XV XVTHE war-robot seemed to block out the sky, a machine out of a nightmare. But abruptly its cranial turret flew apart in a blast of charred circuitry and ruptured power routing as a thread-thin, precisely aimed beam found its most vulnerable point. Han scarcely had the presence of mind to take a step back, nearly treading on Chewbacca, as the automaton crashed at his feet like an old tree.
He leaped up onto its back and scanned the battlefield. Far across it, a form in gray waved once.
“Gallandro!” The gunman gave him a bare, stark smile that held nothing Han could read. Han drew without thinking, then remembered his blaster was empty. Just then a robot appeared behind Gallandro, closing in on him, arms wide. Han never made a conscious decision, but pointed and shouted a warning.
The gunman was too far away to have heard, but he saw Han’s expression and understood. He spun and ducked instinctively. The robot just missed with a blow of enormous power. With an incredible display of agility and reflexes, Gallandro seized the arm and rode the robot’s recovery-backswing, at the same time putting two quick shots into its head. Letting go, he was flung clear to land lightly and put a last bolt into the robot as it fell.
Han watched the incident with awe. By far the most dangerous machine there was Gallandro. The gunman gave Han a sardonic bow and a mocking grin, then, like a ghost, was gone again in the swirl of battle.
The air was hot with the unleashed energies of the battle. With Skynx’s and Badure’s help, Chewbacca had squirmed free of the fallen robot, while Hasti stood nervous guard. Taking back his bowcaster, the Wookiee made a quick motion toward the robot that had so narrowly missed nailing Han and barked a question.
“It was him, Gallandro,” Han told his partner. “A fifty-, maybe sixty-meter tight-beam shot.” The Wookiee shook his head in bewilderment, mane flying.
There was nowhere to go except the camp living area, across the bridge. “Will you two stop chatting and get going?” Hasti called. “They’ll have us surrounded if we don’t hurry.”
They started for the bridge at the best pace they could manage, a half-trot, each of them bearing a number of minor injuries and wounds. They moved in a defensive ring, Badure at the leading edge with his power pistols, Hasti to his right and Skynx to his left, with Chewbacca and Han bringing up the rear, back-pedaling and sideskipping. A metallic voice called Han’s name.
Bollux somehow injected a note of immense relief into his vocoder drawl. “We’re so glad you’re all safe. The Millennium Falcon’s unharmed, at least for the time being, but I don’t know how long that will last. Unfortunately, it’s inaccessible just now.”
Han wanted to know exactly what that meant, but Bollux interrupted. “No time for that now. I have the means to remedy our situation, sir,” he told the pilot, resettling the signalry equipment he had taken from the robots’ command podium. “But you’ll have to get to the far side of the bridge before I can use it.”
“You’re on, Bollux! All right, everybody, scratch gravel!” They hastened away. The attack hadn’t gotten as far as the bridge yet, but resistance was crumbling rapidly.
At the bridgehead Bollux paused. “I’ll be staying here, sir. The rest of you must proceed across.”
Han looked around. “What’re you going to do, talk them into suicide? You better stay with us; we’ll take to the high ground on the plateau.”
With a strange sincerity, the ’droid refused. “Thank you for your concern, sir; Max and I are flattered. But we have no intention of being destroyed, I assure you.”
Han felt ridiculous for arguing with a ’droid, but insisted, “This is not the place to get noble, old-timer.”
Seeing the war-robots converging on them, Bollux persevered. “I really must insist that you go, sir; our basic programming won’t permit Max and me to see you come to harm here.”
They departed unwillingly. Hasti walked with the tired Skynx beside her. Badure patted the ’droid’s hard shoulder and trudged off, and Chewbacca waved a paw. “Look after Max,” Han said, “and don’t get yourself junked, old fellow.”
Bollux watched them go, then searched among the rocks and boulders for a place of concealment at that end of the bridge.
Han and his companions slogged wearily across the bridge among others who had survived the robots’ onslaught and were now falling back for a final stand. At the halfway point they came upon the body of a fallen mining tech who had died before she could complete the crossing, a T’rinn whose bright plumage was now charred and burned from combat. Han gently took a shoulder-fired rocket launcher from her lifeless claws, the weapon still containing a half-magazine of rockets. He was just standing up when a figure broke from the stream of retreating miners and attacked him, swinging an empty needlebeamer.
“Murderer!” J’uoch shrieked, her first blow grazing the pilot over the ear before he was aware of her onset. “You killed my brother! I’ll kill you, you filthy animal!” Dazed, he pushed himself backward to avoid the blows she was raining on him, forearm up to protect himself.
Chewbacca would have torn the hysterical woman from his friend, but at the same moment he was struck from behind, a heavy blow from a thick forearm. The Wookiee fell to his knees, losing his bowcaster, as a huge weight fell upon him: Egome Fass, the enforcer. The two huge creatures rolled over and over, wrestling, tearing at one another. Retreating miners skirted the struggles, concerned only with staying alive.
Badure, weakened by the ordeal, waved an unsteady power pistol at J’uoch. But before he could fire, Hasti had thrown herself at the woman who had killed her sister Lanni. They whirled and fought, hacking and kicking at each other, finding reserves of strength in their mutual hatred.
Badure pulled Han up just as J’uoch got her forearm around Hasti’s throat. But Hasti writhed free of the hold, dropped and turned, put her head and shoulder against the other’s midsection and drove her back with feet churning and driving. J’uoch was shoved backward against the bridge’s waist-high railing and toppled over it. She fell screaming, in a flurry of coveralls, reaching and thrashing. Hasti’s momentum had carried her halfway over the rail, too.
Badure was there in time to pull her back from the rail, grabbing the material of her clothes. She sobbed for breath, her pulse pounding. Then it came to her that the roaring she heard wasn’t in her ears, Chewbacca and Egome Fass had gone to war.
It had been the second time J’uoch’s enforcer had struck the Wookiee from behind. What the Falcon’s first mate felt now could only pallidly be described as outrage. Han waved Badure off when the old man would have shot Egome Fass.
The two punched and grasped at one another while Han leaned against the rail to watch the honor match. “Aren’t you going to help him?” Hasti puffed, her face showing the scratches and abrasions of her own match.
“Chewie wouldn’t appreciate that,” Han told her, keeping one eye on the rallying of robots at the end of the bridge. But he eased a pistol from Badure’s belt in case the match didn’t go as it should.
Egome Fass had gotten a choke-hold on Chewbacca. Rather than squirm out of it or apply an in-fighting trick, the Wookiee chose to lock both hands on his opponent’s arm and turn it into a contest of pure strength. Egome Fass was bulkier, Chewbacca more agile, but the question of brute force was still open. Their arms quivered and muscles jumped in the straining backs.
Bit by bit the arm was levered away from Chewbacca’s throat. The Wookiee showed his fangs in savage triumph, and burst free of the hold. But Egome Fass wasn’t done with tests of strength. He lunged at his antagonist for a deadly hug. Chewbacca accepted it.
They staggered back and forth, first the Wookiee’s feet leaving the bridge, then the enforcer’s. Both applied their full brawn in fearsome constriction. Egome Fass’s feet were lifted clear of the bridge and stayed that way as the Wookiee held him aloft, muscles standing out like cables under Chewbacca’s pelt. The enforcer’s struggle became more frantic, less aggressive. Panic crept into his movements. Then there was a crack, and Egome Fass’s body slumped. Chewbacca let go, and the enforcer slid limply to the bridge’s surface. The Wookiee had to rest a paw on a support to steady himself.
Han teetered over with the rocket launcher over one shoulder. “You’re getting decrepit; two tries to put away a bum like that!” He laughed and affectionately punched the Wookiee’s shoulder.
“Enough, enough!” Skynx protested, tugging at Han’s red-seamed trouser leg. “The robots are ready to attack; Bollux said we must be across the bridge.”
Han didn’t know how much chance the labor ’droid stood of stopping the steel horde, but he and the others obeyed Skynx’s pleas. There was no one to stand with them at the end of the bridge. The miners who had reached it had gone either to put up barricades in the buildings or to find safe places among the rocks.
Han stopped as soon as his boots were off the bridge. He sat on the ground, looking back across the bridge. “We might as well face it here.”
No one made any objection. Badure gave Hasti one of his pistols, while Chewbacca fitted a new magazine into his bowcaster. Hasti put one arm around Han’s neck and kissed his cheek. “That’s for a good try,” she explained.
Bollux crouched in the jumble of boulders on the far side of the bridge. The mining-operations site was now completely razed. Machinery was burned and buildings were flattened, and no living thing could be seen.
The Corps Commander had mustered all his forces with high-pitched summonses. Other resistance had been crushed; all that remained was to annihilate the barracks area on the far side of the bridge, the successful completion of their first combat action in generations.
Bollux waited and didn’t try to interfere. That would have been useless, he knew; they weren’t so different from him. The machines gathered around their commander by the hundreds. The Corps Commander indicated the way with a long metal arm, gleaming like a statue of death in the blue-white light. He stumped toward the bridge, and his awesome troops crowded after him. And as the war-robots drew abreast of him, about to step onto the bridge, Bollux triggered the command signalry he had brought from the podium.
The Corps Commander fell into a marching step as the signals reached him. He didn’t question them; the commands were automatic, military, geared to a segment of him that didn’t doubt or ponder. Such was his construction.
Behind their commander the other war-robots responded to the signal as well, falling into ranks of ten, in step with their leader. Funneled onto the bridge, their ranks filled it from side to side. They stepped with meticulous precision. Metal feet tramped; arms swung in time.
“Will it work?” Bollux asked his friend.
Blue Max, tuned in with both their audio pickups, listened carefully, cautioning the ’droid not to bother him at this critical point. At Max’s instruction, Bollux adjusted the marching tempo, matching the forced vibration of the robots’ tread to the bridge’s own natural frequency, creating a powerful resonance. The war-robots marched in to do battle for an overlord generations dead. The bridge began to quake, dust rising and forming a haze with the unified footfalls. Timbers reverberated, joints and stress members strained; the perfection of their marching made the robots a single, unimaginable power hammer. More of them poured onto the bridge and took up the step, adding to the concussions.
At last the bridge itself thrummed under them as Max found the perfect beat. All the robots were on the bridge, with no thought but to get to the other side and attack the enemy.
Han and the others rose, waiting. “I guess Bollux couldn’t pull off his plan,” Han said. The front rank, following their gleaming leader, had grown large. “We’ll have to fall back.”
“There’s not much room for that,” Hasti reminded him sadly. He had no answer.
Suddenly Skynx exclaimed, “Look!”
Han did, feeling a deep vibration through his boots. The bridge was shuddering in time with the robots’ march, its timbers creaking and cracking with the punishment it couldn’t absorb. Feet pounding, the robots marched on.
Then there was a rending snap; the vibration had found a member that couldn’t support it. A timber bent and turned in its bed of press-poured material. The bed wouldn’t accept the play and the timber twisted and split. All the supporting members at that side of the bridge gave way.
There were electronic bleats of distress from the war machines and the popping of aged rivets from the timber-joining plates. For a moment the whole doomed assemblage, robots and bridge, was suspended in space. Then all fell into the crevasse with a huge concussion, sending up clouds of rock dust and smoke and a wall of impact-noise that drove Han back from the crevasse’s edge.
Wiping the dust from his eyes and spitting it out of his mouth, Han returned to the brink. Among the drifted dust and smoke he could see bridge timbers and the gleam of crumpled armor, the flare of circuit fires, overloaded power packs, broken leads, and shorted weapons. Suddenly Bollux appeared at the other side of the crevasse, waving stiffly, having divested himself of the scavenged equipment. Han returned the wave, laughing. From now on those two are full crewmembers.
A new sound made him look around in surprise and anger, mouthing a Corellian oath. The Millennium Falcon was lifting off. She rose on blaring thrusters, swinging out over the abyss. Han and Chewbacca watched in despair as they saw their ship whisked from under their noses despite all their efforts.
But the freighter settled gently on their side of the crevasse. They got to her just as her ramp-bay doors opened and the main ramp lowered, beneath and astern the cockpit. The main hatch rolled up, and there stood Gallandro. He welcomed them with a smile, his weapon conspicuously holstered. His fine clothing and beautiful scarf were soiled, but other than that, Han reflected, he looked none the worse for someone who had just waded through a horde of war-robots.
The gunman sketched a mocking bow. “I found myself obliged to play dead among the slain; I couldn’t get to the ship until the robots had all left, or I’d have been of more assistance. Solo, those ’droids of yours are priceless!” His smile disappeared. “And so is Xim’s treasure, eh? You’re out for high stakes for a change; my compliments.”
“You tracked me all the way from the Corporate Sector to tell me that?” Chewbacca had his bowcaster aimed at Gallandro, but Han knew that even that was no guarantee against the man’s incredible speeddraw.
The gunman made a wry twist of his mouth. “Not originally. I was rather upset about our encounter there. But I’m a man of reason; I’m prepared to put that aside in view of the amount of money involved. Bring me in for a full cut and we forget the grudge. And you get your ship back; wouldn’t that strike you as a fair arrangement?”
Han remained suspicious. “All of a sudden you’re ready to kiss and make up?”
“The treasure, Solo, the treasure. The wealth of Xim would buy affection from anyone. All other considerations are secondary; surely that’s in keeping with your own philosophy, isn’t it?”
Han was confused. Hasti, who had come up behind him, said, “Don’t trust him!”
Gallandro turned clear blue eyes on her. “Ah, the young lady! If he doesn’t accept my offer, you’ll be in a bad way as well, my dear; this vessel’s weapons are functional.” His voice went cold, the playacting evaporating. “Decide,” he ordered Han crisply.
The defenders were beginning to emerge from the barracks, having seen the bridge collapse and the ship land. In another moment, escape might be much more complicated. Han reached out and pushed down Chewbacca’s bowcaster. “Everybody onboard; we’re back in business.”
In moments they had lifted off with Han at the controls, uttering angry maledictions at the techs who had torn the starship apart in search of the log-recorder disk and reassembled her so inexpertly. “Why did J’uoch have the ship repaired, anyway?” Badure asked.
“She was either going to keep it for her own use or sell it,” explained Gallandro. “She tried to sell me a lame story about her disagreements with you people, but considering the things I’d already discovered about your movements, the truth wasn’t hard to guess.”
Han brought the ship in to hover over the camp. “What about the other miners, the ones who lived?” Hasti asked.
“They’ve got food, weapons, supplies there,” Badure said. “They can hold out until a ship shows up, or slog it over to the city.”
Han was bringing the Falcon down again on the other side of the crevasse. A gleaming metal form waited there. Chewbacca went aft to let Bollux aboard.
“Like you said,” Han found himself telling Gallandro defensively, “they’re valuable ’droids.”
“I said ‘priceless,’ ” Gallandro corrected him. “Now that we’re comrades, I’d never offend you by suggesting you’ve gone soft. May I inquire what our next move is?”
“Direct collection of intelligence data,” Han declared, lifting off again. “Interrogation of indigenous personnel for tactical information. We’re going to make a couple of locals sweat and find out what all this was about.”
The Survivors who had activated the war-robots had decided to escape together in one large hover-raft rather than spread out across the plains in a fleet. A few passes and a barrage from the Falcon’s belly turret brought them to a halt. They threw down their arms and waited.
Han prudently left Chewbacca at the ship’s controls. He and the others, weapons recharged, went to confront the Survivors. Hasti, first down the ramp, waved her gun at them, shouting, and fairly dragged one of them off the raft. Han and Badure had to pull her off the man, while Gallandro looked on in amusement and Skynx in confusion.
“It’s him, I tell you,” she yelled, straining to go after the frightened man again. “I recognize the white blaze in his hair. It’s the vault steward’s assistant.”
“Well, clubbing him silly isn’t going to help,” Han pointed out as he turned to the man. “Better spill it, or I’ll let her loose.”
The assistant licked dry lips. “I can say nothing, I swear! We are conditioned in youth not to reveal the secrets of the Survivors.”
“Old-fashioned hypno,” Han dismissed it, “nothing you can’t overcome if we scare you enough.”
Gallandro stepped forward with a wintry smile, pulling his pistol in one fluid motion, adjusting it one-handed. A low-power, high-resolution beam sizzled into the ground at the captive’s feet, blackening and curling the grass. The man paled.
Bollux had come up, his chest plastron open. “There’s a better way,” Blue Max advised. “Circumvent his conditioning, and we can find out anything we want. We can rig up a strobe and key it to the same light pattern the Survivors use.”
Gallandro was dubious. “Query, computer: can you duplicate the Survivors’ light pulses exactly?”
“Quit talking to me like I’m some kind of appliance!” snarled Max.
“Beg pardon,” said Gallandro politely. “I keep forgetting. Shall we proceed?”