotten a kill. All in all, a good run. His main problems lay in trying to overcome and learn from the mistakes he’d made in that bad sim run two days ago. Like he’d told Mackin, he was attempting to remain more aware of the entire situation around him, but that seemed to come at the cost of losing focus on his primary activity, whether that was flying with a squadmate, tracking a target or going evasive. Thumper couldn’t find a good balance point. In addition to that, after his inadvertent shooting at CC he’d shied away from firing at the enemy whenever it looked like a squadmate or friendly was anywhere close. He knew he had to resolve that problem soon, otherwise he might freeze up if he ever had to help out a squadmate who was being chased by an Imperial in a real battle.

Darin met up with Quiver, and the two of them walked over to meet CC at her simulator. Ruby was already out of the sim’s droid socket and was on the floor, silently watching them. Upon seeing this, Darin’s mood shifted abruptly from one of satisfaction to one of fear. He moved so that Quiver was between him and the droid.

Quiver looked at him strangely while they walked. "A little jumpy, are we?"

"No," Darin said in as normal a voice as he could manage.

Ruby continued to watch them, and when the two pilots got close he let out a quiet stream of static.

It served its purpose. Darin glanced at the droid and said in a soft, worried voice, "I swear Ruby just hissed at me."

"He did not," Quiver argued.

"Yes, he did."

"So are you reconsidering your position on the whole matter then? Specifically your decision to not tell Mack about it?"

"No," Darin said as they reached CC, "because CC said she was going to talk to Ruby. Right?" It came out sounding a little more desperate than he would have liked. Everything Ruby had done up to that point had been based only on suspicion. Darin didn’t want to know what the R2 was capable of after being openly threatened.

CC nodded. "I did this morning, just like you asked. I told him that if he didn’t cut it out right away, he was going to get in a lot of trouble. Didn’t I, Ruby?" She directed her stern question to the droid, who remained there watching them, immobile. Ruby gave no response, and CC sighed and turned back to Darin. "He’s still a little upset, but he’ll get over it."

The three pilots joined their squadmates in walking toward the briefing room, and Darin again moved so that his two friends were between him and Ruby. The droid hissed once more and let the sound linger this time.

"He did it again," Darin whispered anxiously.

"Look, Darin, you can’t keep this up," Quiver said in a low voice. "All this running and hiding and paranoia. You’re wearing yourself out."

"I’m fine."

"I still can’t believe you threatened him," muttered Quiver as they left the room. "Given the situation, that wasn’t very smart."

Darin looked back uneasily into the sim room, just to make sure Ruby wasn’t following. "Yeah, I know. I know."

Darin experienced no more problems with his authorization code or passcode that day, Maptoo was able to fix his console and password problems, and in the subsequent trouble-free days Darin might have thought the situation had been resolved if it wasn’t for one small thing: Ruby seemed to be everywhere.

When Darin left his quarters in the morning to go to breakfast, twice he found Ruby outside in the corridor, simply sitting there. Once Darin appeared, Ruby would give his static hiss and slowly back away. Darin would also back away in the opposite direction down the corridor to prevent finding himself on the business end of an arc welder. Whenever he went to the hangar or the repair bay or the sim room, Ruby was there, watching him. Darin even encountered Ruby one time on an empty deck where he always went running. He didn’t know what Ruby was up to, and the constant worrying and attempts to figure it out did him no good.

Quiver kept urging Thumper to get the situation taken care of once and for all, especially when they had to walk past Ruby and Darin would duck over to the far side of Quiver or CC for protection (an action that was now becoming second nature to Darin); however, Darin kept refusing.

Three otherwise-uneventful days had passed since Ruby had started hissing when Darin was called into Commander Mackin’s office. Darin wasn’t sure what the commander wanted to talk about, but since he was fairly certain he wasn’t in trouble for anything, he was merely a little puzzled and curious as he pressed the door chime to Mackin’s office.

"Come in," Mackin called from inside.

When Darin opened the door, a small room lay before him. It had originally been a standard crew cabin, but it had been remade into the commander’s office. The bunk beds had been removed, and the only pieces of furniture were a round table in the corner with room for three or four people to sit and a single large desk in the center of the room–an actual desk instead of the cobbled-together, makeshift desks the subordinate pilots had in their quarters. Mackin’s desk was positioned so that he was facing the door, with two chairs for guests on the side nearest the door and another two chairs at the table.

Mackin’s desk itself reflected the organized chaos the commander had learned to master. Amid different types of potted plants were stacks of datapads, datacards and even a pile or two of flimsi sheets. At first glance it looked as messy as Quiver’s desk, but the difference was that Mackin could immediately find any particular datacard he wanted. Darin was never quite sure how he did it, but he did.

Along with those things and his computer console, on the desk there were also some holos and mementos, and two items in particular always stood out to Darin. One was the emblem of Bluehill Squadron, Mackin’s former squadron on his homeworld, painted on a small piece of a Z-95 fuselage. The other was the Corona Squadron emblem Maptoo had painted on a small piece of an X-wing fuselage to complete the set. In each case, the metal pieces used had come from a fighter flown as part of the squadron but had later needed all or part of its hull cut up for scrap. Once when Darin had asked, Mack had told him that those types of paintings were a naval squadron tradition on his homeworld, and Darin was fascinated by it.

Now on the far side of the desk, across a jungle of plants and datacards, Commander Quentell Mackin looked up from his work. He was a somewhat stocky, plain-looking pilot, but one whom Darin was happy to be serving under. "Hi, Darin."

The use of Darin’s first name confirmed that he wasn’t in trouble and that they could keep things somewhat informal. As Darin walked in and the door closed, he said, "Sir, you wanted to see me?"

"Yes. Have a seat." Mack’s expression and voice held traces of confusion and concern, and Darin tried to figure out why as he sat down in one of the chairs in front of Mackin’s desk. Had something happened? Was he about to get bad news?

He didn’t have much time to guess. Mack leaned forward on his desk and looked intently at Darin. When Mackin spoke an instant later, his question was not one of idle chitchat but was a direct request for enlightenment. "What’s wrong?"

So that’s what this was about–he’d noticed Darin was acting strangely. Darin tried not to react, but it was hard to cover up the sudden fear that Mackin knew what had been going on with Ruby. And if that was true– "Nothing, sir. Things are fine," he said as neutrally and as casually as he could.

It didn’t look like Mackin believed him one bit. "You’re sure."

"Yes, sir." It wasn’t technically a lie, was it? Ruby had stopped messing with his codes, even if he hadn’t exactly stopped messing with Darin’s head.

"No problems?"

"Nothing important, sir." That one crossed into the realm of untruthfulness, and Darin knew it. He hated lying to Mackin, and Darin also knew he couldn’t hold out much longer while he was the focus of those penetrating dark blue eyes, so he ventured, "Why, sir?"

Mackin leaned back in his chair, still scrutinizing Darin. "Because I want to know why you requested a transfer."

The answer was so unexpected that Darin couldn’t do anything for a second. Then all his other problems vaporized, and he couldn’t keep the pure confusion and anxiety out of his voice. "What? A transfer? Sir, what are you talking about? I don’t want a transfer. I don’t have to leave, do I?" He really liked this squadron. If he had to go–

"You tell me." Mack handed him a datapad. "It’s a request for a transfer, which you signed. Snubber brought this to me about ten minutes ago after receiving it, and he couldn’t figure it out any better than I could. If you didn’t do it, you’d better make sure those pals of yours understand that pranks like this are dangerous."

Darin read over the datapad’s information. Sure enough, it was a standard request to be transferred out of the squadron, and he had signed it. Only, he hadn’t. His confusion grew. "No, sir, I didn’t do this. I really don’t think it’s a prank, either. Although..." He trailed off as the realization dawned on him. Ruby.

"Although what?" Darin was so preoccupied with the potential ramifications that he barely heard the question, and Mackin repeated, "Darin, although what?"

Feeling extremely uncomfortable now and fervently wishing he hadn’t said that one little word that threatened to ruin everything, Darin glanced up at his commander. "Nothing...sir...it’s nothing serious..."

"If it’s transferring pilots out of my squadron, then yes, it is serious. What is it? What’s going on?"

Thumper tried not to fidget. He opened his mouth, hesitated, then closed it again and bit his bottom lip.

"Flight Officer," Mackin said sternly, "I asked you a very simple question."

"Well...sir...it’s...um, it’s Ruby," Darin finished lamely. "He’s paranoid about me and Botch, especially me."

"What does Ruby have to do with this transfer request?"

"He was using my authorization code to mess with stuff in my computer, sir. I think he was hoping I’d get in trouble and get washed out or that I’d get fed up and leave, but he never did anything this drastic before. I think he used it to forge the transfer request and get me away from him."

"He was using your authorization code?! Why didn’t you mention any of this before?"

"We were trying to resolve it on our own first, sir. I thought it was getting better."

Mackin wearily ran a hand through his black crew cut as if he could feel grey hairs growing. "This is not something you deal with on your own, Flight Officer. This is a security threat."

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir." Darin suppressed a sigh and put the datapad back on Mackin’s desk. He’d been so certain that everything would work out in the end, but somewhere along the way his repulsorlifts had turned into nothing more than old metal coils, and it was a long way down.

"What’s been happening?" Mack asked. "I want details. Start from the beginning."

Darin bit his lip again, took a breath and related everything that had happened with Ruby ever since that simulator run a couple of weeks back that had started Ruby’s hostility and paranoia. He took great care to emphasize that he’d gone against Quiver’s insistence to report the problem and that CC had tried to fix things as well; the last thing he wanted now was to get them in trouble over this. If he was still with his training squadron, Darin knew that’s exactly what would have happened: with the Horizons, no one was safe from punishment if they were even the slightest bit involved. But maybe Mackin wasn’t like that. Maybe Darin could put the others in a good enough light and accept all the blame himself. He might as well, since he was going to get in trouble for this anyway. That was a given.

Mackin sat there and absorbed everything as Darin spoke, only interrupting to ask a quick question or two for clarification. When Darin was done, the commander said slowly, "Actually, this does explain a lot." When Darin only looked up at him, he continued, "I had attributed those extra patrols you took to some pilots using your rookie status against you. While I’d hoped I was wrong, I think I would have preferred that to this. Then there was all that sim work that we’ve done the last few days. Even though Snubber and I can tell you’re improving, your sim scores have been steadily and rather noticeably dropping. We checked out the simulator you’ve been using, but it worked just fine for us and gave us scores we expected. But if there’s something going on behind the scenes that’s tied to your access code...well, then it would only act up when you’re logged into that simulator. It also explains why you actively put Quiver and CC between you and Ruby when you have to pass that droid. If I’d only seen you do it once then I wouldn’t have thought anything of it, but you’ve done it several times that I’ve noticed. A little jumpy, are we?"

Darin felt no need to answer the rhetorical question, so he kept quiet and cast his eyes down at the desk until Mackin spoke again.

"Getting back to your story, though, there’s one large part I don’t understand. Why were you so adamant about not reporting the problems Ruby was causing?"

"Sir, I–" How was he supposed to explain this? "I didn’t–well, I was hoping to fix it before–" Oh, just get it over with, he scolded himself. "Um, sir, I was afraid that reporting it would lead to...uh, memory-wipes." Of Botch and any other memory-intact droid here.

Mackin considered Darin’s words for a moment and then said, "If there’s a problem in any aspect of this squadron, it needs to be fixed, Flight Officer. Never refrain from reporting something because you’re afraid of the potential consequences. If it’s something that needs to be done, then it needs to be done for the good of everyone. Plus, if it’s something we can catch early enough, the fixes might not have to be as drastic as they would be later on after the problem has worsened. Don’t presume you know exactly what Lieutenant Weas or I will decide to do, either. I don’t think you’re qualified yet to make that call, and as far as I know, you can’t read our minds."

"Yes, sir."

"You also said at the start of this little chat that you didn’t think this problem was serious or important. Short of obviously-trivial matters, which this definitely is not, also don’t presume it’s your place to determine what is and is not important, since there may be more to a situation than is apparent to you. That’s what the chain of command is for. Lieutenant Weas is your flight lead as well as the XO: talk to him next time if you have any concerns, and he’ll take the appropriate action or raise the issue up to me."

"Yes, sir." Darin secretly wondered if Mackin knew how hard it was to apply all those easily-spoken words to real life. It was a good philosophy, but there were so many factors that came into play each time...

As if to address one of those other factors, the commander took out his comlink and dialed a frequency. The call was answered a moment later with, "CC."

"Flight Officer Cerac, this is Commander Mackin. Report to my office immediately."

The tone of CC’s voice grew more serious. "Yes, sir, I’ll be right there."

"Out." Mackin turned off the comlink.

Thinking Mack was telling him to go, Darin said, "Yes, sir," and started to get up.

His hopes were dashed when Mackin shook his head and waved Darin back down in his seat. "No, that was to end the comlink communication. You stay."

"Sorry, sir." A little embarrassed, Darin settled back down in the chair, which felt ten times stiffer and harder than it had five seconds ago.

"Oh, and one more thing, Flight Officer."

"Yes, sir?"

"If I ever again ask you a question and receive a less-than-straight or less-than-truthful answer, it will not be taken lightly."

His insides felt hollow as Darin looked down and said, "Sorry, sir."

After that, the two pilots waited in silence. It made Darin uncomfortable, but in some ways he preferred that and the silence to what he was afraid would happen after CC arrived.

The door chime to the office rang before too long, and Mackin called, "Come in."

Mack had used CC’s rank when he commed her, and Darin knew she had picked up on that signal. That’s why, instead of coming in the way Darin had, CC would–

She walked in, came to attention in front of Mackin’s desk, saluted and said, "Flight Officer Cerac reporting as ordered, sir."

Mackin stood and returned the salute before saying, "Have a seat."

They sat, and Darin could feel a puzzled glance come his way. He studied one of the plants on the desk, a bluish-green leafy thing sitting beside a holo of Mackin’s wife, so he wouldn’t have to look at CC. Darin hoped she wouldn’t think he’d gone behind her back on this. And whatever would end up happening, it’d be all his fault–

"Flight Officer Cerac," Mackin began, "have you or anyone you know been involved with any pranks regarding squadron transfer requests?"

In Darin’s peripheral vision, CC looked genuinely surprised. "No, sir. We wouldn’t do a prank like that."

"That’s good to hear," Mackin answered. "Unfortunately, something like that has happened to your squadmate here, and since you just confirmed it wasn’t a prank, the remaining theory is that it’s connected to your droid. Have any insight on that?"

CC collected her thoughts for a moment and then slowly replied, "No, sir. I can’t confirm it, but I can’t exactly deny it, either. I certainly hope it’s not."

Mackin gestured to the datapad. "What we have here is a request for a squadron transfer that Flight Officer Stanic apparently signed, though he claims he didn’t. If it wasn’t a prank and if your droid was not involved, can you think of any other plausible way something like this could have happened? Assuming, of course, that he is telling the truth."

Darin fought the urge to flinch, and he wondered how badly he had affected Mackin’s trust in him, what little there could have been after being with the squadron for so short a time.

Half a minute passed before CC finally and reluctantly said, "No, sir, I can’t."

"I can’t either." With a sigh, Mackin said, "I’ll have the computer techs look into it. In the meantime, though, Ruby has to be memory-wiped."

Those were the exact words Darin had been dreading, and he reacted outwardly the same way CC did. CC was the first one to voice their mutual feelings. "Sir, please." She was on the verge of sounding desperate. "Isn’t there something else we can do?"

"Sir, we don’t know for sure that it was Ruby who made that transfer request," Darin added hastily, pleadingly.

Mackin shook his head. "It really doesn’t matter. This should have been done days ago when you first found out he was causing the problems with your authorization code, Flight Officer Stanic. If he didn’t forge the request, it still needs to be done. If he did, it’s one more rather large reason to do it. And Flight Officer Cerac, let me ask you: what exactly have you done so far to get Ruby to stop being antagonistic toward Flight Officer Stanic?"

"Well, sir," CC faltered a bit but then recovered, "we’ve both told Ruby to stop. I warned him that if he didn’t, he’d be in trouble."

"Based solely on how ill-at-ease your squadmate here still looks in Ruby’s presence, I have to question whether that warning did anything at all to solve the problem," Mackin replied.

Darin piped up with, "Sir, I’m just a little jumpy after what happened before. It’s not–"

"The problem isn’t fixed as long as you’re wasting energy thinking it’s not. Now, Flight Officer Cerac," said Mackin, turning his attention from Darin to CC, "what do you propose to do to fix this problem that you haven’t already tried? What you did before doesn’t seem to have worked."

"I–I don’t know, sir, but there has to be something," CC said.

"Can’t we just use a restraining bolt or something, sir?" asked Darin.

Mackin gave another sigh and held both of their gazes. "Look, I know you’re attached to your droids. I’m attached to mine, so don’t think I don’t appreciate the sentiment. I know lots of pilots who don’t like to memory-wipe their astromechs, but this has gone beyond the normal realm into something that frankly is a danger to us. Flight Officer Cerac," he said, giving her his full attention again, "let me present you with a scenario. Ruby is kept memory-intact, he doesn’t heed your warnings and he doesn’t change. He wants to keep your squadmate away from him. What’s to prevent him from tinkering with the programming of, for example, Flight Officer Stanic’s nav computer? With the undetected change of only one number, your squadmate here, or any of the others if Ruby turns his attention to them, could wind up hundreds of light-years away from everyone else after a hyperspace jump, lost and unable to find help in time. A few well-placed lines of code affecting your squadmate’s comm system could broadcast a homing signal to the Imperials while on long-range patrol. What about a command that brings his shields down in the middle of combat?"

Darin suddenly felt a whole lot more vulnerable.

Mackin continued, "A restraining bolt won’t guard against things like that. Are you willing to trade Flight Officer Stanic’s life for the electronic memory banks of your astromech droid?"

"No, sir," CC said resolutely. "Of course not."

"Good answer," Mackin said. "And now you see where I’m coming from." He considered for a short time, and then added, "If Ruby’s personality stabilizes after this memory-wipe, I won’t make routine wipes mandatory for him. However, if the problem shows the slightest hint of recurring, he’ll be wiped again immediately. Understood?"

"Understood, sir," answered CC defeatedly.

"And as for you," the commander said, turning to Darin, "if your droid starts showing any potentially dangerous behavior, he will be memory-wiped as well."

"Yes, sir." Not good, but he’d been afraid Botch would be ordered wiped too, so it was better than Darin had dared to hope for.

That relieved feeling didn’t last long. "I expect you to schedule Ruby’s memory-wipe to take place within the hour."

"Sir?" Darin prayed he had heard that incorrectly. Why him? Hadn’t he done enough to CC already?

Mack raised an eyebrow slightly. "You’re in charge of coordinating with Maintenance for all of the squadron’s astromechs, aren’t you?" His tone of voice indicated that he wasn’t really asking.

Now Darin saw where this was going, but it didn’t make him any happier about the situation. "Yes, sir."

"Then make sure this maintenance is performed correctly and within the hour. I’ll be checking up on it afterward. Any further questions?"

A chorus of subdued and depressed "No, sir’s" greeted him.

"Dismissed."

The two flight officers got to their feet, saluted and turned to walk out. Just before they reached the door, they were stopped when Mackin said, "Oh, wait a second."

Turning around, Darin saw that Mack had picked up the datapad that had started this mess. Holding it up, Mackin asked, "Flight Officer Stanic, what should I do with this transfer request?"

"Well, sir...I’d prefer that you forgot about it." If that’s even an option at this point, Darin mentally added.

Mackin nodded, then he took the datacard out of it and tossed the card to Darin. "Here." After Darin caught it, Mackin went on. "As far as I’m concerned, it never reached this desk."

"Thank you, sir." Darin pocketed the datacard and walked out with CC.

In the corridor outside the office, both pilots slowly came to a stop after the door closed behind them. Darin sighed miserably and looked at the floor. "CC, I’m sorry. I didn’t want this to happen. I didn’t tell Commander Mackin on purpose–"

"It’s okay, rookie," CC interrupted with a mixture of despondence and a dash of anger. A slight waver in her voice made Darin think she was stubbornly fighting back tears with all her strength. "I know you didn’t. But it happened, and he’s right, you know? I just have to learn to let go of this, I guess. Let me know when Ruby’s going to be wiped because I want to be there when it happens. I’ll see you then, okay?"

She slowly turned and walked away down the corridor. Darin watched her go. In the month that he’d known her, he’d never seen her act like that before. He could imagine what it would be like for him if he and Botch were on the receiving end of this order, so Darin felt like he knew what CC was going through.

It was unfair, really: unfair to her. She was the one ultimately getting hurt here and once again falling victim to Darin’s ignorance of the situation around him. In the way that he’d been handling things with Ruby and in the little battle that resulted, Darin had pulled the trigger before realizing that CC was dangerously close to his line of fire. She’d been caught in the middle of the crossfire between Ruby and Darin while trying to mediate. When one side ultimately had to lose, a friend to both would end up losing either way.

Darin felt even worse now.

He sighed and slowly walked to the repair bay to find out the soonest time a tech was available. Better get this over and done with.

In the repair bay, Darin sat with one of the squadron’s maintenance officers and one of the astromech technicians, and looked over the day’s schedule with them. By shuffling some of the lower-priority work around, they were able to create an opening in thirty-five minutes in which Ruby could be memory-wiped. Darin commed CC with the projected time, and then he logged it into the official schedule. Once that was done, the other two people went back to work while Darin took over the task of filling out the rest of the forms for the procedure and updating the various records.

Darin hadn’t been working for more than a few minutes when metallic clangs sounded throughout the repair bay, sounds reminiscent of doors being locked down. Startled, Darin looked up and saw all of the techs in the bay looking equally confused. Some tried to open various doors but found them locked. Seeing this, other techs began pulling out comlinks and speaking into them in bewildered, nervous tones.

One door opened a minute later, allowing a small group of fleet troopers to spill into the repair bay with their weapons drawn. They took up covering positions for each other as they entered. Darin simply watched them, wondering what in the galaxy was going on and if he should be diving for cover or running from a bomb or taking a similar action.

The door closed behind the fleet troopers, and one fleet trooper paused briefly to look around the repair bay. When his eyes landed on Darin he stopped, then without taking his gaze off the pilot he quickly handed a datapad he was carrying to a trooper beside him, who pocketed it. He issued some quick orders, and he and his squad started advancing on Darin, strategically and efficiently moving amid vehicles and crates for protection.

Darin was quite certain he didn’t like how this situation was shaping up. There was definitely something terribly wrong going on, and whatever it was, it involved him or his immediate vicinity somehow. He wanted to dive under the table he was sitting at, but at the same time he figured sudden movements would not improve things; instead, he sat there and anxiously watched as the troopers closed the distance. He even took a look behind him to see if they were after someone (or something) back there, but the area was empty. This was not good.

"Don’t move!" the lead trooper commanded as soon as they were within earshot. Darin obediently froze, except for his heart, which pounded faster. He still prayed they were there for someone else, but those hopes crumbled when the troopers surrounded and leveled their blasters at him. The lead trooper said, "Flight Officer Stanic, stand up and put your hands on your head. Slowly."

Darin now had the undivided attention of every single person in the repair bay. There were a million questions he was desperate to learn the answers to, but he figured he was in no position to ask them. Stunned, he carefully and slowly did as he was told. A new–albeit weak–hope manifested itself in his mind, this one praying that this was all nothing more than an elaborate prank...a very, very elaborate prank.

A couple of the fleet troopers came up while the rest covered them. They grabbed Darin’s wrists and cuffed them behind his back, then they patted him down and removed everything from his pockets. Darin finally found his voice and asked anxiously, "What’s going on?"

"Intel flagged your attempts to access restricted and sensitive information in the computer just now. We were sent to immediately apprehend you."

"But–but I–"

"Save it. Let’s go," the lead trooper said when his men indicated they were ready. They quickly marched him out of the repair bay.

No, this was not good.

Darin had been left by himself in the brig for a while, though how long it had been, he couldn’t tell since they’d taken his chrono. He hadn’t stopped pacing the whole time, making lap after lap around the small cell while his mind had whirled twice as fast trying to figure out what was happening.

His first thoughts, strangely enough, had been that if he was kept in here for too long, he wouldn’t have all the preparations done in time for Ruby’s memory-wipe, and then Commander Mackin would be upset. Darin would get in trouble for not following Mackin’s explicit instructions to have the memory-wipe done within the hour.

After enough time passed to allow Darin’s mind to calm down a bit, he had realized that he was overreacting. Unexpectedly being thrown in the brig was an extenuating circumstance, to say the least, and Mack would certainly understand that. Besides, if nothing else, Darin had scheduled the memory-wipe like he was supposed to.

Thinking about Ruby’s scheduled memory-wipe and the related commands Darin had put in the computer immediately prior to the repair bay’s lockdown had led him down a now-familiar line of thought, one which he was now unsuccessfully trying to convince the investigator was true.

"Sir, I already said I don’t know what files you’re talking about," Darin repeated for the fourth time as he sat in a questioning room across a table from a security officer. It would have been inaccurate to say that Thumper wasn’t anxious, given that he’d never been in this much trouble before with the Rebels, and the worst part now was that although he honestly hadn’t done anything, they didn’t seem to believe him. Half of the mental energy that could have been better used to work through his problem was instead stuck on trying to figure out exactly what was going on. "I was just scheduling a memory-wipe for one of the squadron’s astromechs. That’s all."

The security officer–a husky, dark tan Mon Calamari with a deep, gravelly voice–shook his large head derisively. "Come off it already, Flight Officer. There were flags raised in the computer system that someone was trying to access restricted military files and information, and the access was immediately traced back to your authorization code and computer terminal login. We caught you–how does that Human expression go? ‘Red-handed,’ I believe. Rather sloppy job. You’re not much of a slicer, are you. It shows."

Darin tried to will away the urge to fidget. No wonder he kept making so many dumb rookie mistakes–he could never be a halfway-respectable fighter pilot if he lost his head during something so relatively benign as a questioning session by his own allies. If he acted like this now, how could he ever expect to get through dogfights? He had to pull himself together. "I’m not a slicer at all. Sir, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m just a pilot. I didn’t do any of that." He shifted his weight and sat up a bit in his chair; after sitting there for so long, he was starting to get uncomfortable. "Sir, please, like I said, this astromech is paranoid about getting his memory wiped, and he’s been messing with my authorization code because he thinks I’m out to get him. If you have some of your computer experts check the system, I’ll bet you’ll find some sort of trigger that initiated a snooping program to try accessing those files and frame me as soon as I scheduled him for a memory-wipe."

"And how would you know this, Flight Officer? Is it because you put that program there? Are you trying to frame the droid to shift the blame off yourself?"

Darin hadn’t realized how thin the ice under him had become. He mentally cursed, feeling a little more nervous despite his newfound determination to stay calm and collected. "No, sir, I didn’t put it there. The droid did, if there even is a program like that."

He was about to say more, but the security officer interrupted him by swivelling one large eye in Darin’s direction in a most disconcerting fashion. "You say this droid was supposed to be memory-wiped today. Did it know what you were up to with your snooping? Is that why you’re wiping its memory? To make sure no record exists of what you were doing?"

Dread began to settle in Darin’s stomach. Ruby was surely wiped by this time. They couldn’t really think Darin did it to cover his hypothetical tracks...could they? There would be no way he could prove he didn’t, beyond giving them his word that he didn’t. Even if Commander Mackin said he’d ordered the wipe, what was to keep the investigators from thinking Darin set it all up and set things in motion to force that decision and therefore obtain an alibi? He’d never been so desperate for a permanent record of all the stupid stuff he’d done as he was at that moment.

"I didn’t schedule the memory-wipe because of that, sir," Darin answered as levelly as he could. This was getting very bad very fast. "I did it because, like I’ve said, the droid was crazy and messing with my codes. Sir, you asked me how I knew there might be a snooping program that triggered all of this now. It’s not because I put it there. I know about it because the droid’s done something like that before."

"Really," the Mon Cal said smugly, or what Darin could only interpret as smugness. "And is this reported anywhere so that we might follow up on it and verify what you’re saying?"

Darin opened his mouth to answer but stopped. The computer techs had never received his message about his problems with his authorization code, and Maptoo had fixed it all for him back when they were still trying to resolve the issue of Ruby on their own. There would be no record of it anywhere. Darin’s heart sank.

Just as suddenly, he remembered something else, and he frantically grabbed onto it. "Wait, wait–Maptoo–um, Flight Officer Moog said he was going to talk to the computer techs about it! He said there was a security hole because the droid was able to set up some kind of spy-and-snatch program to get my authorization code in the first place. Flight Officer Moog was going to talk to the techs that night about fixing it." He didn’t want to drag Maptoo into this, but he was getting desperate. He truly hoped the Gran had done what he had said he was going to do. Darin belatedly realized he should have followed up with Maptoo to find out.

The investigator gave a short, harsh laugh and shook his head, vaguely reminding Darin of the brick-wall conversation he’d had with Ruby in the hangar. "This is the stupidest, most pathetic story I’ve ever heard in my career. A droid is framing you because it doesn’t want to be memory-wiped? Listen, Flight Officer, and listen well: this is not a joke. This is serious. Once we finish accumulating all the evidence we’ll be pushing for a court-martial, and no self-respecting judge is going to believe such an insane story. You’d better help yourself by working with us and telling us the truth. Stick to this droid nonsense and I guarantee you’ll be spending many years in prison. Think about it: years. Is that really what you want?"

If that was a scare tactic, it was working. Darin wondered fleetingly if there was any color left in his face. When the investigator phrased everything that way, the pilot realized how truly dumb and incredible his story sounded, and if he’d been on the outside looking in like a judge and jury would be, he himself wouldn’t have believed it either. But what could he do when it actually was the truth?

The Mon Cal must have noticed his reaction because he pressed on. "Actually, it wouldn’t be too hard to reach the conclusion that you were trying to get that information for the Imperials. If that happens, you’d be lucky to spend the rest of your natural life in the brig, though most spies and traitors don’t have such good fortune; they usually spend the rest of their truncated lives in the brig instead. The Rebellion does not take kindly to beings of those occupations."

It was obviously meant to be an even more effective scare tactic, but all it did was make Darin go from a defensive mode to an offensive mode for the first time in the entire questioning session. Blood rushed so quickly into his drained face that Thumper could feel the heat from it. "I am not a spy or a traitor!" he said angrily, not even trying to cover up how insulted and resentful he felt at the accusation. "I’m telling you the truth about the droid–"

"You were carrying a datacard with a transfer request," the security officer interrupted. "Were you planning on transferring somewhere else because the area was getting too hot here for your snooping? Were you disgruntled with your squadron for some reason and wanted to sell some information to the enemy as payback before you left?"

Darin was thrown off-balance with this new approach and the sudden inclusion of the forgotten transfer request that he’d had in his pocket. In attempting to regain his mental footing he was distracted from his anger, falling back instead on his exasperated and anxious confusion. "What?! Sir, no, I don’t want a transfer! That was the droid t–"

"Enough with the droid already! No one is going to believe such an obviously fabricated lie, so stop wasting my time. I can’t–"

The Mon Cal was cut off with a short rap at the door, and Darin was all too glad for the interruption as it gave him a chance to breathe a little and recover. The security officer didn’t seem to share the pilot’s feelings; narrowing his bulbous eyes, the Mon Cal got up and opened the door. There was a small group of people standing outside in the corridor, though Darin couldn’t see them all due to his angle of sight with the doorway and so he couldn’t tell how many there were. The security officer talked to them quietly for a moment before he waved a webbed hand in annoyance at something they said and walked out of the room to join them.

Just before the door shut, Darin noticed that Commander Mackin and Maptoo were part of that group. The CO was looking at Darin with a raised eyebrow and a tired expression that seemed to say, "Do you think this Ruby fiasco has gone on long enough yet?" It might have said something more or something different, but that was all Darin caught in the half-instant before the door closed and left him alone in the room.

Darin was relieved beyond measure that Mackin was there and (presumably) helping him out with Security and Intel. He sighed, folded his arms on the table, leaned forward to rest his forehead on them, and closed his eyes.

Yes, he thought to himself. Yes, it has.

It was late when Darin finally got back to his quarters, and luckily, his passcode still worked. Figuring Quiver would be asleep at this hour, Darin quietly slipped inside and kept the lights off. He was rapidly learning how to find his way around the room and change into his nightclothes in the dark so he wouldn’t disturb his wingman, especially on nights when he came in late from working in the hangar or falling asleep in the lounge. Darin could even adjust the temperature controls in the dark, too.

The door had just closed behind him when Quiver turned on the small reading light at the head of his bed. Squinting from the sudden light and apparently just awakened, Quiver peered down at Darin from his top bunk. "Hey, Niner. You’re back."

"Yeah," Darin said. "Sorry, didn’t mean to wake you up." He grabbed his nightclothes and started changing, wanting to get his general duty uniform off as soon as he could: it smelled faintly of the brig, making it a rather unpleasant reminder of the vast majority of his day.

"Nah, I was kinda waiting for you to get back in anyway. So they finally decided you weren’t going to blow up the ship and let you go, huh?"

"Something like that."

"None of this would have ever happened if we’d talked to Mack about Ruby right away like I wanted to. Remind me to give you my best ‘I told you so’ speech in the morning," Quiver said through a yawn.

That was exactly what Darin felt he didn’t need. "Yeah, sure." Once he was done changing, he looked up at Quiver and hesitantly said, "So...we just finished Ruby’s memory-wipe." It felt like confessing a deed he wasn’t proud of.

Quiver seemed to think the opposite. "That’s good to hear, but don’t tell CC I said that–I’m rather fond of my life."

"I’m really glad Commander Mackin postponed it when he first found out I was taken in for questioning," Darin said. "I’m sure I’d still be in the brig if they hadn’t been able to access Ruby’s intact memory and verify my story. During the questioning, I was so worried that it had already been erased. If he’d been wiped before they could see it, well, things would have been a lot, lot worse."

"Even if you hadn’t been thrown in jail, the wipe would have still been delayed for at least a little while." Quiver shook his head in wonder. "It took nearly thirty minutes to actually find Ruby in the first place and get near enough to him to put a restraining bolt on. Wouldn’t you know it? That droid had used his magnetic tracks to climb up the wall and stick himself to a metal support on the ceiling in a storage bay. I would say that you missed some excitement, but you were experiencing some excitement of your own at the time."

"I would have gladly traded." Darin paused for a few seconds before venturing, "Um, how’s CC? Is she okay?" Darin knew how much she loved that droid, and the memory-wipe had essentially, well, killed it. She had to be angry with him because of his part in the figurative death of Ruby, which was ironic given his recent assertions that he hadn’t been trying to kill the droid. Just now when they were in the repair bay with the techs to wipe Ruby’s memory, she’d been acting rather strangely around Darin. CC had steered clear of him whenever possible, and something about her body language told Darin she didn’t want to interact with him.

"Oh, well...she was pretty upset earlier," Quiver admitted. "Dinner wasn’t very pleasant, and that was even before he was wiped. Next time this happens, I hope you’re there so you can take some of the heat off me."

"Oh." So she was upset at him. Darin fidgeted at the confirmation and changed the subject, saying, "Well, it’s late. I had a rough day and I’m tired, so I’m going to bed. Good night."

"G’night, Convict Nine. And relax. You don’t have to worry about Ruby anymore."

Quiver turned off the light, and Darin climbed into his bottom bunk, not even bothering to secretly fiddle with the room’s temperature controls beforehand. It was late, he had had a rough day, and he was tired, but he couldn’t fall asleep right away like he’d hoped. His brain wouldn’t rest: it kept going around and around about how he had hurt CC, however unintentionally, and how he was now obligated to make amends.

But the one way he thought of to do that was something he wished he could wipe from his own memory.
 
 

Chapter Seven

The next day, the mess hall was as warm as ever; Darin didn’t pay the temperature much heed, however, as he poked at his lunch with a fork. He was too busy wrestling with other thoughts, the same thoughts that had been his constant companion last night and all morning. It’s the only fair thing to do.

The food on his plate was now in a slightly different pattern than it was three seconds ago. So what? he argued. It was ultimately Ruby’s fault anyway. It’s not fair to me or to Botch to punish Botch for something he didn’t do.

He began absentmindedly pushing all the food toward the center of his plate. You’re taking this attachment to your droid too far. Besides, it is your fault that Mack found out about Ruby before the situation could be fixed.

So what? Whenever Darin argued with himself, that seemed to be one of his defense’s favorite phrases. Ruby was the one doing things he shouldn’t have been! He was a danger! He was crazy! Quiver was right: I should have told Mack right away. It would have saved a lot of grief. It took Commander Mackin the rest of the day yesterday and part of the night just to clear up everything with Security, convince them I hadn’t done anything, and get me out of the brig. That was all Ruby’s fault. What if I’d been stuck in there and an attack came? One pilot can make a big difference sometimes, especially since we’re so short-handed to begin with. It could have been a lot worse than it was, and it would have all been because of Ruby. Botch hasn’t done anything wrong. He doesn’t deserve to be memory-wiped. I can’t believe you’re even considering this. There’s no reason for it!

"There you are, rookie."

When Darin looked up, he saw Quiver heading straight for him–rather, as straight as he could while having to weave between tables and people. From the looks of things, Quiver had deposited his lunch tray at their usual table and had then spotted Darin sitting on the other side of the mess hall.

Darin chewed on his bottom lip a little; he’d wanted to finish lunch before Quiver and CC came. Especially after how she had acted last night, he figured it was best if he avoided CC for a while and gave things a chance to calm down before trying to apologize. A discreet glance at his chrono showed him that it was later than he’d realized, and if he hadn’t been lost in thought and poking at his food, he probably could have finished in time and left.

But now Quiver was there, and Darin was stuck. His wingman slid into the seat across the table from him. "Not planning on eating with us today?" Quiver asked. "You skipped out on breakfast, too."

"Sorry." Darin poked at his food some more.

"How come? Please don’t tell me you get moody. I don’t want a moody wingman."

"No," Darin mumbled. "I just...felt like being by myself."

Quiver sighed and rolled his eyes. "Wonderful. First CC starts acting all weird, now you too. This is getting old, and it hasn’t even been a whole day. What did that droid do to you guys?"

As if on cue, they both noticed CC walk into the mess hall at that moment. She stopped short when she spotted the two of them, but then instead of coming over to tal