Chapter Text
Cal Kestis is a moron.
Okay, well, maybe “moron” is a bit too harsh. Cal’s actually very bright, for a human. He knows Binary, he knows how to navigate planets, he can activate and use a laser sword without lopping off a limb. All very important things to know when you’re a wandering adventurer and rebel, I suppose.
But when it comes to feelings? Forget it.
Thankfully, he’s got me to help him out. On the off chance that he listens.
-
“Alright,” Greez announced, “we made it. Welcome to Tatooine, home of sand, sand, and, guess what, more sand.”
“Good.” Cere nudged my leg. “BD-1, can you go wake up Cal? He’s been out for a while.”
“This is the part where you say, ‘Thank you, Greez! We couldn’t have gotten here without your excellent piloting!’” Greez grumbled. “And then I say, ‘Oh, it was nothing, I could have done that in my sleep.’ And then you’d say-”
“Greez.” Cere’s tone was tired. “It’s too early to be a sycophant. Thank you for doing what I literally paid you to do.”
“Hey, it’s never too early. Also, you’re not paying me anymore.”
I hopped onto the steering wheel and beeped out a thank you. Greez grinned. “Ah ha! See? Someone’s glad I’m here. Now get off my wheel! Shoo!”
I hopped onto his head, then onto the floor. The walk to the back took a while - the Mantis wasn’t a big ship, but I had tiny little legs. Cal had once tried to talk Greez and Cere into installing a zipline to the ceiling so I didn’t get tired walking back and forth, but Cere reminded him that droids have no concept of stamina and tiredness.
Which, okay, yeah, but it’s about the principle of the thing.
I walked past the couch, and almost ran into a hand drifting down towards the floor. I had almost forgotten about our newest passenger, who was asleep on the couch.
Merrin’s room was down the hall, but I had never seen her sleep in it. I hopped up on the table to get a better look at her.
Her gray hair, normally kept neat, was a mess. She normally kept herself held professionally, tightly-wound. At the moment, Merrin seemed to be trying to take up as much of the couch as possible, and succeeding. She lay on her back, right hand and right foot dangling off of the “potoli-weave” fabric couch (which a simple scan told me was both fake and easy to clean). And, most of all, her mouth, normally kept in a thin, severe line, was wide open, snoring in a way that sounded remarkably like a tauntaun’s bleat, and drooling.
Merrin was a Nightsister of Dathomir, which means that she was the scariest person I had ever met from the scariest place I had ever been. Merrin could use her magick to crush me like a tin can, or cause the ground to swallow me whole, or a myriad of other ways to destroy me. As a Nightsister, she was one of the single most dangerous living beings in the galaxy. She showed no mercy to those who annoyed her.
I ignored all of that and took a picture of her face with a camera function that Cal had installed on me a few weeks ago on Bogano. Then I made my way to the back of the ship.
How Cal slept in the engine room, I had no idea. The engine itself was loudly roaring at all times. The hyperdrive often glowed bright blue, bathing the room in light. A Gugan that had been brought on the ship to get her opinion on the transmission had accidentally smashed her head on the ceiling, and now the ceiling made a peculiar clicking noise every ten minutes, on the dot.
Cal slept soundly on his cot, facing the wall, breathing softly. I hopped up onto the part of the cot that he wasn’t taking up and nudged him.
“Mmph.”
I clambered on top of him and started jumping up and down on his ribs, beeping.
“Go away.”
It was time to resort to my last option. I hopped onto the workbench and started blaring Suugan Essena at full volume.
That did the trick. Cal rolled out of bed - literally, he got tangled up in his blanket and fell onto the floor in his rush - and waved his hands. “I’m awake! I’m awake!”
I turned off the music and beeped cheerfully at him. “Yeah, yeah, good morning to you too,” Cal grumbled, but it was good-natured, and he walked over to the bench and patted my head. I leaned into his hand. That always felt good.
“Where are we anyway?” he asked. The engine room didn’t have windows.
Beep beep .
“Tatooine? Like, Outer Rim?”
Boop .
“Sand planet. Cool. I don’t think I’ve actually seen a straight-up desert before.” He stretched, then started doing his morning workout. A thousand push-ups, a thousand sit-ups, twenty minutes of meditation. Never with a shirt on.
From what I had picked up, some humans never wanted to be seen without a shirt on, and some humans chose to not wear one in private, or when sleeping.. Cal was the second category. Most females were the first. I didn’t really understand why, but when I walked in on Merrin using the shower about a month ago, she yelled at me to get out. When I told Cal and Greez later, Cal’s ears went red, and Greez laughed.
A few days later, we were on the beach planet Iloh to do some trading, and apparently the beach we were on was what was known as a “nude” beach. A woman walked past with no clothes on, and Cal and Greez both nearly strained their necks in surprise when they saw her. Cere rolled her eyes to me, but Merrin was glaring daggers at Cal, who seemed ashamed of looking at the woman for some reason. Cal ended up plopping down in the sand, deciding that he liked sand, and said that he was “working on his tan” as he lay there, while hastily pretending he was meditating anytime Cere came close.
Merrin had firmly said that she did not wish to be in the sun, so Cal bought her an umbrella and some glasses that hid her eyes behind darkened lenses. Merrin had given him one of the smiles that she only gave to him, and sat underneath the umbrella, blatantly staring at Cal when he wasn’t looking from behind the sunglasses. “Do not judge me,” she whispered to me. “He’s handsome.”
Humans were a hypocritical bunch.
Greez, after an hour, had declared that he wished to take all of his clothes off along with “all of the other beautiful people.” Cal and Merrin looked at each other and moved to a different part of the beach.
Anyway, after Cal finished his pushups, I showed him the picture of Merrin that I had taken. After he finished laughing, he told me to not take pictures of people without their permission.
“I might get that framed,” he pondered. “Eh, she’d probably kill me. But it’d be worth it to see the look on her face…”
I knew for a fact that if anyone could get a picture of her framed and escape with their life, it would be Cal. Everyone knew it but Cal.
After finishing his sit-ups, Cal kneeled in the center of the circle he had drawn with chalk on the floor of the engine room. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and was silent. I didn’t understand meditation in the slightest. It seemed tedious to me, and I couldn’t stay in one place for too long. Cal had once attempted to explain it to me, but I just didn’t understand.
I did understand that he liked to be left alone during it, so I made my way to the door. Before I could open it, however, it opened by itself, and Merrin stood on the other side.
“Cal Kestis,” she began to say, “Cere Junda has said- oh.” She trailed off at the end, taking in the fact that Cal was basically naked, with only a pair of loose shorts on. For his part, Cal bolted upright. Cal was blushing bright red, but all of the color drained out of Merrin’s face, which I had learned was the Dathomirian version of blushing. “I-I am sorry to have interrupted you,” she said, her normally pitch-perfect cadence failing her in her apparent shock.
Cal, at this point as red as the sun of Dathomir, squeaked, “It’s okay! I was almost done.” I beeped at him. Hadn’t he just started a minute ago?
“What did the droid say?” Merrin asked. “I still do not speak… that language.”
“The droid has a name,” Cal insisted. I appreciated the defense. “It’s Binary. He… was congratulating me on a job well done. Of mediation. He said that I’m… really good at… meditating.”
Oh. He wanted to talk to her. Duh.
Merrin seemed to have recovered her senses and had her normal stoic look back on her face. “I see. Well, if you are finished, Cere Junda has requested your presence in the kitchen.”
“Okay, I’ll put some clothes on.”
“If you have to, Cal Kestis,” Merrin said casually, then walked out. I bumped her foot, and she scooped me up and placed me on her shoulder. I turned back to Cal, and he looked flustered, but managed to mouth traitor to me before the door closed.
When the door closed, Merrin leaned against the wall and put her palm to her face. “Mother help me,” she mumbled. “All of the people in the galaxy, and you have to go for him. Great work, Merrin.”
I beeped curiously. She looked at me nervously, which is an expression I didn’t see on her very often. “Please do not tell him I said that.”
I nuzzled her head, beeping affirmatively. Merrin smiled and patted my head. “Thank you, dro- I mean, BD-1.”
As she walked to the kitchen, I looked up at the vent grate, where two eyes stared back at me. The bogling was a stealthy little creature - this entire time, only Cal and myself knew that he was onboard, although Greez had picked up hints that there was a stowaway on board. It looked at me with big, dark eyes. I gave it a nod, which it returned before scrambling away when Cere turned to see what I was looking at.
“Should I wear a poncho?” Cal asked as he joined us, shrugging on a simple shirt and pointedly not looking at Merrin, who was returning the favor. I hopped over to his shoulder and beeped contentedly. Merrin’s shoulder was nice and all, but I really appreciated the familiarity of Cal’s.
Cere said, “You can if you want, but there wouldn’t be much of a point. You two are shipsitting while Greez and I head to Mos Eisley to seek out a source for our next assignment.”
Cal let out a breath. If droids could breathe, I would have too. Our current mission involved hunting down a bounty hunter that possibly had information on the Hutt clan’s slaver routes. The hunter himself was a slippery man with a rather dumb alias - Troggo Malogdo.
Greez had laughed when he heard the name. He had stopped laughing when he saw the number of captures on him.
At the moment, neither Cal nor Merrin was happy about their jobs. “What?” Cal groaned. “You get to go have all the fun, and we’re stuck here?”
“Yes,” Merrin said, “I agree with Cal Kestis. Why are we staying?”
Cere held up a placating hand. “I know, I know. It’s not preferable for me or Greez, either, but it’s gotta happen. Cal, have you seen what your bounty goes for these days?”
With a frown, Cal shook his head. Greez wandered up from the front. “It’s gotta have skyrocketed, right?” Greez said. “I mean, no one launches a siege on the Empire and gets away with it.”
I searched my inner databank, looked through the bounty list, found an image, and projected it to the group. Cal paled. Greez whistled. Even Merrin raised an eyebrow.
“That’s… a lot of money,” Cal admitted. “Like, more money than any person needs. Do you think there’s bounty hunters in Mos Eisley?”
“I know it,” Cere confirmed. “This is one of the biggest hotspots for bounty hunter activity in the entire Outer Rim. They’ll all be gunning for you the second they get word that you’re on the planet.”
“But the bounty on Greez will not affect your search?” Merrin asked.
“His is Brood-exclusive,” Cere said. “There might be a Brood Hunter, but I can protect him, and, if worse comes to worse, he’s expendable.”
Greez grunted indignantly and punched her in the thigh. Cere grinned. “Kidding. I’ll take care of him.”
“There’s another reason you two are staying here,” Greez cut in. “The Jawas.”
Cal and Merrin looked at each other nervously. “The whats?” Cal asked, and Merrin asked, “Are they dangerous?” at the same time.
“Jawas are scavengers that prowl the desert,” Cere said, “grabbing any metal that gets left behind. They’ve taken spaceships that’ve been left alone before.”
“And if anything happens to my baby, I’m waging war on an entire species,” Greez said gravely.
“So you’re here to make sure that the Jawas don’t take the ship,” Cere finished. “Sound good?”
Merrin nodded stoically. Cal conceded the point. Cere opened the ramp to the outside. “Don't go too far, and stay safe. BD-1 will babysit.”
I chirped happily. Cal and Merrin immediately protested. “We’re not kids!” Cal protested. “I’m seventeen!”
“I am thirty-seven moon cycles old!” Merrin said after him.
“Wait, you’re thirty-seven?” Cal asked.
“Thirty-seven moon cycles is about seventeen Standard years,” Merrin told him.
Cal visibly relaxed. “Okay. Just checking.”
Cere simply smiled and nodded at me and ducked out. Greez wasn’t finished. “Okay, kids, some ground rules. No joyrides, rule number one. Rule number two, don’t touch my steering wheel. Rule number three, don’t be a fool, wra-”
“Okay, Greez!” Cal interrupted, turning red again. Merrin didn’t seem to understand, but before she could ask, Cal hurried along with, “We’ll be safe, we promise. Don’t get eaten by a sarlacc.”
Merrin frowned. “Sarlaccs are on this planet? Those are dangerous.”
“You live on a planet literally infested with the Dark Side, giant goblins, spiders the size of an astromech droid, and a giant bat the size of the Mantis, but sarlaccs are dangerous for you?” Cal asked.
Merrin sniffed snootily. “Yes, of course.”
Greez shook his head. “Stay safe. Don’t be dumb. We’re a call away if you need us. We’ll be back by tomorrow night.” He stepped down the ramp, waved with his two right arms, and walked after Cere.
I beeped triumphantly and stepped onto Cal’s head. “What did he say?” Merrin asked.
Cal picked me up and set me on the table as he walked to the kitchen. “He’s gloating about being in charge.” He turned to Merrin. “And then there were two. I’m gonna make some tea. Want any?”
Merrin nodded. “I would love some, actually. Double honey, please.”
“But of course.” Cal turned on the stovetop and placed the kettle on top. “With a little umbrella in it?”
“Do we have those?”
“I picked some up in Iloh.”
Merrin looked slightly embarrassed, but she said, “If there is a pink one, I would like that.”
Cal grinned at her. “Ask and ye shall receive.” He set out two cups and placed a green umbrella in one, and a pink umbrella with circle markings in the other. “Well, we got a bit before the water starts boiling. What do you wanna do first?”
Now that the other two were gone, Merrin was much more open. She crossed her arms and grinned. “I think I would like to try on a poncho.”
Cal looked at her, then started laughing. “Yeah. Yeah, sure, you can try a few out.”
As they started walking towards the back, I followed them on foot.
It was only for a night.
What’s the worst they could do?