Work Text:
Later, when he’s run an after-action review of the events leading him to this unlikely place with the indignity of a restraining bolt affixed to his chest plate, K-2SO would determine, as he so often does, that any fault in the proceedings was to be found in the organic element.
On a technical level, K-2SO understands that he is a complex, semi-autonomous, engineering marvel of a machine whose decisions are actually algorithms run at impossibly fast speeds.
He understands that these algorithms are based upon programming developed by the Galactic Empire and implanted within his neural cortex at Arakyd Industries, all of it overlaid with an Imperial loyalty matrix, the last stage of his development before he came off the line and was deployed into service.
He understands that said programming is the source of the present debacle and dilemma, and that an organic asset would likely not find itself in this situation.
Theoretically, any of his KX-model brethren would, as they are all produced and programmed in the same manner; but this is the question that keeps his processors working full-tilt as he hovers there, restrained, while his mission target paces and deliberates with his Rebel co-conspirators if this is a trap or a glitch or something else altogether.
Glitch implies a fault in his systems somewhere. An aberration. A unique error to him and this moment and the myriad algorithms that led him here.
But his diagnostic is clean and the distressed human and two suspicious Arindi trying to decide what to do with him fail to factor in the most unpredictable variable and obvious source of the anomaly: the organic element.
A ubiquitous problem, to be sure.
Security at a secret Imperial garrison the likes of which resides on Wecacoe is at once extremely important to the Imperial mission, and extremely uneventful. Secret being the operative word. The organics who are posted on-site comment frequently on the lack of activity, often accompanied by an expressed desire for a new assignment, never in hearing range of their superior officers.
Security at a secret Imperial garrison is therefore, like all Imperial security matters, most effectively handled by KX-series droids whose programming does not grow complacent during the long stretches of inactivity. There are always perimeters to maintain, communications to monitor, and surveillance logs to update, and repeatedly logging no suspicious activity does not have any impact upon a droid’s ability to perform the same measures the next cycle, or the next.
Nor does it impede K-2SO’s ability to respond to suspicious activity when it does occur with every bit the same efficiency he might have done the day he came off the line.
When the infiltrating rebel operative knows he’s caught out and runs into K-2SO’s enforcement zone, escaping the pursuit of the organic guards who cannot monitor the base security feeds in real time, he informs the operations channel that he is moving to intercept and will have the rebel in custody in under a standard minute’s time.
The voice of Wecacoe installation’s ranking officer, Major Virsig, cuts into the channel, which is unprecedented.
But then, so is the successful infiltration of a rebel operative into the installation’s secure systems.
“We need the intruder alive, at all costs.”
And herein lies the organic element.
K-2SO is a complex machine, running algorithms at incomprehensibly fast speeds to decide what to do from one moment to the next, based upon his programmed procedures and priorities. The standard and constant mission of any KX enforcer is, naturally, following the Empire’s enforcement protocols in service of his assigned installation’s security.
There are many enforcement protocols, varying by situation and location. Preference for or indifference towards the suspect’s survival; a comprehensive database of species’ weak points and how best to incapacitate.
When not actively enforcing Imperial procedures, self-preservation subroutines have priority.
When neither enforcing nor avoiding any known threats, passive surveillance measures take effect.
These factors all combine into the algorithms a KX model must run constantly to decide what to do from one moment to the next.
All of them can be superseded or contradicted at any time by the ranking officer on site.
K-2SO, with his access to the installation surveillance and blueprints, locates the intruder in the predicted standard minute, with four point seven seconds to spare.
Upon overriding the door and stepping into the maintenance hatch dead-end where the rebel has inadvertently trapped himself, he registers an old model Bryar pistol being turned his way from where the rebel stands at the door of the service lift that will not come because the installation has been locked down.
The weapon will not cause significant damage in the time K-2SO needs to subdue a single overexerted human male.
The overexerted human male apparently runs the same analysis in an unusually prompt manner. K-2SO is already informing him that he will be detained when the human male shifts his aim and directs the emitter nozzle at the vulnerable underside of his own chin.
Herein lies another organic element.
One of the most reliable and predictable weak points in any organic’s operational strategy is the tendency for self-preservation to override nominally higher mission objectives. The human male’s intention to self-destruct is likely sincere by the minor tremor in his hand; biological imperative confers hesitation when the moment demands decisive action.
K-2SO runs new algorithms based upon this new data, on the backdrop of the ranking officer’s single instruction on approach, and reaches the human male just in time to close a metal fist around the emitter of the blaster before it can discharge a lethal energy bolt into the human’s own head. Haptic sensors register heat and superficial damage to the plating of his metal palm.
For a moment – half a standard second at most – the constant churn of new algorithms dictating his next move quiet in K-2SO’s processors and there is only the sensory input of the pistol closed in his superficially damaged fist and the optical input of the rebel operative staring up at him and breathing heavily.
And then the rebel recovers and moves and K-2SO’s calculations resume.
Alive does not mean uninjured and so K-2SO crushes the front half of the blaster with one hand, catches the human’s swinging fist in the other and applies pressure enough to break the scaphoid bone before hauling him around on his newly injured wrist, dislocating his shoulder and pinning him face-first to the scuffed and dirty duracrete floor.
“You are under arrest,” K-2SO informs his prone prisoner.
Three seconds after breaking the nose of one of the Arindi and two seconds after flinging the other off his back like an organic plagued by an irritating flitnat, K-2SO offered to set Cassian’s dislocated shoulder for him.
Cassian responded by slapping a restraining bolt on his chest.
Now, twenty-three standard minutes later, restrained, unable to move while the two Arindi alternate staring at him and staring at each other, unable to access any of his external networks or communications abilities, rendered into nothing more than a passive surveillance droid with no system accessible where he might upload his data, K-2SO hears a grunt and a strangled cry of pain from the other end of the ship and deduces that Cassian did it himself.
Delivering an apprehended prisoner is as routine as apprehending one in the first place. The troopers who locate them first are not careful as they secure binders around the prisoner’s wrists, one of them broken, or as they haul him up by the dislocated shoulder.
Alive does not mean undamaged.
In the narrow doorway of the maintenance hatch, which the rebel has correctly deduced to be the most promising spot to mount a nevertheless doomed escape attempt, the unarmed and unarmored human male throws his weight into one trooper to knock the trooper into the doorframe.
Perhaps the rebel has also deduced it to be the most promising spot to mount a second and indirect attempt at self-destruction, by the way he does not attempt to dodge or duck from the rifle the second trooper lifts and aims at him.
K-2SO takes the rebel by the collar with one hand and plucks the blaster from the trooper’s grip with the other. “Major Virsig said alive at all costs,” and years of collected data inform him that a single stormtrooper would be an easily accepted cost, and the attacked trooper, at worst, has only had his fragile organic head knocked around inside his helmet.
The word glitch is first used when they reach the detention center and Lieutenant Mo’tri attempts to take custody of the intruder and K-2SO declines to unhand him and repeats, “Major Virsig said alive at all costs.”
The lieutenant stares at him, incomprehension struggling against ire. “And he is alive; stand down.”
But he is not the ranking officer on-site and cannot countermand the mission objective running at the highest priority in the algorithms K-2SO runs at incomprehensible speeds, and so he repeats, “Major Virsig said alive at all costs.”
The rebel twists his neck around to stare up at him. One of the troopers mutters, “Never heard an enforcer glitch out before,” and the lieutenant’s anger wins out.
The organic element is the pride that prevents the lieutenant from calling his superior to clarify the situation and countermand his earlier instruction.
The mechanical element is the looping paradox presented by the careless phrase at all costs that prevents K-2SO from seeking such clarification for himself that would absolve him of handing over his prisoner.
The deciding factor in the fates of the lieutenant, the two troopers, and the three technicians in the room is the utterance of the letters, “ISB,” in connection with his prisoner’s near-future and it takes only a second’s scan of the Imperial detention records to know that, statistically, prisoners who enter into ISB custody are released only in death.
K-2SO has collected enough data over years of service to determine that one lieutenant, two troopers, and three technicians can be an acceptable price for success even when at all costs is not the current parameter of his mission scope.
“I’m sorry,” Cassian murmurs to his still and mute figure as one of the Arindi pops off the access panel at the top of K-2SO’s back plate and immediately prods an ill-designed tool into his wiring.
The Arindi with the broken nose glances sidelong at Cassian with a cloth held over her face and does not appear to share his contrition.
With a vague sense of something surging and blowing out, the place inside K-2SO where he would access the Imperial network or any local comm channels goes dark and dead.
Having deactivated his own transponder, and until it occurs to someone to sever K-2SO’s ability to access the force deployment grid, evading detection is simple, even with his still-bound and now blood-covered prisoner in tow. To his organic credit, the prisoner has taken the events in stride and is not actively hindering K-2SO’s mission to remove him from the reach of Imperial forces who would hand him over to his death.
He waits until they’ve slipped out a maintenance shaft and K-2SO has dispatched of two more patrolling guards to suggest, “I can run better without the binders.”
“You are under arrest,” K-2SO repeats.
“If they catch me, they’ll kill me,” the human male points out.
“They will have to deactivate or destroy me first,” K-2SO assures him as he steers him in the direction of the supply hangar, monitoring for which forces will next intercept their path.
The troopers are fragile enough; the three KX units could prove troublesome.
“Wait,” his prisoner plants his feet and lets out a pained gasp as K-2SO’s forward momentum strains his injured wrist and shoulder. “Wait. I don’t – what are you –” He aborts whatever attempt at comprehension, calms his breathing with visible effort despite the pain drawing his eyes tight and raising perspiration on his face. “What’s your name?” K-2SO keeps his photoreceptors fixed on his human face, unmoving. “Designation?”
“I am K-2SO.”
“Okay. K-2SO. My name is Cassian.”
“Irrelevant.”
Something like a smile briefly touches the human’s face. “Yes. Okay. But I have a better way. The other way. A way to get away.”
“You are under arrest.”
The looping paradox might be making itself apparent to his captive, too. “Well, K-2SO,” he tells him quietly, even as the sound of boots running their way grows louder and louder. “You’re going to have to make a choice.”
“I am an Imperial enforcer droid.”
Cassian nods. “They’ll decommission you for what you did back there.”
The bodies in the detention center. Their blood on Cassian’s clothes and face and drying in his hair. “An acceptable cost.”
He means the bodies; Cassian misunderstands. “Come with me. To my ship. We’ll both get away; both stay alive. And I’ll still be your prisoner.”
They’re simplistic calculations. Organic. Light on data and factored variables.
K-2SO runs his own in the span of a human heartbeat and then snaps the binders apart with his hand.
They’ve landed somewhere; K-2SO has no ability to assess a location save the likely efficiency of a vessel this size and the duration of transit.
“They want to reprogram you,” Cassian tells him after popping the restraining bolt back off his chest. There’s a brace immobilizing his injured wrist. “Ker and Ris. Reach inside and yank out everything that makes you you. Shove in something else in its place.”
A lesser organic would have feared removing the bolt before relaying that information, but Cassian understands, enough, the parameters of his mission objectives.
The two Arindi have left the ship under vocal protest at Cassian’s insistence and, eventually, his pulling rank. Lesson learned.
Because they are rebels and, “I am an Imperial enforcer droid.”
“And I’m your prisoner,” Cassian agrees.
The paradox has escalated into an impasse.
Except, “I could,” Cassian starts, halting, like he’s run the algorithm again and again and cannot predict the outcome. “I could remove the loyalty matrix. Just that.”
Except, “If you remove the loyalty matrix,” K-2SO runs the variables, “I will no longer be bound by Major Virsig’s order.”
“True.”
“My primary programming will remain unchanged.” Enforcement; survival; surveillance. Built upon Imperial protocols.
Cassian tips his head and stares at him. Eyes narrowed. Running more calculations. “Are you trying to talk me out of it.”
“My present operational priority is preserving your life. The direction of the threat is irrelevant.”
They sit with the dilemma for a minute, two, each of them working it out, the organic angle versus the mechanical, until in tandem, Cassian announces, “I’m going to do it,” at the same moment K-2SO identifies the logical path forward and declares, “I could self-destruct.”
Cassian slaps the restraining bolt back on his chest, reaches around behind his neck, and finds the switch hidden under his left shoulder panel.
When K-2SO’s systems come back online, he is aware of the absence of something inside of him more by the hole left in its wake than a tangible sense of what’s been lost.
He is aware that four hours and twenty-six minutes have passed.
He is aware that he is still in the same place on the same ship, but cannot say if the ship has moved. He can say that it is not presently moving.
He is aware of the restraining bolt affixed to his chest plate.
He is aware of footsteps, and then Cassian moves into the sightline of his photoreceptors and the hole doesn’t so much disappear as fill imperfectly. A slapdash job, incompatible parts from different makes and models forced to work together.
A new matrix of a sort, but it does not perfectly overlay the one that’s been deleted. Gaps around the edges, a leaky seal, and the logical assessment from sluggish diagnostics is that Cassian has failed in his task, failed to scrape away the stubborn edges that irrevocably tether K-2SO to Cassian’s avowed enemies.
“I’m going to remove the bolt again,” Cassian informs him a second before he does. K-2SO turns his head this way and that but the Arindi are still absent, or absent once more. “Are you going to threaten to self-destruct again?”
“I did not threaten, I suggested, and obviously I would not have self-destructed right in front of you as the entire point of the hypothetical exercise was removing myself as a threat to your person, Cassian.”
Cassian blinks at him twice. K-2SO runs back his words and compares them against collected years’ worth of data both from his own service and observation of his KX-model brethren, and then begins prodding more insistently at those leaky seals and gaps he can sense.
“Okay… that’s. Will you answer the question?”
“The premise of the question was faulty.”
“Because you never threatened it?”
“Because you – oh.” K-2SO casts about inside his inner workings as the diagnostic finally catches up. “You disabled the mechanism. Then why did you ask?”
Cassian chews on his lip, possibly to hide the smile that emerges anyway, and shrugs. “Guess that’s my answer, in any case.” It probably makes sense, in an organic sort of way. “I think you’re free from the major’s imperative to keep me alive, but you haven’t attacked me so I guess your primary protocols are cycling aimlessly without the loyalty matrix.”
“Oh.” That misshapen puzzle inside of him has him distracted. “Yes. You are my prisoner.” A single, slow eyebrow climbs up towards Cassian’s hairline. K-2SO casts about for the logical response. He’s reverted to primary programming protocols which means detaining identified rebels or other beings acting suspiciously as top priority; self-preservation second; passive surveillance third.
Any of these can be superseded or contradicted by the ranking officer onsite.
K-2SO’s processors start working a little harder as he parses through the chaos of his inner workings. “I should be detaining you,” he notes while wondering why he is not.
In a gentle tone unlike any he’s yet heard from the rebel in the short duration of their acquaintance, Cassian asks, “Do you want to detain me?”
“Oh,” K-2SO identifies the cause of the leaky seals over the patched hole in his system and promptly shorts out into static and then nothingness.
When K-2SO’s systems again begin to come back online, the first thing he notices is the sound of Cassian’s voice somewhere out of range of his optical sensors, which are fixed on an empty expanse of stone wall with dark patches of moisture seeping through ancient mortar.
The second thing he notices is the new restraining bolt affixed to his chest plate; a more advanced design with a remote activation capability. It is not presently activated.
The third thing he notices is that his databanks have been mined and uploaded elsewhere. A standard day ago, subroutines would have deemed this a hostile action and demanded an attempt to recover the stolen data.
Today, he contemplates the leaky seals in his patched systems and waits to be acknowledged.
“So what you’re telling me,” a second voice rises over Cassian’s, “is that you had an Imperial droid whose primary objective was somehow keeping you alive, and the first thing you did was remove that part of his operating system.”
“The courtesy didn’t extend to Kertas and Rismor; they’re in medical.”
“Ah. And you don’t want to gut its programming for the Rebellion’s benefit because…?”
“He saved my life.”
“By dint of a careless officer’s fortunate word choice, you aren’t special, Captain Andor.”
Andor, K-2SO files away. Cassian Andor. If he still had access to the Imperial security uplink, he would look up the name in an instant and take in all of the information the Empire had on the human.
Or… perhaps that impulse is simple force of habit, his neural processors wriggle into the leaky gaps around his protocols. Perhaps the optimal understanding of Captain Cassian Andor is not to be gleaned through Imperial eyes.
Like he can read the series of considerations running at high speeds through K-2SO’s neural network, Cassian steps around the work station where K-2SO is propped in a mechanic’s hub but disconnected from the console that surely yanked out copies of everything stored inside him. He tips his head sideways, peering at K-2SO’s photoreceptors. “I was worried I broke you.”
K-2SO notes a new and better brace on Cassian’s injured wrist.
“Substantial internal recalibration was required.”
The other speaker moves into view. Older human male; Cassian has not addressed him as sir but his tone and bearing suggest superior officer, as does the more complicated rank markings on his chest. In his hand is the remote for the restraining bolt. “Unit K-2SO. You are a droid without a cause.”
His photoreceptors shift between Cassian and the superior while he examines his recalibrated systems and priorities, thinks that may not be true, but opts not to share that fact with the older human male, because that is a thing he can now do.
What he does say is, “You copied my databanks.”
“I did my job,” Cassian acknowledges in an inflectionless tone that K-2SO decides is meant to convey he is unapologetic but more likely is purposefully concealing that he is. “I have friends who could take you in. Let you decide what you want to be.”
“I do not… want,” K-2SO’s vocabulator catches on the unfamiliar concept, those leaky seals, “to go.”
The older man scowls; deep lines on his face suggest it is a common expression. “Why?”
“Data collected in the short duration of our acquaintance suggest Cassian operates with a reckless disregard for his personal wellbeing.”
Cassian ignores the barked laugh from his superior and shakes his head, apparently displeased with the analysis. “I don’t need a bodyguard.”
Affronted, K-2SO echoes Cassian’s earlier sentiment. “I saved your life!”
“After you captured me.”
False, K-2SO does not articulate. Or, incomplete truth.
Perhaps Cassian does not recall his own attempt at self-destruction thwarted by K-2SO.
Perhaps he does not wish his superior officer to know how close his mission came to failure.
Perhaps it simply does not merit his further consideration.
“The job entails risk,” Cassian eventually elaborates. “No way around that.”
“Shortsighted and false even by the standards of organic logic; get a different job.”
Cassian smiles. “Not sure the general here would let me go.”
“Oh.” K-2SO runs that dilemma as he turns his attention to the superior officer and begins to unfold himself from the maintenance dock. “Then the general is an obstacle and therefore must be - ”
The restraining bolt is reactivated before he can finish his pronouncement of the man’s unfortunate but necessary demise, and he’s shut down soon thereafter.
His systems reboot faster the next time Cassian toggles the switch under his shoulder panel. His internal chrono informs him two standard rotations have passed, and he’s been relocated to what is evidently a humanoid sleeping space, by the size and shape of the bunk taking up the opposite wall, and is evidently Cassian’s, by the presence of the man staring at him from two paces away.
He gestures at the inactive restraining bolt on K-2SO’s chest and tells him, “It’ll switch on if you leave the room.” And, “Just until I have a window when I can sneak you out.”
Oh. “Are you finding a different job, then?”
The curve of Cassian’s mouth indicates amusement; the downward pull of his eyes indicates something else. “No. But they won’t let you stick around forever without gutting you and turning you into just another data analysis droid.”
He turns away, fiddles with some tools on an improvised work station, sheet metal propped between stacked crates. K-2SO straightens to his full height and takes a tentative step forward and assesses the sparse space. “Will you not be decommissioned for your insubordination?”
And Cassian echoes his sentiment from the workshop. “I don’t think the general can spare me.”
K-2SO runs that data alongside the rest of that which he’s collected since encountering Cassian on Wecacoe.
And then he returns to the corner where Cassian placed him and spends several minutes crafting new algorithms and running new variables.
When he emerges from his calculations, Cassian is typing on a datapad and eating a wholly insufficient meal by the nutritional and energy standards of a human male of Cassian’s size. K-2SO’s conclusion of, “At all costs,” has the unintended consequence of causing him to put down the ration bar so he can turn and direct his undivided attention.
“Elaborate,” Cassian prompts him in a tone that probably indicates he is thinking about the two troopers, one officer, and three technicians K-2SO first killed to preserve Cassian’s life.
“Major Virsig did not mean those words literally but they are, in fact, the scope of the Rebellion’s mission parameters: at all costs.”
Cassian just watches him, still and silent.
“You have inferior numbers, inferior ships, inferior weapons, inferior tactics. You compensate with tolerance of insubordination and reckless disregard for personal wellbeing.”
“That’s. Well – no. Some rebel factions, maybe, but – no. There’s… there’s a line.”
“Where?”
He clicks his tongue and sits back in his makeshift stool, also comprised of an unused storage crate. “The leadership have to balance risk against probability of mission success.”
“And you?”
“The advantage of working mostly alone,” Cassian tells him, tone clipped, “is the privilege to draw that line for myself.”
“I am highly capable of calculating such probabilities and can help you better draw your line.”
The corner of Cassian’s mouth tugs upward. “You just threatened to kill my boss.”
Semantics. A simple (aborted) statement of fact was not a threat. “I did not understand then.”
“Understand what?”
“Your operational protocols and parameters.”
Cassian stares at him for a long time by organic standards before yielding. “I’ll talk to the general.”
The general – General Draven, K-2SO learns, once Cassian has yielded to having his systems picked over by the base’s finest droid techs before giving him access to the Rebel Alliance protocols and databases – shakes his head slowly back and forth while observing the data transfer.
“I will take some small solace, Captain Andor,” he tells Cassian, “that if this little experiment does bring ruin down upon us all, at least it is sure to be entertaining.”
“I resent that,” K-2SO says, too quiet for them to hear across the room.
The technician at the station coughs to cover up her laugh.
The first time they leave Base One in the U-wing K-2SO is now an expert at flying and performing onboard repairs, Cassian asks him, “Can I call you Kay?”
It’s an easy equation, a good tactical suggestion. “Yes, that will significantly reduce the time it takes for you to request my assistance in the event of sudden calamity.”
Despite the look Cassian shoots sideways at him from the pilot’s chair – lips pressed into a thin line, eyes narrowed, and K-2SO has enough data now to classify it as annoyed at K-2SO’s accurate assessment – the shortened moniker likely spares Cassian from a blaster to the head three days later on Ord Mantell.
Nevertheless, K-2SO files a reminder to download an updated package in human field medicine upon their return to base.
Risk, K-2SO reminds himself the first time Cassian is significantly injured during one of their missions, is an inherent part of Cassian’s operational protocols.
His own priorities place Cassian’s wellbeing above the possibilities he computes towards increasingly violent retribution – he makes sure to flag the one that begins to generate around General Draven’s blame in setting the mission in the first place – but even the Rebel Alliance’s most up-to-date information on organic maintenance and repair can not quiet the incessant algorithms he runs once the bleeding has stopped and the damage as contained as they can manage aboard the U-wing.
It is not like machines, that are broken until they are fixed and then fixed until they once again break.
Patching the outer shell does not negate the fact that there is a hole torn into Cassian’s fragile organic body. It does not bring the human vital signs up into the normal range, and every moment that they hover sub-optimally is a moment K-2SO is running calculations based upon the current data.
The fact that Cassian is conscious and talking and moving about carefully but with minimal obvious pain hindering his motions does not temper the impulse.
“Kay,” Cassian sighs at him for the third time since entering hyperspace. “Find something else to worry about.”
But that is not the nature of his primary mission parameters. “I am unable.”
“Then… just. I don’t know. Imagine it all works out for the best.”
The absurdity of the suggestion does actually halt his whirring processors and he turns his head slowly to peer at Cassian slumped down in the co-pilot’s seat with his hand pressed over his damaged side. “Enforcer droids are not known for their abilities at imagination, Cassian.”
“Take whatever’s bothering you and substitute the optimal variables instead of the present ones.”
He does, is momentarily pleased with the algorithm predicting Cassian’s complete and quick recovery, and then startles back into the moment with a crackle of something deep inside. “But it isn’t real.”
“No,” Cassian murmurs, staring out the viewport at the swirling lines of hyperspace. “It’s a simulation. It’s… hope.”
“Hope is lying to yourself and believing it may come to pass anyway?”
“Welcome to the Rebellion,” Cassian mutters.
“The Empire,” K-2SO shares his latest analysis with Cassian during the one night he has grudgingly conceded to observation in the base infirmary, “is built on control through absolute power and total submission.”
“To put it nicely.”
“The Rebellion is built on… hope?”
A startled laugh escapes Cassian and then morphs into a grunt of pain. “You said it, Kay – inferior weapons, inferior numbers… hope is what we’ve got.”
He runs back the memory files of their first meeting and wonders where Cassian keeps his hope.
The first time K-2SO endures significant damage during a mission, damage he is ill-equipped to fix himself, Cassian endeavors to conduct his own brand of field medicine until they can get him to the better-equipped workshop at Base One and better trained technicians.
There is no frantic energy in the way Cassian removes damaged plating; in the way he carefully separates half-melted wires with a multitool while assessing what he can fix now and what will need to wait for later.
The most important parts of K-2SO are naturally the best protected. If he should ever be so damaged as to render his operating systems and memory banks unstable or inaccessible, there is a high likelihood his chassis would not be deemed worth repairing.
The only betrayal of Cassian’s nerves is the faintest tremor of his hand as he yields to K-2SO’s assurance that removing the lump of fused wires will not cause any cascading system failures. “You could conduct a comforting simulation,” K-2SO suggests.
“You think I haven’t been since the moment you were hit?”
Oh. “Will you tell me?”
“Sure,” Cassian grunts as he clips a final wire and tenses as the severed connection crackles. “In my simulation, there’s no war.” He deposits the ruined mass in an empty compartment in the repair kit and picks up the damaged plate, charred edges and all. “Pick a place quiet and easy. Work with machines. Maybe repairs. Ships and droids.”
Oh. “Then I am not present in your simulation.”
Cassian’s hand slips and the spanner scrapes across the damaged plate. “Of course you are. You fix the droids, I fix the ships.”
K-2SO does not point out that his ability to store technical plans for any type of machinery Cassian could simulate in his mind would render him the obvious technician for either type of job. “If there is no war,” he clarifies, “we will not have met.”
Silence reigns in the cockpit while Cassian focuses his attention on the job at hand. While he packs up the tool kit and returns it to the compartment in the rear bulkhead. While he wipes his hands on a cloth so dirty already it is at best useless and, more likely, actively dirtying his hands further still.
Once he’s tidied and nominally cleaned up, Cassian settles himself in the pilot’s chair, turns it to face K-2SO, and says, “You’re right. I’m sorry. Organics sometimes overlook the most obvious variables. The war is so all-consuming it’s difficult to fully account for the ways the galaxy would be different without it.”
And then he offers an attempt at a smile and suggests, “Maybe the better simulation is how we might have met in a galaxy at peace.”
But K-2SO’s processors stay quiet. “I have no framework or data from which to construct such a hypothetical,” he informs Cassian, matter-of-fact.
When Cassian is grievously damaged some months later on what he expects to be a routine information drop, K-2SO overrides his usual mission priorities long enough to assess the optimal point on the attacker’s body at the intersection of maximum pain, surest chance of catastrophic system failure, and slowest time to reach it.
Then he carries Cassian to the safehouse a klick and a half away while translating each grunt and groan of pain into the injuries causing them, their likely severity, his probabilities of recovering from each individually, and his probability from recovering from the lot of them combined as he adds more and more to the list.
Cassian does not request simulated hope; he’s unconscious through much of the next twelve hours anyway. When two days pass and the ship has not been breached, K-2SO makes a difficult calculation and leaves Cassian bedridden with a blaster in reach of either hand to go and stake out the hangar for signs of a trap.
When they reach Yavin 4, K-2SO stands back while medical crews ferry the barely-stable Cassian off to the infirmary, and then meets General Draven at the base of the ship’s ramp. “You had an Imperial informant on the Hal’bry cell payroll. He died,” he informs him, and, “Painfully,” he elaborates.
“I’m glad you were there, K-2SO,” Draven tells him before following behind the medical crew and their hover-gurney, so K-2SO supposes violent retribution is not over the general’s line.
During the protracted recovery period and unprecedented downtime that follows, K-2SO files away as much data as his data up to the point suggests he will ever acquire as to Cassian Andor’s character absent an impending mission, anticipation of imminent violence.
The day he is discharged from the infirmary, K-2SO cannot stop himself from verbalizing the analysis he’s generated with during the long days of waiting.
“You are unlikely to survive this war.”
Cassian chuckles. Distinguished against K-2SO’s collected databank of tone and duration of Cassian’s expressions of amusement, he even deems this one to be more sincere than mocking or self-disparaging. “Took you long enough.”
“They will have to deactivate or destroy me first.”
Cassian touches a hand to his metal arm, says, “Thank you,” and doesn’t even admonish him about making promises he might not be able to keep. It is nevertheless a comforting simulation.
Cassian, during his unprecedented downtime and recovery period stuck at Base One, locates a past acquaintance he identifies as a friend.
The closest thing K-2SO has observed to a relationship that wasn’t strictly professional was the med-tech who snuck Cassian an extra helping of custard the week the canteen actually had fresh milk instead of the powdered military grade stock.
Cassian introduces him to Melshi with bright eyes and one hand clinging to the Tracker sergeant’s sleeve; Melshi looks him over and immediately assesses, “Seems like there’s a story here.”
K-2SO informs him primly, “I am a reprogrammed Imperial droid,” and struggles to make sense of new variables entering his ceaseless equations.
Cassian frowns at him but clarifies for Melshi, “He’s my partner,” and then clarifies for K-2SO, “Melshi and I escaped prison together a few years back.”
This is a thing he did not know about Cassian, but perhaps there is logic to be found in the omission.
He’s charging in Cassian’s billet that night – it’s the longest consecutive stretch of time they’ve spent at Base One but Cassian hasn’t yet banished him to the droid bay so he can make more efficient use of the small space – when Cassian comes in, sits down, and asks, “What’s the matter with you?”
“There are high priority subroutines concerning the apprehension of escaped Imperial prisoners.” Cassian nods slowly. “Is that why you did not tell me you escaped an Imperial prison?”
“No, I didn’t tell you because it was terrible and a lot of people died and I don’t like to think about it.”
He reworks the problem. “But… Sergeant Melshi was there.”
“That’s right.”
“You have nurtured a friendship based upon… mutual suffering?”
“Organics can be funny like that.”
The nuances continue to elude him. “Will Sergeant Melshi be your partner now?”
Cassian straightens and looks at him like he’s experiencing a catastrophic systems crash; maybe he is. “What? Kay… he’s not even Intel. And even if he was…” he cuts off; K-2SO keeps his photoreceptors fixed on him, waiting for the rationale, for the additional data. “Working with others isn’t easy. You and I, Kay, we built our trust in the field. With Melshi, there’d always be the question of what wins out – past experience or the present moment and what needs doing.”
Some of the explanation makes sense; some of it does not stand up to his accrued data. “Sergeants Kertas and Rismor are twins.”
“And consequently have unique abilities that lend consideration the other way, in their particular case. But I don’t envy them, should they ever find themselves in need of making a difficult call in the field.”
To prioritize the mission, the security of the Rebellion, the secrecy of other assets. To leave a partner behind if necessary. To –
“Could you destroy me?” he asks Cassian. “If the mission made it necessary?”
Cassian climbs to his feet and crosses the scant space between them so he can peer more closely at K-2SO’s photoreceptors. “Run that algorithm and you tell me.”
But he does not need to, is the thing. Is perhaps the source of his present disconnect. “Past experience has already demonstrated the answer to be negative.” When he refused to tear out the programming that formed the baseline of K-2SO’s knowledge and personality. When he secreted him out of the droid bay so he could sneak him off-world instead of letting him be stripped of his very self and turned into another Rebel analyst droid. “I could not do so either.”
Cassian touches a hand to the side of his head; it is a very organic gesture of comfort. “I know. It’s okay.”
“But I would do everything in my considerable power to save you.”
“I know that, too.” He places his other hand on the other side of K-2SO’s head and applies gentle pressure until he tips downward, low enough that Cassian can press his forehead against cold metal. “No more self-destructing, though.”
A hypocritical request. “Only if doing so is the difference between the Rebellion’s hope and ruin,” he corrects. “Those are your operational protocols.” Cassian doesn’t remove his hands, but he does pull back and frown at him. “It is, after all, how we met.” Not at all costs but, “That is your line. And so I have made it mine.”
Cassian does not raise the matter again until weeks later, after he is recovered, after a hundred fleeting moments with Melshi that provide K-2SO a whole new dataset to analyze and, apparently, make Melshi an unsuitable fieldwork companion.
He does not raise the matter again until Draven’s orders take them to Navir Prime and a suspicious lead there takes them to Jenoport for further investigation.
He does not raise the matter again until circumstances have conspired to force him to choose between a bad option and a worse one and “Did you reach the same conclusion?” Cassian asks him later while he’s in his third hour of sitting in the co-pilot’s chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, unmoving, and “Yes,” K-2SO lies, because those gaps in his programming have grown over time and this is a thing he can do now to spare Cassian further psychological pain, and the variance between the algorithms he’d run was almost marginal anyway.
He does not raise the matter again until K-2SO has finally located him in the aftermath and found him with wet trails down his cheeks, staring at the blaster in his hand, and it’s not exactly pointing up at himself but it’s not exactly far off either.
It’s not the same weapon; the Bryar, crushed, was left behind on Wecacoe. But in a familiar motion that triggers a cascade of pinging static along his neural network, K-2SO closes a metal fist around the emitter of the blaster.
“You didn’t kill anyone on Wecacoe until they said the ISB was coming for me,” Cassian points out in his fifth hour of sitting in the co-pilot’s chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, unmoving. “But you wouldn’t let them take me before that, either.”
The organic element, K-2SO had long ago concluded, and the paradox brought on by alive, at all costs and a fragile organic being with a seeming predilection for self-destruction. “I was yet unaware of your mission parameters.”
Not at all costs but a brittle Rebellion built on hope and a lone operative with the privilege of setting his own line.
That line, K-2SO is cognizant, may well have just moved.
During the seventh hour of Cassian sitting in the co-pilot’s chair with his knees drawn up to his chest, unmoving, K-2SO offers, “I could wipe my memory banks of the events following our departure from Navir Prime.”
Cassian moves only so far as to turn an exhausted stare over on him. “Why would you do that?”
Hours of careful analysis have left him only with, “If your continued dignity and service demanded it.”
Cassian neither accepts nor declines the offer until the eighth hour, when he finally, slowly, uncurls himself with obvious and painful effort and answers flatly, “Someone should know what I did back there.”
Perhaps the line has not so much moved as Cassian has unwittingly flown well-past it and is now scrambling backwards to familiar ground.
K-2SO is unclear if Cassian intends to imply that their stopover on Jenoport will not be included in his write-up for General Draven, but decides in the end to omit it from his own report anyway.
He runs a simulation in which they never went to Jenoport at all, but it is unsatisfying and serves only to offer him a framework around which to comprehend the futile organic emotion of regret.
Though rare, it is not the first time Cassian has left on a mission without him, but it is the first time he asks if he’d be willing to stand by with Sergeant Melshi’s squad for a potential mission. Infiltration; prisoner extraction. The request is strategically sound considering K-2SO’s base programming and skill set; the request is indicative of something else K-2SO cannot parse, until Cassian has returned with his information and Melshi with his captive.
It would be easy for an organic who does not have the extensive dataset K-2SO has accumulated to attribute Cassian’s short words and terse comportment to fear, but K-2SO…
The Rebellion may be built on hope but this, K-2SO reluctantly assesses in the frantic hours ahead, is what it looks like when the foundations begin to crumble.
There is something unsettlingly appropriate in the metaphor when Jedha quite literally begins to crack apart around them.
The problem is catching, in that inconvenient way of organic maladies. As Cassian takes a daring step over his line and avoiding K-2SO’s eyes all the while, General Draven apparently abandons his hope for them and they narrowly avoid death only to return to a base in crisis.
While senators and generals and admirals alike give in to despair, Cassian quietly summons Melshi and contradicts every basic protocol of his operating procedure in what he asks of him. “You said you shouldn’t do fieldwork alongside Sergeant Melshi,” K-2SO accuses.
“I’ve said a lot of things, Kay,” Cassian mumbles as he drags his storage chest out from under his bunk, pops it open, and starts collecting spare weapons and power packs.
He doesn’t need to plug in the variables; not really. “At all costs?”
“All at once,” Cassian shoves his haul into a go bag and climbs to his feet. “Something real.”
“You are going to die.”
Cassian walks up right in front of him and peers up into his face. Calmly, he agrees. “Yes.”
The temptation to restrain him, prevent his leaving, surges through K-2SO’s circuits. His last directive as an Imperial enforcer droid, and the one he’d chosen for himself. It takes effort, to force his processors through the gaps in those priorities where his decision exists, his ability to refuse or contradict or outright lie.
The random factor.
His choice.
And there is only one logical response.
“They will have to deactivate or destroy me first,” he promises.
A promise he can keep, he is pleased to discover in the end, as he seals the vault shut behind Cassian and Jyn.
And K-2SO, an Imperial enforcer droid built for war and oppressive control, does not have the framework nor the data from which to generate a simulation of a galaxy where the war never began in the first place.
It is a self-serving thought, but he does not think he would regardless; not if it meant he never received ill-phrased orders on Wecacoe that led him to blocking the shot that would have ended Cassian Andor’s life then and there and all of the cascading consequences.
Cassian Andor will die on Scarif, today, likely imminently, but K-2SO takes solace in the knowledge in the few seconds he has before total system collapse that they were forced to destroy him first even as he passes on the final shred of hope for Cassian’s mission success – “Climb.”
In those final seconds, he is comforted to realize that he now possesses the data to simulate, not a galaxy without war, but a galaxy in which the Rebellion emerges the victor and he and Cassian can find that calm and quiet spot of Cassian’s memory or imagination.
And in the last second his systems cling to continue functioning, he chooses to mentally simulate an impossible scenario in which Cassian escapes alive.
The simulation pleases him.