Of course, if he couldn’t make the array work, none of those exciting possibilities would happen. If you said you would try to do something, people heard that as you would do something, and if you didn’t achieve the goal then they thought you had failed. And blamed you for trying at all. It wasn’t exactly fair, especially because predicting the future with a massive computer array made from wired-up droid brains was basically impossible. But that was how the system called society worked, and Keven Tarr would never be powerful enough to change that set of rules.

His situation was binary. Succeed or fail. He’d done everything he could to make sure it was the former, and that was all.

He lifted a comlink and spoke. “You guys got that last batch of droids linked up?”

A crackle—this many droids in one spot was causing interference. You could taste it in the air, like touching your tongue to new metal.

“One more left,” came the response from Chief Innamin of the Republic Defense Coalition—Petty Officer Innamin until recently, promoted based on his heroic efforts during the Legacy Run disaster. He and his shipmate, Peeples, then an ensign now a lieutenant, had decided to stay in-system after the disaster to help however they could, as a way of honoring the sacrifice of their captain, Bright, who had died during a rescue attempt on a solar array.

Keven liked that the two officers were contributing their skills—thought it was noble and good. More important, Innamin had the necessary engineering training to be particularly useful here on the Rooted Moon, and to supervise Peeples, even though the lieutenant was technically his superior officer. Peeples didn’t seem to mind, and had even offered to swap ranks with Innamin. The chief declined, after letting out a heavy sigh. In any case, the duo was currently completing the wiring for the subnode tasked to model the fifth Emergence.

Privately, in a way he would never, ever voice, Keven wished there had been a few more Emergences. Every single one was a data point, and so far there had been twenty-nine. Not bad—a pretty good set—but the more information his machine had to draw on, the better. He wouldn’t get a second chance at this, for many reasons.

Mostly for one reason, in fact, something he had purposely decided not to tell the kind people who had helped him gather all these rare and valuable machines for his array.