Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [45]
“Taking it on commission, my friend.”
Threepio turned, and Artoo swiveled his cap to align his visual receptors with the scar-lipped captain as he emerged from the airlock at their heels. He carried a huge square of plastic casing that had been a console housing, filled to overflowing with components and wire, and had a thick black remote unit in one hand.
“Commission, sir?”
He grinned a slow grin, reminding Threepio, who was not fanciful, of some semisentient species less developed from its hunting ancestors than standard humankind. “For absent owners and their—uh—heirs. There’s a lot of unrest back there in Durren. Partisans coming in out of the countryside, riots in the streets. Lots of houses being burned, lots of people getting the hell away before things get worse. Some of ’em decide now’s a good time to clean out their closets, get rid of all that excess gold and platinum they got lyin’ around. You.”
He gestured with the remote unit at Artoo. “I burned out my main navicomputer after a little difference of opinion with the Port Authorities, pox eat their lyin’ hearts. I’m gonna need you.”
Artoo hesitated and let out another protesting wail that caused Bortrek to point the remote in his direction and Threepio to admonish, “Artoo, behave yourself! If Captain Bortrek is being so good as to transport us to Cybloc XII, it’s only right that we assist him with his ship by any means in our power.”
The astromech wavered, rocking on his wheels, but Captain Bortrek had quite clearly disabled the upper level of motivators. After a despairing little meep, Artoo followed Bortrek through the door. Threepio started after them, saying, “Now, Captain Bortrek, once we reach Cybloc XII it is imperative that we get in touch with Admiral Ackbar of the Republic fleet …”
The door shut in his face. After a considerable period of time, during which he amused himself by pricing the contents of the hold at somewhere between twenty-three and twenty-eight million credits (allowing for an inflation index as a result of the unrest in the sector and fluctuations in the average price of Durren artwork), Threepio’s auditory sensors picked up the scraping and rocking of the port-to-port tunnel being retracted. Calling up a readout on the pad near the storage hold’s door—the binary language was a very simple one—Threepio ascertained that the Pure Sabacc was being put into pretravel mode.
“How very curious,” the droid remarked to himself. “I quite distinctly heard Captain Bortrek say that his navigational computer was nonfunctional.”
He addressed a few further remarks to the computer core, which when phrased in quite standard codes caused the mechanism to blurt everything it knew on any number of subjects in a succession of high-speed bursts. It took Threepio a few seconds to download the bursts from his temporary holding memory and process the information into existing systemic memory, but when he did, he felt as close to outrage as a well-programmed protocol droid is capable of being.
“Why, that course that’s being laid in is nowhere near Cybloc XII!” he exclaimed. “The man is a thief! We’re being stolen!”
“The entire mission has disappeared.” Mon Mothma, guiding spirit of the Rebellion and former Chief of State of the Provisional Government, held her wasted hands close to the semicircular iron fender of the hearth, and the flame outlined her fingers in threads of amber light.
Han Solo, though he’d come to know the tall, beautiful woman well over the past several years, still felt in awe of her. Her picture was everywhere, in histories of the Rebellion and of the last days of the Empire. It was like sitting across the fire from a god of ancient legend, or finding oneself in the same room with smashball center guard Rip “Iron One” Calkin who’d made seven hundred last season.