Star Wars_ The Han Solo Adventures - Brian Daley [20]
“Meet your passenger,” Jessa invited.
Han’s features clouded. “You never said anything about taking a ’droid.” He looked at the aged mechanical. “What’s he run on, peat?”
“No. And I warned you there’d be details. Bollux here is one of them.” She turned to the ’droid. “Okay, Bollux, open up the fruit stand.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Bollux replied in a leisurely drawl. There was a servomotor hum, and the ’droid’s chest plastron split down the center, the halves swinging away to either side. Nestled in among the goodies that were the ’droid’s innards was a special emplacement; secured in the emplacement was another unit, a separate machine entity of some kind that was approximately cubical, with several protrusions and folded appendages. Atop it was a phtoreceptor mount, monocular lensed. The unit was painted in deep, protective, multilayered blue. The monocular came on, lighting red.
“Say hello to Captain Solo, Max,” Jessa instructed it.
The machine-within-a-machine studied Han up and down, photoreceptor angling and swiveling. “Why?” it demanded. The pitch of its vocal mechanism was like that of a child.
Jessa countered frankly, “Because if you don’t, Max, the nice man is liable to chuck your teensy iron behind out into deep space—that’s why.”
“Hello!” chirped Max, with what Han suspected to be forced cheer. “A great pleasure to make your acquaintance, Captain!”
“The parties you’re picking up need to collect and withdraw data from the computer system on Orron III,” Jessa explained. “Of course, they couldn’t just ask the Authority there for probe equipment without raising suspicions, and your walking in with Max under your arm might cause a few problems, too. But nobody’s going to bother much about an old labor ’droid. We named him Bollux because we had so many headaches restructuring his gut. We never did get his vocal pattern up to speed.
“Anyway, that cutie in Bollux’s chest cavity is Blue Max; Max because we crammed as much computer capacity into him as we could, and blue for reasons that even you, Solo, can see, I’m sure. Blue Max was a piece of work, even for us. He’s puny, but he cost plenty, even though he’s immobile and we had to leave out a lot of the usual accessories. But he’s all they’ll need to tap that data system.”
Han was studying the two machines, hoping Jessa would admit she’d been joking. He’d seen weirder gizmos in his time, but never on a passenger roster. He didn’t like ’droids very much, but decided he could live with these.
He bent down for a better squint at Blue Max. “You stay in there all the time?”
“I can function autonomously or in linkage,” Max squeaked.
“Fabulous,” Han said dryly. He tapped Bollux’s head. “Button up.” As the brown segments of plastron swung shut on Max, Han called up to Chewbacca, “Yo, partner, find a place and stow this mollusk, will you? He’s with us.” He turned back to Jessa. “Anything else? A marching band, maybe?”
She never did get to answer. Just then klaxons went off, sirens began to warble at deafening levels, and the public-address horns started paging her to the base’s command post. Everywhere in the hangar, outlaw-techs dropped their tools in a ringing barrage and dashed off frantically for emergency stations. Jessa sprinted away instantly. Han took off after her, yelling back for Chewbacca to stay with their ship.
The two crossed the complex. Humans, nonhumans, and machines charged in every direction, necessitating a good deal of dodging and swerving. The command post was a simple bunker, but at the bottom of the steps leading to it, Jessa and Han entered a well-equipped, fully manned