Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 02_ Shield of Lies - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [20]
“Lando, that is not a rational expectation.”
Lando chuckled tiredly. “I know when I’m being silly,” he said. “Do you know when you’re being stuffy?”
“Master Lando—”
“What is it, Threepio?”
“Is it possible that this vessel could already have exited hyperspace, without our knowing? Perhaps we were distracted by our other activities. We may not have gone as far as you fear.”
“No,” Lando said curtly. “I’ve never heard a ship growl like this one does going in and coming out. We couldn’t have missed it. I couldn’t have, anyway. That’s something I’ve been thinking about. Thinking about how long this ship’s been jumping at shadows, hopping in and out of hyperspace. About how long it’s been since it was in for a structural inspection and an overhaul.
“I had a friend in the yard at Atzerri who showed me scanning holos of the ships that’d come through there—microfractures in the hyperdrive cage, the inner stringers, even the keel of a Dreadnaught.
“No, even if we had all the oxygen, all the water, all the hot café food we could eat, all the time we could ask for, I don’t think I’d want to hang around here long enough to hear that growl too many more times. Because someday soon, no matter how well the Qella tightened the nuts, this old crate is going to turn herself into a deep-space junkyard.”
Artoo cooed worriedly.
“I wonder where Glorious is now,” said Threepio.
“That I won’t think about,” said Lando, and laughed. “I don’t want to get depressed.” He released the hand line and floated free. “You rest if you want. Show me the map, Artoo. There’s still a lot of ship to explore.”
They found the coupling panel in the seventy-first hour of their imprisonment. It was pure luck that they did, since it appeared in a section they had already passed through twice and would not have returned to if a new passage they were marking had not brought them there.
Nearly two meters long and more than a meter wide, the round-cornered panel was inset flush in the “ceiling” of the passage. (Lando had established by fiat that the hand lines defined the “right” face of the passage and all other directions derived from it.) The panel was liberally decorated with sockets and projections of various heights, depths, and diameters, with the sockets clustered symmetrically in the center third and the projections flanking it.
“Master Lando, what do you think it is?”
“Some sort of intelligence test, maybe,” Lando said, trying to peer through one of the larger-diameter sockets. “Anyone feel up to taking it?”
“Why, it does bear some resemblance to the busy box Ambassador Nugek gave to Anakin Solo,” Threepio said. “My, how he enjoyed spinning the wheels and pushing blocks through the holes—”
“Shut up, Threepio.”
“Yes, sir.”
Lobot was carrying out his own examination of the artifact. “Twenty-four sockets, in two sizes. Eighteen projections. I can see no obvious moving parts. The metal has a high sheen and reflectivity, and no protective finish. Yet there are no scratches or scars, even in and around the sockets.”
“It looks like some sort of bus port to me,” Lando said. “Like the diag rack on the Falcon, or the maintenance cabinet on Lady Luck. Plug in here and you have access to the ship’s systems.”
“That is what you have been looking for,” said Lobot. “How likely is it that you would find it?”
“It’s the only mechanism we’ve seen in nine klicks of passageway.”
“It is the only mechanism we have been able to recognize,” said Lobot. “But the design of this vessel apparently provides for mechanisms to be concealed until they are needed. I ask you to consider why this mechanism has appeared now.”
“You tell me.”
“Most likely because the ship will shortly need whatever function this mechanism serves—”
“Which gives us a chance to slip in and take care of ourselves,” Lando said. “These couplings weren’t designed for us, but maybe we can make use of them anyway. Energy is energy—Artoo can