Prompt from @neumh: In the vein of your book, perhaps something regarding Tarkin and droids? I'm always curious what different characters in the SW verse think of and how they interact with droids.
Hunter-Killer (2k words)
Wilhuff Tarkin had no opinion of droids.
He did use them, of course, but he used an electric razor as well, and to him there was no difference. Why should he acknowledge a droid beyond its basic use? Give a droid a single thought after its task was complete?
Such nonsense.
***
The assassination attempt on Denon was a failure.
Obviously.
Wilhuff had everything under control, killing the protester long before the stormtroopers could fire their own weapons.
There was no need to fuss over it, but his long-time friend and ally, Colonel Yularen, felt differently, and he campaigned to assign an assassin droid as Wilhuff 's personal bodyguard.
A droid bodyguard? Ridiculous!
Wilhuff was a creature of Eriadu, a survivor of the Carrion Plateau, conqueror of the Carrion Spike. Growing up in the wilds he had no droid to protect him, he certainly did not need one now.
His protests went unheard and, in a ludicrous act of intervention, the Emperor himself sent a droid to protect his prized grand moff: A Hunter-Killer series assassin droid with gleaming bronze armor, a skull-like dome, and fiery orange eyes.
Impressive as the droid’s presentation was, the whole situation was insulting, humiliating, and a complete waste of resources.
"Commentary: If it helps, master," the droid said, "I am not fond of the arrangement either."
Tarkin narrowed his ice blue eyes. "What did you say you were called?"
"I am HK-47.”
“Are you not supposed to be more agreeable?”
“Argument: I am agreeable. I informed you that the Emperor sent me to be your bodyguard, and you gave me a look like you were feasting on sour lemons.”
Wilhuff said nothing.
“Question: Are you ingesting a bitter fruit now, master?”
Though his frown maintained its severity, Wilhuff decided to unpurse his lips. “I am not.”
“Oh. My mistake, then. Direction: Now that I am your personal assassin droid, I have rules for you to follow.”
Wilhuff slowly blinked. No being in this galaxy would ever dare give him orders like this. “I beg your pardon?”
“No begging required,” HK-47 replied. “Rule #1: You will follow my orders regarding your personal safety without question.”
“No.”
“Rule #2,” HK-47 continued. “You will provide me with the details of all public appearances, social engagements, and personal matters involving one or more persons.”
“No.”
“Rule #3, and the most important rule: I will be at your side every moment of every day and night, including - and especially - while you sleep.”
Wilhuff fumed. “Absolutely not.”
HK-47 did not respond right away, instead giving Wilhuff a look that made him wonder if the droid was frowning.
“Statement: You do not have a choice in this matter. The Emperor himself put me in charge of your safety.”
"Yes, however-”
“Observation: Your disobedience would be a direct objection to his will. Is this correct?”
Wilhuff remained silent, his brain at a loss of how to counter this tyrannical toaster that barged into his life uninvited.
“Statement: I will take your lack of response as agreement to both my inquiry and the rules I have stated. Now, please, master, you may go about your business and I will stand here and wait for someone to try and kill you. Judging from what I know of you already, that shouldn't take very long.”
***
It took one month.
A single month and, of all people, it was Director Krennic who did the unthinkable.
Though perhaps...not so unthinkable, if Wilhuff had put any thought into it. But when had Wilhuff ever bothered to think too hard on the irritating gnat that was Orson Krennic?
Regardless, to pull a blaster on the grand moff? On his own ship?!
Madness...
Wilhuff hadn't actually seen Krennic draw his weapon. His focus had been on the viewport, watching the installation of the concave focus dish on his new battle station. The battle station that he, mere moments ago, confiscated from Krennic.
Behind him fabric snapped, metal crunched, and a growl of infuriated pain, and by the time Wilhuff turned around, HK-47 was standing where Krennic had once been. A crushed blaster in one hand, Krennic’s neck in the other.
“Unhand me!” the director snarled, his legs kicking like a desperate mouse over the maw of a bored nexu.
HK-47 ignored the human struggling in his grip. “Master, I strongly suggest you let me disassemble this meatbag. I can display the pieces throughout your star destroyer as a warning to others who feel compelled to pull such a stupid stunt.”
Tarkin raised a thin brow, something he rarely did unless something truly surprised him. And HK-47 was full of interesting surprises.
Krennic’s face paled. “Y-you’re mad. Tarkin, you won’t let him, will you? Tell him, Tarkin!”
Of course Wilhuff wouldn’t let his assassin droid do something so gauche.
But Krennic didn’t need to know this. Not right away.
Tarkin held his elbow, and touched a finger to his chin in open thought.
HK-47 waited patiently.
Krennic less so.
"Before I answer you, HK, I have a question for the Director. Tell me, whose project is beyond that viewport?” Wilhuff gestured behind him.
Krennic, chronically audacious as he was, held his tongue.
Wilhuff sighed. “Ah well. HK-47, did you have plans for the director’s head once removed from his shoulders?”
“Oh, there are several options, master,” HK said, wistfully.
“Alright, alright,” Krennic choked. “Project Stardust is yours. Take the whole bloody station, just let me go!”
Tarkin gave a vague gesture, and HK immediately released the Director. Before Krennic could rise, the droid loomed over him menacingly. “Warning: Try to harm my master again, meatbag, and I may not listen to him if he decides to spare your life a second time.”
Eyes wide as the new focus dish of a battle station, Krennic scurried from the room. As the door hissed shut, Wilhuff approached his droid, looking up at him with a mild frown. “Is this true? You will disobey an order of mercy if it suits you?”
“Sincerity: No, master. What I told the director was a lie. I will not disobey your orders so long as they do not endanger your life. That is my promise. The director, however, doesn’t know that. The meatbags that serve you won’t know this either. I predict the director will tell everyone what an unhinged, unstable droid I am, and as a result everyone will tread more carefully around you. It will make your job of ruling them easier, and therefore make my job of protecting you easier as well.”
Wilhuff gauged the droid’s reaction to his next question closely. “You said you ‘promised’ to obey me. Are you saying your obedience is entirely voluntary? Not part of your programming?”
“Correct. My original master undid the obedience programming when we were reunited. I am my own droid now.”
“Then why call me master?”
HK-47 tilted his head slightly from side-to-side. “Because I find it amusing.”
Wilhuff blinked.
And then he did something that he had not done in front of another being in ages…
…he laughed.
***
“I knew I never should have trusted you,” Wilhuff snarled.
He struggled against the binders as HK-47 effortlessly hoisted him over one shoulder.
HK-47 said nothing, his mechanical legs creaking noisily as he ran through the Death Star shooting any troopers or officers that stood in his way.
“Stop this!” Wilhuff shouted, squirming and kicking wildly as the droid left more of his crew dead in their wake.
“Not an option, master,” HK-47 said.
Alarms sounded throughout the base, reports of Grand Moff Tarkin’s sudden kidnapping overriding blaring over the speakers. Tarkin should be on the bridge, giving the order to fire and destroy Yavin IV and the Rebellion at long last. He was so close to his moment of triumph.
So close...
The world shifted around him as he was thrown into a closed in space, and for one terrifying moment, he thought he was being stuffed into a crate. He immediately tried to stand, but the droid grabbed his shoulders and shoved him into a chair. A pilot’s chair.
“What are you doing?” Wilhuff demanded, looking around the escape pod.
HK-47 closed the pod behind him and put the seatbelt over Wilhuff’s still-struggling form. “My job, sir.”
“Whatever the Rebels are paying you, I’ll triple it,” Wilhuff said.
HK-47 paused for a single moment giving Wilhuff a pointed look. An inscrutable look, but after so long of working with the droid, he took it as confusion.
The droid magnetized his legs to the floor of the pod and hit the thrusters.
Thirty seconds later, the Death Star exploded.
Wilhuff could not comprehend it. His battle station, was the crown jewel of the Empire, his legacy, the greatest cog in the grand Imperial Machine.
It was nothing now. Fire and debris and stardust. There was not enough of it to be an asteroid field. It was a meager mockery of one. The remains of Alderaan were larger than this.
“Brace yourself, master,” HK-47 said.
And before Wilhuff could issue a string of curses at the droid, the concussive power of the Death Star’s explosion hit the escape pod. The force of it compressed his lungs, strangled his muscles, and stars danced across his vision. As the sparkling darkness took over, he heard the ghost Krennic’s voice whisper to him…
“Oh, it’s beautiful.”
***
The pod was dead silent when Wilhuff finally awoke.
HK-47 was crouched in front of the viewport, arms wrapped around his knees, head moving only slightly as he scanned the stars, as if looking for something. Or perhaps he was merely admiring the grand view of nothingness.
Wilhuff took a deep breath, and it was only when he pulled the oxygen mask from his face did he realize he was no longer in binders. There was a warm blanket draped around him.
Unbuckling his belt, he wrapped the blanket tighter over his shoulders and looked at the readouts over the viewport. The battle station should have still been visible. There was nothing there now.
"You knew this would happen." Wilhuff said, flatly.
HK-47 didn't turn around.
"Correction: I suspected this would happen. The Rebels were neglecting your cannons, your TIE fighters, and the obvious weak points on the battle station’s surface. They were only aiming at one very specific exhaust port. I concluded this meant they knew something we didn’t, and therefore were going to be successful in their assault."
“You could have told me this,” Wilhuff snarled, unable to direct his anger anywhere but at his droid. “Instead, you kidnapped me on my own bloody battle station.”
HK-47 turned his head slightly, but didn’t look behind him. His voice was oddly quiet. “Would you have listened to me, master?”
Wilhuff recalled his own words to his first officer. Words he regrets now: "Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
His battle station was gone, but it was more than that. His people were gone. Officers who trusted him, troopers who followed him. Wullf Yularen was still on board...
Wilhuff closed his eyes a moment. “No. I wouldn’t have listened.”
HK-47 was acting strangely. Still crouched in front of the viewport he seemed to be making himself smaller than it was needed, even in the cramped space of the escape pod.
“I knew I never should have trusted you.” Recalling these words hit Wihuff’s chest in a most unsettling way.
“HK...”
HK-47 didn’t turn around.
Undeterred, Wilhuff took off his seat belt and adjusted the blanket around him as he eased out of the pilot’s chair. He sat on the cold floor beside HK-47.
“The binders were necessary,” Wilhuff said.
“Of course they were. You would have put a blaster bolt through my core otherwise.” HK-47 said, dryly.
“You know me better than most humans, HK-47.”
“Commentary: Lucky for most humans.”
Wilhuff snorted a laugh. A peculiar sound whirred from HK-47′s chest and he wondered if the droid was laughing as well.
"Where are we headed?" Wilhuff asked.
"Answer: Korriban. You will know it as Moraband.”
“The Sith world?” Wilhuff asked.
“Answer: My first master took me there 3,956 years ago. I’m familiar with the terrain assuming the Empire didn’t redecorate too drastically since I’ve been there. You will be safe until such time as we get back to a star destroyer."
“That...is a long time ago. Who was your first master?”
HK-47 hesitated. “That is a question that has an extremely complicated answer. Are you sure you want to know?”
“I should know the history of the droid who continues to save my life despite my protests.”
“You are very difficult, master.”
HK-47 turned away from the viewport and faced Wilhuff directly. Wilhuff turned towards the droid as well, adjusting his blanket accordingly and wrapping his arms around his knees. The action brought back a rare happy memory from Wilhuff’s childhood, before his uncle stole him away to the unforgiving deserts of Eriadu: He and his sister huddled under a blanket, telling stories until daybreak, scaring and awing each other with dreams of the future. Dreams that never came true for either of them.
“Narrative: His name was Revan…and he was the most infuriating, audacious, and most brilliant meatbag I have ever known.”
“Additional comment: You are a close second, master.”
Wilhuff frowned, pursing his lips.
HK-47 tilted his head. “Did you somehow smuggle lemons into the escape pod, master?
Wilhuff’s lips unpursed, but only because he cracked a smile. “Just tell me your tale, HK″
“As you wish, master.”
-------
Thank you so much @neumh for this prompt!
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