“Somewhere between Subsector Five and Subsector Twelve, I suppose,” Aro said.
“What’s below Subsector Twelve?”
Aro chuckled uneasily. “A whole lot of bastaks, if you believe the rumors.”
“What’s a—” A deep, wet-sounding growl echoed out of the darkness.
“That is,” Aro said.
“Chewie, can you get us down from here?”
Chewie wondered with a grunt if Han was sure he wanted to do that, then just shook his head and with a click sent them all plummeting toward the floor. It wasn’t quite as far as Han had feared, and their landing was cushioned with an unpleasant squish from one of the semi-splattered forosnags.
Han stood, drew his blaster, scanned the darkness. “See anything?”
Chewie was already up and glancing around. He shook his furry head and moaned.
Something moved in the shadows, and then a snarling, dust-and-blood-caked forosnag limped toward them, shattered teeth dangling out of its open mouth.
“These things eat blasterfire and they never quit?” Han sighed.
Aro and Peekpa scrambled to their feet and started backing away.
“How do we get out of this place, Aro?” Han asked.
The forosnag scrabbled another few clumsy, panting hops, and then something huge swooped out of the darkness with a growl and snatched it up.
“That way!” Aro yelled, grabbing Peekpa and breaking into a run.
A gnarled face emerged into the lit area above them. A pale-blue shell bristling with crusty growths wrapped around it like a helmet, and swiveling antennae sprouted from its forehead. Four tiny eyes squinted down at Han and Chewie; then its chitinous mouth seemed to unfold itself into a wide, toothy expanse as it howled into the darkness.
The screech was transfixing. For a few seconds, Han stood there, stunned, as the waves of reverberating bastak-call seemed to wrap around him, a haunted, horrific sirensong.
It’s not that it was pretty, just…mesmerizing. The bastak’s four tiny eyes seemed to burrow into Han, holding him there as the howl wrapped around and around him.
Something heavy landed on his shoulder.
He brushed it away.
Whatever it was, it couldn’t be more important than that desperate call cascading through the empty space.
The heavy thing—oh, it was furry, too—whacked his shoulder again.
Ridiculous, really, that something would try to distract him when those four magnificent, squinting eyes were getting closer and closer.
Han was just able to make out the tiny stretch lines reaching across the bastak’s face, its carapace-lined brow furrowed with determination (what was that infernal barking sound, though?), the speckled lines of fat bulging around its circular mouth, all those beautiful tee—
“Oof!” Han grunted as his back slammed against the cold floor with the full weight of Chewbacca on top of it. Chewie was yelling like a mad Wookiee, right in his face. And behind Chewie, something huge swung through the darkness.
The bastak!
What had…Chewie was already yanking Han to his feet and shoving him out of the way as a huge, clawed arm whooshed past them.
Rwharrkkkk krassshkygh! Chewie cursed.
“I’m going!” Han yelled. “I’m going!”
Side by side, they ran toward the spot where Aro and Peekpa waited anxiously near a wide tunnel entrance.
Behind them, a rumbling, crackling sound probably meant the bastak was crunching over whatever was left of the troopers and their forosnags.
“Why didn’t you tell us bastaks have a hypnotic call?” Han demanded.
“I’m literally a middle-management administrator for an archival building,” Aro said. “That’s it. Knowing the intricacies of random giant carnivorous beasties is not in my job description, thank you very much.”
“Maybe it should be if they live in your basement. Why did I get hypnotized and no one else?”
Chewie growled his ignorance on the subject.
Aro shrugged. Peekpa muttered something in Ewokese that sounded vaguely derogatory.
“Well, if we don’t know that, how are we supposed to keep from getting hypnotized again?”
“We get out of here,” Aro said. “And fast.”
They ducked into the tunnel, where all was darkness, cut only by the shimmering reflections of faraway lights in the tiny stream running down its middle. “And by the way,” Aro said, “you’re welcome for saving your asses back there.”
Behind them, the bastak howled again and started toward the tunnel.
Han pulled out his comlink. “Lando!” he yelled over the increasingly loud howl. “Come in, Lando!”
Only static came in reply.
“Where is that guy?”
“LOOK,” LANDO SAID, HIS FINGERS still sliding up and down Kaasha’s lekku, “I know I don’t…I know I’m not…I haven’t…” He sighed. Words were always there when he needed them to get out of a tight spot. They showed up when he beckoned: sweet ones to smooth out the path, rough ones that hinted at the certain violence he would commit if things didn’t go his way. Words had always been Lando’s allies. They glinted from his perfectly shined teeth and, with a little added umph from his rich voice in one direction or another, assured Lando would make himself clear about whatever it was that needed to be said.
But now…
“Just spit it out, ma sareen,” Kaasha whispered. “You know you can talk to me.”
“See,” Lando growled, throwing his arms up. “That’s the problem right there…”
“Wait.” She reached up and brought his hand back to her lekku, then settled back in on his chest. “Don’t stop.”
Lando shook his head, his fingers resuming their duty as commanded. “Exactly that. Ma sareen. Don’t stop. How is a man supposed to…” He growled and Kaasha purred. He wrapped his arm around her back and pulled her up into a kiss.
“Enough talk,” Lando murmured into her lips. “Let me try and say it another way.”
The barracks door beeped and slid open; Taka poked their head in and gasped. “Whoa! Twi’lek butt!”
“They don’t knock where you’re from?” Lando growled, pulling a sheet over himself and Kaasha, who couldn’t stop laughing.
“Han’s in trouble.”
Lando jumped out of bed, leaving the sheet spread over Kaasha. “What else is new?”
“Whoa!” Taka yelled. “Human butt!”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Lando pulled on dark-blue stretch pants with a gold lining and then shoved both feet into his tall black boots. He hated getting dressed in a hurry, not being able to take the requisite time to truly enjoy the way each garment fell into place as the whole connected masterpiece came into focus. “Get us ready to move, Taka. I’m on my way.” Beside him, Kaasha had risen and was sliding into her dark-purple slip top. Lando managed to stay focused.
“I already did,” Taka said. “That’s not the problem.”
“What’s the problem?”
“We have no idea where they are.”
“Well—”
“And neither do they.”
* * *
—
“You’re being followed by a what?” Lando gaped into the comm.
Han’s out-of-breath reply came through mottled by static. “It’s called a bastak.”
“Don’t look in their eyes,” Taka advised, maneuvering the Vermillion off the landing pad and taking it into a slow glide over the tops of the Grimdock prison complex.
“Wait,” Han’s scratchy voice yelled through the comm. “What?”
“Hold on.” Taka swerved between two fortified towers and then swung the ship low into a steel canyon. “Trying to stay out of sight of all those warships waiting for a fight to break out right above us.”
Han’s reply was unintelligible.
“The bastaks have a hypnotic siren call, but it only works if you make eye contact,” Taka said. “Kinda like that Mandalorian construction worker who used to hit on me on Strata Seven, come to think of it.”
“Makes sense,” Han said after a staticky pause. “The first part anyway.”
Lando leaned over Taka’s shoulder. “Do you have any way of finding out where you are?”
“Below Subsector Twelve,” Han said. “That’s all I got. Right, Aro?”
“Who’s Aro?” Lando asked. “Why are you always making friends?”
“He’s a Gungan,” Han said. “He works here, so he knows a thing or two, but these basements—no one goes here. At least, no one that anyone ever sees again. You need to access the building codes somehow and find us that way.”
“Unfortunately—” Lando started.
“I know,” Han said. “I know. We have the slicer with us. And there’s no signal down here, and certainly no ports for her to slice into.”
“All right,” Lando said. “I have an idea. Try not to get hypnotized by a giant crustacean in the meantime.”
“Easy for you to say,” Han said. It sounded like he was running again. “There’s about a—” Static erupted over his voice, punctuated by yells and blasterfire. Then the line went dead.
Taka shot Lando a worried look.
“Keep flying low,” Lando said. “I’ll be in the tech room.”
* * *
—
“Biggles!” Lando yelled, banging on the cargo hold as he fastwalked down the corridor. “Wake up, pigg-o! We need your help.”
A snorting grumble came from inside, and then the door zipped open. Lando was already down the hall, tapping in the security code for the tech room. Inside, DRX-7 still hung in pieces across the wall. Florx stumbled in, rubbing his eyes, and squealed a complaint.
“Doesn’t matter,” Lando said, surveying the scattered remnants of his protocol droid. “We need a droid.”
“Snork spora klork,” Florx pointed out.
Lando shook his head. “If he tries to kill me again, turn him back off. We’ve got to try the reboot again. We don’t have any other choices right now. Or time. Now let’s hop to it.”
Florx snort-muttered something, shook his head, and then shrugged, rolled up his sleeves, and picked up a flame spitter, revving it up.
“There ya go,” Lando said, rolling his eyes. “Now let me see about this wiring.”
L3 had lectured Lando about droid anatomy once, years and years ago. Anatomy, Lando thought. Of course she would call it that. The central intelligence processor, the brain basically, was usually in the head, of course, but the wiring that connected the brain to the body was fundamental in a way even most techies didn’t fully understand. Those wires didn’t just transmit information and commands; they translated them, too, L3 had explained. They interpreted them. And that interpretation could mean the difference between someone being perceived as a lethal threat or as a silly clown playing a joke, which of course could in turn determine whether a droid responded with a hardy chuckle or a spray of blasterfire. Life-and-death decisions, then, all lurked amid this cluster of often overlooked wires stretching along a droid’s neck.
And life-and-death decision making was exactly what had been compromised on DRX.
Somehow.
Whatever had happened had probably happened in the central processing drive within DRX’s head, but if Lando could circumvent the way that message was being interpreted…he unscrewed the neck panel and swung it open.
Florx snorted something about his own progress on the reboot.
Fourteen red wires led from the “brain” to the body, relaying commands and experiences. Twenty-nine blue ones sent messages from the body to the head, everything from sensory receptors to statistical predictions based on vibrational readings in the ground.
One of these was sending the message that Lando himself had to be killed. And that message was overriding all the others. He started sorting through the wires, tracing each back to its entrance point into DRX’s central command system.
“Blertringa,” Florx announced: The reboot was ready.
Lando closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “Here goes nothing.” He clipped two of the wires, then stood out of the way as Florx pushed some buttons.
DRX’s eyes lit up with their old yellow shine. Lando pumped his fist. “We did it!”
DRX’s eyes went red. “Killllll,” he moaned. “Killlll Calrisssssiannn!”
Florx squealed a curse and flicked DRX off again. Lando threw the cutters he was holding at the workbench. “Keep at it,” he snarled, then spun and headed out the door.
“What can I do?” Kaasha asked, walking down the hall toward him.
“Know anything about droids?” Lando asked with a sigh.
“Not a whole lot, but I’ll see if I can give Florx a hand.”
Lando smiled and kissed her on the cheek before heading off toward the cockpit.
“WE’RE RUNNING OUT OF TUNNEL,” Han warned as they reached the far end of the echoey pipe they were clomping through. His lungs were on fire from running so hard, and his legs felt like they were about to call it quits. “And if we’re down here much longer, I’ll be too old for this.”
Chewie reminded Han that he was about a hundred years too young to be saying that in Wookiee years, and Han was about to clap back when a shadow darkened the gaping tunnel exit in front of them.
“Another one?” Han panted.
“Look away,” Aro yelled as the screechy howl burst through the air around them. Han turned in the opposite direction, just in time to see another towering form lumbering through the shadows at the far end of the tunnel. The screeches mingled, a hellish, dissonant symphony.
Han closed his eyes and yelled, letting loose with both blasters.
* * *
—
“Anything?” Lando and Taka both asked each other at the same time as Lando slid into the copilot’s seat.
Both shook their heads despondently. The sandy-white building complexes of Substation Grimdock rose and fell around them as Taka swung the Vermillion across the prison moon.
“Any movement up above?” Lando asked.
Taka nodded at the sensor, where they’d rigged up an extended skywide map showing each of the various freighters and warships squared off in the Grimdock stratosphere.
“Damn,” Lando whispered. “Really looks like a little war about to break out, huh?”
Taka nodded, frowning. The small fleet of New Republic cruisers now formed a loose kind of barricade, blocking the larger, ragtag grouping of random ships. All of them remained locked and loaded.
“There,” Lando said, turning his attention back to the prisonopolis below. Scaffoldings and cranes loomed around a sizable opening in the moon surface. “Can the Vermillion fit in there?”
“It’ll be tight,” Taka said, narrowing their eyes. “But I’ll make it work.”
Lando stood and made for the door, patting their shoulder. “Good. Now let me see what’s going on with our maniac droid friend.”
* * *
—
“Well, if you hadn’t put the main radium conductor on the edge of the table, I wouldn’t have knocked it over,” Kaasha was saying as Lando walked in.
Florx’s response was neither polite nor any way to talk to a lady. Lando told him so. Kaasha looked like she was about to use the flamepitcher to make her point clear.
“All right, all right, all right,” Lando said, waving both hands up and down. “Everybody calm down. Florx, take five. You’ve been working hard since I woke you up. Go get a caf and relax.”
Florx Biggles muttered something, snorted twice, and waddled out of the room, sliding the door shut in a way that made it clear he would’ve slammed it if
he could’ve.
Kaasha sighed. “I tried to get along with him, Lando, I swear. He’s just—”
Lando caught her flailing wrists. “I know, Kaasha. I know how he is, believe me. Now let’s de-psycho-killer this droid, okay? And fast. Taka’s taking us into the moon’s subsector but I don’t know how much time we have.”
Kaasha nodded, turned back to DRX’s deactivated torso. “It seems like you almost had it with the neck wiring thing. Florx and I actually got him talking for a few seconds before his eyes blipped red again, and then…” She shook her head.
“What if it is just the eyes?” Lando said.
“Huh?”
He placed a hexdriver into a groove around the metal sockets lining DRX’s golden eyes and popped one of the small bulbs out. “Snippers.”
Kaasha placed the plastic handle into Lando’s waiting hand. He clipped away at the wires, freeing the orb, then passed it to Kaasha and started on the other one.
“Could it be that simple?” she asked.
Lando tilted his head, stepping back. “I doubt it. But along with the combination of all the other rewiring we’ve done, it just might work.” He reactivated the droid.
For a second, nothing happened. Lando remembered that illuminated eyes were usually the first sign a droid had come back online. He waited.
DRX stirred. “Oh my,” he muttered. “What’s happened?”
Kaasha’s eyes went wide. She put a finger to her lips, shushing Lando. And she had a point: His voice could easily activate another override.
“We need your help, Dee-Arrex,” Kaasha said.
“Of course, I am pleased to be of service! My name is Dee-Arrex Seven Five Two Bee, and I am a—”
“We know,” Kaasha said.
DRX flinched. “How rude.”
“We’re in a hurry, I’m afraid. Our friends are in trouble.” She took the comlink out of Lando’s hand and put it in DRX’s. “Can you triangulate the signal that corresponds to the comlink this one is communicating with?”
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