Lobot loosed a string of curses he had forgotten he knew and started toward the injured droid. Lando stared dumbly for a moment, then did the same. But Artoo beat both of them to Threepio, latching on and dragging him away down the passage in the opposite direction from the one the bolt had taken. As Artoo passed Lando, the droid made a hostile noise.
“I’m sorry,” Lando said, throwing his arms up in a gesture of surrender. “It’s not my fault. Lobot—tell him it’s not my fault.”
Hastening up the passage after Artoo and Threepio, Lobot letted past Lando in purposeful silence.
Artoo would not allow Lando to approach Threepio. He had to content himself with watching from several meters away while Lobot and Artoo hovered over the protocol droid and tried to assess the damage.
From several meters away, the damage looked to be considerable.
An R6 or R7 could have survived the jolt handily.
The latest combat-rated droids were armored against power surges and induced currents up to and including a near-direct hit from a class one ion cannon.
But Threepio had been designed for wars of words.
His buffers and breakers were minimal, and the bolt of energy from the panel had overwhelmed them. If the charge had passed across his body, through the primary processors, instead of up one side, Threepio would be dead.
As it was, Lando could see that Threepio’s right arm was rigid and useless at his side, the servo controllers burned and the linkages fused. Even worse, his speech synthesizer or vocal processor had been crippled. When he spoke, his voice phased and changed timbre, as though he were a million klicks away on a pocket comlink.
Twice already he had halted in midsentence, as though stuck searching for the most ordinary of words—something Lando had never heard him do before.
After a few minutes, Lobot left Threepio with Artoo and joined Lando.
To Lando’s surprise, there were no words of recrimination—only a businesslike coolness barely distinguishable from Lobot’s usual demeanor.
“Threepio’s arm is beyond repair, given that we have no spare parts,” Lobot said. “Artoo is trying to free the lateral actuator and restore freedom of motion to Threepio’s head.” He nodded past Lando at the equipment grid, which Lando had towed away from the scene of the accident. “I need the tool kit.”
“In a moment,” Lando said. “What happened back there–have you thought about it?”
“I need the tool kit, Lando,” Lobot repeated, and moved to pass between Lando and the passage wall.
Lando reached out and caught Lobot’s forearm.
“You were right about these passages. They’re getting ready to—” Something moved at the periphery of his vision, and Lando’s gaze flicked past Lobot to the droids, then past the droids to the growing glow where the passage bent out of sight. “Blast!” he exclaimed.
“Get away from the wall. Artoo, look out!”
“What?” Lobot craned his head.
Using his grip on Lobot’s suit, Lando dragged him toward the center of the passage, just as the energy halo appeared at the horizon of their vision and sped toward them. It surrounded them for only a moment as it raced through on its course, but its passage made the hair rise on the back of Lando’s neck.
“It’s gone all the way around?”
“Yes.”
“It doesn’t seem to have lost any strength at all,” Lobot said in wonder.
“No,” Lando said. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. You were right. These are conduits—superconduct-ing accumulators. Perhaps even some sort of gas-tube cascade generator.”
“For the weapons,” Lobot said slowly. “It has to be for the weapons.”
“That panel is the ballast, the source of the spark.
Threepio created an arc path while it was building up to fire—probably prematurely. He may have caused the system to report a failure, buying us a little time as it resets.”
“The weapons are useless in hyperspace. That explains our reprieve.”
“It also answers your question about the panel—about why it showed up now,” Lando said. “Smart.
She’s a smart lady. The last thing I do before I enter an unfriendly room is check my weapon.”
“Testing the integrity of the system. She must be getting ready—” “Wait, ” Lando said. “Listen.”
All at once, all around them, the ship began to groan and growl in a slow, deep voice.
Lando released Lobot and dove toward the equipment grid, wresting the sensor limpet from its restraints.
The limpet was secured in a harness of silk line, with a single trailing cord ending in a loop.
“I have to do this now,” Lando said. “Artoo! Map!