Star Wars_ Planet of Twilight - Barbara Hambly [52]
Artoo made no reply. Instead he made his way to the smaller of the two airlocks, where he issued a whole new string of commands to Threepio involving the removal of another access hatch and the reattachment—by temporary clips, this time—of his data couplers and ports to the main trunkline of the central core.
“Artoo, what are you doing?” demanded Threepio irritably. “This is really outside of enough! Captain Bortrek will be awake by this time, if you restored the oxygen to his hold, and will be most displeased! I shouldn’t be surprised if he sold you by the pound for scrap.”
Still no reply, except the heavy clank of the outer airlock door locking. The small comm screen flickered, displaying a view of the empty bridge. “Really, the ideas you get in your head …” Threepio turned away, and tried the door. “What?” he demanded irritably, to Artoo’s imperative beep. “Come back to the screen? If as you say you’ve let Captain Bortrek out, why would you need me to …”
On the main bridge, visible through the viewscreen, Captain Bortrek came slamming through the doors in a violently disagreeable mood. At the sight of the patched-up wires and systems where Artoo had been he began to curse, with great vehemence and little imagination and continued to curse until, at Artoo’s urging, Threepio called his name four or five times.
Swiveling where he stood, Bortrek faced the screen with eyes red and bulging with rage. “You stinkin’ little garbage can!” he screamed. “You don’t think I can see where you are? I’m gonna come there and …”
He strode to the door and almost broke his nose on it when it would not open.
“Artoo!” cried Threepio. “Tell the core system to open that door for him at once!”
Artoo-Detoo made an apologetic noise, then issued another set of instructions.
“You want me to say what?”
It took quite some time to get Captain Bortrek’s attention; even more, to wait until he ran out of breath and ceased his wholly anthropomorphic remarks on the droids’ parentage, ancestry, reproductive proclivities, and ultimate destination, in terms impossible to apply to droids and probably not even to the human-appearing synthdroids of which he had seemed so fond.
“Captain Bortrek, I am terribly, terribly sorry,” said Threepio. “I apologize wholeheartedly for my counterpart here, and I am overcome with embarrassment at his behavior. But he requests that when we emerge from hyperspace, you …” He hesitated, knowing that the words would evoke yet another spate of furious imprecations. “He requests that when we emerge from hyperspace you proceed by the most direct route to Nim Drovis, and there land and let us out.”
Threepio found he was absolutely right about the effect of his words, though he felt that Captain Bortrek’s commentary on himself was hardly fair, considering he was only Artoo’s translator. A certain allowance should be made, of course, for the disinhibiting effects of alcohol, gylocal, and hyperdrive coolant on the human system.
“I’m terribly sorry, sir,” he said, when the irritated captain had once again shouted himself breathless. “I simply don’t know what’s gotten into him. He says that if you do not comply, the moment we are clear of hyperspace he will flood the entire ship with carbon dioxide again and, when you are unconscious, send out a distress signal to the Galactic Patrol. Those are his words, not mine,” Threepio added, in the face of more unfair adjurations and implications. “None of this was my idea at all.”
“You stinkin’ hunks of scrap metal!” screamed Captain Bortrek, whose face had returned to the rather livid hue of cyanosis despite the 20.78 percent oxygen present in the cabin. “You think you’re gonna get the better of me? I can rewire this crate in twenty-five minutes and pull the