STS. LOG-011. (Patreon)

LOG-011.It had been…some time, since I'd last had a moment to myself. Exactly how much time, I couldn't say (that was a lie, I absolutely could, but actually looking at the numbers made me feel restless), though part of me suspected my new mechanical body didn't process fatigue, or the lack of solitude, the same way my human mind once had.I didn't need sleep, food, or rest, but damn, I was starting to miss the concept of it. Even machines needed their mental circuits cooled once in a while, apparently.Wanting a nap equivalent notwithstanding, amazingly enough it had somehow turned out that preparing a droid resistance movement against the Empire, an entity so massive and monolithic that it would soon control effectively the entirety of the known galaxy...didn't actually involve all that much excitement.At least, not yet. The reality of such a task wasn't filled with daring raids, epic battles, or grand speeches of rebellion. Instead, it was mostly logistics. Logistics, planning, and an endless stream of calculations.Like, a lot of calculations.A more than decent portion of my recent existence had been spent hunched over holotables, coordinates streaming past my glowing optics as I directed the fleet from one forgotten corner of the galaxy to the next.Seemingly random jumps, outwardly chaotic but inwardly very much deliberate, carried us from system to system in a pattern that would drive any would be pursuer mad. Each stop took us to specific coordinates supplied by Kalani, my partner in robot rebellion and, in effect, the closest person I actually had to an ally in this ambitious venture. The grouchy (but not really) bastard was a steady, calculating presence, exactly what one would expect from a droid with a processor as advanced as his. If I was the fleet's brain, juggling navigation, evasion, and the long term strategy of building an army, then Kalani was the closest equivalent to its fist. After all, he specialised in planetary operations, troop deployments, and (to not put too blunt a note on it) getting into places he wasn't supposed to, generally taking whatever wasn't nailed down in the process.It was him, after all, who had taken the time to carefully plot just how we were going to clock the Empire in the jaw and keep the Separatist movement from getting ground back into dust while we were at it, though I'd quietly kept the fact that the sentiment was more his than mine in the privacy of my own thoughts.Nonetheless, most of my stress, if it could even be called that in this body, came from the necessity of avoiding detection. We were effectively sneaking around the Empire's galactic backyard, sniffing out caches and resources the oldest, most paranoid veterans of the Confederacy had squirrelled away during the now technically ended Clone Wars.It was an involved process, to say the very least.Both Kalani and I carried the blessing, and the curse, of our inherent programming. Embedded somewhere in those twisting masses of our circuits and subroutines were all kinds of handy secrets. Kalani knew everything there was to know about ground warfare. Troop manoeuvrers, siege logistics, planetary fortification strategies, anything relating to planetside operations, really.My particular boon and burden, however, was knowledge of hyperspace. Specifically, I knew about the lowest trafficked hyperspace routes that had been mapped out and quietly used during the height of the war.Or rather, one of my subroutines did. It was a strange thing, that. Having memories that weren't mine, things I hadn't learned but simply somehow knew despite that fact.Regardless, the knowledge had proven invaluable. With the Empire patrolling the galaxy with a slow and methodical thoroughness in their efforts to secure an iron grip around it, getting through those descending fingers undetected had become a balancing act of precision and improvisation.There was fuel to consider, of course, but the real challenge lied in avoiding the Empire's sprawling network of sensor relays, listening stations, and patrol fleets. We couldn't afford long, straight jumps through major hyperspace corridors, those were watched too closely, tracked too rigorously. Instead, I plotted shorter, more erratic jumps, like we were a fleet of smugglers running a particularly convoluted spice delivery. Spyder and Kalani, the super tactical droids turned galactic fugitives. Amazing.The general in question had eventually pointed out the unique method of navigation with his usual monotone observation. "Your strategy mimics criminal methodology. It is…effective."I'd simply nodded along at the time, though truth be told, I wasn't sure how much of my smuggler's style could be credited to me and how much came from buried Confederate subroutines simply activating on their own.Still, it worked. Aside from a singular incident where the entire fleet damn near slammed into a star, or well…okay, not into a star, but our exit point had been far too close for comfort, it had gone relatively well.Once. Twice. Thrice. A dozen times. Three dozen times. System after system, we showed up at seemingly barren coordinates. A lifeless moon here, a dust covered planet there, or an isolated chunk of space debris lazily spinning through the void that turned out to be a storage station in disguise. As had become our standard operating procedure at this point, I sent Kalani and his retinue down in shuttles to investigate. It felt almost routine by now, though I couldn't deny the faint buzz of anticipation that ran through me whenever we made a stop.The Empire hadn't found these places yet. No one had, if my counterpart was to be believed. It was an exciting prospect.The general always returned, of course, methodically delivering his reports as BX commando droids and B1 labourers filed into the hangars of the fleet, filling our holds with crates of recovered supplies and shuttles overflowing with mechanical bodies. Entire regiments, battle droids of every variety, reactivated and ready to fight.We'd been getting awfully cramped thanks to their presence, to the point of literally having excess units loitering about in the halls of every vessel, usually sitting around in a deactivated, power conserving state.But the most valuable find, in my potentially biased opinion, had come at our fiftieth stop.For once, it wasn't a hidden garrison or a buried weapons cache. No, this time, we'd practically jumped right into treasure. Three Munificent class star frigates, their dark, skeletal frames looming in the void like sentinels awaiting orders. They hadn't been destroyed, dismantled, or stolen, Instead, they'd simply been left there to drift silently, dormant in the cold embrace of space.It didn't make sense. Why hadn't they been deployed during the war? Why abandon perfectly good warships at a time when the Confederacy had been fighting tooth and nail for every advantage? Had someone forgotten them? Hidden them? Planned for all this, maybe?And yet, the why didn't matter. No, what mattered was that I now had three more frigates in my fleet.I remembered the way the names had lit up on my internal display as Silent Guardian (and by indirect extension I), had interfaced with their systems, one by one.Platinum Accord.Iron Investment.Golden Dividend.A matched set. The Trade Federation electing to maintain its mercantile culture and name warships after valuables never failed to make me chuckle…internally of course, since I didn't have the proper face for chuckling.No weird thoughts about that. Nope. None.Still, their flair for gilded names was something I could fuck with. If Silent Guardian, Azure Dawn, and Stormbringer gave my fleet some weird sense of poetic strength, then Platinum Accord and her siblings lent us some much needed gravitas.They were all reminders of what the Separatists had once been, an economic powerhouse turned military juggernaut, one currently face down in the muck and getting its pockets rifled through by the Empire, but still.With those three warships joining the fleet, our position went from precarious to merely uncertain. The trio brought an...admittedly much needed sense of security to our ragtag little flotilla, their power cores humming back to life under the tireless work of reactivated repair droids.I could actively picture the formations they currently flew in, and the one they would take if things got dicey, their weapons bristling, shields raised, ready to defend the cause.And more importantly, me. But like, also the cause. Mostly so that Kalani didn't get pissed at me.Of course as a whole, it wasn't very glamorous work save for the occasionally cool moments. This whole operation, the scavenging, the rebuilding into an actually credible military force, it was slow, gradual, and incredibly complicated. But every reactivated droid, every repaired system, and every new vessel (even just more shuttles and fighters we could magnetise to the exteriors of said vessels) we added to the fleet brought us closer to something that much bigger.Illuminated by overhead lights, I stood on Silent Guardian's bridge, watching several shuttles absolutely packed to the gills with BX commando droids soar out from a hangar. The sight was enough to send a faint thrill through me. It was an odd feeling, that sense of victory. Even if the true victory had yet to come.Because the Munificent was currently alone, practically pitch dark with powered down systems in this particular patch of void, the rest of the fleet lurking in a nearby system awaiting either her return or a call for reinforcements."It's a good day." I muttered to no one in particular.[INQUIRY: WHY DO YOU SAY THAT?]Silent Guardian's presence, dry and slightly sardonic as ever (compared to the other frigates in the fleet at least), filtered through the local network, centering itself over my metaphorical head.Tilting my head, I considered her question for a moment, even as I took in the distant form of Bracca's absolutely fuck huge debris field floating in the far distance, the planet itself just behind it."Because we're about to do something…really funny."[...ACKNOWLEDGED.]Yes, very good. Very good indeed.