Star Wars_ Death Star - Michael Reaves [95]
He felt himself relax a little. Things weren’t so bad. Once again, luck had been on his side. He was almost coming to believe that he led a charmed life.
43
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES, DECK 106, SECTOR N-ONE, DEATH STAR
“Hold still, Persee.”
“I am motionless, sir,” the droid said.
Atour Riten frowned. If that was true, then his hands must be shaking a bit. Was he really that old?
“Almost done here,” he said. “A bit more patience …”
“I have infinite patience, sir, being a droid. However, I am constrained to point out that your current actions would seem to be in violation of the Imperial Legal Code, Section Fourteen, Subsection Nine, Part C-dash-one, which forbids tampering with autonomous droid function without official permission.”
“So it would seem. But I have permission.” He inserted the photonic cable and turned it until it locked into place.
“I show no record of such permission, sir.”
“Hand-delivered this morning,” Atour said. “My-eyes-only, very hush-hush.”
“Really, sir? This is most unusual. I feel I must verify—”
The droid’s last comment was interrupted when Atour touched the transfer button on his datastick, and the program contained therein began to download into Persee’s memory. The droid sagged slightly, and its photoreceptors dimmed.
The personality substrate would remain the same; Atour did not want to disturb the droid’s abilities, good help being so hard to come by. There were only two items that would be substantially changed. First, Persee’s spyware, which required it to monitor its work environment and to report on any activities that might be remotely illegal according to Imperial statutes, would shortly be disabled. Second, its basic loyalty module, set up to put the good of the Empire at the top of its function pyramid as defined by its Imperial programmer, was being altered to shift this loyalty to Atour personally.
Persee was, in a few more seconds, going to become Atour Riten’s servant first and foremost, and anything it saw or heard its master do from now on, it would keep to itself. Any tampering with its memory chip in an attempt to bypass the new programming would result in a total memory wipe, right down to the primary nodes. What would be left wouldn’t be able to walk, talk, or do much of anything else. After all, an assistant who might consciously or unconsciously betray him to Imperial agencies, either covert or overt, wasn’t of much use.
Atour had been able to access some wonderful material over his years of filing and cataloging. This droid-altering program had been one of his best finds. Hook it up, pop it in, and zip! Just like that, you had a new best friend who would do anything to keep you from harm. Anyone who queried Persee would get reasonable assurances that Commander Atour Riten was a prince of a fellow, as honest as the galaxy was wide, and this would hold true no matter how insistent the questioner. If it went past a certain point, Persee would suffer a firmware breakdown and, whatever anyone might suspect, there would be nothing to find indicating sedition.
The memory of the transfer itself would also be erased from Persee’s mind. The droid wouldn’t have a clue that any tampering had been done, or that it was any different when it walked out of the office than when it had walked in.
There was a ping! as the download ended. Atour unlocked and then removed the cable; the entire process had taken only a couple of seconds. He counted to ten.
Right on schedule the droid’s photoreceptors lit. “Will there be anything else, sir?” Persee asked.
“No, I think that will do it for now. Systems check.”
The droid replied, with no discernible delay, “My circuits, modules, and mechanics are all operating at optimum, sir.”
“Well, good,” Atour said. He made an airy gesture of dismissal. “Toodle off, then.”
After the droid left, Atour felt better. There was no way he could do