Explosions shook the Tantive IV. Her superstructure spouted flames and shattered hull plating where she had been struck. Two of her mechanical passengers, C-3PO, a tall human like machine, and R2D2 a stubby tripodal robot, staggered or slid along an access corridor in time to the explosions.
Artoo Detoo had the better of it with his squat construction and his cylindrical body's low center of gravity. The small blue and silver astromech droid glanced up at See Threepio who steadied himself against the bulkhead. His single cyclopean eye fixed on See Threepio's battered and scuffed metal casing; he emitted a series of urgent, high-pitched squeaks and whistles. To untrained human ears it would be unintelligible, but See Threepio understood the mechanical language easily.
"Yes, yes, I heard that a moment ago. They've shut down the main reactor," he waved a golden arm at his companion and began ambling stiffly down the corridor once again. "This is madness. This time, we'll be destroyed for sure," the golden droid shook his head slowly.
Artoo tilted his barrel shaped torso backwards and with his magnetic feet gripping the deck, the meter high robot assumed the approximate posture of a human studying the ceiling thoughtfully. He issued a series of short beeps and chirps.
"That is strange Artoo, we've lost power, but there is still firing? I don't detect any more hits, so who is shooting, and at whom?"
Artoo Detoo righted himself, turned around, and sped down the corridor bleeping madly. See Threepio glanced around in alarm, "Artoo! What do you mean, 'energy surges'? I don't detect any--"
A small band of Republic guards appeared, rifles at the ready. They wore neutral colored tunics and dark vests, along with white coal scuttle helmets and the grim expressions of men prepared to die.
See Threepio watched the Guardsmen take up defensive positions facing a nearby airlock. Then, suddenly, one after another the guards began to vanish into thin air, consumed by strange sparkling blue columns of light. The first few vanished without knowing what hit them. The others began to shout in panic and tried to flee. The last few actually dissipated in mid-stride while they fell pell-mell down the access corridor in a futile effort to escape this impossible turn of events.
"By the maker!" See Threepio exclaimed. He glanced around and found himself in an empty corridor. The faint echo of Artoo Detoo's excited bleeping reached his listening modules and he hurried off as fast as he could, "Wait Artoo, wait for me!"
See Threepio followed the noise down the twisting and quiet corridors. Occasionally, he caught sight of a human crew member or passenger dashing this way or that. Then, the strange high pitched hum would sound and another blue-white energy field would engulf them. The protocol droid was programmed to mimic human behaviors very extensively in order to better interact fulfill his programming instructions as a facilitator of human cyborg relations. None of his human behavioral imitation programming helped to him deal with unexplained mass disintegrations and bizarre energy fields. See Threepio stood stock still for three point eight five seconds, an eternity in droid terms, completely baffled as to his next course of action.
He turned his golden photoreceptors down a dim maintenance passage. A strange diaphanous figure leaned over Artoo and ran a light feminine hand over his domed head. See Threepio imitated the human gesture of a 'double take' and tried to calculate the probability that what he was seeing was real or an electronic hallucination emerging from over stressed logic circuits. He started forward through a cloud of semi-opaque waste gasses and found Artoo squealing excitedly and wheeling back and forth in confusion. The strange woman was gone.
"Artoo Deetoo what are you doing, don't you realize humans are disappearing all over the ship?" See Threepio leaned over the little droid and scolded him.
Artoo honked indignantly and swung around to face his counterpart.
"Mission, what mission?" Artoo Detoo you sound like you have a loose circuit in your logic terminal and--" Threepio paused; Artoo ignored him, moved off down the corridor and interfaced with the access hatch to one of the Tantive IV escape pods.
"Artoo," Threepio leaned into the low entryway of the pod, "that's restricted, you're not supposed to be in there."
The door slid open. Artoo beeped happily and wedged himself in front of the control panel, then he rotated his head around to face Threepio and hooted angrily.
"Don't you call me a mindless philosopher you overweight glob of grease!" Threepio straightened outside hatchway, "and I am not getting in there!" Threepio declared.
Artoo emitted a low mournful whistle followed by a sarcastic sounding honk.
"What do you mean, 'there's nobody left'?" Threepio turned and looked down the access corridor as far as he could, then pushed his audio sensors to their maximum sensitivity. The only sounds in the dim hallways of the Tantive IV were the sharp staccato sounds of shorting circuitry and the dull groan of her superstructure in the iron grip of the imperial tractor beams. The little automated thermocapsulary dehousing assister may be right!
"On second thought Artoo, you may just need me on this mission of yours. Now, move over!" The gold plated protocol droid scrambled aboard the escape pod.
Artoo closed the airlock doors and pressed the activating stud. The explosive bolts detonated, the pod shook one more time, then fell away from the crippled vessel and followed it's twisted path down to the surface of Tatooine.
Threepio and Artoo turned to watch through the viewing plate in the escape pod door.
"Artoo, look at that. Another ship, and it has engaged the Imperials!"
The battling capital ships shrank rapidly until they were only a couple of metallic specks against the night sky lit by crisscrossing red and green energy bolts.
Artoo Detoo added only a low whistle in reply to See Threepio's observation.
"We need everything and we need it now!" Chief Engineer Laforge shouted. He pored over his readout panels, his frustration mounted every second. Laforge turned and scanned the gigantic blue-white glowing cylinder that formed the better part of the Enterprise' matter/anti-matter reactor. He could do this because, despite being born blind, Laforge had been fitted at a young age with a multi optic 'visor' that allowed him to see outside the visible spectrum, detect energy fields, radiation and to examine objects at a microscopic level by sight alone. For all of his gifts though, the Enterprise chief engineer was deprived of normal sight, and could not appreciate subtle differences in color and light. He could not enjoy the slow fading light of an evening sunset, or catch a gleam in the eye of a beautiful woman. "Gomez, how's it coming?"
"I'm on it chief," Ensign Sonya Gomez, pulled open an engineering access panel and began rooting through isolinear chips with a tricorder, "I'm pulling the primary power systems governor chip."
"Good work Gomez," Geordi smiled and turned back to his crew station. That would give him complete control over power allocation, overriding most of the safety protocols. He would not be able to change the power settings enough to shut off life support or endanger the anti-matter containment field, but things would get a little cool and dark pretty quickly.
He tapped his comm badge, "Laforge to bridge!"
"Picard here," came the clipped reply.
"This is all we have captain, I hope it's enough," Geordi smiled grimly.
"As do I Geordi. Excellent work, Picard out."
Ensign Gomez slid out from under the main engineering station and scrambled back upright with a grunt.
"Pretty exciting first mission huh?" She asked, he voice wavering.
The Enterprise bucked and pitched under the rain of turbolaser bolts. The lights flickered and dimmed down to nothing but blood red emergency illumination.
Geordi put a reassuring hand on her shoulder, "Steady as she goes Ensign, have faith in Captain Picard. We've been in far worse scrapes than this, and he always got us out in one piece. He didn't even get mad when you spilled coffee on him this morning!
Sonya let out a strained laugh, and Geordi embraced her around the shoulders with one arm and gave her a friendly shake, "My guess is that these 'Imperial' clowns won't even know what hit them!"