Fel was alone on the Unfair Advantage. It didn’t happen often, anymore. Lots, in those early days, before Jet. Long before any of the current ‘crew.’ He still wasn’t sure how many of them were in for the long haul. He would’ve guessed most would head for greener pastures if they pulled off the heist. …If. He didn’t have much to do aboard-ship. He wandered. Engine room, mostly squared away. Galley, well-enough stocked, and not like ‘Shaddaa was home to such unimaginable delicacies that a shopping trip was on his to-do list. Hardly. The flight deck was, in a word, perfect. Just as he wanted it. Worn parts, paint rubbed off panels and items that were regularly handled. Modifications that made the ship a virtual extension of himself. The bunks… sure, they were a part of ‘his ship.’ But they weren’t his anymore, strictly speaking. So he steered clear of them. Even his own. It would have been an invasion of privacy. 

In the back of his mind, he knew what he had to do. Didn’t want to. So he continued wandering. Checked the hold, grabbed a few tools off Jet’s workbench, and ascended to the dorsal hatch, stepped out onto the superstructure. Not something he got a chance to do very often. It was dirty, from a thousand re-entries and more than a few scars of laser-fire damage. The port Borstel cannon had been a degree or two out of alignment for better than a month, and he hadn’t had a chance to do anything about it. So for the next couple hours he sat, dismantling its focussing matrix. Sure enough, a servo was on its way out, and by the time Fel had replaced it, the brighter gloom was being replaced by a darker one. By the time he had put Jet’s tools back (they were in better shape than any of his own…) it was what passed for night, on the Smuggler’s moon. Time to do what he had to do. 

Wrench was a creature of habit. Which was both good, and bad. But if the little droid, Fel’s oldest companion, followed his usual routine, he’d be powering down to plug in and charge up shortly. Sure enough, Fel found the little Astro droid on the flight deck, plugged into its custom-made astromech socket, on a soft power-down. Making the power-down, a hard ‘off’ was no simple feat, but it was made easier by the fact that Wrench was ‘sleeping.’ After that was done, Fel accessed the droid’s memory banks with an external terminal. 

How long had it been? Fel had never wiped the droid’s memory. Not once. He believed, as many did, that the Astro droids developed a personality over the months and years of experience they gathered. He had been content to let go all the oddities and the headstrong streak that Wrench had cultivated. He had even leaned into it on many occasions. The short cuts, the jump memory, the secrets that little droid held, had saved him on more than one occasion. 

But. What had happened with Eryn had been borderline dangerous. He’d let it go at the time, because what was the other option? There was a time and a place. And now was the time. Wrench was becoming a loose cannon. Of all the things aboard the UA that could, and did, act in an unpredictable manner, Fel needed Wrench to be rock-solid. Didn’t he? His finger hovered over the ‘execute’ button which would wipe R2-P47’s memory and reset it to factory standards. He looked over the dented and carbon-scored radome of the little droid, oblivious to his companion’s actions. 

But he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Fel had been made to kill before. Had willingly killed before. But had never killed a friend. There would be some other work-around for it. There would have to be. Wrench wouldn’t abide a restraining bolt, but Fel couldn’t kill his oldest friend. He unplugged the terminal and closed up Wrench’s access ports, thinking once more whether he was making the right choice. Exited Wrench’s diagnostic mode, letting him go back to ‘sleep.’ He’d have to answer for it at some point, because Wrench would know that he had been offline for nearly three minutes. But not now. 

Fel walked back to the dorsal hatch ladder, ascended, and sat on the edge of the UA’s cargo mandible, looking out into the night. Once again, he wasn’t sure he had done the right thing. There was a lot more of that these past few weeks than he was comfortable with. He didn’t usually second-guess himself, good or bad. Maybe he was losing it. Whatever ‘it’ was.