Possible target acquired.
Proceeding to investigate.
Encountering hostiles.
Cannot give away position.
Hobbie, Wedge, let's go! Move it!
We're behind schedule, Phoenix Squadron.
I want these fighters launched and at the training coordinates by 062.
Don't understand why I can't come along.
Zeb, you're my chief of security.
I need you to stay behind and mind the base.
Hera, come on. Let me tag along.
You can always use an extra pair of hands.
Just don't leave me on my own here. I'll be bored to death.
You won't be on your own.
You have Chop and AP-5 to keep you company.
Like I said, bored to death.
We'll be back before you know it.
Carry on, Captain Orrelios.
Sorry, buddy.
Did they seriously leave you in charge of this entire facility?
Something wrong with that?
Well, I just always assumed
you were more of a "lift heavy things and punch anything in your way" type.
You know, a grunt.
Precisely. Now, what exactly do you do?
What'd he say?
He said, "We've never really figured that out."
Don't you have something to do?
Actually, while everyone is off practicing,
I intend to take this opportunity
to conduct a thorough inventory of the base's munitions supply depot.
Either one of you may assist me.
I'm with you, Chopper.
Counting crates? Not exactly my idea of fun.
Is that because you never learned to count? I can teach you.
What? No!
I don't have to stay here and listen to this.
I'll be in the command center.
- Doing what? - Commanding!
- Captain. - Anything to report?
We've been tracking meteors impacting on the surface nearby.
We think one of them knocked out a perimeter sensor in sector six.
- Should I send a unit? - No, I'll go take a look.
Chopper, you're with me.
You don't want to go?
Fine. Then you can stay here and help AP-5 with his supply inventory.
Chopper, there you are.
We have a lot of inventory to calculate immediately.
Wait. Where are you going?
Yeah, that's what I thought.
Well, I don't see a meteor,
but it looks like spiders had a go at it.
Easy enough to fix.
Looks like something stumbled onto a nest and got swarmed.
It's some kind of droid.
And not one of ours. How'd it get here?
Doesn't look Imperial.
We should take it back to base,
see if we can figure out where it came from.
Course you disagree and wanna trash it.
Well, I suppose, since Hera left you in charge...
Wait, she didn't.
Agent Kallus, we've lost contact with one of our Infiltrators.
It hasn't reported in.
What was its last known location?
The droid never transmitted its coordinates,
so we don't know. Should we alert command?
If we chased down every temporary comm failure,
we'd have little time to do anything else.
If there's still no contact by next cycle, we'll follow up.
For now, we wait.
No, no, no, no.
This is all wrong.
Rations in the munitions section?
Torpedoes with detonators?
My maker! This is a logistics nightmare.
Say what you like about the Empire, they were organized.
Mostly because of me, of course.
Hey, Inventory!
Excuse me.
This is a supply area, not a trash compactor.
We found this busted-up droid in the wasteland.
Can you identify it?
It looks like an older model of some type of protocol droid.
I should be able to give it enough power for a systems restart.
Hey, it worked!
Of course it worked.
Hello. Who are you?
Where do you come from?
Designation, unknown.
Its memory systems are damaged.
Armory and munitions storage area.
Proton torpedoes, 47.
Blaster recharges, 820.
Thermal detonators, 62 crates.
Ion mines, 32.
Did he... Did he just scan and inventory this entire area?
He's better at your job than you are.
I seriously doubt that.
However, he appears to be a logistics droid
and could prove useful as my assistant.
Seems harmless enough. I guess we could take in another stray.
Species, Lasat. Designation, military. Rank, unknown.
Captain Orrelios at your service.
Fast learner, this one.
Astromech C1 series.
Obsolete mechanism. No longer in production.
He doesn't like you. Now I really like him.
Captain Orrelios to the command center for a priority message.
Keep an eye on my new friend, huh?
Very well.
Sir, we have a message from Fulcrum.
Let's hear it. Put him through.
The Empire has begun to deploy recon droids.
These Infiltrators sweep the Outer Rim worlds for rebel bases.
Look at that thing. It's armed to the teeth.
They are extremely dangerous,
but can appear harmless while in protocol mode.
Oh, no.
One recently failed to report in.
Be advised, if the droid remains out of contact,
the Empire will come after it, and soon.
Fulcrum out.
Make sure you categorize every crate in this section.
This is marvelous.
You and I are going to get along famously.
We'll have this rebel base in tip-top shape.
Rebel.
AP-5, step away from that droid!
Rebel base.
What exactly is happening?
That thing's some kind of Imperial recon droid.
Rebel base identified.
Get away from it! What's it doing?
Designation, Imperial lnfiltrator Droid EXD-9.
It's remembering.
Assignment, Atollon.
Target, rebels.
Stop!
Uh-oh!
You okay, Chop?
I can only guess what he's saying.
In summary, "I told you so."
Well, I managed to damage it, but it's on the run now.
We can't let that thing report what it saw back to the Empire.
We must alert Captain Syndulla.
No time.
Hera put me in charge because she trusts me.
I'm not letting her down.
Come on. It's leaking fluid. We can track it.
Ghastly.
This poor astromech's power core has been completely drained.
And several key components have been removed.
That thing's repairing itself.
Trail ends here, where it patched itself up.
Chopper, think you can track it?
Chopper said its power supply is not registering on his scanners.
The power it consumed from this droid was likely not enough for its needs.
It may still be looking for more.
Well, that gives me an idea.
Really? You can have those?
Chopper, you get its attention.
Lure it to me, and I'll blast it.
May I remind you that we are in an area housing high-explosive munitions?
Perhaps not the best place to be firing blasters.
We were lucky enough the first time.
You could have told me that before.
I just told you now.
Okay, so I'll just grab it.
Get it on the ground and shut it down.
Grab it? That's your plan?
Yes. And if I do, can you shut it down?
Of course I can.
All right. Chopper, get to it.
I got it. I got it!
Shut it down!
Hold it steady.
I'm trying!
Shut it down now!
Almost got it. Stand by.
- Stand by? - Got it.
What do you know? Your plan actually worked.
Of course it did!
Okay, let's have some good news.
You know, just to see how it feels.
Chopper can detect no long-range communications equipment,
which means the droid has not transmitted our position to the Empire.
Well, that's something.
It must have a ship somewhere nearby.
What's the bad news?
The droid appears to be counting down?
Counting down to what?
Most likely it has activated its Imperial anti-capture failsafe.
There's probably a proton warhead inside too.
If you're right, then this droid could vaporize the entire base
and us along with it.
The countdown timer has already begun.
How much time have we got left?
Twenty seconds.
Any ideas?
What did he do?
He's temporarily frozen the countdown circuit.
That should buy us time to move the droid
to a safe distance from the base before it detonates.
This part will require some manual labor.
Your specialty, I believe.
Wait.
Fulcrum said if this droid doesn't report back to the Empire,
they'll come here looking for it.
Wait.
Are you suggesting we allow it to return to the Empire,
with a memory bank filled with rebel secrets?
Well, we can't let it detonate. We can't let it go back.
Think, Zeb, think!
This might take a while.
Can you get inside the droid's programming?
I believe I can.
I want you to wipe its memory.
No, its memory core is protected.
Any attempt to tamper with it would likely trigger detonation.
Nor can I disarm the warhead.
One way or another, it is going to explode.
It's just a matter of when.
Or a matter of where.
What if we send it back to the Empire still ticking?
Can you make an adjustment to the warhead,
set it to restart the countdown
when the droid reconnects to the Imperial network?
Possibly. What are you suggesting?
We let it go back to its base,
but it blows before it can upload its data.
Maybe even takes some more of these droids with it.
The Empire will never know which one it was.
Well, can you do it or not?
Yes, I can. Or at least I can try.
Sorry for my delayed response.
I was just rather stunned by the fact that you had a good idea.
Just get to work fixing it.
Good point, Chopper.
It may try to kill us, so I will restore the droid's behavioral system
to the disarmed state in which we found it.
I will also initiate its return-to-base protocol
so it should promptly leave peacefully.
Main system restart now.
It's leaving the base. Good job.
Let's make sure it gets home.
I'm picking up a second signal. Must be its ship.
There it is.
That's a long-range transmitter.
It's going to contact the Empire.
Not if I can help it.
Yes!
We did it. We did it!
Now that it can't contact the Empire, it will return home, right?
If it follows its programming.
But what if... I mean, if it goes back,
and I didn't correctly reprogram that detonator?
Look, we may not like each other, but you've always done your job.
Well, whatever the outcome,
you performed admirably, Captain.
A lot's happened today.
Not sure if I can deal with you and me starting to get along
on top of everything else.
Agreed.
I think that missing unit is back.
So plug it in. Let's see what we got.
Alert command.
This droid was damaged, but found something.
- Is that a countdown? - Oh, my.
What just happened? Report!
I believe it was a proton warhead detonation, sir.
Okay, what happened that you called me back on day one of the exercise?
Well, it may be nothing.
We... We think we've got it all under control.
But just in case...
Incoming message, priority.
Hold that thought.
You had nothing to do with what?
I can only assume you found and reprogrammed
the lost Infiltrator I warned you of.
Well, as you no doubt planned,
the droid did self-destruct on its return to base.
I don't know how you pulled it off, but you have my congratulations.
Fulcrum out.
What was that about?
It's kind of a long story.
Which I can recall every detail of.
It all began when Captain Orrelios brought the droid back...
How did this happen, Agent Kallus?
I suspect the rebels captured a unit in the field
and reprogrammed it to self-destruct upon its return to base.
Quite ingenious, really.
I'm inclined to agree.
You seem in surprisingly good spirits, considering this loss.
Loss, you say?
The rebels may have protected the location of their base for now,
but in doing so, they have narrowed my search.
Before today, they could have been hiding in any of a thousand systems.
But now...
Now I know they are almost certainly
on one of the 94 planets surveyed by my Infiltrators.
The rebels have won this battle,
but the war will be ours.