Star Wars_ Children of the Jedi - Barbara Hambly [88]
And yes, the air in the Plawal Rift was extraordinarily damp, plastering Leia’s dark linen shirt to her arms and back as she leaned on the railing of the terrace where Han and the Wookiee were working to take advantage of the daylight—Jevax’s promised engineers had yet to arrive to repair power in the house and completely unstick the welded shutters. If they worked on anything like the MuniCenter’s schedules, thought Leia, they wouldn’t see them until the packing plants shut down for the night again.
And yes, secondhand machinery not designed specifically for work in hyperdamp climates did develop the occasional flutter.
But presumably the mechanics would install dehumidifier packs in everything—they were certainly present in all the kitchen’s quaintly old-fashioned blenders and choppers. And Artoo had spent considerable time in the marshes of Dagobah without becoming homicidal, a restraint of which Leia wasn’t sure she would be capable, after hearing Luke’s account of that green, snake-ridden world.
As her old nanny had phrased it, something about it all just didn’t listen right to her.
Whatever programmers said, thought Leia, perching herself on the stone rail of the balcony, a “mechanical flaw” might possibly account for Artoo’s running amok and trundling off the path into the trees … but by no stretch of the imagination could it cause him to perform a complicated series of specific activities like closing doors, sealing locks, crossing wires within wall panels and blasters.
It was definitely Artoo: The serial numbers on his main block and motivator housing matched. Chewbacca—his arms and shoulders crisscrossed with strips shaven in his fur and synthflesh patched in beneath but otherwise little the worse for the events in the caverns last night—hadn’t found any kind of relay mechanism inserted into Artoo’s motivators that would have given him instructions from the outside.
And in any case, when would such a thing have been installed? He hadn’t been out of Leia’s sight last night for more than a few moments, and for part of that time she’d heard him moving.
“So whaddaya think?” Han wiped his fingers on an already unspeakable rag.
Chewbacca pushed back his eyeshades and groaned noncommittally. The Wookiee had reassembled the engines of the Millennium Falcon when they’d been in worse shape than this and the thing had flown; Leia, regarding the loose piles of wire and cable still spread around the stone flagging of the terrace, had her doubts.
Artoo rocked a little on his base and managed a faint, reassuring cheep.
“What did you think you were …?” began Han, and Leia reached over to touch his shoulder, stopping further words. Artoo had to be feeling utterly wretched already.
“Can you tell us about it?” she asked gently.
Artoo rocked harder, swiveled his top, and beeped pleadingly.
“Can he tell us about it?” demanded Han. “I can tell you about it! He tried to kill us!”
The droid emitted a thin, despairing wail.
“It’s all right,” said Leia. She knelt beside Artoo, touched the droid on the joint of base pivot and body, disregarding her husband’s muttered commentary. “I’m not mad at you, and I won’t let anything happen to you.” She glanced over her shoulder at Han and Chewie, a sinister-enough-looking pair, she supposed, leaned against the stone railing with their arms full of drills and grippers. “What happened?”
All Artoo’s lights went out.
Leia turned back to Chewie, who had pushed his welding goggles back onto his high forehead. “Are you sure you got his wiring back the way it’s supposed to be?”
“Hey, he works, doesn’t he?” retorted Han.
Leia stepped back while Chewbacca knelt and went to work again. Though not much of a mechanic—Luke had taught her to break and reassemble a standard X-wing engine in a pinch, and on a good day she could even identify portions of the Falcon’s drive system—Leia had the impression the Wookiee was redoing some of the repairs he’d done half an hour ago. But Han and Chewie, like Luke, were mechanics, and thought in terms of mechanical failure.
She found herself