Chapter 5

During one of Retsof’s numerous jobs, he stumbled upon a couple of dismantled HK droids. HK stood for Hunter Killer and this series of droids was centuries old and very unpleasant to come across when activated. After spending numerous hours working on them, he managed to get them both fully operative and completely loyal and protective of anyone whom he chose. This included himself of course and his trusted R5.

The four of them, heavily armed and ready for war, had intended to hijack a large cargo vessel when the news of the outbreak of war spread across the galaxy. This news meant many things, one was that droids were now unwanted guests in pretty much any quadrant of the galaxy. This made Retsof also of more value to the Seps now because his gift with droids was well known around Coruscant. He was quickly reassigned by some higher up senators to a droid battle ship. He was being delivered to Geonosis to help them develop newer and more powerful battle droids. Since he was reassigned at gun point, Retsof went willingly, he did however insist that his R5 astromech droid and his two HK droids join him. The HK’s he explained, would be used as examples of the kind of new battle droid he could create. The Seps were more than willing to allow them to follow him.

The new problem that Retsof faced now, was that Geonosis and Kessel were not all that close together, in fact, they were several weeks of hyperspace travel apart.

But, as usual, Retsof just did his duty and worked on repairing the droids throughout the battle cruiser he was aboard as it delivered him to Geonosis. After a few weeks of travelling through hyperspace from Coruscant, Retsof had managed to retool almost three quarters of the droids on board. He had worked non-stop, and by only sleeping a few hours a day, and having full access to the entire ship, he plan was starting to unfold.

As the droid battle cruiser neared Geonosis, his commanding droid officer made the sudden decision to make a stop at Kessel first and drop off a number of new battle droids to bulk up the security of Esuom Llams spice mining operation. Conveniently enough, Retsof had been ordered to make a routine repair check up on the commander a few hours before the order.

Now Retsof sat in his quarters, very crampled and uncomfortable quarters too, and he whistled softly to himself as he curled up to go to sleep. In a few weeks time, he would wake be plowing through space ship debris and this ship would be plummeting to its doom onto the spice mining world of Kessel.