He argued a little louder, squirming against his bindings.
I wilted. “He already told you I helped him sneak aboard, didn’t he?”
“He did, then I gagged him,” she confirmed, watching as I went into the pantry to set him free.
Once I pulled the cloth from his mouth, he snapped, “That defective droid said she’dfiletme!”
Veebee didn’t disagree. “I’ve always wanted to try cooking humanoid meat.”
I unbound his wrists. “I told you to stay in the crate.”
He winced, rubbing his freed hands. They were a bit red from the string, though it was much easier to see on his pale, pale skin. In the bright, unforgiving light of the galley, he had the coloring of frost on a window, or moonstone. “I was gagging on the smell.”
N2-0 beeped a question, and Veebee answered, “No, ofcoursethe captain doesn’t know about him. Why else would she have smuggled him in through the pickled fleek eels?”
“And we’ll keep it that way?” I suggested.
Veebee debated. “What’s in it for me?”
My eyebrows shot up. “Really?You’re going to resort to blackmail?”
“I could use some new knives,” she went on, motioning to her belt of tools.
“So you can just cut off another pinky?” I asked. She inclined her head, and I sighed, motioning for her to go to the counter so I could fix it. “I’ll tell you everything while I put your finger back on. C’mon.” I pulled the tools from my little work pouch: a soldering iron, a desoldering pump, wire strippers, and tweezers. They gleamed in the harsh galley light.
Being a hodgepodge of droids, Veebee was tall and awkwardly built, so she had to duck in and out of every room, and her limbs were long and scratched from firefights she’d never been in. She grabbed her pinky finger from beside the game board and handed it to me. “It better be a good story.”
“It’s a great story,” Sian suggested, looming over my shoulder as I went to work. “What model are you?”
“Oh? Do my complexities stun you?” Veebee asked.
“I just haven’t seen”—he motioned to all of her—“the likes of you before.”
“Vee is one-of-a-kind,” I said, preparing to solder the wires between her hand and pinky back together. Itwas a difficult process, and even more so with someone leaning over to watch. I wouldn’t normally mind, but for some reason I was all too aware of how he towered over me, which just reminded me about that tiny hiding spot in the alley, pressed against him, our heartbeats too loud and our body heat too warm. I pulled on my glasses, then asked, “Do you mind?”
He blinked at me, confused. “Oh, right.” He eased back a little.
That was better. But not by much—especially since he smelled rather strongly of pickled fleek eel. With a little more room, I got started. “When I found Veebs, she was pretty messed up. Her last owners had tossed her into a junk heap, so I patched her up with a weird E-series model I’d never seen before and dragged her out of the junkyard before the Hutts found me.”
“It was probably a defective model,” VB-35 noted dryly.
“Probably,” I agreed.
While Veebee had adapted to her body, it seemed her programming still had issues with physicality in space, so she was all banged and scratched up. Once, she thought she had cleared an airlock but it turned out her right heel hadn’t. So I had scooped up the heel of another droid—spare parts really were everywhere—and solderedit on. Standing about as high as Sian, she was just as broad, a mismatch of bronze and scuffed silver parts, with two long tapered antennae on the sides of her head that looked, from a distance, like pointed ears. Veebee was made up like a patchwork quilt, a little bit of all the places we’d been.
I told her that once, and Veebee had gone quiet for a long moment.
“I don’t mind that, I don’t think,” Veebee had replied earnestly. Which would have been a perfectly good answer if she hadn’t ruined it a second later with, “But can’t you at leastmatchmy parts?”
Which, you know,fair.
Because he was not allowed to hover over my shoulder to watch, Sian wandered the galley instead, poking his head into cupboards and shelves, making himself right at home. He took a handful of nuts from a bag and ate them as he wandered. “So, you really have lived here all your life, huh.”
“On this ship? Yeah.”
“Sounds awful.”
Veebee studied him. “I don’t think I like you.” His eyebrows shot up, but before he could respond, she asked me, “Why did you smuggle him in?”
