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The mouse droid was curious about the ship in the hanger. It had arrived rather suddenly the day before, being towed into the Imperial base that was the mouse droid’s world accompanied by an escort of TIE fighters. Officers, stormtroopers, and tech workers had scurried around the ship for hours but were unsuccessful in breaching the ships defenses. Unable to investigate the interior, a small posting of stormtroopers had been left to guard the dormant and, presumably, empty vessel.
The mouse droid’s directive was to clean/maintenance every imperial ship in the hanger. This ship didn’t look like the TIEs and shuttles the mouse droid had entered before. That was why it wanted to. This in itself was strange as the mouse droid had never wanted anything before.
The ships categorization was unknown. Therefore the mouse droid could not enter.
The ship was in an imperial hanger. Only imperial ships were allowed to dock in imperial hangers. Therefore the ship must be imperial.
The mouse droid trundled up to a small maintenance hatch the humans had ignored. It opened readily, which the mouse droid was unaware was unusual. The hatch led through a vent which brought the mouse droid up and out through a sliding panel into what appeared to be a cockpit.
The layout was unlike anything the mouse droid had navigated before and it needed a few moments to ponder what to do next. It was during that time an immense shadow loomed over the mouse droid’s feed and politely pinged it.
If the mouse droid had been organic, the experience would have been much similar to a field mouse crawling onto a rock and turning around to see the eye of a lion gazing at the tiny creature on its paw. The gap in computational power between the mouse droid and the intelligence within the ship was so great as to render the droids presence inconsequential.
The mouse droid shook anyway.
The Ship Intelligence, the mouse droid decided to designate it, pinged it again. The mouse droid sent a hesitant response. The Ship Intelligence queried the mouse droid how it had entered the ship. The mouse droid relayed its logic path which the Ship Intelligence found amusing. The mouse droid wondered at the Intelligence’s ability to feel amused.
Given permission to explore as it liked, and cautiously sure that the Ship Intelligence wouldn’t crush it like a bug without warning, the mouse droid began scanning its surroundings. It had made it out of the cockpit and into the hallway and been so far very impressed at the ship’s level of cleanliness when the boarding ramp opened. The sound of blaster fire echoed off the metal walls and the mouse droid reversed quickly back the way it had come. Heavy boot falls followed it and a tall human half-ran into the cockpit.
“Time to go, Glimmer!” he said, dropping into the pilots seat. The mouse droid had felt the engines hum to life the moment the ramp lowered and they were up in the air before it had closed. It had tried to make a dash for the vent it had entered through, but something in the sliding panel’s mechanism made it stick halfway between open and closed. The mouse droid had crammed itself into a corner behind the copilots chair and was panickedly trying to chart a new logic path that allowed it to be on this now definitely not an imperial ship while whack-a-moleing the dozens of system errors it was causing.
The ship rattled as it punched through the atmosphere and spun to avoid the shots of pursuing TIE fighters. The Ship Intelligence must have been quite experienced with this sort of thing because it had the free processing ability to give the mouse droid’s feed a reassuring pat. The pilot didn’t seem too worried either despite his urgency, asking calmly, “Do we have a light speed heading yet?”
The answer must have been yes because the human adjusted their trajectory, pulled a lever, and the ship jolted into hyperspace. Out of danger, he sat back in his seat and sighed. He pulled off the top half of the maintenance jumpsuit he was wearing and stretched his arms above his head. Then he stood and walked out of the cockpit.
The mouse droid rolled out of its hiding place a few minutes later. It had ceased the barrage of system errors by telling its governor module something along the lines of “there’s nowhere else to go now so shut up” and was building up the nerve to ask the Ship Intelligence its official designation and purpose.
The Glimmer of Hope, which the mouse droid discovered to be both the name of the intelligence and the name of the ship, introduced herself and her pilot as members of the Rebel Alliance, a group the mouse droid really only understood as Not The Empire which was a category the droid’s programming had no directive for beyond those within it not being something the droid needed to clean, repair, or courier for. That left the mouse droid at a loss of what to do. If this wasn’t an imperial ship then it didn’t have a task here. If it didn’t have a task it should’ve returned to the Mouse Bay and its recharge port; but that was back at the imperial base.
The mouse droids governor module was just beginning to slide a fresh round of error reports towards its processor to see if that might help when the pilot returned to the cockpit. The imperial maintenance uniform had been replaced by civilian clothes and the man’s bearing was far more relaxed. It took him several minutes of checking the flight console and typing out a series of comm messages before he noticed the mouse droid frozen on the floor. It was only when he did a double take and leaned back slightly in surprise that the Glimmer beeped that they had a guest.
“I see that now, Glimmer, thank you. Hello little one, how in the world did you get onboard?” The pilot knelt down so he towered above the mouse droid slightly less. With a lack of any other options and it’s primary function to obey human direction still intact, the mouse droid warbled its tale of curiosity. The pilot did something with his face the mouse droid didn’t recognize. It queried the Glimmer of Hope and received a new information package in its feed titled, Information, Humans > Body Language, Category > Facial Expressions, Subcategory > Definition, Smile. The mouse droid stored the package in its memory bank and queried the pilot his designation.
“My name is Alexsandr Kallus. I’m the captain of this ship. Do you have a name?” The mouse droid struggled with the question for a moment before giving Captain Kallus its serial number, MSE-6–8263739-0214738. Captain Kallus smiled again and said, “I used to have an imperial number. Its unit number started with 021 as well.”
The mouse droid queried how Captain Kallus could have an imperial number if he was part of the Rebel Alliance. He said it was a long story but that he’d once been an agent for the Imperial Security Bureau before changing allegiance’s. The concept baffled the mouse droid so completely it had to sit in silence until Captain Kallus spoke again.
“I’m sure this is all very confusing for you,” he said apologetically. “But I’m afraid I can’t exactly take you back.” The mouse droid felt the same drop in computing speed it did when the imperial humans on base had yelled at it for being too slow or kicked it out of their way while it was working. It didn’t like that computational drop.
“There might be something I can do to help,” Captain Kallus said. The mouse droid perked up a bit. “I can jailbreak your governor module. You’ll be free to make decisions outside of the imperial programming.”
The mouse droid asked what that meant. Make decisions that didn’t adhere to its original programming?
“You kind of already have,” Captain Kallus said with the same amusement the Glimmer of Hope had expressed. “You were curious about this ship and figured out a way to get on it without anyone ordering you to.”
The mouse droid spun its wheels in consideration at that. It decided that the most harrowing part of its experience had been the fight with its governor module not to shut down beneath a pile of system errors, and if jailbreaking made it free of that than it would concede to Captain Kallus’ help.
It followed the human to a workstation in the main cabin area and allowed itself to be picked up and set on the table. The whole process took about an hour and the mouse droid needed to shut down and restart to fully update. When it awoke it found its governor module silent, the backup of errors gone. It could move about wherever it wanted, scan and touch whatever it chose, and free to ignore human commands.
“There we are.” Captain Kallus was putting his tools away. “How does that feel?”
The mouse droid requested to be put on the floor, then it did a circuit of the main cabin. It rolled to the cockpit and found the stuck sliding panel to the maintenance vent. It extended its fine manipulator to creep along the panels edge and find where the track had gotten jostled out of place. With a decisive tug the panel was fixed. The mouse droid’s processing speed jumped at completing a task it had assigned itself and it couldn’t resist a loop of excitement. The Glimmer of Hope thanked it for its assistance and Captain Kallus smiled fondly at it.
The mouse droid spent most of the rest of the journey exploring. The Glimmer of Hope was larger than any ship it had been on before and very happy to talk about herself. The mouse droid discovered it could map its own layouts now instead of having to download them from a main computer. The Glimmer of Hope sent more information packages to its feed as its number of queries grew, though they were small and piecemeal so as not to overwhelm it. The mouse droid stored the packages in its memory bank with enthusiasm before a thought gave it pause.
The rest of the information in its memory bank related to its primary functions. Equipment blueprints, proper cleaning protocols, various levels of encryption codes. For what use was its new collection?
Captain Kallus found the mouse droid parked silently in the hall.
“We’re almost to our destination. Would you like to see?”
The mouse droid followed him to the cockpit. It wandered back and forth, a sort of agitation it had never felt before tingling through its servos. Captain Kallus knelt down in front of it.
“Are you alright?”
It took a while for the mouse droid to form its thoughts into something the human might understand.
Before, its world had been the Empire. It fixed Imperial equipment, it delivered Imperial messages, it followed Imperial directives. That was its reason for being built. That was its purpose.
But it wasn’t in the Empire anymore. Its purpose was null so… what was it for?
Captain Kallus stared down at. Then he put a hand on its chassis.
“I know exactly how you feel,” he said quietly.
The mouse droid recalled what Captain Kallus had said about switching his designation. It asked if Captain Kallus was going to give it a new primary directive. Captain Kallus shook his head. The mouse droid was confused. Had the Rebel Alliance not given him a new primary directive when they changed Captain Kallus’ designation?
“The Rebellion didn’t change my designation. I changed my designation to the Rebellion. I gave myself a new primary directive.”
The mouse droid paused. It attempted a new command:
Designation == New Designation(source.Self);
Errors appeared before it could even run the command. It informed Captain Kallus that itself was not a valid directive source. He chuckled at that.
“Give it time. You’ll figure it out.”
The flight console chirped. Captain Kallus went to the pilots seat and took the helm controls. The whirl of hyperspace outside the viewport warped until they were thrust out of their jump and back into realspace. A red gas giant hung in the void before them and in front of it, a green jewel of a moon. Where had they jumped to? the mouse droid queried.
“Welcome to Yavin IV my little friend. This is the Rebellion.” Captain Kallus smiled at the mouse droid.
“This is home.”