Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [122]
Jadak studied the navicomputer, which still retained its original alloy faceplate with the name RUBICON in raised letters across the top. Spots of rust had formed around the bolts that fastened it to the bulkhead, but the keyboard was relatively new.
Jadak gazed at the raised letters. “Rubicon,” he said softly.
Digging into his pocket, he pulled out a scrap of flimsi on which were scrawled some of his attempts at deciphering the mnemonic phrase Senator Des'sein had had him memorize.
He gazed again at the navicomputer, then studied the handwritten phrase. His forefinger moved across the flimsi.
“R … u … b … i … c …”
His heart began to race. He stared at the flimsi. “Restore,” he said quietly. His finger moved over the letters. “R … e … s—” He stopped. “Reset? Reset … Rubicon …” He looked from the flimsi to the navicomputer and back again. “Reset Rubicon to …”
Some of the keyboard tabs were marked with numbers and letters. Had the mnemonic phrase been designed to remind the bearer to reset the Rubicon to the numbers represented by the nine letters that made up the final two words? If so, did the numbers represent time–space coordinates or was the numerical sequence itself a cipher?
In either case, he didn't expect the Falcon to respond, much less alter course—not while traveling through hyperspace. But it was possible that the navicomputer would furnish him with the name or the star map coordinates of the treasure world.
If at least that much happened, Jadak would have no further use for the Falcon. The Solos could drop him and Poste at Toprawa and be on their merry way to Nar Shaddaa or wherever else, and he and Poste could begin to figure out how to raise enough credits to finance an expedition to the treasure world.
Centering himself over the keyboard, Jadak hit the RESET button and used both his forefingers to enter the nine-digit code. The navicomputer chimed in response, but neither a name nor coordinates appeared in the display screen.
Instead he heard a pained cry issue from elsewhere in the ship.
* * *
Anyone observing Han as he whirled and high-stepped his way through the Falcon's port ring corridor might have assumed that he was executing a rather sloppy interpretation of the Sacorrian Jig, which had enjoyed a brief revival in popularity on Corellia in the years after the Battle of Yavin. But in fact Han was attempting to yank from his trousers pocket the archaic transponder Allana had discovered weeks earlier, which was just now needling his upper thigh with a series of painful electric shocks.
Bouncing the device in his cupped hand when he finally managed to withdraw it, he was on the verge of smashing it underfoot when it suddenly calmed down.
By then Jadak had hurried from the cockpit and was standing in the center of the main hold when Han and Poste appeared from one side and Leia, Allana, and the protocol droid appeared from the other, none of them looking very happy.
“Kriffing thing went off in my pants!” Han shouted.
Leia gestured. “Maybe Mag or whatever his real name is can explain.”
Jadak heard a sound he had thought he would never hear again— the snap-hiss! of a lightsaber being activated—and all at once he and Poste were being forced back toward the hologame table's arc of acceleration couch.
“Down,” Leia said. “Both of you.”
Poste sat, and Jadak followed suit.
“Last time I saw one of those it was dangling from the belt of Jedi Master J'oopi Shé,” he told Leia.
Her expression turned quizzical. “What?”
“What's going on?” Han said, glancing from Jadak to his wife.
“Tell him, Threepio.”
C-3PO raised an arm and pointed to Poste. “Captain Solo,