• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Master Solo will probably remove my legs and make me recompile and alphabetize all the fragmented files in the Imperial Information Center!”

In the dim underworld Jacen pointed to a noisy machine in front of them as the cluttered street widened. “Look,” he said. “Droid.”

The children ran, waving their hands and hoping to get the droid’s attention. But they stopped as the machine continued along a polished path worn through the debris.

The droid was vastly older than the maintenance model up at the turbolift. It had bulkier joints, squarish limbs; large bolts held the pieces together. The antique repair droid was little more than a mobile cart of tools with a torso, arms, and an angled hexagonal head. One of its optical sensors had fallen off. Thick cables ran down its spine and along its neck, corroded and caked with dust and dirt. Moss had begun to grow on its sides. It moved with a stuttering motion as if desperately in need of lubricant.

Along the street a line of corroded poles stood a meter taller than the twins. Atop each pole rested an old glowcrystal, engraved with magnifying facets, but each crystal was a dead translucent gray, shedding no light into the dim streets. Some poles had come loose from their ground-level moorings and tilted sideways.

The repair droid worked its way to the end of the street, stopped at an appropriate position, and ratcheted its torso high on accordion joints so its arms could reach the darkened glowcrystal. The droid removed the burned-out crystal, cradling it carefully in segmented pincers. After placing it in the back of the cart, the repair droid removed another thick glowcrystal from an open bin. Following complex programming, the droid positioned the replacement crystal on top of the pole and activated it.

The new glowcrystal remained as dead and lightless as the first, but the repair droid didn’t seem to notice. It moved to the next pole, repeating the process.

Jacen stood in front of the droid, addressing it in his best Daddy voice. “We’re lost,” he said.

Jaina came up beside him. “Please help us find our home.”

The repair droid ratcheted up as if in alarm, then lowered itself down to study the children with its single optical sensor. “Lost?” it said in a clanking voice.

“Home,” Jaina insisted.

“Not in my programming,” the droid said. “Not my main task.” It ratcheted up again and moved to a third malfunctioning glowcrystal pole. “Not in my programming.”

Jaina and Jacen began to cry. But upon hearing each other, rather than reinforcing their tears, the twins stopped. “Be brave,” Jaina said.

“Brave,” Jacen agreed.

The two exhausted twins sat down on a time-smoothed chunk of duracrete in the middle of the open street. They watched the repair droid continue removing dead glowcrystals from poles and replacing them with equally useless lights.

The droid moved all the way to the end of the street, unsuccessful in getting any of the streetlights to work again. Then, picking up speed, it whirred down the worn path it had traveled for a hundred years, back to where it had started.

The droid stopped in front of the first dead glowcrystal pole all over again, ratcheted itself up, and replaced the lightless crystal it had changed only a short while earlier with another one.…

22

Still reeling from the destruction of the Manticore, Admiral Daala slumped against the bridge rail. She found herself at a loss for words as the battle on Calamari continued.

“Wipe them out,” she said. “Open fire with all turbolaser batteries from orbit. Target every floating city.” She stared with glassy eyes out the Gorgon’s wide viewport. “Destroy them all.”

She couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. She had followed Grand Moff Tarkin’s tactics exactly. He had trained her carefully, giving her all the information she should have needed. But since Daala had emerged from Maw Installation, she had met with one disaster after another. The Sun Crusher fallen into Rebel hands, the Hydra destroyed, and