With as much haste as his wheels could muster, R2-D2 made his way down the debris-littered halls of the Pamari diplomatic ship towards the hangar bay. Inside, safely tucked within his memory banks, the electronic patterns of Senator Amidala were steady and firm. His goal was simple now--he had to get off the ship before the pirates destroyed it. Then, once aboard another vessel, he could work on restoring his owner to a physical state.
Finally, the droid reached the hangar bay again, a destination he by now knew well. Inside, he ambled purposefully over towards the shuttle he'd seen the prisoners use. The guards there glanced his way, but paid him no mind as he rolled aboard, assuming he must have some important reason to be there. After all, he was obviously too small for someone like Senator Amidala to fit inside, wasn't he?
Within the shuttle, Artoo fidgeted nervously. The computer here wasn't powerful enough to restore the Senator, and besides, there was too much of a risk of capture. Instead, he waited silently in the back, behind the last row of seats, until finally he heard the tromping of humanoid feet approaching. A few moments later, guards and prisoners began to file into the shuttlecraft, and pretty soon most of the chairs were occupied by shackled Republic diplomats. A quick count showed Artoo that the other two had now been found, for he recognized all the other members of the team except Amidala. None of their guards were present, though, and he wondered where they were. Probably deactivated, he thought with the mechanical equivalent of a shrug.
One of the last to enter was Bail Organa, followed immediately by the pirate captain, Tor Levan. "Come on, Senator," he was insisting. "You have to know where she is. Tell me now, or she'll die when the ship blows up."
"Really, Captain, how could I possibly know?" asked Organa with a flustered sigh. "I was in an escape pod! I didn't even see Amidala before your vicious attack started. She could be anywhere--you probably killed her with one of your ship's guns!"
"Well," said Levan, "you know what? I think you must be right, because our scanning teams swept this ship twice and didn't find any other human life signs. She's either dead already, or soon will be. Now have a seat and enjoy the ride."
The captain pushed Organa rudely into a chair, then headed back towards the front of the ship. A few moments later, the whole shuttle shook as it lifted off, and then they all felt the unmistakable sense of motion as it fled the doomed vessel's bay.
Artoo wanted very badly to beep something that would let Bail Organa know Amidala was all right, but didn't dare. Their conversation might easily be overheard, and besides, there were guards all around. Any of them might misinterpret Artoo's beeps as some kind of coded warning. No, it was best to keep silent, and concentrate on maintaining the stable flow of power to Amidala's energy pattern.
The trip to the pirate vessel didn't take long. Neither Artoo nor any of the other prisoners got any kind of look at the ship, for the windows were all safely sealed. For all they knew, they could be going to a Trade Federation cruiser, though more likely Artoo figured they'd be on some kind of Corellian transport. These men certainly sounded and acted like Corellians, though of course that could be a deception. He could do many things, but R2-D2 was not able to identify humans all that well. That was a task better left to protocol droids.
Some of the prisoners tried to pick up a conversation, but the guards were swift to cut that off--another reason, if any were needed, for Artoo to remain silent. He waited idly there, in the corner, wishing the flight would go faster so he could get his owner to safety. As he sat there, Senator Organa let his eyes survey the room, as if to lend strength to his fellow prisoners, until finally he chanced to spot Artoo in the darkness. His eyes opened wide as he saw the droid, and then his face fell, for he knew if R2-D2 was here, that could only mean Amidala was dead.
Artoo couldn't let that go without a response, so he flashed a single light on his front panel. At that, Organa's head jerked up, but whatever he might want to do or say after that went unstated. One of the guards took two steps over to Organa and smacked him across the face with the back of his hand. "You there!" he shouted. "Eyes forward!"
Bail glared up at the man in obvious frustration and anger, but didn't attempt to resist. Instead, he settled back into his seat and tried to relax. At least he knew Amidala was safe now. Artoo's flash had confirmed that. Where she was, he had no idea, but that didn't really matter. The fact that she was all right was enough for him.
The man named Tor Levan frowned as he watched the prisoners file out of the shuttle onto the rough metal surface of the Crimson Octagon's hangar deck. He knew his mission projections assumed he'd lose 25% of the diplomats during the attack, but still, he'd been hoping to bag them all. Besides, the one he really didn't want to let get away was Padmé Amidala, the heroine of the Naboo fiasco. Jemal, his contact within the Trade Federation, promised him a huge bonus if he brought her in alive.
Well, so much for that, Tor thought, but even so, he was still getting paid a princely sum for this operation. The best part about it was, it was almost risk-free. Unless the Octagon, or her sister ship the Hexagon, were interdicted on the way out of Pamari space, no one would ever know what really happened here. All they'd know for sure was the diplomats never made it to their conference, and instead were kidnapped, tortured and killed--by Pamari!
And scratch one treaty, thought Levan with satisfaction. As far as he was concerned, anything that hurt the Republic was a good thing. He hated them and everything they stood for.
This wasn't always the case, though. Once, he was one of their prized possessions, the commander of a special forces team that went where no one else in the Republic dared--not even the vaunted Jedi. It only took one sour mission to end that, though. They abandoned him and his men to their fate, breaking orbit without warning or explanation and forcing Levan to watch his men hunted and cut down one by one on a hostile alien world. Only his own skills and abilities enabled him to survive until rescue came.
Only it wasn't really rescue. His saviors arrived on a mercenary ship, and they turned him into a slave. He survived countless brutalities there before finally clawing his way to freedom and respectability by killing the ship's captain in one-on-one combat. While that won him a post on the vessel, it also earned him an arm wound so severe that the doctor aboard ship had no choice but to amputate. The well-concealed cybernetic arm he wore now was a constant reminder of the Republic's duplicity and abandonment of their own. He owed them nothing but revenge.
In due time, Tor became captain of the Crimson Octagon, and set about collecting a crew of nothing but fellow haters of the Republic. The ease at which he succeeded in this only proved to him that his former government was corrupt and deserved to fall. Levan had no doubt that this would come to pass, sooner or later, and while he had no idea what would rise out of the ashes, that hardly mattered to him. All he cared about was being a part of the Republic's inevitable collapse.
His second, Ethan Pirett, walked up beside him as the prisoners moved slowly along towards their ultimate destination, the brig. "All boarding parties are clear," said the shorter pirate. "Guns are standing by to destroy the Pamari ship."
"Are you absolutely certain you searched that vessel from stem to stern?" asked Tor needlessly. He knew his second wouldn't have failed him in this task, for the loss of the bounty on Amidala would cost Pirett his share as well.
"Absolutely. Twice, sir." Ethan sounded quite confident. "There was nothing living on that vessel when we left it. Unless she has some kind of personal cloaking device, she must've died in the initial bombardment. There were several bulkheads open to space, and we found quite a bit of unidentified blood in those compartments. I think she's sucking vacuum right now, sir."
"Very well," Levan replied, "Let's get to the bridge and start firing, shall we?"
"Aye, sir. Wait--what's that?" He stopped short and pointed back at the shuttle, where a small R2 unit had emerged and was now rolling along to follow the now-departed prisoners.
"I don't see anything," the captain replied. "Is there something behind that droid?"
"No, sir, I'm talking about the droid," Pirett replied. "I've seen it before, back on the Pamari ship."
"I'm not surprised," said Levan. "Probably a personal servant of one of the ambassadors. Good call, though. It might try to make a rescue or something, although I find it hard to imagine a droid with that kind of initiative. I'll have someone deactivate it."
"No, sir, that's not what I mean," Ethan insisted, walking over to step in front of the R2 unit, which obligingly stop. "This is a Pamari droid. I used it to turn off one of their machines, back on the ship."
"That can't be right," Levan countered. "R2s are built in the Republic. Unless the Pamari have started buying Republic designs from the Trade Federation, which I strongly doubt, this has to belong to the ambassadors."
"Then it was acting awfully odd before," said Pirett, stepping in front of Artoo again as he tried to maneuver around the armored human. "It deceived me, and that means it must have conflicting orders. I think we should examine it more closely, sir. It might have a message inside, or something similar."
"Good thinking," Levan replied with a wry chuckle. "I knew I kept you around for something! Bring it into the storeroom, here, and we'll see if we can't figure it out."