Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [239]
So was someone else. Across the battlefield a ring of war-robots was closing in on the converted freighter, preparing to demolish her, their arms raised and weapon apertures open. Others were shoving the wreckage of Gallandro’s scoutship toward the brink of the crevasse.
Another machine, far smaller than they, blocked the way to the Millennium Falcon, seeming fragile and vulnerable. Bollux’s chest plastron was open, and Blue Max’s photoreceptor gazed forth. From his vocoder tumbled the signals learned from tapes shown him by Skynx, amplified by the gear Bollux had cannibalized from the podium.
The advance stopped; the war-robots waited in confusion, unable to resolve the conflicting orders. The Corps Commander appeared, the death’s-head insignia of Xim gleaming on his breastplate. He loomed over Bollux. “Stand aside; everything here is to be destroyed.”
“Not this vessel,” Max told him in the command signalry. “This one is to be spared.”
The towering robot studied the two-in-one machines. “Those were not our orders.”
Max’s voice, directed through the podium’s scavenged horn, was high. “Orders may be amended!”
The thick arm came up, and Bollux prepared for the end of his long existence. But instead a metal finger indicated the Falcon, and the command came: “Spare that vessel.”
With signals of acknowledgment, the other war-robots moved on. The Corps Commander still regarded the labor ’droid and the computer module. “I am still not sure about you two, machines. What are you?”
“Talking doorstops, if you listen to our captain’s opinion,” offered Blue Max.
The Corps Commander stood stock-still in surprise. “Humor? Was that not humor? What have machines become? What kind of automata are you?”
“We are your steel-brothers,” Bollux put in. The Corps Commander made no further comment, but continued on his way.
The waves of robots had thwarted Han’s effort to reach his ship. One, stepping over the ruins of a crew-served gun and its slain crew, advanced toward the pilot. Han was looking elsewhere, helping Hasti fire blaster and disruptor shots at a machine approaching from the opposite direction. Han’s shot scored the cranial turret; Hasti’s, less practiced, sent its torso and limbs in a wild scatter. Badure was firing at still another, a long-barreled power pistol in each hand.
Chewbacca stepped into the path of the oncoming robot and triggered his bowcaster. Its staves straightened, and the explosive quarrel detonated against the robot’s chest armor, holing it but not stopping it. The Wookiee held his ground, jacking the foregrip of his bowcaster and firing twice more, this time hitting the robot’s head and midsection. The machine came on relentlessly. Its weapons-hands were raised, but their power had been drained in battle. Chewbacca backed a step and came up against Han, who was still firing the other way.
Then the robot toppled forward. Chewbacca, standing in its very shadow, would have leaped clear but realized that Han was unaware of his imminent danger. The Wookiee shoved the pilot aside with a sweep of his hairy arm but failed himself to avoid the tottering automaton. It struck him and pinned his right arm and leg to the ground. Skynx raced to him and began pulling ineffectually at the Wookiee.
Another robot chose that moment to step over the one Han and Hasti had just downed. Since Hasti’s disruptor was drained, Han moved forward, then realized that his blaster’s cautionary pulser was tingling his palm in silent warning that his weapon, too, was spent.
He whirled and called to his sidekick, then saw the Wookiee wriggling to extricate himself from under the fallen robot. Chewbacca paused long enough to loft his bowcaster into the air one-handed.
Han caught it, pivoted, dropped to one knee, and