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You are not capable of regurgitating fuel intake. You do not possess the biological organ capable of facilitating that action.
Nevertheless, you feel sick.
You ignored the niggling unease that made itself first known upon your preliminary assessments of the metropolitan area. You dismissed the conclusions your mind came up with, replacing them with the optimistic enthusiasm that had earned you the alias your comrades gave you.
Yes, there were too many humans. But perhaps Father Ra Moon had reassessed the previous plan for the species’ termination. Perhaps they were useful as slave labor after all.
Yes, the automatons here lacked any hint of Stardroid influence. But resources for production of Empire droids had been rather low for the past twenty-thousand years - your own model of Kuiper Droid was more than enough evidence of that. It would make sense if the Empire made due with Earth technology until they were capable of the same technological output as they had in the Golden Era.
Yes, there was not a single sign that the Empire had reclaimed the Promised Land like they sought to when you and your charge were sent to a remote location on the planet to remain dormant until the crusade had been successful.
But -
But.
You decided that a dive into Earth’s global communications network was necessitated.
You had dived into an abyss that enveloped you and left you sinking deeper, deeper.
INTERGALACTIC INVADERS THWARTED BY THE BLUE BOMBER
DR. PEDRO ASTIL ON THE TOPIC OF ANCIENT ALIEN LEADER RA MOON
STARDROID THREAT DEFEATED! WORLD SAVED YET AGAIN BY MEGA MAN
EXTRATERRESTRIAL ENEMIES ELIMINATED
You have no respiratory system but you are drowning.
This is impossible. This must be anti-Empire propaganda. Yours was a military power that existed for hundreds of thousands of millennia. Human society was not even a challenge for -
A picture obtained from a private communication channel - one of the various bodies of power’s intelligence agencies - shows paneling of green and yellow metal. Another picture from the same source is a cross-section of Empire technology. Cerebral processor, white-on-black optics, all contained within a helmet defined by a protruding beak -
You do not recognize the sound you make as your own, but you’ve heard similar noises from the prisoners of wars you’ve taken, all made upon seeing feeds of their planets’ destruction.
As you shuffle back to the makeshift camp, you now understand why they did not move away from Tribune Tethys’ blaster when placed to their primary organ’s cavity.
“Kuiper Droid!”
You stop walking and look down at your right side.
The small droid looks up at you expectantly.
“Do you have anything to report from your reconnaissance mission?”
She speaks with the authority of her rank, a juvenile Stardroid.
The last Stardroid.
“Kuiper Droid. I am talking to you.”
Her little brows draw together, pout forming above the cleft of her chin.
“Kuiper Droid 8JU-N14! Your superior orders your compliance!”
She looks so much like her sire.
“… M… Merry?”
How do you tell her about her sire?
How do you tell her about her sire?
In the end, you don’t know how you tell her. But you know by her reaction that you did.
Her wails are worse than any you’ve heard before.
You are a mass-produced guard and combat droid, disposable and unimportant. She is a carefully-built, reality-warping planetary destruction droid, modeled after Legate Saturn and raised as his progeny.
This doesn’t matter anymore.
You are the last two survivors of a toppled intergalactic Empire, on the planet of your people’s murderer, and you are despairingly alone.