Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [86]
“Artoo, don’t be foolish!” cried the protocol droid, deeply distressed. “Oh, dear, I’m afraid those circuits we couldn’t get out of you on the Pure Sabacc have disrupted your directional system! That alley won’t take you anywhere near where we last saw Captain Solo!”
Nevertheless, he toddled in pursuit of the determined astromech, well aware that on his own he did not possess the information necessary to facilitate Her Excellency’s rescue. It was his responsibility to deliver Artoo safe and sound to Captain Solo whether Artoo cooperated or not.
And to his great surprise, the next corner they rounded showed them Solo, the tall Ho’Din, and the Drovian troops, just pelting across a plank bridge while a much larger force of Gopso’o fired at them futilely from the other side of an alleyway choked with slobbering, aggressive orange and yellow fungi, like a knee-deep river of mucus between the confining alley walls.
Unfortunately, Artoo had led them out of the maze several meters too far up the alley, so that the Gopso’o, the molds, and the width of the canal lay between the two droids and the fleeing Drovians. Amid a welter of blaster fire Threepio called out, “Captain Solo! Captain Solo!” but such were the vocal volume modulations necessary for a protocol droid, his words did not carry over the razor-wire shriek of the blasters. Even as Threepio was trying to ascertain how to get through the Gopso’o and the molds—which though they could not digest the two droids they would certainly gum up their means of locomotion—Solo, who was in the rear, made it across the plank bridge and turned the cutting ray of his blaster on the jerry-built catwalk, exploding it in a dazzle of flame and dropping it into the canal.
Solo, the Ho’Din, and the Drovians disappeared at a run down the narrow street beyond.
What ensued reminded Threepio of nothing so much as an obstacle course of the sort invented by military computers to test the reflexes of humans and droids—such droids as were specially fitted for military usage, he reflected bitterly. Artoo, who seemed to know where he was going or to think he did, led the way around corners, across tiny squares where recent shell holes from grenades or cannister shot were rapidly filling with muddy rainwater, down narrow walkways above canals oozing with purulent, creeping life. And everywhere there was shooting, small bands of topknotted or nontopknotted natives of Nim Drovis firing at one another from doorways and balconies, groups of them looting burning stores and houses with the oily smoke thick in the air. Bodies lay in the street, soaked with rain and half-covered, some of them, with slowly feeding molds. In places the narrow streets were so torn up by blaster shot and grenades that the underlying dirt, soaked with the pouring gray rain, made an impassable soup of muck. In others, barricades had been erected of furniture, broken paving stones, and timbers, sometimes occupied by combatants of one side or the other locked in deadly blaster duels, sometimes festooned only with the dead.
“We have to find Captain Solo,” nattered Threepio, catching his balance on the wall of a narrow through-passage where the flooded goo came up to his precisely articulated knees. “He will be here in search of Her Excellency, of course. The Council must know by this time that something has befallen her. Even without free communication, he’ll be searching the sector.”
Artoo, brown as if painted with a slurry of mud, tweeted in response.
“The docking bays!” cried Threepio. “Artoo! You’re a genius! Of course that’s where they’ll be going!”
They reached the docking bays only moments after the advancing Gopso’o closed in around the spaceport facilities. Blaster fire splattered hot and vicious among the wide, sheltered permacrete