Threepio watched silently until they had vanished around a far bend in the passageway, then looked back at Artoo. The smaller robot hadn’t shifted from his position of listening. Threepio’s gaze turned upward also though he knew Artoo’s senses were slightly sharper than his own. "What is it, Artoo?" A short burst of beeping came in response. Another moment, and there was no need for highly attuned sensors. For a minute or two more, the corridor remained deathly silent. Then a faint scrape, scrape could be heard, like a cat at a door, from somewhere on the ship’s hull. When several muffled explosions sounded, Threepio murmured, "They’ve broken in somewhere above us. There’s no escape for the Captain this time." Turing he peered down at Artoo. I think we’d better—"
The shriek of overstressed metal filled the air before he could finish, and the far end of the passageway was lit by a blinding actinic flash. Somewhere down there the little cluster of armed crew who had passed by minutes before had encountered the ship’s attackers.
Threepio turned his face and delicate photoreceptors away –just in time to avoid the fragments of metal that flew down the corridor. At the far end a gaping hole appeared in the roof, and reflective forms like big metal beads began dropping to the corridor floor. Both robots knew that no machine could match the fluidity with which those shapes moved and instantly assumed fighting postures. The new arrivals were humans in armor, not mechanicals.
One of them looked straight at Threepio—no, not at him, the panicked robot through frantically, but past him. The figure shifted its big rifle around in armored hands –too late. A beam of intense light struck the head, sending pieces of armor, bone, and flesh flying in all directions. Half the invading Imperial troops turned and began returning fire up the corridor—aiming past the two robots. "Quick—this way!" Threepio ordered, intending to retreat from the Imperials.
Artoo turned with him. They had taken only a couple of steps when they saw the rebel crewmen in position ahead, firing down the corridor. In seconds the passageway was filled with smoke and crisscrossing beams of energy.
Red, green and blue bolts ricocheted off polished sections of wall and floor or ripped long gashes in metal surfaces. Screams of injured and dying humans –a peculiarly unrobotic sound, Threepio thought—echoed piercingly above the inorganic destruction. One beam struck near the robot’s feet at the same time as a second one burst the wall directly behind him, exposing sparking circuitry and rows of conduits. The force of the twin blast tumbled Threepio into the shredded cables, where a dozen different currents turned him into a jerking, twisting display.
Strange sensations coursed through his metal nerve-ends. They caused no pain, only confusion. Every time he moved and tried to free himself there was another violent crackling as a fresh cluster of componentry broke. The noise and man-made lightning remained constant around him as the battle continued to rage.
Smoke began to fill the corridor. Artoo Detoo bustled about trying to help free his friend. The little robot evidenced a phlegmatic indifference to the ravening energies filling the passageway. He was built so low that most of the beams passed over him anyhow. "Help!" Threepio yelled, suddenly frightened at a new message from an internal sensor. "I think something is melting. Free my left leg—the trouble’s near the pelvic servomotor." Typically, his tone turned abruptly from pleading to berating. "This is all your fault!" he shouted angrily. "I should have known better than to trust the logic of a half-sized thermocapsulary dehousing assister. I don’t know why you insisted we leave our assigned stations to come down this stupid access corridor.
Not that it matters now. The whole ship must be—" Artoo Detoo cut him off in midspeech with some angry beepings and hoots of his own, though he continued to cut and pull with precision at the tangled high-voltage cables. "Is that so?" Threepio sneered in reply. "The same to you, you little…!"
And exceptionally violent explosion shook the passage, drowning him out. A lung-searing miasma of carbonized component filled the air, obscuring everything. Two meters tall. Bipedal. Flowing black robes trailing from the figure and a face forever masked by a functional if bizarre black metal breath screen –a Dark Lord of the Sith was an awesome, threatening shape as it strode through the corridors of the rebel ship.
责任编辑：mman
