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With a strange sincerity, the ’droid refused. “Thank you for your concern, sir; Max and I are flattered. But we have no intention of being destroyed, I assure you.”

Han felt ridiculous for arguing with a ’droid, but insisted, “This is not the place to get noble, old-timer.”

Seeing the war-robots converging on them, Bollux persevered. “I really must insist that you go, sir; our basic programming won’t permit Max and me to see you come to harm here.”

They departed unwillingly. Hasti walked with the tired Skynx beside her. Badure patted the ’droid’s hard shoulder and trudged off, and Chewbacca waved a paw. “Look after Max,” Han said, “and don’t get yourself junked, old fellow.”

Bollux watched them go, then searched among the rocks and boulders for a place of concealment at that end of the bridge.

Han and his companions slogged wearily across the bridge among others who had survived the robots’ onslaught and were now falling back for a final stand. At the halfway point they came upon the body of a fallen mining tech who had died before she could complete the crossing, a T’rinn whose bright plumage was now charred and burned from combat. Han gently took a shoulder-fired rocket launcher from her lifeless claws, the weapon still containing a half-magazine of rockets. He was just standing up when a figure broke from the stream of retreating miners and attacked him, swinging an empty needlebeamer.

“Murderer!” J’uoch shrieked, her first blow grazing the pilot over the ear before he was aware of her onset. “You killed my brother! I’ll kill you, you filthy animal!” Dazed, he pushed himself backward to avoid the blows she was raining on him, forearm up to protect himself.

Chewbacca would have torn the hysterical woman from his friend, but at the same moment he was struck from behind, a heavy blow from a thick forearm. The Wookiee fell to his knees, losing his bowcaster, as a huge weight fell upon him: Egome Fass, the enforcer. The two huge creatures rolled over and over, wrestling, tearing at one another. Retreating miners skirted the struggles, concerned only with staying alive.

Badure, weakened by the ordeal, waved an unsteady power pistol at J’uoch. But before he could fire, Hasti had thrown herself at the woman who had killed her sister Lanni. They whirled and fought, hacking and kicking at each other, finding reserves of strength in their mutual hatred.

Badure pulled Han up just as J’uoch got her forearm around Hasti’s throat. But Hasti writhed free of the hold, dropped and turned, put her head and shoulder against the other’s midsection and drove her back with feet churning and driving. J’uoch was shoved backward against the bridge’s waist-high railing and toppled over it. She fell screaming, in a flurry of coveralls, reaching and thrashing. Hasti’s momentum had carried her halfway over the rail, too.

Badure was there in time to pull her back from the rail, grabbing the material of her clothes. She sobbed for breath, her pulse pounding. Then it came to her that the roaring she heard wasn’t in her ears, Chewbacca and Egome Fass had gone to war.

It had been the second time J’uoch’s enforcer had struck the Wookiee from behind. What the Falcon’s first mate felt now could only pallidly be described as outrage. Han waved Badure off when the old man would have shot Egome Fass.

The two punched and grasped at one another while Han leaned against the rail to watch the honor match. “Aren’t you going to help him?” Hasti puffed, her face showing the scratches and abrasions of her own match.

“Chewie wouldn’t appreciate that,” Han told her, keeping one eye on the rallying of robots at the end of the bridge. But he eased a pistol from Badure’s belt in case the match didn’t go as it should.

Egome Fass had gotten a choke-hold on Chewbacca. Rather than squirm out of it or apply an in-fighting trick, the Wookiee chose to lock both hands on his opponent’s arm and turn it into a contest of pure strength. Egome Fass