YES.
Bones is often getting into trouble, but the anatomical framework of a battle droid is quite simple. And so begins a self-repair routine: The cable connecting the droid’s head to his torso suddenly retracts—vvvvvvipp—and the socket, though damaged, telescopes open and once more embraces the stem of the B1’s neck. Bones shifts his head down. His serrated beak digs into the dirt and cinches shut, moving him forward.
He does this again and again. Each time, it moves his frame forward by a few centimeters. It is slow and arduous. But it is progress.
When he closes in on the nearest arm, he again digs the front end of his raptor-skull robot head into the ground, but instead of moving it up and down he swoops it from side to side. Servos whine and grind. Again, it is enough to move the body to the right—centimeter by centimeter until the torso taps the disconnected arm waiting there. Tink.
ARM, autonomic repair mode. The socket at the side of the torso thrums as it magnetizes. The arm judders on the ground, twitching as if suddenly and independently alive. It slides swiftly toward the body. Ball joins with socket. Metal claw-clips fix it in place.
Bones sends a ping down the length of the limb. Fingers move. The arm bends. I HAVE AN ARM AGAIN. That arm is a vital tool that allows the droid to—like a dead thing reanimating to life—lift himself up off the ground, where he sees his other three limbs. Two legs. One arm.
He begins to reassemble himself.
Piece by piece. Appendage by appendage. Buzz and click. Durasteel talons pin wires inside joints. The droid readjusts a few bent rib bones. His hand functions as a wrench—enough to tighten his spine, but not enough to fix the bowing, bent posture. The left arm is not fully functional. The right leg isn’t fully functional, either. External repairs will be needed.
But the droid now stands in the dark by Norra’s cage.
This is Mister Bones.
—
In the blackness of the Jakku night, Norra stirs. Her eyes bolt open. Something’s off. Something’s wrong. No— Something has changed.
She swallows and it’s like choking back broken blast glass. Everything feels dried out, and when she blinks the grit is only ground deeper into her eye. She winces, reaching out, pulling herself to standing.
The shape of the droid’s parts in disarray is gone. Bones…
They must’ve come for him and taken him away after she fell unconscious. Once more she feels dreadfully alone.
Out there in the darkness, someone screams. That scream is cut in half. Moments later something rolls out from behind the kesium rig wells. Something that tumbles up to her cage with a clong.
A helmet. White, mostly, though striated with finger marks of Jakku dust. It belongs—or belonged—to a stormtrooper.
Blood soaks the sand beneath it.
Out there, another piercing scream. Blasterfire fills the air just after, lighting up the dark. Something moves in the shadows, and Norra presses her face against the cage to see two more stormtroopers running toward the shape—they disappear behind the kesium well, and that’s the last Norra sees of them. But she hears their cries. Their bleats of pain.
Now, from that direction comes someone else.
Effney, the officer. He staggers forward, falling to one knee, though momentum bounces him back up to running. He’s shirtless and sweat-slick, a white cloth swaddled around his brow. In his hand hangs a small blaster.
He fires it behind him as he runs. He screams: “No! Get away! Get away from me, you monster!”
He is prey. And his predator reveals itself.
The battle droid moves in herky-jerky fits and starts—Bones is broken, Norra can see that much. His right leg is slow and wobbles at the joint every time it touches down. His left arm—blade extended—convulses even as the other arm remains steady, pointing its weapon.
Effney’s shots go wide, missing the droid by a considerable margin.
He’s running toward her cage. He’ll be alongside it— She growls, scooping up a handful of sand and dirt in her open palm, and as he comes past, panicked—his mouth wide, his eyes wider—she flings the debris into his face. He cries out, clawing at himself.
It stops him long enough for Bones to catch up.
Effney swivels, pointing the blaster. It’s too late. The droid’s blade cuts that arm off, and it thuds against the sand. Then Bones does to him what he did to Bones—one piece after the next, until Effney is just a pile of himself sitting outside her metal cage.
Bones swipes his vibroblade downward, buzzing through the lock on Norra’s cage. The door swings open.
“I HAVE PERFORMED VIOLENCE,” Bones says.
“Yes, you have,” Norra says.
“FOUND YOU.”
“You sure did. Thank you.” And thank you, Tem, for building him. Her strange, cackling, dancing, knife-slicing savior. “We have to go, now, Bones. Or we’re both dead.”
“ROGER-ROGER.”