Star Wars_ Luke Skywalker and the Shadows of Mindor - Matthew Woodring Stover [91]
R2 continued to watch with detached interest as Han Solo shouted “Chewie!” and threw himself against the mass of Melters, whose response was several bursts of that same energy that almost instantly dropped Han Solo twitching on the ground beside his copilot. However, the collapse of Han Solo apparently triggered a similar human emotional response from Princess Leia, who shouted to Han and leapt toward the Melters—and in the .384 second she was actually in the air, R2 called up an array of highly specialized subprocessors that had been originally installed as a customized aftermarket modification by the Royal Engineers of Naboo and later extensively refitted and programmed with a very specific set of behaviors by a particularly gifted tinkerer, who’d had, in his day, a justified reputation as the finest self-taught improvisational engineer the galaxy had ever produced: Anakin Skywalker.
Turbojacks deployed powerfully from the bottoms of R2’s locomotors, kicking him through the air directly into the mass of Melters. His antitamper field sizzled to life with an unusually loud discharge crackle; based on the extraordinary drain on his internal power supply, R2 was able to calculate that the antitamper field was currently operating at triple strength, which was actually beyond its theoretical limit, owing to potentially lethal effects. R2 also noted that when a nearby Melter reached for him with a stone pseudo-arm, the touch of his triple-strength antitamper field instantly liquefied the electrocrystalline structure of the Melter’s stone body … as well as those of the four Melters nearest to it.
With a fierce Thooperoo HEEE!, which was his closest approximation of a Wookiee war whoop, R2-D2 waded into the Melters, sparking them to slag on every side. As long as he had a single remaining erg in his energy supply, he would allow no harm to come to Princess Leia.
He did, however, note one particular flaw in this determination, which was that his level of energy output had already outstripped the self-regeneration capacity of his energy supply, and so that single remaining erg situation was, as C-3PO might say, no mere metaphor. And the walls and floor just kept on humping into lumps that would become new Melters.
For a brief flicker of a millisecond, R2-D2 experienced a power spike in a tiny audio loop in one specific memory core: he heard C-3PO’s voice exclaim We’re doomed.
CHAPTER 14
NICK TROTTED ALONG THE CURVING CAVERNWAY AFTER Luke, his breath going short. How was it that every time he met a Jedi, the guy turned out to be some kind of nikkle nut? Skywalker had gone from brown dwarf to nova just like flipping a switch. Now Nick could barely keep up with him. “Take it easy, huh? Unless you want me to just, y’know, wait for you here. Which would be fine. Between you and me, I could use a nap.”
“No time.” Skywalker kept going. “You said Blackhole needs somebody who can use the Force. My twin sister’s just as strong as I am—but she doesn’t have my training. Once he gets his paws on her …”
Now he did stop, and turned back to Nick, and the bleak fury in his eyes brought a sudden twist of fear to Nick’s gut. “I won’t let that happen,” Luke said grimly. “That’s all. I won’t. No matter what I have to do.”
“Uh—”
But Luke had already turned and was jogging away.
“Shee, kid. Two minutes ago, things were going pretty good and I could barely get you to talk. Now everything’s going wrong, and you’re making the jump to lightspeed without bothering to board