“Woah woah woah! There is no need to go messing with my mind, okay? I’ll... I’ll tell you whatever you want to know!”
“Coward. An Imperial would take his secrets to the grave.”
Glares at the squad leader. “Whose side are you on always?” I kneel down in front of Izel. “First off, what was that droid and what was it threatening you about?”
“TAURUS is... was one of the Chancellor’s enforcers. I have no idea where it came from, but he has been monitoring our work here for a while. We have been building these special droids under his specifications, using material he procures for us. I don’t even know what the metal is called, but it’s resistant to nearly every weapon we test it against... except, it seems, the laser cutter. Maybe next batch we’ll fix that...”
“I don’t think so. We’re shutting this operation down for the time being. Now, since helped design the Sith Hunter droids, why don’t you tell me about them.”
“They are the most durable droids I have ever seen. Every variation we build was personally overseen by TAURUS, and heavily scrutinized by the Chancellor. Every time he would send back the same requests; more fire power! More guns! More explosive power!” Shakes head. “He wanted something strong enough to kill an army of Jedi.”
“And he basically has it! I’ve seen those droids in action. I’ve fought one on Ilum and it nearly killed me. I can’t imagine what a whole group of them could do if they all hanged up.” I lean closer. “We need it’s weaknesses. It has to have some.”
“Oh, it has many weaknesses! So many simple weaknesses that, had the Chancellor not been so focused on offensive capability, could have been easily fixed.” Sounds genuinely upset about that fact. “As you just saw, it is weak against its own weapons, and especially against extreme heat. Fire it can handle, but prolonged exposure to heat above 1500 degrees Celsius and the whole thing cools from the inside out. Also, there is a space in its elbow where fuel for its flame thrower attachment is exposed. Sever that it will douse itself in flammable liquid and literally set itself on fire. Also...” Sighs in embarrassment. “...it can’t walk up or down stairs, and if it falls on it’s back, it can’t get back up. Like a turtle.”
Smirks. “Good to know, but it isn’t like we’ll be fighting them in a stairwell, and we would have to get within close range to properly burn it enough to destroy. That still puts us at a major disadvantage in a fight against it.”
“True... but it has one more glaring weakness; it is INCREDIBLY stupid. We spent so much time making it an unstoppable killing machine that we never had time to give it a proper droid brain. Is is completely incapable of thinking for itself. Every action it makes needs to be explicitly ordered. And it has no long term memory storage, so it can only handle one command at a time. Each new command overrides the previous one. And once a command is fulfilled, it goes into standby mode until the next order is issued. So everywhere one is deployed, it needs to have an open comm channel open to a handler to issue each of its commands.”
“So... if we took out the handler, they would all stop fighting?”
“No, that would continue to carry out their current task even after they have stopped receiving orders. If the last command they were given was ‘destroy all enemy combatants’, then they would continue to do that until all the enemies in the area were killed or until the unit itself is disabled. However, if it’s last command was ‘destroy the enemy base’, then it would destroy the base exclusively. Anyone who tried to attack the droid while it is distracted would meet no resistance because there is no order expressly telling the droid to defend itself. You understand?”
“Yeah... that’s really helpful. Thank you, truly.” As a sign of thanks, I untie the Foreman and his assistants. “You’re free to go.”
