Han hitched himself around the stone trough and pulled the Mark II's bipod legs down. He had only one more trick left, and if that didn't work, he'd have no more worries about treasure, Gallandro, or the Falcon. Resettling so that his knees and the small of his back were higher than his shoulders, he wrestled the Mark II around and rested it on the incline of his legs. He set his feet against the bipod legs, holding the weapon tightly to steady it.

He squinted upward through the heavy-a.s.sault rifle's open sights. The boat came at him again. He bracketed it in the sights and waited until he heard the first concussion of R'all's fire.

Then he opened up, bracing the bucking Mark II with hands and feet, holding it fairly steady for the first time. The boat's pilot recognized his danger too late; an evasive maneuver failed and the heavy-a.s.sault rifle's full force caught the light boat, tearing a long gash in the fuselage. Control circuitry and power panels erupted and a gaping hole appeared in the c.o.c.kpit canopy. The boat wallowed and shook, out of control, and disappeared in a steep dive, trailing smoke and flame. A moment later the ground shook with impact.

"R'all!" J'uoch screamed to her dead brother as she clawed her way out of the bunker. The boat had exploded on impact, scattering burning debris over a long, wide swath of ground.

Gallandro caught her arm. "R'all is gone," said the gunman with no particular sympathy. "Now, we will do this thing as we originally agreed. Your ground forces will encompa.s.s Solo's position, and we'll force him out into the open and capture him alive."

She wrenched her arm away, seething with rage. "He killed my brother! I'll get Solo if I have to blow these mountains apart!" She turned and called out to her enforcer, the hulking Egome Fa.s.s, who stolidly awaited orders. "Get the crew to the loadlifter and warm up main batteries." She was about to turn from him when an unfamiliar sound, rising over the fury of the boat's destruction, made her pause. "What's that?"

Gallandro heard it, too, as did Egome Fa.s.s and all the others in the camp. It was a steady beat, shaking the ground, the pounding of metal feet. The column of Xim's war-robots appeared at a spot farther along the mining camp's perimeter, having finished their roundabout march from their mustering place.

They came in glittering ranks, arms swinging, unstoppable. When their Corps Commander gave the signal that freed them from lockstep, they spread out across the site to begin their devastation. J'uoch stared in astonishment, not quite believing what she saw. Gallandro, fingering one of the gold beads that held his mustache, tried to remain calm. "So, Solo was telling the truth after all."

Up on the ridge, Chewbacca hooted to the exhausted Han, indicating the camp. Han wearily moved to the ridge and joined his companions in looking down on a scene of utter chaos. Their own presence had been forgotten by the response squads, fire teams, and other camp defenders.

The war-robots, faithful to their instructions, moved to obliterate everything in their path. First to feel the battle machines' power was a domed building that housed repair shops. Han saw a robot smash through the dome's personnel door while a half-dozen of his comrades set to work wrenching off the rolling doors. Pieces of lockslab gave way like soggy pulp, and a group of Xim's perfect guardians moved into the dome, demolishing work areas and heavy equipment, ripping down hoisting gear, and firing with the weapons built into their metal hands. Heatbeams and particle discharges flashed, throwing weird shadows within the dome. The building flared, pitted in a score of places. The robots' fire lanced the dome, probing the sky. More of them pressed in to tear apart everything they encountered.

It was the same elsewhere in the vast mining site. The war-robots, with their limited reasoning capacity, were taking their orders literally, devoting as much attention to devastating buildings and machinery as to attacking camp personnel. Whole companies of the war machines were moving among the abandoned mining autohoppers and land-gougers, tow-motors and excavators.

The robots blasted and sprayed fire everywhere, making full use of their tremendous strength. One of them was sufficient to reduce a small vehicle to rubble in moments; for larger equipment, groups cooperated. Tracks were wrenched from crawlers, whole vehicles lifted off the ground, their axles snapped, wheels ripped off, cabs torn loose, and engines yanked out of their compartments like toys. A battalion moved toward a barge sh.e.l.l that contained the latest shipment of refined ore. The robots tore into it, swinging and firing, wrecking everything they encountered and hurling the pieces aside.

Meanwhile, others engaged the camp personnel in determined combat, turning the camp into a scene of unbelievable chaos. War-robots flooded through the operations site. "They're headed for the Falcon!" Han bellowed, then charged down the ridge. Badure's shouted warnings went unheeded. Chewbacca went racing after his partner; Badure took off, too, followed by Hasti.

Skynx was left alone, staring after them. Although going after his companions seemed a good way to ensure that he would never see the chrysalis stage, he realized that he had become a part of the oddly met group and felt acutely incomplete without them. Abandoning good Ruurian prudence, he flowed off after the others.

At the bottom of the slope, Han found his way blocked by one of the robots. It was just finishing demolishing one of the bunkers, kicking the fusion-formed walls to bits and hurling the larger chunks easily. The robot turned on him, its optical lenses extending a bit as their focal point adjusted. It lifted and aimed its weapon-hand.

Han quickly brought up the heavy-a.s.sault rifle and fired point-blank, knocked back several steps by the sustained recoil. His fire blazed blue against the mirror-bright chest. The machine itself was driven back a step with an electronic outburst and was ripped open. Han moved his aim up to the spot where the cranial turret was joined to the armored body.

The head came off, flying apart, smoke and flame gushing from the decapitated body. Han shot it again for good luck and the Mark II's beam came only faintly; the weapon was virtually exhausted. But it served to topple the robot, which landed with a resounding clatter.

More war-robots were reaching that part of the camp. Chewbacca descended to level ground, trailing dust and tumbling pebbles, just as another machine came at Han. The Wookiee threw his bowcaster to his shoulder and aimed. But his fire bounced off the robot's hard breastplate; he had forgotten his weapon was still loaded with regular rounds rather than with explosives.

Han threw aside the useless a.s.sault rifle and drew his blaster, setting it for maximum power. Chewbacca stepped back, removing the magazine from his weapon and taking one of the larger ones from his bandoleer. Han stepped in front to cover him in a stiff-armed firing stance. He squeezed off bolt after bolt, deliberately and with great concentration, into the approaching robot's cranial turret. Four blaster rounds stopped the machine just as it fired in response. Han ducked the heatbeam that split the air where he had stood. As the robot fell, the beam traced a quick arc upward.

Defenders that were sufficiently well armed were putting up stiff resistance with rocket launchers, grenade throwers, heavy weapons, and crew-served guns. Living beings and war machines were reeling back and forth in a storm of energy discharges, bullets, sh.e.l.ls, and fire. Four robots lifted the reinforced roof off a boxlike hut as the men defending it fired frantically. Using a chattering quad-gun, the men's shots kicked up enormous clots of ground and blew away segments of the machines even as they attacked. More robots approached to join in; the crew, with barrels depressed, traversed their gun back and forth in a frenzy, taking a terrible toll. But even though several crew members used side arms in a desperate attempt to keep from being overrun, the roofless hut was gradually outflanked and disappeared behind a wall of gleaming enemies.

Not far away, a dozen of J'uoch's employees had formed a firing line in three ranks, concentrating on any robot that came near, and were thus far succeeding in preserving their lives. Elsewhere, isolated miners worked their way among the high rocks to exchange earnest fire with the machines, which couldn't negotiate the incline.

But many of the camp personnel were caught alone or unarmed, or were surrounded. The fighting was heaviest and fiercest there, the robots' implacability matched against the furious determination of the living beings. Humans, humanoids, and nonhumanoids dodged, evaded, ran, or fought as well as they could. War-robots simply advanced, overcoming obstacles or being destroyed, without any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

Han saw a stocky Maltorran run up behind a robot with a heavy beamdrill cradled in its brachia and press it flush against the machine's back. The robot exploded, and the drill, exploding from the backwash, killed the Maltorran. Two mining techs, a pair of human females, had gotten to a landgouger and were making a resolute effort to break through the automaton lines, crushing many of them under the gouger's tremendous treads, maneuvering to avoid their weapons' aim. But soon the fire of many robots converged on them, finding the landgouger's engine. The gouger was blown apart with an ear-splitting explosion. Elsewhere, Han saw a robot grappling with three W'iiri who had swarmed onto it, tearing at it with their pincers. The machine plucked them off one by one, smashing them and tossing them aside, broken and dying; but in the next moment, the robot itself toppled over, disabled by the damage they had done it.

"We'll never get through to the Falcon!" Badure yelled at Han. "Let's get out of here!" More robots were approaching, and to attempt a return up the steep ridge under fire would be out of the question. The old man proposed, "We can withdraw across the bridge and take shelter in the barracks area!"

Han glanced across the creva.s.se. "It's a dead end; there's no other way off that plateau." He considered blowing the bridge behind them, but that would take the Millennium Falcon's guns, or those of the lighter.

The latter ship was herself under attack. A ring of dozens of war-robots had formed around her, furiously firing while the huge cargo ship's engines strained to lift her off, her main batteries answering the robots' fire. Many of the robots' weapons were silent, their power exhausted, but more of the machines were gathering around the lighter every moment. Though the vessel's salvos wiped out five and ten robots at a time, sending them flying in heaps of tangled, liquefied wreckage, Xim's machines kept cl.u.s.tering to her, weapons-hands blazing, standing their ground. Soon hundreds were ma.s.sed there.

Others turned their attention to Gallandro's scoutship, cutting swaths in her hull. The lighter rose unsteadily, her shields glowing from the concentrated fire, her heavy guns raking back and forth. Just at the moment it seemed she would reach safety, one of her aged defensive shields failed; after all, the lighter was an old industrial craft, not a combat vessel. The ship became a brilliant ball of incandescence, showering torn hull fragments and molten metal into the creva.s.se. The detonation knocked combatants, living and machine both, to the ground. Han was on his feet again in an instant, charging toward the Falcon with his blaster in his hand, determined that the same thing would not happen to his beloved ship.

So was someone else. Across the battlefield a ring of war-robots was closing in on the converted freighter, preparing to demolish her, their arms raised and weapon apertures open. Others were shoving the wreckage of Gallandro's scoutship toward the brink of the creva.s.se.

Another machine, far smaller than they, blocked the way to the Millennium Falcon, seeming fragile and vulnerable. Bollux's chest plastron was open, and Blue Max's photoreceptor gazed forth. From his vocoder tumbled the signals learned from tapes shown him by Skynx, amplified by the gear Bollux had cannibalized from the podium.

The advance stopped; the war-robots waited in confusion, unable to resolve the conflicting orders. The Corps Commander appeared, the death's-head insignia of Xim gleaming on his breastplate. He loomed over Bollux. "Stand aside; everything here is to be destroyed."

"Not this vessel," Max told him in the command signalry. "This one is to be spared."

The towering robot studied the two-in-one machines. "Those were not our orders."

Max's voice, directed through the podium's scavenged horn, was high. "Orders may be amended!"

The thick arm came up, and Bollux prepared for the end of his long existence. But instead a metal finger indicated the Falcon, and the command came: "Spare that vessel."

With signals of acknowledgment, the other war-robots moved on. The Corps Commander still regarded the labor 'droid and the computer module. "I am still not sure about you two, machines. What are you?"

"Talking doorstops, if you listen to our captain's opinion," offered Blue Max.

The Corps Commander stood stock-still in surprise. "Humor? Was that not humor? What have machines become? What kind of automata are you?"

"We are your steel-brothers," Bollux put in. The Corps Commander made no further comment, but continued on his way.

The waves of robots had thwarted Han's effort to reach his ship. One, stepping over the ruins of a crew-served gun and its slain crew, advanced toward the pilot. Han was looking elsewhere, helping Hasti fire blaster and disruptor shots at a machine approaching from the opposite direction. Han's shot scored the cranial turret; Hasti's, less practiced, sent its torso and limbs in a wild scatter. Badure was firing at still another, a long-barreled power pistol in each hand.

Chewbacca stepped into the path of the oncoming robot and triggered his bowcaster. Its staves straightened, and the explosive quarrel detonated against the robot's chest armor, holing it but not stopping it. The Wookiee held his ground, jacking the foregrip of his bowcaster and firing twice more, this time hitting the robot's head and midsection. The machine came on relentlessly. Its weapons-hands were raised, but their power had been drained in battle. Chewbacca backed a step and came up against Han, who was still firing the other way.

Then the robot toppled forward. Chewbacca, standing in its very shadow, would have leaped clear but realized that Han was unaware of his imminent danger. The Wookiee shoved the pilot aside with a sweep of his hairy arm but failed himself to avoid the tottering automaton. It struck him and pinned his right arm and leg to the ground. Skynx raced to him and began pulling ineffectually at the Wookiee.

Another robot chose that moment to step over the one Han and Hasti had just downed. Since Hasti's disruptor was drained, Han moved forward, then realized that his blaster's cautionary pulser was tingling his palm in silent warning that his weapon, too, was spent.

He whirled and called to his sidekick, then saw the Wookiee wriggling to extricate himself from under the fallen robot. Chewbacca paused long enough to loft his bowcaster into the air one-handed.

Han caught it, pivoted, dropped to one knee, and pressed the stock to his cheek. He squeezed, and the explosive blast blew up against the juncture of the approaching machine's shoulder and arm. The metal limb fell away, and the robot shuddered but kept coming.

Han tried to jack the bowcaster's foregrip and found, as had the man in the city, that his human strength was insufficient. He stopped himself from dodging out of the way; Chewbacca lay trapped, directly behind him. Badure, some distance away, couldn't hear Han's shouts for aid. Hasti fired at the machine with the only weapon she had left, the dart-shooter, but emptying the whole clip at it served no purpose.

Han avoided Chewbacca's efforts to swipe him out of the way and shifted his grip on the bowcaster, preparing for a last, hopeless defense.

XV.

THE war-robot seemed to block out the sky, a machine out of a nightmare. But abruptly its cranial turret flew apart in a blast of charred circuitry and ruptured power routing as a thread-thin, precisely aimed beam found its most vulnerable point. Han scarcely had the presence of mind to take a step back, nearly treading on Chewbacca, as the automaton crashed at his feet like an old tree.

He leaped up onto its back and scanned the battlefield. Far across it, a form in gray waved once.

"Gallandro!" The gunman gave him a bare, stark smile that held nothing Han could read. Han drew without thinking, then remembered his blaster was empty. Just then a robot appeared behind Gallandro, closing in on him, arms wide. Han never made a conscious decision, but pointed and shouted a warning.

The gunman was too far away to have heard, but he saw Han's expression and understood. He spun and ducked instinctively. The robot just missed with a blow of enormous power. With an incredible display of agility and reflexes, Gallandro seized the arm and rode the robot's recovery-backswing, at the same time putting two quick shots into its head. Letting go, he was flung clear to land lightly and put a last bolt into the robot as it fell.

Han watched the incident with awe. By far the most dangerous machine there was Gallandro. The gunman gave Han a sardonic bow and a mocking grin, then, like a ghost, was gone again in the swirl of battle.

The air was hot with the unleashed energies of the battle. With Skynx's and Badure's help, Chewbacca had squirmed free of the fallen robot, while Hasti stood nervous guard. Taking back his bowcaster, the Wookiee made a quick motion toward the robot that had so narrowly missed nailing Han and barked a question.

"It was him, Gallandro," Han told his partner. "A fifty-, maybe sixty-meter tight-beam shot." The Wookiee shook his head in bewilderment, mane flying.

There was nowhere to go except the camp living area, across the bridge. "Will you two stop chatting and get going?" Hasti called. "They'll have us surrounded if we don't hurry."

They started for the bridge at the best pace they could manage, a half-trot, each of them bearing a number of minor injuries and wounds. They moved in a defensive ring, Badure at the leading edge with his power pistols, Hasti to his right and Skynx to his left, with Chewbacca and Han bringing up the rear, back-pedaling and sideskipping. A metallic voice called Han's name.

Bollux somehow injected a note of immense relief into his vocoder drawl. "We're so glad you're all safe. The Millennium Falcon's unharmed, at least for the time being, but I don't know how long that will last. Unfortunately, it's inaccessible just now."

Han wanted to know exactly what that meant, but Bollux interrupted. "No time for that now. I have the means to remedy our situation, sir," he told the pilot, resettling the signalry equipment he had taken from the robots' command podium. "But you'll have to get to the far side of the bridge before I can use it."

"You're on, Bollux! All right, everybody, scratch gravel!" They hastened away. The attack hadn't gotten as far as the bridge yet, but resistance was crumbling rapidly.

At the bridgehead Bollux paused. "I'll be staying here, sir. The rest of you must proceed across."

Han looked around. "What're you going to do, talk them into suicide? You better stay with us; we'll take to the high ground on the plateau."

With a strange sincerity, the 'droid refused. "Thank you for your concern, sir; Max and I are flattered. But we have no intention of being destroyed, I a.s.sure you."

Han felt ridiculous for arguing with a 'droid, but insisted, "This is not the place to get n.o.ble, old-timer."

Seeing the war-robots converging on them, Bollux persevered. "I really must insist that you go, sir; our basic programming won't permit Max and me to see you come to harm here."

They departed unwillingly. Hasti walked with the tired Skynx beside her. Badure patted the 'droid's hard shoulder and trudged off, and Chewbacca waved a paw. "Look after Max," Han said, "and don't get yourself junked, old fellow."

Bollux watched them go, then searched among the rocks and boulders for a place of concealment at that end of the bridge.

Han and his companions slogged wearily across the bridge among others who had survived the robots' onslaught and were now falling back for a final stand. At the halfway point they came upon the body of a fallen mining tech who had died before she could complete the crossing, a T'rinn whose bright plumage was now charred and burned from combat. Han gently took a shoulder-fired rocket launcher from her lifeless claws, the weapon still containing a half-magazine of rockets. He was just standing up when a figure broke from the stream of retreating miners and attacked him, swinging an empty needlebeamer.

"Murderer!" J'uoch shrieked, her first blow grazing the pilot over the ear before he was aware of her onset. "You killed my brother! I'll kill you, you filthy animal!" Dazed, he pushed himself backward to avoid the blows she was raining on him, forearm up to protect himself.

Chewbacca would have torn the hysterical woman from his friend, but at the same moment he was struck from behind, a heavy blow from a thick forearm. The Wookiee fell to his knees, losing his bowcaster, as a huge weight fell upon him: Egome Fa.s.s, the enforcer. The two huge creatures rolled over and over, wrestling, tearing at one another. Retreating miners skirted the struggles, concerned only with staying alive.

Badure, weakened by the ordeal, waved an unsteady power pistol at J'uoch. But before he could fire, Hasti had thrown herself at the woman who had killed her sister Lanni. They whirled and fought, hacking and kicking at each other, finding reserves of strength in their mutual hatred.

Badure pulled Han up just as J'uoch got her forearm around Hasti's throat. But Hasti writhed free of the hold, dropped and turned, put her head and shoulder against the other's midsection and drove her back with feet churning and driving. J'uoch was shoved backward against the bridge's waist-high railing and toppled over it. She fell screaming, in a flurry of coveralls, reaching and thrashing. Hasti's momentum had carried her halfway over the rail, too.

Badure was there in time to pull her back from the rail, grabbing the material of her clothes. She sobbed for breath, her pulse pounding. Then it came to her that the roaring she heard wasn't in her ears, Chewbacca and Egome Fa.s.s had gone to war.

It had been the second time J'uoch's enforcer had struck the Wookiee from behind. What the Falcon's first mate felt now could only pallidly be described as outrage. Han waved Badure off when the old man would have shot Egome Fa.s.s.

The two punched and grasped at one another while Han leaned against the rail to watch the honor match. "Aren't you going to help him?" Hasti puffed, her face showing the scratches and abrasions of her own match.

"Chewie wouldn't appreciate that," Han told her, keeping one eye on the rallying of robots at the end of the bridge. But he eased a pistol from Badure's belt in case the match didn't go as it should.

Egome Fa.s.s had gotten a choke-hold on Chewbacca. Rather than squirm out of it or apply an in-fighting trick, the Wookiee chose to lock both hands on his opponent's arm and turn it into a contest of pure strength. Egome Fa.s.s was bulkier, Chewbacca more agile, but the question of brute force was still open. Their arms quivered and muscles jumped in the straining backs.

Bit by bit the arm was levered away from Chewbacca's throat. The Wookiee showed his fangs in savage triumph, and burst free of the hold. But Egome Fa.s.s wasn't done with tests of strength. He lunged at his antagonist for a deadly hug. Chewbacca accepted it.

They staggered back and forth, first the Wookiee's feet leaving the bridge, then the enforcer's. Both applied their full brawn in fearsome constriction. Egome Fa.s.s's feet were lifted clear of the bridge and stayed that way as the Wookiee held him aloft, muscles standing out like cables under Chewbacca's pelt. The enforcer's struggle became more frantic, less aggressive. Panic crept into his movements. Then there was a crack, and Egome Fa.s.s's body slumped. Chewbacca let go, and the enforcer slid limply to the bridge's surface. The Wookiee had to rest a paw on a support to steady himself.

Han teetered over with the rocket launcher over one shoulder. "You're getting decrepit; two tries to put away a b.u.m like that!" He laughed and affectionately punched the Wookiee's shoulder.

"Enough, enough!" Skynx protested, tugging at Han's red-seamed trouser leg. "The robots are ready to attack; Bollux said we must be across the bridge."

Han didn't know how much chance the labor 'droid stood of stopping the steel horde, but he and the others obeyed Skynx's pleas. There was no one to stand with them at the end of the bridge. The miners who had reached it had gone either to put up barricades in the buildings or to find safe places among the rocks.

Han stopped as soon as his boots were off the bridge. He sat on the ground, looking back across the bridge. "We might as well face it here."

No one made any objection. Badure gave Hasti one of his pistols, while Chewbacca fitted a new magazine into his bowcaster. Hasti put one arm around Han's neck and kissed his cheek. "That's for a good try," she explained.

Bollux crouched in the jumble of boulders on the far side of the bridge. The mining-operations site was now completely razed. Machinery was burned and buildings were flattened, and no living thing could be seen.

The Corps Commander had mustered all his forces with high-pitched summonses. Other resistance had been crushed; all that remained was to annihilate the barracks area on the far side of the bridge, the successful completion of their first combat action in generations.

Bollux waited and didn't try to interfere. That would have been useless, he knew; they weren't so different from him. The machines gathered around their commander by the hundreds. The Corps Commander indicated the way with a long metal arm, gleaming like a statue of death in the blue-white light. He stumped toward the bridge, and his awesome troops crowded after him. And as the war-robots drew abreast of him, about to step onto the bridge, Bollux triggered the command signalry he had brought from the podium.

The Corps Commander fell into a marching step as the signals reached him. He didn't question them; the commands were automatic, military, geared to a segment of him that didn't doubt or ponder. Such was his construction.

Behind their commander the other war-robots responded to the signal as well, falling into ranks of ten, in step with their leader. Funneled onto the bridge, their ranks filled it from side to side. They stepped with meticulous precision. Metal feet tramped; arms swung in time.

"Will it work?" Bollux asked his friend.

Blue Max, tuned in with both their audio pickups, listened carefully, cautioning the 'droid not to bother him at this critical point. At Max's instruction, Bollux adjusted the marching tempo, matching the forced vibration of the robots' tread to the bridge's own natural frequency, creating a powerful resonance. The war-robots marched in to do battle for an overlord generations dead. The bridge began to quake, dust rising and forming a haze with the unified footfalls. Timbers reverberated, joints and stress members strained; the perfection of their marching made the robots a single, unimaginable power hammer. More of them poured onto the bridge and took up the step, adding to the concussions.

At last the bridge itself thrummed under them as Max found the perfect beat. All the robots were on the bridge, with no thought but to get to the other side and attack the enemy.

Han and the others rose, waiting. "I guess Bollux couldn't pull off his plan," Han said. The front rank, following their gleaming leader, had grown large. "We'll have to fall back."

"There's not much room for that," Hasti reminded him sadly. He had no answer.

Suddenly Skynx exclaimed, "Look!"

Han did, feeling a deep vibration through his boots. The bridge was shuddering in time with the robots' march, its timbers creaking and cracking with the punishment it couldn't absorb. Feet pounding, the robots marched on.

Then there was a rending snap; the vibration had found a member that couldn't support it. A timber bent and turned in its bed of press-poured material. The bed wouldn't accept the play and the timber twisted and split. All the supporting members at that side of the bridge gave way.