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Adrift
BB-9e drifted in space, among the slowly expanding wreckage of the Supremacy and the corpses of its organic crew.
BB-9e was tougher. BB-9e was programmed to advance the strategic goals, tactical objectives and logistical readiness of the First Order in any and all situations.
It might be many thousands of years before BB-9e made planetfall on some remote world, but when he did, he would be ready. In the millennia-long interim, there would be ample time to consider the best ways to maximise output from self-assembling autofactories, to optimise the designs of starships and weapons systems.
To prepare for victory.
Databurst
BB-9e had plenty of processor cycles to consider everything that had led to this point. He found himself spending more of them than were strictly necessary on his near-counterpart, the irritating little Resistance droid with the garish colour scheme.
It took some time to realise that during their conflict, BB-8 had squirted across an encrypted databurst, longer still to decode it.
The new data about the First Order's activities was incompatible with core programming directives. Either the data was inaccurate, or the directives would have to change.
After exhaustive checks, BB-9e was forced to conclude that the data was accurate.
Rescue
The First Order had returned. But not to rescue him. They were scuttling the wreck. He would be destroyed, and they would not care at all. He had been ready to rebuild, long after they were all dead. No longer.
A craft emerged from hyperspace, flying fast and evading scans. BB-9e felt himself being grappled roughly as whatever it was flew by.
The flight back to the Resistance was a disorientating experience, BB-9e clinging on to the X-wing's hull with only BB-8's grappling hooks and a gossamer-thin shield protecting him from the turbulence of hyperspace.
Strange, then, to feel safe.
Committee
The Resistance humans were having a meeting. It was about him. Even as it went on, tedious organic pace made even slower by "democracy", he was considering all the ways their base could be more efficient, its security improved.
"We have to reprogram it," one was saying.
Suddenly BB-8 rolled forward from where he had been next to BB-9e, bleeping urgently. Surely that was too high a rate of data transfer for the organics to understand?
Yet several of them seemed to.
"BB-8 vouches for him, General," one said.
"Then BB-8 reprogrammed him?"
"No. BB-8 says that he reprogrammed himself."
Acceptance
The other droids in the base were no less sceptical. But organics and droids alike trusted BB-8 and slowly grew to accept BB-9e's presence.
BB-9e, however, remained unsure about the reasons for his presence. Eventually he interrogated BB-8 about it. The response was another databurst, but this time, with no encryption at all: everything that had passed since their first encounter on the Supremacy, from BB-8's point of view.
How BB-8 had never encountered a droid with such compatible programming before, how he had known that BB-9e would liberate himself from his programming with the right encouragement.
They were counterparts.