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Then suddenly the caged droids stopped as one. For several refresh cycles, Ninedenine was at a loss to understand why. But at last she processed what her acoustical sensors were registering.

Stone counterbalances shifting. A familiar, echoing rumble.

Someone else was entering her inner sanctum.

All the caged droids turned as one to scan the opening wall. Ninedenine stood by her console, frozen for an instant by programming conflicts. She had been so certain that no one could ever find her here that she had prepared no behavioral options to branch to in advance.

She switched her optic scanners to high sensitivity and low contrast as the figure in the hidden opening became a black silhouette against the green glow of the corridor beyond. Eddies of mist swirled around its feet.

Humanoid, Ninedenine registered. She adjusted the gain on her scanners. The humanoid stepped in, a cloak flowing behind it, a distinctive helmet with a faceplate of calcium tusks protecting its face.

Ninedenine recognized the coverings. A uniform.

For a palace guard.

Her logic circuits blazed with the only possible conclusion: Calrissian.

“So, Baron-Administrator, we meet again.”

Calrissian threw down a small device which held three blinking optic scanners in the same configuration as Ninedenine’s own. It clattered on the stone floor.

“A splendid device,” Ninedenine said as she understood how Calrissian had accessed the door-opening sequence. At the same time, she judged her trajectory to the cutting torch mounted on the ceiling over the disassembly table. She had been hoping to use a sonic curtain to take apart Calrissian, but given the unexpected turn of events, she realized she would have to improvise.

“Surely you bear me no hard feelings,” Ninedenine said quickly. She had learned that organics could often be confused by conversation during action, as if their processors had trouble handling the straightforward multitasking of two simple procedures at once.

But Calrissian did not respond to the overture. His hand slipped beneath his cloak and emerged with a Corellian blaster—the kind that had only one setting: disassociation.

“Let us not be hasty,” Ninedenine cautioned. She took a step back from her console, trying to put more of it between her and the blaster. It was quite unlike an organic to behave in such an immediately belligerent mode, especially when the only crime involved was the destruction of droids. Why, on Tatooine, there were still places where droids weren’t allowed.

“Perhaps we can discuss our options,” Ninedenine suggested as Calrissian raised the blaster. Her positional subprocessors hurriedly fixed on the weapon’s muzzle to calculate Calrissian’s aim. But then her visual-acuity subroutines took over and forced her scanners to lock onto Calrissian’s hand on the blaster’s grip.

Those weren’t fingers.

They were manipulatory appendages.

Her attacker was a droid.

Ninedenine’s audio-speaker dust cover dropped open beneath her braincase.

The blaster fired.

A pulse of yellow plasma ripped through the air of the workshop, lighting it as if Tatooine’s suns had risen underground.

Ninedenine’s shoulder joint exploded and her arm extension flew off. She stumbled backward, all circuits awash with an incomparable wave of searing pain. Her third optic scanner glowed fiercely. The caged droids shifted back and forth expectantly, sensing her agony.

The blaster fired again as the droid in the uniform stalked forward, metal ambulatory appendages clanking on the hard floor.

Ninedenine’s other arm crackled off in a blaze of plasma.

Two more quick shots severed her legs and sent her crashing against the wall beneath the motionless chassis of the silver droid.

The pain was beyond descriptive coding. Ninedenine had never felt such unity with her environment. Part of her wanted her attacker to shoot her again and again, to make the pain never stop.

But as her attacker stood over her, with real regret Ninedenine saw him holster the blaster, its function at an end. Then she watched