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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