Star Wars_ Millennium Falcon - James Luceno [22]
“Good,” Taunt started to say, then stopped himself, all color draining from his face. “Decree had us retask the droids to their original programming.”
Heet stared blankly.
“Their original programming is to disable Republic vessels!”
The three of them swung as one to the viewport.
A choice epithet flew from the pilot. “The escort's flying right into their midst!”
“Warn them away!” Taunt said. “Tell them we have a radiation leak!”
“Overseer, this is Second Chance,” the pilot said into the mike. “It would be better if we came to you—But—But—No, that's not the case—It's—” Turning to Taunt, he said: “They suspect a trick. They're threatening to open fire.”
For a moment, Taunt couldn't get his vocal cords to work. “How much time until the escort reaches the droids?”
The pilot brought a magnified view of the ship to one of the displays. You didn't have to be a technical wiz to grasp that the spherical sabotage droids were already maneuvering toward the escort.
“They're penetrating the deflector shield. Attaching!”
Taunt stumbled backward into the copilot's chair, which nearly collapsed beneath him.
The cockpit fell eerily silent, except for deliberate tones issuing from the communications suite. Then, without warning, an explosion blossomed in front of the YT and nova-bright light flooded through the viewport.
In the early days, there wasn't a sacrifice he wouldn't make for the Falcon—even if that meant flying halfway across the galaxy risking his and Chewbacca's lives to rescue a man from prison in exchange for equipping the YT with an upgraded guidance system, a new rectenna, and a hyperdrive that would allow the ship to make 0.5 past lightspeed.
The trip to the Corporate Sector was the first real voyage he and the Wookiee had made with the Falcon, shortly after he had won it from Lando at Cloud City. The first of their grand adventures. The idea had been to visit Klaus “Doc” Vandangante, an outlaw tech who knew better than just about anyone how to get the most out of a ship. The problem was that Doc had gone and gotten himself arrested and imprisoned in Stars' End on Orron III, and Doc's gorgeous blond daughter, Jessa, had made Doc's rescue part and parcel of the agreement to upgrade the Falcon.
Doing that had required having the Falcon masquerade as the brain of an ungainly barge, which had so slowed the jump to Orron III that he and Chewie were practically at each other's throats by the time the cumbersome vessel emerged from hyperspace. But the tedious journey had left him feeling proud of the fact that he was in some way responsible for having rescued the old freighter from a life of such duties. In the same way the Falcon had saved him from a life of having to pilot gaudy ships for the Hutts and other degenerates.
Over the years, as the sacrifices he made for the ship had mounted up, he came to think of himself as bound to the Falcon as surely as he was bound to Chewie and, later, to Leia. All the chances they had taken together, all the danger they had put themselves through, all the sacrifices they had made for each other.
ZAMAEL ARCHIPELAGO, DEEP CORE
43 YEARS AFTER THE BATTLE OF YAVIN
ALLANA SOLO SAT ON THE RIM OF THE MAIN HOLD MAINTENANCE access, her thin legs dangling over the edge of the open hatch.
“Tell her to try it now,” Han called from somewhere deep in the innards of the ship.
Allana cupped her hands to her mouth and turned toward the cockpit. “Grandma, he says to try it now.”
A moment later the Falcon's sublight engine loosed a whining groan but failed to come to life. In the compartment Han muttered a barely inaudible, truncated curse.
“One hundred and eighteen,” C-3PO said from behind Allana, who shifted slightly to look at him. “This is the one hundred and eighteenth time since it has been my privilege to serve aboard the Millennium Falcon that this very same event has occurred. Or events of a similar nature, I should say.”
Allana smiled. “That's a good thing.”
The protocol droid cocked his head to one side, as if he hadn't quite heard her. “I'm not certain