Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [51]
Artoo explained. Rather typically of Artoo’s explanations, it did not elaborate much.
“The toolkit? Oh … Under which hatch? I see.” As he crossed back to his friend and opened the requested access cover, he added, “But I’m very sure Captain Bortrek would be much handier with this than I am. Oh, very well. Which activation switch? Oh, I see. A simple backup/overwrite of original motivator settings. I still don’t see why Captain Bortrek couldn’t reset your motivators. He’s the one who altered them in the first place, you know.”
Artoo tweeped apologetically. There were a few minutes of whirring while the motivator circuits reset, then the whole core system console began to wink and flash again as Artoo did something—it looked to Threepio like he was again rerouting instructional paths for data and commands.
“He’s going to be very angry at being locked in the hold, you know,” added Threepio. “You simply must learn to be more careful, Artoo. We aren’t designed to … detach what? What switching box? Oh, that one … I’m sure Captain Bortrek would not approve.”
Another line of wibbles and beeps.
“Well, on your head be it, but it appears to me he went to a great deal of trouble to adapt you as part of the central core. I’m doing it, I’m doing it,” he added peevishly, bending awkwardly down and grasping the sonic extractor with gold fingers never designed for delicate manual work. “At least I think I’m doing it. I really think you ought to let Captain Bortrek out of the hold first, though. We’re going to reach the hyperspace target point in an hour, and we need him to take us out and navigate us into Celanon.”
He obeyed another string of commands and unfastened the cable lines from the gray switching box space taped to Artoo’s side. “What do you mean, we’re not going to Celanon? Of course we’re going to Celanon.”
A pause for more instructions. The central core chattered and shifted data in waves of green and yellow lights.
“Nim Drovis? I’m sure he has no intention of returning to the Meridian sector. And no, I can’t see the switches you’re talking about. Of course I’m looking!” He bent and squinched sideways as best he could, studying the switching box. “I don’t see anything of the kind. How should I know what a DINN looks like? The only DINN I know about is the Horansi past participle of the verb ad’n, ‘to clean one’s toenails’; the Nalros word for ‘small hard-shelled insects’; the Gamorrean adjective meaning ‘inclined to drool excessively’; Gacerian for ‘one who is always getting married and divorced’; Algar for.… Well, if you can’t describe it any better than that I’m afraid that switching box is going to stay where it is.”
Amid considerable bickering, the protocol droid laboriously followed Artoo’s instructions for detaching him from the consoles, resetting certain switches in the consoles, and reattaching Artoo’s legs. Granted the astromech retained several extraneous parts like the switching box, which See-Threepio couldn’t manage to disconnect, but at least, Threepio thought huffily, he hadn’t left any bits of Artoo in the consoles.
“It’s all very well to reroute your motivators through the central core to get around Captain Bortrek’s commands,” Threepio said when he was done. “You know perfectly well he’s just going to hook you up again.”
Experimentally, Artoo leaned forward on his third leg, and trundled, albeit with less than his customary speed and accuracy, toward the door.
Threepio followed. “You’ll have to let him out, you know, if we’re ever going to get out of hyperspace. What?” Artoo had paused in the doorway to tweep a command. “Oh, very well.” Threepio went back for the toolkit. “It’s not going to do you the slightest bit of good, you know. We’re prisoners of a thief and a criminal