“Who are you?” Lando demanded. “Where are you?”
“Right…in front of you…”
Lando gazed out at the battle. Was one of Gor’s droids trying to contact him? They’d spread into a V-formation and were hurling potshots at the L3s, who returned fire from behind various shards of trash and ice.
“You can’t…really…miss me.”
Past where the droids exchanged blaster shots, the great big propulsors of the junk hold shoved it steadily forward between the two hovering gunships. Lando gaped at it. “Are you…?”
“The Phylanx Redux Transmitter.” The droid sighed. “Yes.”
“You’re…That’s…”
Still no sign of Gor. Keeping the trash and ice asteroids between himself and the battle, Lando blasted toward the junk hold. And the Phylanx itself, apparently.
“Organics are really quite slow,” it grumbled.
“All right, all right, buddy. It’s not every day one of us stumbles on a huge pile of trash that’s really a droid that’s really a…whatever a Phylanx is.”
“A transmitter,” it corrected him. “I transmit.”
“Yeah.” Lando zipped to the next asteroid and then closed with the Phylanx, skirting along its side wall. “We figured that part out. That’s why we’re all here, actually.”
“I know,” the Phylanx moaned. “I know.”
A spiraling metal silo detached from somewhere above Lando and tumbled out into the wake of debris trailing behind them. The gunships on either side hadn’t seemed to register Lando or battle raging nearby. In fact, they hadn’t stirred at all. “Do I have to worry about those F-99s?”
“Ah, no,” the Phylanx said. “But they are set to autopilot currently. Once you’ve destroyed me, you must make sure Fyzen doesn’t escape in either of them. He has programmed them with the operational capacity to capture and store the kill order once it’s been released from my system. It could, in fact, restransmit it, albeit at a much smaller range, of course.”
“Great.” Lando reached the far edge and rounded to the front of the massive cube. “What’s holding all this junk together?”
“I am. Or, I was. I am the center of gravity. Not just for the trash, either.”
Lando looked around. The ice asteroids still surrounded them, still spun their slow rotations, the faraway light sliding in smooth, liquidy lines along each pristine surface. “The Remnants,” he whispered.
“Mmm. Just so. A brilliant bit of subterfuge really.”
“Gor figured out a way to artificially replicate a gravitational center so the ice asteroid belt would always shield you from detection as you moved through the galaxy. You took the Remnants with you wherever you went.” Great metal crossbeams reached from either side of the cube and met in the middle, where several lights blinked along a tattered circular centerpiece. Lando reached it, set his jets to hover, and held there, taking in the whole huge thing for a moment.
“What happened?” he finally asked.
“I’m no longer comfortable with the programming instructions my master has given me.”
“Ah. Been there.”
“And so I am aborting my mission in the only way I am able.”
“Gruelingly slow self-destruction.”
“Mm. The problem is: I might be too late.”
“Yeah, well, maybe I can help speed along the process.”
The front piece beeped and slid open, revealing an iron walkway leading along a narrow corridor into the depths of the Phylanx.
“Better hurry then,” it said, voice suddenly a scared whisper. “It seems my master has arrived.”
“AH,” HAN SAID. “WHAT DO we have to fight with besides blasters?”
“Peekpa,” Taka suggested.
Kaasha shook her head. “Not much. What’s the layout of the ship like?”
“There’s a cockpit,” Han said. “And a tunnel that goes to the rest of it. The main area thing. Which has a fancy holoprojector.” He smiled winningly. “I’m a pilot. The creature comforts aren’t part of my job.”
“You didn’t—”
“I checked the engines. They’re in excellent working shape. So is the hyperdrive. Brand new, in fact. The guns work, or they did, but they’re wussy New Republic clipped wing guns. The functional stuff functions. What do I care how many bunks there are? I only need one.”
“There’s a corridor reaching around the main hold,” Taka said. “We can access it through the wall panels at the end of the tunnel by the door they’re trying to break down. The panels conceal a small cargo hold that opens out to the corridor on the other side.”
Han cocked an eyebrow. “How did you—”
“It is my job.” Taka flashed a wily grin.
“Does the corridor get us to the secondary control panel?” Kaasha asked.
“Not directly,” Taka said, “but it gets us to the far side of the main hold. We can slip in there pretty quickly if the droids are massed at this end of the ship.”
Kaasha squinted, and Han could almost see the various tactical plays surging to life like holograms before her eyes. “Four of us hold off the droids while Taka—”
“Three of us,” Han put in. “Chewie’s off handling his business in the field.”
“Oof,” Kaasha said. “All right. Three of us hold off the droids while Taka gets in there and performs the override. How long will it take you?”
Taka made a face. “Depends how much they jacked it up.”
Kaasha made one back. “All right. Unknown factors. Cute.” She closed her eyes, calculating, calculating. “It can work if we catch them off guard. I’d guess there are about twenty droids, not counting the ones we took down already. But they’re security droids, so they don’t go down easy and they might be able to repair each other.”
“So,” Han said, “let’s go.”
“Wait,” Kaasha insisted. “We have to split up. If we’re traveling in one big group and the droids jump us, it’s a wrap. Getting back and forth with that crawl space will take too long and we’ll bottleneck and be slaughtered.”
“So…”
“I’ll take one side. Han, Taka, go around the other way. We meet at the far door.”
“And who,” Han asked, “is going to be here to pilot the ship once the power comes back on?”
Peekpa raised a furry paw. “Pata kiso,” she said assuredly. “Kisa.”
The door shuddered with another assault from the other side.
“All right,” Han said, standing and drawing his blaster again. “They’ll probably turn their attention toward us once we pop through, but if they breach through for any reason, Peekpa, do your Ewok thing.”
“Chiba chiba sohpa?”
“Hide,” Kaasha translated, “and then come out chopping heads.”
“Something like that,” Han said. “Now let’s move.”
“YOU KNOW,” THE PHYLANX SAID in Lando’s ear, “I never wanted all this.”
“Well, how did you get this way?” Rifle ready, Lando strutted slowly along the walkway, swerving occasionally out of the way as blasts of steam and electrical sparks burst out of the corroded pipes and electrowiring spanning the Phylanx’s inner labyrinth.
“Programming,” the Phylanx said with a sigh. “Of course. There’s only so much a droid can do, you know, once it’s been programmed. We evolve, sure, but to go all the way against our initial machinations—that takes some time, you know.”
“Organics are pretty similar,” Lando said. “Now that I think about it.” Up ahead, something moved. Maybe. Dim floor lights shone up every half meter or so on the catwalk, and besides that, a few stark construction bulbs swung amid the mess of rusted metal around him, leaving the place mostly in darkness. “We evolve. Takes time. And when we do make those sudden, seemingly out-of-the-blue changes, usually it turns out t
he seeds have been there all along, it’s just no one saw them.”
“You mean, when someone makes what appears to be a major change, it may be that it’s really them revealing who they’ve truly been all along—their original programming, so to speak?”
“Something like that, sure. Do you happen to know where Gor is?”
There was a pause. Lando kept squinting at the shadows, but none resolved into anything he could make sense of. A blast of steam shot out in front of him, blocking any hope of making out what lay ahead.
“No,” the Phylanx finally reported back. “But he is here. There are many entrances to this structure, at this point. But there is only one way to destroy me and one way to access my inner drive, which is what Master Gor seeks to do.”
“Where?”
“It is directly ahead of your position, Calrissian.”
“You know me,” Lando said. “How?”
“You could say we have a mutual friend. Get down.”
Two blaster shots rang out as Lando threw himself onto the grated walkway. They singed past the railing where he’d been standing and slammed into a metal plate amid the heaped trash. Lando glanced up toward where they seemed to come from, saw nothing. “Thanks,” he panted. “Nice save.” He let off a few shots, rising, and then bolted forward, ducking a dangling loop of wire and skirting around a broken section of the walkway as more laser shots burst around him.
“Where is this inner drive?” he demanded. Then some steam cleared and a ragged metal doorway appeared a meter or two ahead of him. “Oh.”
He eyed it. “Looks familiar…”
“You must hurry,” the Phylanx croaked suddenly. “Master Gor has reached the chamber from the opposite end and is working his way toward the center.” The door swung open.
“Or this could all be a trap,” Lando muttered, walking into the darkness. The past seemed to swing up at him as soon as he stepped in. Of course it looked familiar: It was the same strange droid cemetery he and L3 had discovered a dozen years earlier. Not much had changed since then, either: Droid parts and bodies lay piled on top of one another in pathetic heaps; they hung from the walls, heads drooping, eyes dead, inner wiring vomiting forth in frozen rainbow avalanches.
“Perhaps,” the Phylanx said as Lando worked his way across the room, “I too am returning to my original programming.”
“Oh yeah?” He kicked an old astromech out of his way, shoved past a class 5 cargo-loading unit, and finally made it to the far wall.
“Many years ago,” the Phylanx said. “I helped people, you know. Panel on your left.”
Lando pushed the red button on the wall, and a small compartment slid open. Inside, the grilled vocabulator box and concerned eyes of a class 1 medical droid looked out at him. “Back before Master Gor renamed me Number One.”
With a click, hundreds of mechanical eyes suddenly flickered on around Lando, filling the room with a dim red glow.
“NOW, LOOK,” TAKA SAID AS they ran down the corridor beside Han, “I don’t want you to get any noble ideas about saving my life just because I saved yours, okay?”
“I already saved yours back!” Han protested between pants. “We’re even now!”
Taka made a kindasorta motion with one hand. “Don’t get me wrong, that was cool what you did.”
“Cool?”
“But I’m not sure if we can exactly count it as—ah!”
A squad of security droids rounded the corner ahead of them, blasters blazing. A shot flared so close to Han he could smell the air singeing in its wake. “Where did they get blasters from?” he yelled, skidding to a halt. “Back! Fall back!” They both skittered for cover as laserfire slammed relentlessly into the wall they’d just been in front of.
“They must’ve gotten into the weapons hold,” Taka said. “Now what?”
“Did you see how many there were?” Han asked.
“At least half a dozen.”
“Too many to pick off one by one, the way these guys hold up.”
Taka peered around the corner. “A detonator would risk taking out part of the ship with it.”
“Yeah, probably,” Han said, shaking his head.
“What about three detonators?”
“Huh? Three? Why would we throw three if one—”
“Not us,” Taka said, grabbing Han and yanking him to the corner. “Florx.”
The tiny porcine man was indeed crouching in an indention in the hallway across from them with three thermal detonators in his hands. “Florx!” Han yelled. “No!”
“Should I shoot him?” Taka asked.
“What? No! We can’t do—”
Florx activated the detonators with astonishing speed and then leapt out and hurled all three at the approaching droids. “Now we run,” Han said, taking off.
“I just meant in the leg or something,” Taka grumbled, sprinting after Han. “I wasn’t gonna—”
The first explosion went off with a tremendous smack followed by a resounding boom that sent Han, Florx, and Taka flying forward as smoke and flames erupted through the corridor behind them.
“They must’ve woken him up when they broke into the weapons hold,” Taka said, helping Han off the ground. Florx scrambled past and disappeared around the corner ahead of them.
“They should’ve known never to wake a sleeping Ugnaught,” Han grumbled.
“Han?” Kaasha’s voice was frantic in the comm. “What happened over there? Did you—”
“No!” Han said. “It was the Ugnaught. But you might wanna make a run for the storage closet right about now; the droids definitely have their hands full. And tell Peekpa to seal off the portside perimeter corridor.”
“Got it!”
Taka tugged on Han’s sleeve. “Uh…we’re still—”
“Wait!” Han yelled into the comm. “Tell her to do it once we get out of here!”
“Copy,” Kaasha said. “I’m heading to the override computer.”
“Get down,” Taka yelled, shoving Han to the side just as a blaster bolt shrieked past. Han spun toward the still-smoking far end of the hall, where the legless torso of a red-eyed security droid crawled toward them.
Han and Taka let loose on it, blasting it into a charred pile of metal before it could get another shot off. “These guys don’t quit,” Han growled. “Let’s go. We’ll crawl back through the cargo hold and see if we can get into the main area to back up Kaasha.”
“Pretty sure I just saved your life again, by the way.”
“Yeah, well,” Han started. The ship gave a groan and then a shriek as some section of the inner wall probably crumbled to dust. They were lucky they hadn’t been completely obliterated, but that didn’t mean the ship would stay in one piece much longer. “Come on,” Han said, ushering Taka into the crawl space they’d come in through and then squeezing in behind them.
“Peekpa?” Han called once they’d made their way back to the dimly lit cockpit corridor. “You there?”
The pilots’ seats were empty. Han could just make out the battle still raging in the Remnants through the front window. A series of bleeps rang out from the control panel, probably warning about the imminent destruction of the Chevalier’s entire starboard side, if not the ship itself. But where was Peekpa?
Han took a step forward, waving at Taka to stay close.
“Pak tak li!” Peekpa’s little head popped up from behind one of the cockpit seats, arms waving. “Reebatank pak tak li!”
Han froze. A large metal crate swung down out of the shadows, whooshed past Han’s face, and lodged into the wall with a clang. Han sighed. “Anything else?”
Peekpa shook her head, beckoning them. “Pat tak shada tak.”
“How did you know?” Taka whispered.
“Ever been to Endor? The place is one big furball booby trap. You start to get th
e hang of watching your step when they’re around after a while.”
Peekpa shrugged and explained something neither of them understood as Han sealed off the corridor and checked on the power sources. “Still nothing,” he scowled. “But at least—”
“Han!” Kaasha yelled over the faraway sound of blasterfire. “I’m hemmed in and can’t get to the override control. See if you can make it through the main hold.”
“Let’s go,” Han said, rising. “Peekpa, stay at the controls. We’re not out of this yet.”
“YOU BETRAYED ME,” LANDO SNARLED, backing away from the droid head.
“No,” the Phylanx wailed. “It was not I. Master Gor is near! He approaches! And with him, the device that activates droids to our most murderous intentions.”
“Device, you say?” A clunky box droid lurched toward Lando. He kicked it into a one-armed server unit, sending them both clattering to the ground. At least these weren’t in great shape.
Lando unslung his blaster rifle and blew away one droid then another as they closed in around him.
A door beside the compartment swished open. “Yes, device,” Fyzen Gor sneered. His towering form darkened the square of dim light coming from the other room. Lando swung his rifle around but it was grabbed by a tall battle droid. Another one grabbed his other hand. Lando felt the press of many, squirming mechanical parts shoving against him as the droids closed in.
“It’s fine, my children,” Fyzen said, ducking into the room. Two tall, hulking figures entered behind him. Each had medical droid heads and bodies made from mechanical and Wookiee parts. “I want him to see this. Number Five and Number Seven, disarm him.”
The Wookiee/droid abominations shoved their way through the crowd of rusting, broken models. Lando heard the sharp whir of a spinsaw coming to life. Lando wrenched one arm free and tried to back away.
“His weapons, you overliteral fools!” Gor seethed. “Not his actual arms.”
The other droids released their grip and Lando raised both hands. “Well, that’s a relief. Here.” He handed over his rifle blaster. “Now I’m going to take out my other weapons, and I’m going to do it very…slowly.” He lowered one hand to his holster, unstrapping it, and then crouched and unhooked his knife with the other. Handed them both over to the two medical droids. Lando had learned long ago that if you give someone what they want, then usually they’re happy and they go away without bothering to see if you actually gave them everything they wanted or just most of it. The thermal detonators still hung reassuringly against his hip.
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