3 Chapter 2

Renn collapsed into his bed exhausted, it'd been a month since he'd started his training and Alpha and Sapphire were pushing him so hard, he sometimes thought they might be sadists.

His entire body felt sore from his combat training with Alpha and his brain felt like it might burst from all the information Sapphire seemed to be trying to cram into it. The only upside he could see was he could feel himself growing stronger, with both his body and his mind.

With every new day the exercises Alpha put him through became a little easier, and Sapphires lessons became easier to understand. Of course, both Alpha and Sapphire would step up the intensity of his training whenever he seemed to start finding it too easy.

Renn felt sleep rapidly overtake him as soon as he closed his eyes and soon drifted into unconsciousness.

-

The next day Renn making his way through the corridors of the base without any real destination in mind. Sapphire had given him the day off to rest so he was looking for something to do when he heard excited beeping before something nearly collided with him.

Looking behind him Renn saw a T3 repair droid that seemed to be radiating with glee and was happily chirping in the mysterious droid language of beeps and clicks.

"I'm happy to see you to Tinker, are you out on your own or is Bolt with you," Renn smiled as he asked the excited little droid.

As if answering his question, a T7 astromech came from around a corner behind Tinker and began beeping at him, probably admonishing him for running off, but stopped halfway through what he was trying to say when he saw Renn.

Renn let out a small laugh as now both droids began beeping happily at him and after standing and watching them almost start jumping up and down in excitement, he allowed Tinker to pull him along to where the droids where going, which happened to be the repair bay where Tinker and Bolt spent most of their time.

-

The repair bay was a medium sized room filled with tools and spare parts all arranged to the standards of Bolt, who was in charge of the small droid engineering team. Boxes lined one wall containing items that were waiting to be fixed and ones that already had been fixed, works in progress where on workbenches in the middle of the room.

Three Droid charging stations dominated another wall. The Two belonging to Bolt and Tinker were empty but the third was occupied by another T3 repair bot called Drillbit. Unlike Bolt and Tinker who both took care to maintain their appearance and were both a painted a silvery grey Drillbit seemed to be covered in little scratches and little bits of dirt, Drillbit was also painted a rusty red colour.

Renn followed behind the droids as Tinker flew into the room before the doors had even fully opened with Bolt following quickly behind beeping at him to slow down. Tinker went straight to Drillbit to tell him that Renn had come to visit them. Renn couldn't help but smile as he looked at Tinker rocking side to side as he talked with Drillbit.

All the Droids with Renn in the base had been heavily modified and upgraded on Aruum by the technomancers of House Dredd, the modifications had upgraded all their abilities as well as making them much smarter than normal droids. Drillbit however was different, not completely different he still had the same modifications on Aruum as the rest of the droids but escaping the doomed planet had changed him.

A part of the ship the survivors of House Dredd had used to escape Aruum had been malfunctioning during their attempt to reach hyperspace and Drillbit had attempted to fix it to try and save the ship. He succeeded and the ship reached hyperspace safely but unfortunately, he was hit by an electrical surge that fried some parts of his processing unit.

Despite Bolt and Tinker trying everything they could to fix him the processing unit was damaged beyond repair and had fused inside him making it impossible to repair. The damage led to Drillbit not being able to do complex tasks, so he spent most of his time in the repair bay with Bolt and Tinker looking after him.

Renn approached the two repaid droids while Bolt watched from near the work benches. "So, what have you guys been working on," he asked the droids while patting the tops of Tinker and Drillbit who seemed over the moon receiving the attention.

The droids then led Renn to a workbench with a partially disassembled blaster rifle on it. Tinker and Bolt moved to the bench and started fixing the rifle while excitedly explaining what they were doing with beeps and whistles. Drillbit stayed close to Renn happy just to watch and receive head pats from Renn.

Renn watched in amazement as the droids assembled and disassembled the rifle at breakneck pace and silently decided he would start spending more of his free time with the repair droids.