Fate of the Jedi: Backlash (21 page)

“The problem with little girls,” he told her, “is that, unlike droids, they can’t be memory-wiped and reprogrammed. Meaning that if I let you go, no matter what you promise now, someday you’ll tell on me.”

She glared at him, wishing that she could make one of her own eyes scary. “I’m not going to promise you anything. I
will
tell on you. You stole Artoo.”

“Yes … I think you need to see the inside of a trash compactor.”

Allana heard feet shuffling toward her out of the hangar’s dark corners. Monarg must have heard them too, because his prosthetic eye began swinging back and forth, peering into shadows.

Allana struggled, swatting ineffectually at the arm by which he held her. She opened her mouth to tell Monarg that he was in a lot of trouble, but it was not her voice she heard next.

“I say, I think you should unhand the little girl. If you do not, I will be forced to thrash you.”

M
ONARG’S EXPRESSION CHANGED TO INCREDULITY
. H
E SWUNG AROUND
toward the doors and the source of the new voice.

C-3PO stood there, the doors open behind him, his posture as awkward and unthreatening as always. But his voice was stern as he addressed Monarg. “I assure you I am not jesting, sir. It is time for you to release the girl. If you wish to avoid unpleasantness.”

“I thrive on unpleasantness.” With his free hand, Monarg rubbed his caf-abused eye and opened it wider. The skin surrounding it was red and it could not open fully, but it was clear to Allana that he could see again.

Monarg cleared his throat. “Seal up shop.”

The doors swung closed behind C-3PO, trapping him inside the dome, and Allana heard the sound of automatic bolts engaging.

Undeterred, C-3PO took a few steps toward Monarg. “I am now in the process of loading a comprehensive package of unlimited-class total-combat maneuvers, the use of many of which constitutes a felony on most civilized worlds.”

“Protocol droids don’t fight.” Monarg dropped Allana. She landed on her feet, rubbed her arm where his grip had pained her, and then scampered to one side, into the shadow thrown by the SoroSuub yacht.

Anji was still in the middle of the hangar floor, whimpering. Every time she tried to get up, she could only stagger a few steps before she seemed to get dizzy and fell down again. Allana didn’t know how she was going to get her friend out of the hangar. The nexu was still just a cub, but she was already too big for Allana to carry.

Monarg advanced on the droid, his movements graceful and decisive. Allana winced. C-3PO was clearly in for a horrible beating, and she had no idea what he’d been thinking when he challenged Monarg.

The mechanic droids had slowed to a halt when Monarg had called for the shop to seal up. Now they constituted a silent audience, their head sensors slowly swiveling to track their master as he approached C-3PO.

Monarg stood before the golden droid, towering over him, and glowered down at him. “Have you finished loading your fighting program?”

“Well, frankly, no. It’s a large package, and I’m having to debug and compile certain portions of it on the fly.”

“Unfortunate for you.” Monarg put one hand on C-3PO’s chest and shoved.

The golden droid staggered backward, slammed into the sealed doors, and slid to a sitting position on the floor. “You are no gentleman, sir.”

“I’m aware of that. It doesn’t cost me any sleep.” Monarg advanced and kicked, a powerful blow that connected with the side of C-3PO’s head.

His head rocked and the glowing lights of his eyes dimmed for a moment. “Oh, dear.”

Allana had to stop this, now. C-3PO couldn’t endure much of this sort of pounding. He’d be in pieces in moments. Monarg kicked at C-3PO again, this time so hard that he spun himself around in a complete circle and fell on the floor. He screamed in surprise and rolled to his knees, then whirled around to glare at Allana.

“Did you do that?” he demanded.

“Do
what
?” Allana replied.

Monarg only shook his head and stood up, turning back to C-3PO. Allana dug out her comlink and switched it over to the emergency services channel. But no one responded to the words she whispered into it—there was only a hiss.

She glared at Monarg. He thought of
everything
.

Well, not everything. The mechanic droid nearest her had a tray full of tools, and one of them was an extra-long, extra-heavy hydrospanner. Perhaps if she had that, and sneaked up behind him … Surreptitiously, she began moving toward that droid.

A few meters behind her, lights came on all across R2-D2’s torso and dome-like head. They did not indicate actual consciousness, not at first. The sequence in which they flashed was like a language to astromech engineers, who could talk at length about what power-up and self-test each sequence indicated.

But as R2-D2’s start-up sequence activated his memory and reasoning centers, he began assembling data very fast—far faster than a waking human could.

Across the dome C-3PO had brazenly entered in his search for answers, the man who had attacked him was now in the process of swinging him around by his legs and slamming the golden droid into walls and permacrete flooring.

The restraining bolt Monarg had plugged into R2-D2 was now on the floor a few meters away, discarded. That was good. Anji was in the middle of the hangar floor, staggering around in circles. That was bad.

Allana was creeping up toward the man, a large tool in her hand, going from table to table and making use of them as available cover. R2-D2’s threat analysis matrix marked it as a virtual certainty that she was going to attack the man. It was nearly as certain that the attack would fail.

Comm frequencies were being jammed. R2-D2 had several messages waiting, all from C-3PO and Allana. One from C-3PO was most recent, and was marked
HIGHEST PRIORITY
. He reviewed it in the milliseconds he waited for his motivators to come online completely.

“I say, Artoo, I’ve sent you a wake-up command. With the luck
I usually experience, it has probably had no effect, but if it has penetrated, please be aware that I am probably now in the process of being destroyed. This is chiefly a delaying tactic on my part, in the hope that you can awaken in time to rescue me, or, more importantly, Miss Amelia. I’ve attached the psychological profile of my assailant, as stored by the computer system of local law enforcement authorities …”

R2-D2’s motivators came fully online. He immediately sent an emergency situation report to Zekk and Taryn Zel, then settled himself into wheeled tripod configuration and rolled forward almost silently.

Monarg was now folding C-3PO backward, exerting more and more pressure, threatening to snap the droid in half at the spine. The smile on Monarg’s face was curiously friendly. Clearly, he was enjoying himself.

R2-D2 had traveled no more than five meters when he received a response indicating that Zekk and Taryn were aware of the situation and monitoring it from inside the hangar. He found this perplexing, since they had not yet made their presence known to Monarg. The solution to this puzzle came to R2-D2 a millisecond later, when he recalled the order
he
had been given not to reveal their presence to Allana—or even C-3PO. Obviously, they were operating deep undercover and needed to remain in hiding as they rendered assistance.

R2-D2 vectored to the right to stay as much behind Monarg as possible during his approach. He rolled past Anji, then Allana, who gave a little gasp of surprise as he shot by.

The astromech opened an external access plate and extended one of his many tools, an arc welder. He adjusted its electrical output to voltage and amperage that were less efficient in metal welding and more effective against living tissue. As he rolled up behind Monarg, he chose a target area—left buttock, a large and, for the moment, comparatively stationary region—and touched his welder to it, discharging current into it.

The results were … gratifying. Monarg seemed to leap straight up into the air, and the volume of his screech made him sound like the opening tones of a planetary alert siren. C-3PO crashed to the floor, straightening into something like his normal configuration. Monarg
landed beyond him, clamping his hands over his buttocks, and spun to look at his new attacker.

R2-D2 extended his welder in what he thought might look like a menacing pose and rolled past C-3PO toward the human.

Monarg ran, limping, along the curve of the wall, away from the droids. The astromech ignored him and rolled up to the doors. He extruded his datajack and inserted it into the wall plug beside the doors.

Normally, it would take several minutes to crack the security on this dome. It had taken that long when R2-D2 had entered for the first time. But Monarg, knowing that the astromech was helpless, had not bothered to change his codes. The doors unbolted and swung open. R2-D2 swiveled his head to look at his companions and tweetled at them.

C-3PO, struggling to his feet with a great whining of his servos, nodded. “I agree. Miss Amelia, Artoo suggests that we leave now. At a running pace.”

Allana raced over to Anji and buried a hand in her fur, then led the cub toward R2-D2 and C-3PO. A mechanic droid reached for her stolen hydrospanner as she passed. Barely looking at the droid, she swung the tool at it without even thinking, just reacting to the sense of danger. The blow was as effective as Monarg’s kick to C-3PO had been: the droid’s head rocked, and the droid fell over.

She reached the doors. “I was right.” Then she and Anji were through, into the darkness beyond.

“Yes, you were right.” C-3PO waddled after her.

“You were wrong.”

“If I had teeth, I would be gritting them at this moment. Yes, I was wrong.”

R2-D2 issued a final command to the dome, then rolled in the wake of his friends. The doors closed behind him; as they locked, R2-D2 heard the distinctive sound of a blaster pistol being discharged, its bolt hammering into the thick durasteel of the shut door.

The astromech knew that the lockup command he had issued would not delay Monarg for long, but any delay would help—especially the way Anji was staggering about. In addition, the comm center commands he’d issued would keep the man from calling for support for some time, and that could be even more important.

“Do you really have an ultimate fighter program?”

“Oh, no, miss. I’m certain that a child of four could outwrestle me on my best day.”

“Then we’d better hurry up and get Anji aboard the
Falcon,”
Allana said. “She doesn’t look very good, and I don’t think Monarg would be very nice to her if he caught us again.”

“I should think not,” C-3PO agreed. “While pursuing you, I did access local files on our friend Monarg and his arrest record. He has a habit of becoming inebriated and engaging in unscheduled combat events involving his neighbors. I ran his behavior against a psychological analysis and prediction package, and came up with a profile of, as they say, “buttons to push” in a variety of situations. When I entered the dome and saw that Artoo was inert but freed of his restraining bolt, I took steps to awaken him and then keep our host’s attention on myself while Artoo awoke.”

“That was a good plan.”

“Thank you, miss.”

“I wish all your plans were that good.”

C-3PO merely sighed.

As they ran, waddled, and staggered up the
Millennium Falcon
’s boarding ramp, they heard the doors of Monarg’s dome slam open.

Allana looked, anxious, at R2-D2. “Can we keep him out?”

At the top of the ramp, the astromech waited until Anji had stumbled past, then sent a localized comm signal to the
Falcon
’s computers. The ramp rose into place and locked. He tweetled at C-3PO.

“Artoo says, um, no. Or, rather, only for a few minutes. We face an angry, determined mechanic with a shop full of tools. In addition, his is the most successful local mechanic’s shop, and his arrest record, which reveals that he is never more than locked up overnight for his drunken rampages, suggests that he is in very good favor with the local authorities.”

“So what do we do?”

“We get on the comm and threaten him with legal action if he continues his aggressive behavior, of course.”

Allana glared at C-3PO, then ran up to the
Falcon
’s cockpit.
“Grandpa and Grandma will know what to do.” She jumped up into the pilot’s seat and looked over the alarmingly complex comm board. Since Han and Leia had adopted her two years ago, Han had, with the mixed pride of an owner and a grandfather, shown Allana every detail of the ship’s controls. He had done so again and again, had even let her take the yoke for brief periods of time and complete simple flying tasks.

Now she knew what to do. She activated the comm board, waited for a confirmation that it was live and receiving all local and satellite broadcasts normally. She switched the board to the preset for her grandparents’ normal frequency and activated the mike. “Hello? Uh, this is
Millennium Falcon
. We need to talk to Han and Leia right away.”

There was no answer.

“Please? Anji’s hurt.”