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22 BBY
"Tech, why is the gonk droid in here?" Hunter begins, but stops to consider his next words carefully. His official promotion to sergeant was recent, and he is still figuring out what tone to take with his brothers when they aren't on duty. Then again, they all know that Hunter prefers to keep things shipshape and tidy enough to pass inspection.
Not that anybody in charge has ventured inside the Bad Batch’s bunkroom since it was assigned to the four of them. But theoretically, any ranking officer of the GAR could do so at any time, and if they did, the sheer chaos on display might give them second thoughts about training this particular squad of cadets as a commando team.
"I'm serious, Tech,” Hunter says. “There's too much of your clutter in this room already."
The GNK droid honks.
Wrecker looks up, interested. "Is it here because we need extra power? Tech, is there gonna be a blackout?" Shoving an entire protein ration bar in his mouth, he stands up and peers at the droid, as if it can predict when its battery power might need to be put to use.
"On the contrary, I have determined that this droid cannot be fixed," says Tech from across the room, as he lays out his heavier tools: crowbar, cable cutter, rubber mallet. "It was likely subjected to extreme temperature variances during its manufacture, which rendered its charging microstructure permanently unstable. I intend to dismantle it. There are a few parts that can be scavenged."
"Shhh!" Wrecker instinctively claps his hands over the droid's upper plug-in sockets.
Tech looks up briefly. "Wrecker, the gonk droid does not have ears. Its auditory sensors are scattered across its undercarriage."
"Aw, Tech, don't tear him apart. You can't!" Wrecker shoots a glance towards their sergeant, hoping he'll issue a stay of execution.
"A gonk droid that can't hold its charge is essentially useless," Hunter admits.
"It's not!" Wrecker moves restlessly. "We can, uh—" his eyes scan the room, "we can put things on it!"
Tech looks pointedly at the long table that stretches across their barracks room. "This table's working surface is more than adequate."
"But Gonky here can bring you things." Wrecker plonks a protein ration bar on its flat top and gives it a nudge in Tech's direction.
The GNK droid takes small purposeful steps. Half a minute passes as they all watch it waddle across the room. With each step, the ration bar rocks back and forth.
"Hypothetically, the food would be cold by the time it reached me," Tech says grimly.
"It's a ration bar," says Crosshair, not looking up from the rifle scope he's calibrating. "Tastes terrible at any temperature."
"Hey!" Wrecker exclaims. "I know what Gonky's good for." He races over and grunts as he deadlifts the GNK droid, then balances it on one hand and hefts it upwards as an overhead press. The droid's feet pedal wildly in the air, as if it cannot conceive of moving through space without employing its normal stepping motion.
Wrecker guffaws loudly as he continues lifting. "The weight room gets so crowded with all the regs. But now I can work out here!"
Moving closer, Tech points at the head and then at the wriggling feet. "The weight of the droid is unevenly distributed. It is too oddly shaped to serve as a free weight."
"That's what makes it a good workout," Wrecker protests. He flips the GNK droid so that its feet are pointing in the opposite direction. "When they finally send us out into battle, I'll have to lift all sorts of things, right?" He looks over at Hunter for confirmation.
Hunter gives a loose, uncertain nod.
"Who knows what shape those things will be?" Wrecker jabs a finger towards Tech. "Betcha you don't even know."
Tech balks. "Obviously, I cannot anticipate every object you might—"
"But they won't be shaped like barbells," Wrecker says confidently.
"Hmm," replies Tech. Behind the goggles, his eyes narrow.
Suddenly, there's a flash and a clink as a small round mirror lands on the GNK droid'shull. From his bunk, Crosshair squints through his rifle scope at the reflector dot he has just thrown. He grunts noncommittally, then says, "I can use it to practice my ricochet shots.” He stands up. “Wrecker, bring it to the shooting range."
"Right now?" says Hunter, but Crosshair is already out the door, with Wrecker—still hefting the GNK droid—close behind. Tech grabs his data pad and follows them.
Hunter surveys the mess of their barracks room. The protein ration bar that Gonky had transported so painstakingly across the room lies forgotten on the ground. Hunter picks it up, drops it on Wrecker’s bunk, and lets out a deep sigh.
By the time Hunter catches up to his brothers, the GNK droid is standing in the middle of the shooting range, sporting deflector dots on all four sides.
Standing several meters away, Crosshair fires a bright bolt at an angle off the closest dot. It zings off the mirrored surface and strikes the wall.
Without moving, he calls out: "Take a step backward."
The GNK droid obeys.
Crosshair fires again at the same dot, but this time the bolt ricochets to a slightly higher section of the wall.
"Turn 45 degrees clockwise. Take four steps forward," he instructs the droid.
The GNK droid executes the one-eighth rotation via a series of little stamping motions, then trundles forward. Its low honking noises sound like snuffles.
Hovering just behind the safety boundary, Wrecker fidgets. "Cross, don't accidentally shoot Gonky."
Crosshair's lip curls, as if to imply he's never done anything by accident in his entire life, but he says nothing. He adjusts his rifle and takes aim.
Standing further back in the uprange zone, the other two observe the proceedings.
"As if Crosshair could miss," Hunter murmurs. "That only happens when he's ill or if he's trying out a new weapon."
"Or when the target's velocity or trajectory cannot be predicted," Tech agrees. "None of those apply in this instance." He pauses as a rapid succession of blaster bolts sizzle through the air at oblique angles. "I admire his determination to master the geometry of ricochet shots, but this is hardly the only way to practice."
"Looks pretty efficient to me," says Hunter.
Crosshair had started off in a loose, almost perfunctory stance, but now he is sitting on the ground, braced against the wall, with the rifle resting on one knee. He continues calling out movements and degree turns to the GNK droid. Many of his ricochet shots seem to deflect at an identical angle, but anyone watching the walls would notice incremental differences in regards to where the bolts land.
Wrecker is still making fretting noises.
Without looking up, Crosshair reminds him, "A dead droid would still work as a barbell, you know."
"Not if Tech strips it for parts," Wrecker says in a loud whisper, nervously looking backwards. "Gonky's not a piece of junk!"
"Relax, Wrecker." As usual, Crosshair manages to sound impatient even though he speaks slower than any Kaminoan. "This gonk droid won't end up on the scrapyard that Tech calls his bunk. Not on my account."
He adjusts his scope. Raising his voice, he orders the droid: "Half-step forward, then turn 30 degrees counterclockwise."
"Salvage is a necessary part of every droid's lifecycle, and I don’t understand why you all are so dead-set against it," Tech says to Hunter. "I will not insist on scrapping this gonk droid, but if we are so squeamish about decommissioning an obviously defective machine, then—"
Hunter winces. "Really, Tech? You're going to use that word?"
"Which word? Defective?"
"Decommission."
"But that is the appropriate term for retiring droids and military equipment from service. You may blame the Kaminoans for making it a euphemism for euthanizing clones who do not—"
Hunter puts up a hand to stop him from finishing. "I get it."
He thinks.
"You know who didn't get decommissioned by the Kaminoans?" Hunter asks.
Tech blinks rapidly. He swivels to peer out into the corridor, where regs are walking past in pairs and small clusters, then slowly turns back toward Hunter. "Is that a trick question?" he says suspiciously.
"I'm talking about 99," Hunter says, picturing the kindly old vod whohas always taken such an interest in the young squad. "Just like us, his primary function was to be a soldier. When it became clear that he couldn't fulfill that purpose, the longnecks could have ... 'retired him from service.' For some reason, they let 99 live. And that allowed him to develop a new primary function: watching out for all of us."
Tech is quiet.
Hunter suspects that his brother is thinking about all the times 99 had shown up with a box of assorted servos, sensors, and wires—scraps he had personally scavenged from the disposal unit for Tech to tinker with.
"You're suggesting that this defective gonk droid's true usefulness has yet to emerge," Tech says finally.
"Maybe."
He observes Wrecker. Every time Crosshair's plasma bolts bounce off the extreme edge of a reflector dot, Wrecker's arms twitch as if he wants to clutch something.
Hunter speaks up again. "You wouldn't take Lula away from Wrecker, would you?"
"Lula?" Tech looks puzzled. "Her primary function is to bring comfort to Wrecker. I have no quarrel with his toy."
"Would it help to think of this gonk droid as a heavy, clunky Lula?"
Tech takes this in skeptically. "A Lula encased in an armored hull capable of withstanding extreme temperatures and a radiation conduit breach."
Hunter smiles. "A Lula with a battery that can hold a decent charge. Enough for light tasks, anyway."
"This is all highly irregular," Tech says, mostly to himself.
Hunter claps him on the shoulder and jostles him. "Nothing about us is regular, Tech."
Not long afterwards, Hunter figures out his own use for the GNK droid.
As it happens, it relates to sleep, one of the few issues that Tech openly defies him on. Given a choice between sleeping or tinkering, Tech would gladly spend every spare minute upgrading their gear or reverse-engineering an intriguing new piece of hardware.
One night, soon after being promoted, Hunter had made the mistake of pulling rank and ordering Tech to go to bed immediately, without giving him time to wind down his work.
Tech had obeyed, but for the next few days, in response to every casual suggestion Hunter made ("You should try the soup" or "Can you hold this for a second?”), Tech had coolly asked: "Is that a direct order, Sergeant?"
Wrecker had guffawed. Even Crosshair seemed amused.
From then on, Hunter had realized that he should only expect unquestioning obedience during their combat simulations.
Still, Hunter's heightened senses are genuinely sensitive to the ambient light of the mounted desk lamp, so he persuades Tech to plug a narrow-beam lamp into the GNK power droid. "Gonky can follow you around your workbench," Hunter says, pointing out that responsive spot illumination will save Tech the trouble of adjusting the beam of the fixed lamp.
"Allowing me to solder without interruptions," Tech says thoughtfully. "Very well—I will try it."
Over the next few days, Hunter notices that Gonky’s latent electromagnetic hum is emitting at a lower resonance in the mornings. Finally he realizes that powering a high-beam lamp for hours is taking a discernible toll on the GNK droid's faulty battery-charging capacity. In other words, Gonky's energy signature allows him to “hear” how late Tech actually stayed up the previous night.
Armed with this knowledge, Hunter develops a new strategy. Whenever Tech’s sleep deficit builds up, Hunter simply asks their trainers to schedule an early morning session for the Bad Batch. All of them look forward to the battlefield simulations; they’re eager to prove themselves. So when Hunter orders an early "lights out" the night before, nobody balks.
Not even Tech. Tinkering may be his passion, but combat readiness is their job.
* * *
19 BBY
It has been a week since they all escaped from the fiery ruins of Tipoca City, but Tech believes that Omega has finally put Kamino behind her.
It had taken half a day for AZI-3 to fully recharge, but after the medical droid had rebooted, Omega seemed determined to make up for lost time. She asked her old companion to tell her everything that had happened on the clone base in the months since she had absconded with the Bad Batch.
AZI-3 readily obliged, and it seemed that no detail was too mundane for Omega. As she walked around the ship, the medical droid followed her, chattering on about various medical personnel and inventory shipments.
At one point, however, Tech overheard AZI-3 remark that the Havoc Marauder was a far cry from the sterile white labs of Kamino—to which Omega responded, quite seriously, "This ship is our home now, AZ."
Then she changed the subject. For the last few days, she has been telling AZI-3 about the adventures she’s had with the Batch and the new friends she made on Saleucami, Ord Mantell, Corellia, and Ryloth.
Omega has also taken it upon herself to clean the Havoc Marauder. Whether in response to AZI-3’s comment—or for other reasons entirely—she has been using cleaning rags and old toothbrushes to scrub every inch of the interior. Wrecker is baffled by her industriousness. Hunter and Echo, on the other hand, clearly approve of her desire to improve the cleanliness of the ship, though they’ve gently told her not to overexert herself.
Tech is also pleased to see her initiative, especially after he and Omega come to an agreement that his personal workspace is off-limits.
“However, if you would like to help with ship maintenance,” he says, tapping on his datapad, “I have prepared a list of tasks.”
Omega perks up.
That night, while the others are asleep, Tech takes first watch in the cockpit and begins running a scheduled diagnostic of the hyperdrive coolant system. Meanwhile, Omega has embarked upon a thorough deep-cleaning of Gonky, who has slid along the floor of the Havoc Marauder more often than is good for his hull.
“Tech, have you ever tried to fix Gonky’s battery problem?” she asks.
"Of course," he replies. "But I concluded that the problem originated during its manufacture. It was faulty when it left the factory. That kind of defect cannot be fixed."
"So, then—" her voice lowers and her hands cover Gonky’s upper plug-in sockets, "why did you keep him around?"
"Have the others told you how we came to have this droid in our possession?" Tech asks.
Omega shakes her head.
"On one of our first training missions as cadets, we stopped at a GAR base on Balmorra to refuel and resupply. While I was busy fixing faulty power couplings on the Marauder, this gonk droid apparently wandered into our section of the hangar and powered down. Wrecker assumed I had requisitioned a backup power source for our shuttle, so he loaded the droid along with our other supplies. By the time I realized it, we were already halfway to our next destination."
"So you were a stowaway?" Omega gives the droid an approving look. "Very sneaky."
Gonky honks.
Omega looks back up at Tech expectantly, waiting for him to continue.
He blinks. Even after all these months of having her around, it's still disorienting to have somebody to give him their undivided attention. This hasn’t happened since he was a cadet, when 99 would sit and listen intently as Tech showed him all the gear he had fixed and breathlessly described his ideas for new inventions. 99 always asked him detailed questions about his blueprints, and more often than not, the very parts that Tech needed to build his next gadget would be in the next box of scavenged scraps.
“So you stole Gonky?” Omega prompts him.
Clearing his throat, Tech pulls himself back to the present.
"Stealing implies deception,” he corrects her, “and I did not deceive. When I contacted the Balmorra base to apologize, they told me not to bother returning the droid, as it was defective. My own repair attempts were unsuccessful, so I decided to scrap it, but the others protested vigorously. I found that surprising. I did not think we could afford such sentimentality."
Omega frowns. "What do you mean?"
"In wartime, we cannot allow our tactical or strategic thinking to be influenced by past affection or the memory of comfort. Such behavior puts lives at risk."
Omega says nothing—only puts her head down and busies herself with a stubborn rust spot on Gonky’s hull.
Tech thinks back to Omega’s panicked outburst when they realized that Hunter had allowed himself to be captured on Daro. And her foolhardy attempt to rescue AZI-3 in the murky ocean of Kamino. Staying cool-headed enough to properly triage a crisis situation is a lesson that Omega has yet to learn. Tech decides that such a conversation is better left to Hunter.
But a suggestion from a child-rearing manual—his recent leisure reading—suddenly comes into his head: Educate by example, not by lecturing.
Perhaps indirect instruction is called for here.
"In the end," Tech announces, "I came to accept Gonky for the sake of team cohesion."
Gonky rocks from side to side.
Tech adjusts his goggles as he mentally scrolls through the contents of the child-rearing manual. Ah, yes. Adults can set a good example by owning up to their shortcomings.
He adds, "And I readily admit that Gonky's power reserves saved our lives during the dogfight on Daro."
Gonky takes a few eager steps towards Tech, who responds with a quizzical frown.
Hiding a smile, Omega pulls the droid back.
She asks, "Does that mean you've changed your mind about being sentimental?"
"Not at all," Tech says, taken aback. As his mind whirls through recent events to confirm his conviction, however, he identifies certain outlier events that might require clarification.
"When we invited Echo to join our squad, some of the regs believed we were motivated by pity," he says. "Although Echo was, at the time, emaciated and traumatized from his captivity on Skako Minor, we knew he would be a valuable addition to Clone Force 99."
"Because he was an ARC trooper!" Omega says brightly. "And because of his cybernetics."
Tech nods. "Most regs would not have able to see past what Echo had lost. But we saw his differences as strengths."
He pauses and turns toward her. "And then, of course, we—"
"You all came back to Kamino for me," Omega finishes his sentence.
"Yes, when we realized that your differences put you in danger."
Her face falls and she scrubs extra hard at the rusty spot. Without looking up, she says in a quiet voice: "I've put you all in danger several times since then."
"We clones expect danger." Tech says matter-of-factly. "We were bred for it, we trained for it. On some level, we all crave it."
Seeing Omega’s consternation, Tech raises a finger. "But we do not pursue danger for its own sake—only in service of a larger purpose. Loyalty runs in our DNA. Jango Fett, our genetic template, fought for Mandalore. We fought to defend the Galactic Republic."
"Captain Rex is still fighting," Omega says, lost in thought.
Tech tilts his head. "Fighting to preserve what's left of the Republic, yes."
"And Crosshair … he thinks the Empire will give him purpose?"
Tech thinks back to their last glimpse of Crosshair on that lonely platform in the Kaminoan ocean. "Yes, unfortunately."
After a minute or two of companionable silence, Omega gives the GNK droid a final swipe with her cleaning rag. "There you go, Gonky. You're ready for action. Even if we don't know what our purpose is right now."
She bites her lip, a sign that she's about to ask a question she's been holding back for a while. "Tech?"
"Yes, Omega?"
"I heard Echo telling Hunter that we're being wasted as smugglers and mercenaries. Do you think he's right?"
Tech takes a few seconds before answering. "I do not believe we will be running jobs for Cid indefinitely," he replies. "Some larger purpose will present itself. I trust Hunter."
"So do I," Omega says with a firm nod.
"Speaking of Hunter, he would no doubt say it is time for you to sleep, Omega."
"Fine, I'll go up to my room." Reluctance weighs her down, but only briefly. "I might watch a few holo-doc episodes before I sleep," she says with a conspiratorial air.
Tech gives her a reproving look. Sometimes there is no substitute for a lecture.
Before he can start, however, Omega raises her finger. "It's the holos on exobiology, the ones that you assigned me! And I wear headphones so I'm not disturbing anyone," she points out. "Anyways, Wrecker says you used to study all night when you were cadets."
"That is true," he admits. "With regard to sleep hygiene, I am not a good role model."
"So while you're staying up late working on your projects," she says cheerily, glancing over at his tool-strewn workbench, "I'll be learning about the razor-toothed river clams of Naboo!"
Tech is conflicted. He really should insist that she sleep. On the other hand, the holo-episode on carnivorous mollusks is genuinely fascinating.
He tries another approach. "Back on Kamino, Hunter always seemed to know exactly how late I stayed up, despite getting a full night's sleep himself. Somehow his enhanced senses could track my sleep debt, and I have never been able to determine how. He may be able to sense the same with you."
"It'll be fine," Omega assures him. "I won't stay up too late."
She is already leading Gonky to the back of the ship. She parks the droid next to the ladder to her gun-turret room and plugs her datapad cord into Gonky’s power socket. Swinging back to face Tech, she cups her ear with one hand, and uses the other to point to the sleeping compartment, where they can both hear Hunter snoring on his rack.
Tech shrugs.
Omega grins. She gives Tech a little goodnight wave, then climbs up to her room and draws the curtain shut.
Gonky, standing guard next to the ladder, gives a low honk.