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C-3PO canted his head. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“Yeah, and throw in some sound effects while you’re at it,” Han added.

It took C-3PO a moment to realize that Han was joking. “Sound effects, indeed,” he muttered. “Why doesn’t someone just paint a target on my recharge coupling.”

Han hurried him to a public address comlink mounted on the interior bulkhead. “Say something!”

Placing his vocabulator close to the mike grate, C-3PO began to speak. “Bruk tukken Vong pratte, al’tanna brenzlit tchurokk …”

Almost instantly, the war cries ceased.

“That’s the idea!” Han encouraged. “Keep talking!”

The droid carried on for another minute, finishing with the phrase: “Al’tanna Shimrra knotte Yun’o!”—Long life to Shimrra, beloved of the gods!

“They’re withdrawing!” the soldier closest to the blast shield reported.

Han clapped C-3PO hard on the back, then wrung his hand in pain. “Good going, Goldenrod! You did it!”

C-3PO straightened. “I do have my moments.”

“Of course you do. Now let’s get out of here!”

They waited to make certain that the warriors were gone, then one by one they squeezed through the hole in the blast shield and took the corridor Threepio had wanted everyone to take to begin with. Not one hundred meters along, however, they ran smack into an enemy hunting party. But this time C-3PO was prepared. Adjusting the audio output modifier, he began to speak, completing just two sentences before a storm of thud bugs whirled through the corridor, prompting Han, Leia, and the rest to hit the deck.

“What’d you say to them?” Han asked, up on one knee, with his blaster raised.

C-3PO thought for a moment. “Oh, my. I may have mixed up my words.” He looked down at Han. “I think I insulted them!” “Well, that’s just great.”

“Really, Threepio,” Leia said. “Now you’ve made them angry.”

Everyone raced back to the intersection, but with a dead end in one direction and Yuuzhan Vong in the other, there was no safe turn.

They had to make a stand.

The band of warriors C-3PO had insulted surged down the corridor. Forty strong, they outnumbered the defenders better than two to one. Fusillades of blasterfire improved the odds somewhat, but also depleted many of the weapons. Exhilarated by the sight of empty blasters being hurled aside, the warriors ordered their amphistaffs to curl about their forearms, and began to strut forward, determined to go hand to hand with their quarries. Several of them had their sights set on Leia, who was parrying the last of the thud bugs with nimble twists of her lightsaber.

Han broke for her side, shooting from the hip to drop two of Leia’s would-be contenders. Two others were quick to fill the gap. One lost his head to Leia’s blade. The other flew straight at Han, driving him clear across the corridor and hard into the exterior bulkhead. Dodging hammer blows, Han slid down the wall and squirmed between the warrior’s legs, hoping to be able to choke him from behind. But the warrior spun while Han was struggling to stand, vising his huge hands around Han’s neck in an asth-korr throat hold and whirling him back against the bulkhead.

Han saw stars; then darkness made a narrow tunnel of his vision. He was gasping for breath when the warrior’s head suddenly exploded. The hands on Han’s throat loosened, and the body crumpled to the deck, taking Han with it. Certain that Leia had saved him, he tried to crawl out from under the Yuuzhan Vong, but the corpse wouldn’t budge. His outstretched right hand seized on a small object and he held it up to his eyes. As long as a human finger, and somewhat thicker, it was an older-generation rocket dart, with its obviously defective explosive tip still attached.

Han wriggled free of the fallen warrior in time to see four more Yuuzhan Vong felled from behind by blaster bolts and rocket darts. The fatal volley was coming from halfway down the corridor, where half a dozen soldiers were crouched, kneeling, and prone on the deck.

They wore pinch-cheeked helmets that were as domed as an R2 unit, bisected by horizontal viewplate strips and surmounted by flaglike targeting