Scribbler's note: this isn't as easy as it looks! Sorry it took so long to figure out a few more chapters...
Sorry, too, if the display is a little strange. Fanfiction.net seems to be having trouble accepting HTML at the moment, and I'm re-submitting this without formatting.
Chapter Three : The Great Forest
"Follow the bright yellow line," Luke said to himself. "Follow the bright yellow line."
"The bright yellow line?" the little Ewok warrior asked, his black eyes twinkling like small shiny beads.
"Follow the bright yellow line," Luke explained, holding up the direction-finder the Princess had given him.
"Ah," the warrior said wisely. "To the Great Jedi who lives in the Emerald City. But first we go this way."
"This way? What's this way...I mean that way?"
"The garrison," Wicket said in a matter-of-fact way.
"Garrison, garrison?"
"The Imperial garrison," the Ewok said patiently.
"Oh, that garrison," Luke said. "For a moment I thought you meant..." It hit him then. "An Imperial garrison?" he yelped.
"The evil Fett is no more. Now, the Ewoks rise!" Wicket held up his bow in one furry paw and shook it. Then he screeched another one of his awful, warbling war-cries.
"Only one thing worries us," Wicket continued calmly, his voice as close to a low, satisfied rumble as the voice of a oversized teddy-bear could get. "The Imperials may have a Warbot."
They waited until dusk to march. Which suited Luke fine; it meant the Ewoks couldn't see how bad his knees were wobbling. Artoo was only convinced after long argument not to use the bright lights built into his stubby cylindrical body. He rolled through the tangled forest floor with much turning and backing and a steady stream of muttered imprecations in Droid.
"Keep it quiet, Artoo," Luke hissed.
"Sssss!" Wicket hissed back at him.
"Hssss!" twenty Ewok warriors shushed back at Wicket.
Artoo muttered something that started with a low electronic tone and ended up in a small metallic fart.
Oh, this is turning out to be a fine adventure, Luke thought sourly. He found himself remembering life back on the moisture farm with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Sure, it had been boring most of the time, and hard work most of the times that it wasn't boring. And dry and dusty pretty much all of the time.
But he missed it. He missed his folks. Adventure was all well and good when you were reading it on a tape and curled up under the covers of your own bed, or chatting about it with friends over a long sunset and a tall glass of...well, on Tatooine usually a barely-carbonized soft drink that crossed the best aspects of sarsaparilla and fusel oil.
But real adventure meant long nights and dirty clothes and empty stomachs, and getting hurt and having to watch friends get hurt, and worrying and missing home, and way, way, way too much walking.
"We are there," Wicket hissed loudly in the boy's ear.
"Okay. I mean, great!" A thought struck him. "What's the plan?"
"We attack!" Wicket screeched.
"Oh, sh...!" Luke said.
Half a hundred heavily-armed teddy bears erupted from the forest and leapt into the clearing. Some fired bows...others ran in front of the arrows. Some paused to pose dramatically with weapons upheld...and others kept going and bowled them over.
Somehow they managed to keep from injuring themselves or others. Luke got the feeling Ewoks were durn near indestructible. They charged out of the bush under the moonlight, swarmed over the two sorry-looking troopers on guard, and were inside the cluster of cheap, pre-fab buildings.
The Imperials offered no effective resistance. More than a few blaster bolts cracked into the night but somehow all they brought down was shrubbery -- and the large communications antenna on the top of the main building.
It was more than possible, Luke was to reflect rather later, that the extreme disorganization of the Ewoks had worked in their favor. The Imperials were too used to thinking in terms of established fronts and lines of attack. Hit from so many directions at once they assumed they had been surrounded by a vastly superior force. Most of them gave up right away.
Except for one.
Luke came around a barrel just as a glittering metallic figure strode out of the darkened barracks. "Ieee!" cried the first Ewok that spotted the robot.
"Ieee!" cried the others. "Run away!"
In mere seconds the tide of battle turned. The wave of Ewoks turned to froth then began an unseemly retreat from the shore. Luke could see the attack dissolving before his eyes. "Wait! Wait!" he jumped to his feet. "Uh, oh," he said then.
He was effectively alone in the clearing, empty-handed, and a stone's throw from the glittering metal of an Imperial Warbot.
The Ewoks waited breathlessly to see what their Heroic Jedi would do. The Imperials waited, winded and confused, to see what the crazy teddy-bears were up to now. Luke waited to be killed.
The warbot was taller than he was and sheathed in metallic gold. It was vaguely human in form, with two large eyes in a face whose fixed expression seemed rather bemused. An extremely large rifle was cradled uncomfortably in its arms.
Luke scratched his head. Something about this just didn't look right.
"Hands up, prisoner, by orders of the Imperium!" the warbot rasped mettalically.
Luke stuck his hands up. The warbot fiddled with its weapon.
"Drop your weapons!" the warbot said next.
"I'll have to put my hands down," Luke said. Suddenly he began to grin. The situation was just too strange. Days ago, on the farm in Tattooine, he would have never imagined he'd be facing down a Warbot while leading an attack of primitive warriors on a remote Imperial garrison.
"Okay..." the warbot said uncertainly. "That is, you may." It cocked its head in uncertainty. Cleared its throat mettallically. "Don't try nothin' funny, ya' louse!" it said then. "Now drop that gat before I drill ya!"
"Huh?" Luke's jaw dropped.
The warbot shook his weapon. Almost dropped it. Got a good grip again and waved it vaguely in Luke's direction. "Drop the hardware or you'll be sleeping with the fishes!"
"Waa...?"
A sardonic beep cut across the clearing.
"I most certainly do not!" the warbot said testily. His original cultured accent had returned. "I was merely using the most effective idiom for this situation."
"Um..." Luke interjected. "I hate to bother you, but...you forgot to put the power pack in your weapon."
"Oh, dear," the warbot said. It fumbled again, comically. Then dropped the large weapon in the dirt.
"Ewoks...attack!" Luke howled. "Leave the 'Warbot' to me!" he added.
The Ewoks re-appeared like the tide returning, and broke over the remaining Imperials with a spray of arrows and war-cries and random blaster bolts. Luke was left alone with the robot, and Artoo.
"Twee-twoo-twaaa," Artoo said.
"Well, I never! That Artoo unit of yours is rather fresh."
"That he is," Luke grinned. "You aren't a warbot. What are you?"
"I am C3PO, a protocol and translator droid attached to the royal family of Alderan. The Imperials pressed me into service to help them in any way I could."
"Pweee," Artoo said, expressing his opinion of the effectiveness of the droid's service.
"I am afraid you are quite right, Artoo," the tall golden figure said sadly. "I'm a failure. I couldn't even convince a young boy to surrender."
"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself, Threepio," Luke said. "You really had me going for a moment."
"Do you really think so? Oh, you are just saying that to make me feel better." Threepio sighed. "I know one million three hundred and sixty-five languages with their expressions and regional dialects, the heraldry and lexicology of all six thousand sixty-eight original members of the Old Republic, but when it comes to practical matters I am as useless as a broken-down toaster."
"Then what you need is experience," the boy said. An idea was forming. "Say, we are going to the Emerald City...we've been sent there by your Princess -- Leia Organa of the House of Alderan. So why not come with us?"
A blaster bolt cracked in the distance. Luke cocked an ear. "Of course, it could be dangerous," he said. "The Imperials aren't going to be happy with any of us."
"Oh, I'm not afraid," Threepio assured him. "I am a robot; I can't feel pain. If I get injured I can be repaired easily. The only thing that worries me is a strong electromagnetic field."
"I get it. That sort of thing could scramble your positronic circuits. Well, if you're sure you want to come with us..."
"Why, thank you very much. Say, I am not very good at such things, but shouldn't we be leaving this clearing soon?"
"Huh?"
"Assuming the garrison got a communication out, a scouting force of Imperial Speeder-Bikes should arrive in, oh, fourteen point oh-three-nine minutes. I would not choose to be in the open when they do."
"Threepio," Luke said, "I have a feeling you are going to be handy to have around. Wicket!" He raised his voice, "We gotta move!"
"Grmphh," Luke said. He yawned, scratched, then sat up. Then he brushed handfuls of bark and dirt off.
They had walked for hours away from the Imperial Garrison, then found a sheltered-seeming spot to curl up until dawn. Now, dawn it was.
Luke looked around. There was no path visible. Nothing but thick woods in all directions. He sighed. Stood up. Bumped his head against the overhang they had sheltered under. And it rang -- not his head; the overhang.
The boy turned. "Well, I'll be," he said. "I think that's a ship. A crashed ship."
Artoo whistled a low whistle.
The ship had been camouflaged with loose brush, but the cover was dry and dead and pulled away easily. Luke and Threepio cleared away part of the hull and the main hatch. Then Luke cleared away Threepio, who had managed to trip and up-end himself against the sloping hull.
"Thank you, Master Luke. Oh, why must I be such a clutz?"
"Slave-1," Luke was reading off the hull. "Something tells me this was Bobba Fett's ship. Want to bet he hid it here in the brush near where he was operating?"
It took Artoo twenty minutes to get through the complicated lock. The little droid muttered to itself all the while.
"What language!" Threepio remarked. "I say, that Artoo unit must have had a colorful past."
At last the little droid made a satisfied sound.
"And all the internal defenses as well? Are you quite certain you de-activated them, Artoo? I'm sure Master Luke would be unhappy to discover otherwise." Threepio, belatedly, noticed the others had already gone inside. "Oh, wait for me!"
The ship was dark inside. Perhaps it was to Bobba Fett's taste that way. More likely, the internal systems were in no better shape than the dinged-up landing gear, twisted struts, and cracked engine nozzles Luke had noticed outside.
"It might fly," Luke said. "But it would take a good pilot to keep it in the air. It wouldn't do us any good, anyhow. No ship on Oz can escape again, what with the Energy Barrier."
Artoo whistled sharply. Luke looked that way to see a light blinking slowly on some lumpy piece of gear in the cramped cargo space.
"It looks like...it is...a man," Luke said in a hushed voice. "A man frozen in stone."
"If I could beg your pardon, Master Luke?"
"Threepio?" Luke's voice was still hushed.
"This appears to me to be a variation of a commercial carbon-freezing unit. They are used on some long-range expeditions to store perishable goods; mostly food-stuffs."
The man looked out at Luke with sightless, bas-relief eyes, hands straining from the black stone in the agony of being buried alive.
Artoo beeped again. The red light continued to blink. Below it was a small status panel. "I...I don't believe this," Luke studied the panel. "Threepio, do you think...is there a chance he is still alive, in there?"
Artoo beeped again, more definitely. A probe came from his stubby body and advanced at the black basaltic slab containing the frozen man.
"Artoo, what are you..?"
The little droid touched a control. Suddenly light flared about the stone. Steam hissed. Lights went crazy. A low hum came and climbed rapidly to a whine. The black stone began to flow like water, then, with increasing rapidity, blew away into vapor.
Luke coughed in the cloud. It was cold, too; cold enough to drive him away into the furthest corner of the cargo bay. But he could not take his eyes from the changes occurring in the black slab and its pitiful occupant.
A huge gasp of vapor came. Cracked bits of black stone rained down, and a large piece of equipment whined then fell over. Then, suddenly, all lights and activity stopped.
A man stood, crouched, wavering, in the middle of the floor. He took a gasping, whooping breath. Shuddered. Then collapsed bonelessly to the deck-plates of Slave-1.
Sorry, too, if the display is a little strange. Fanfiction.net seems to be having trouble accepting HTML at the moment, and I'm re-submitting this without formatting.
Chapter Three : The Great Forest
"Follow the bright yellow line," Luke said to himself. "Follow the bright yellow line."
"The bright yellow line?" the little Ewok warrior asked, his black eyes twinkling like small shiny beads.
"Follow the bright yellow line," Luke explained, holding up the direction-finder the Princess had given him.
"Ah," the warrior said wisely. "To the Great Jedi who lives in the Emerald City. But first we go this way."
"This way? What's this way...I mean that way?"
"The garrison," Wicket said in a matter-of-fact way.
"Garrison, garrison?"
"The Imperial garrison," the Ewok said patiently.
"Oh, that garrison," Luke said. "For a moment I thought you meant..." It hit him then. "An Imperial garrison?" he yelped.
"The evil Fett is no more. Now, the Ewoks rise!" Wicket held up his bow in one furry paw and shook it. Then he screeched another one of his awful, warbling war-cries.
"Only one thing worries us," Wicket continued calmly, his voice as close to a low, satisfied rumble as the voice of a oversized teddy-bear could get. "The Imperials may have a Warbot."
They waited until dusk to march. Which suited Luke fine; it meant the Ewoks couldn't see how bad his knees were wobbling. Artoo was only convinced after long argument not to use the bright lights built into his stubby cylindrical body. He rolled through the tangled forest floor with much turning and backing and a steady stream of muttered imprecations in Droid.
"Keep it quiet, Artoo," Luke hissed.
"Sssss!" Wicket hissed back at him.
"Hssss!" twenty Ewok warriors shushed back at Wicket.
Artoo muttered something that started with a low electronic tone and ended up in a small metallic fart.
Oh, this is turning out to be a fine adventure, Luke thought sourly. He found himself remembering life back on the moisture farm with Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Sure, it had been boring most of the time, and hard work most of the times that it wasn't boring. And dry and dusty pretty much all of the time.
But he missed it. He missed his folks. Adventure was all well and good when you were reading it on a tape and curled up under the covers of your own bed, or chatting about it with friends over a long sunset and a tall glass of...well, on Tatooine usually a barely-carbonized soft drink that crossed the best aspects of sarsaparilla and fusel oil.
But real adventure meant long nights and dirty clothes and empty stomachs, and getting hurt and having to watch friends get hurt, and worrying and missing home, and way, way, way too much walking.
"We are there," Wicket hissed loudly in the boy's ear.
"Okay. I mean, great!" A thought struck him. "What's the plan?"
"We attack!" Wicket screeched.
"Oh, sh...!" Luke said.
Half a hundred heavily-armed teddy bears erupted from the forest and leapt into the clearing. Some fired bows...others ran in front of the arrows. Some paused to pose dramatically with weapons upheld...and others kept going and bowled them over.
Somehow they managed to keep from injuring themselves or others. Luke got the feeling Ewoks were durn near indestructible. They charged out of the bush under the moonlight, swarmed over the two sorry-looking troopers on guard, and were inside the cluster of cheap, pre-fab buildings.
The Imperials offered no effective resistance. More than a few blaster bolts cracked into the night but somehow all they brought down was shrubbery -- and the large communications antenna on the top of the main building.
It was more than possible, Luke was to reflect rather later, that the extreme disorganization of the Ewoks had worked in their favor. The Imperials were too used to thinking in terms of established fronts and lines of attack. Hit from so many directions at once they assumed they had been surrounded by a vastly superior force. Most of them gave up right away.
Except for one.
Luke came around a barrel just as a glittering metallic figure strode out of the darkened barracks. "Ieee!" cried the first Ewok that spotted the robot.
"Ieee!" cried the others. "Run away!"
In mere seconds the tide of battle turned. The wave of Ewoks turned to froth then began an unseemly retreat from the shore. Luke could see the attack dissolving before his eyes. "Wait! Wait!" he jumped to his feet. "Uh, oh," he said then.
He was effectively alone in the clearing, empty-handed, and a stone's throw from the glittering metal of an Imperial Warbot.
The Ewoks waited breathlessly to see what their Heroic Jedi would do. The Imperials waited, winded and confused, to see what the crazy teddy-bears were up to now. Luke waited to be killed.
The warbot was taller than he was and sheathed in metallic gold. It was vaguely human in form, with two large eyes in a face whose fixed expression seemed rather bemused. An extremely large rifle was cradled uncomfortably in its arms.
Luke scratched his head. Something about this just didn't look right.
"Hands up, prisoner, by orders of the Imperium!" the warbot rasped mettalically.
Luke stuck his hands up. The warbot fiddled with its weapon.
"Drop your weapons!" the warbot said next.
"I'll have to put my hands down," Luke said. Suddenly he began to grin. The situation was just too strange. Days ago, on the farm in Tattooine, he would have never imagined he'd be facing down a Warbot while leading an attack of primitive warriors on a remote Imperial garrison.
"Okay..." the warbot said uncertainly. "That is, you may." It cocked its head in uncertainty. Cleared its throat mettallically. "Don't try nothin' funny, ya' louse!" it said then. "Now drop that gat before I drill ya!"
"Huh?" Luke's jaw dropped.
The warbot shook his weapon. Almost dropped it. Got a good grip again and waved it vaguely in Luke's direction. "Drop the hardware or you'll be sleeping with the fishes!"
"Waa...?"
A sardonic beep cut across the clearing.
"I most certainly do not!" the warbot said testily. His original cultured accent had returned. "I was merely using the most effective idiom for this situation."
"Um..." Luke interjected. "I hate to bother you, but...you forgot to put the power pack in your weapon."
"Oh, dear," the warbot said. It fumbled again, comically. Then dropped the large weapon in the dirt.
"Ewoks...attack!" Luke howled. "Leave the 'Warbot' to me!" he added.
The Ewoks re-appeared like the tide returning, and broke over the remaining Imperials with a spray of arrows and war-cries and random blaster bolts. Luke was left alone with the robot, and Artoo.
"Twee-twoo-twaaa," Artoo said.
"Well, I never! That Artoo unit of yours is rather fresh."
"That he is," Luke grinned. "You aren't a warbot. What are you?"
"I am C3PO, a protocol and translator droid attached to the royal family of Alderan. The Imperials pressed me into service to help them in any way I could."
"Pweee," Artoo said, expressing his opinion of the effectiveness of the droid's service.
"I am afraid you are quite right, Artoo," the tall golden figure said sadly. "I'm a failure. I couldn't even convince a young boy to surrender."
"Oh, don't be so hard on yourself, Threepio," Luke said. "You really had me going for a moment."
"Do you really think so? Oh, you are just saying that to make me feel better." Threepio sighed. "I know one million three hundred and sixty-five languages with their expressions and regional dialects, the heraldry and lexicology of all six thousand sixty-eight original members of the Old Republic, but when it comes to practical matters I am as useless as a broken-down toaster."
"Then what you need is experience," the boy said. An idea was forming. "Say, we are going to the Emerald City...we've been sent there by your Princess -- Leia Organa of the House of Alderan. So why not come with us?"
A blaster bolt cracked in the distance. Luke cocked an ear. "Of course, it could be dangerous," he said. "The Imperials aren't going to be happy with any of us."
"Oh, I'm not afraid," Threepio assured him. "I am a robot; I can't feel pain. If I get injured I can be repaired easily. The only thing that worries me is a strong electromagnetic field."
"I get it. That sort of thing could scramble your positronic circuits. Well, if you're sure you want to come with us..."
"Why, thank you very much. Say, I am not very good at such things, but shouldn't we be leaving this clearing soon?"
"Huh?"
"Assuming the garrison got a communication out, a scouting force of Imperial Speeder-Bikes should arrive in, oh, fourteen point oh-three-nine minutes. I would not choose to be in the open when they do."
"Threepio," Luke said, "I have a feeling you are going to be handy to have around. Wicket!" He raised his voice, "We gotta move!"
"Grmphh," Luke said. He yawned, scratched, then sat up. Then he brushed handfuls of bark and dirt off.
They had walked for hours away from the Imperial Garrison, then found a sheltered-seeming spot to curl up until dawn. Now, dawn it was.
Luke looked around. There was no path visible. Nothing but thick woods in all directions. He sighed. Stood up. Bumped his head against the overhang they had sheltered under. And it rang -- not his head; the overhang.
The boy turned. "Well, I'll be," he said. "I think that's a ship. A crashed ship."
Artoo whistled a low whistle.
The ship had been camouflaged with loose brush, but the cover was dry and dead and pulled away easily. Luke and Threepio cleared away part of the hull and the main hatch. Then Luke cleared away Threepio, who had managed to trip and up-end himself against the sloping hull.
"Thank you, Master Luke. Oh, why must I be such a clutz?"
"Slave-1," Luke was reading off the hull. "Something tells me this was Bobba Fett's ship. Want to bet he hid it here in the brush near where he was operating?"
It took Artoo twenty minutes to get through the complicated lock. The little droid muttered to itself all the while.
"What language!" Threepio remarked. "I say, that Artoo unit must have had a colorful past."
At last the little droid made a satisfied sound.
"And all the internal defenses as well? Are you quite certain you de-activated them, Artoo? I'm sure Master Luke would be unhappy to discover otherwise." Threepio, belatedly, noticed the others had already gone inside. "Oh, wait for me!"
The ship was dark inside. Perhaps it was to Bobba Fett's taste that way. More likely, the internal systems were in no better shape than the dinged-up landing gear, twisted struts, and cracked engine nozzles Luke had noticed outside.
"It might fly," Luke said. "But it would take a good pilot to keep it in the air. It wouldn't do us any good, anyhow. No ship on Oz can escape again, what with the Energy Barrier."
Artoo whistled sharply. Luke looked that way to see a light blinking slowly on some lumpy piece of gear in the cramped cargo space.
"It looks like...it is...a man," Luke said in a hushed voice. "A man frozen in stone."
"If I could beg your pardon, Master Luke?"
"Threepio?" Luke's voice was still hushed.
"This appears to me to be a variation of a commercial carbon-freezing unit. They are used on some long-range expeditions to store perishable goods; mostly food-stuffs."
The man looked out at Luke with sightless, bas-relief eyes, hands straining from the black stone in the agony of being buried alive.
Artoo beeped again. The red light continued to blink. Below it was a small status panel. "I...I don't believe this," Luke studied the panel. "Threepio, do you think...is there a chance he is still alive, in there?"
Artoo beeped again, more definitely. A probe came from his stubby body and advanced at the black basaltic slab containing the frozen man.
"Artoo, what are you..?"
The little droid touched a control. Suddenly light flared about the stone. Steam hissed. Lights went crazy. A low hum came and climbed rapidly to a whine. The black stone began to flow like water, then, with increasing rapidity, blew away into vapor.
Luke coughed in the cloud. It was cold, too; cold enough to drive him away into the furthest corner of the cargo bay. But he could not take his eyes from the changes occurring in the black slab and its pitiful occupant.
A huge gasp of vapor came. Cracked bits of black stone rained down, and a large piece of equipment whined then fell over. Then, suddenly, all lights and activity stopped.
A man stood, crouched, wavering, in the middle of the floor. He took a gasping, whooping breath. Shuddered. Then collapsed bonelessly to the deck-plates of Slave-1.