Star Wars_ The Jedi Academy Trilogy 02_ Dark Apprentice - Kevin J. Anderson [14]
Threepio raised a golden arm. “Over here,” he said. “Master Solo, over here!”
“Daddy!” Jaina said. Jacen echoed her a fraction of a second later.
“Thank heavens,” Threepio said, and started to unfasten the restraints.
“Get ready to go,” Han said as he marched forward, his expression unaccountably troubled. Threepio reached forward, about to begin his litany of complaints, but Han dropped the bulky turbo-skis into the droid’s arms.
“Master Solo, is something wrong?” Threepio tried to balance the heavy skis.
“Sorry to cut your vacation short, kids, but we have to get back home,” Han said, ignoring the droid.
Threepio straightened. “I’m very glad to hear that, sir. I don’t mean to complain, but I was not designed for temperature extremes.”
He felt an impact against the back of his head as a large lump of snow splattered him. “Oh!” he said, raising his arms in alarm, barely managing to keep hold of the skis. “Master Solo, I must protest!” he said.
Jacen and Jaina giggled as they each picked up another snowball to throw at the droid.
Han turned to the twins. “Stop playing with Threepio, you two. We have to get back home.”
Down in the repair bays of the revamped Imperial Palace on Coruscant, Lando Calrissian couldn’t imagine how Chewbacca managed to cram his enormous furry body inside the Falcon’s narrow maintenance crawlway. Standing in the corridor, Lando saw the Wookiee as a tangle of brown fur wedged between the emergency power generator, the acceleration compensator, and the anticoncussion field generator.
Chewbacca let out a yowl as he dropped a hydrospanner. The tool bounced and fell with a series of ricocheting clangs until it landed in a completely inaccessible spot. The Wookiee snarled and then let out a yelp as he banged his shaggy head on a coolant pipe.
“No, no, Chewbacca!” Lando said, brushing back his sleek cape and sticking his arm into the maintenance crawlway. He tried to point toward the circuitry. “That goes here, and this goes there!” Chewbacca grumbled back, disagreeing.
“Look, Chewie, I know this ship like the back of my hand, too. I owned her for quite a few years, you know.”
Chewbacca made a string of ululating sounds that echoed inside the enclosed chamber.
“All right, have it your way. I can work the access hatches on the outside hull. I’ll retrieve your hydrospanner. Who knows what other junk we’ll find there?”
Lando turned and made his way to the entry ramp, stomping down into the cacophony of shouted requests and engine noises in the starship mechanic bay. The air smelled oily and stifling, tainted with gaseous coolants and exhaust fumes from small diplomatic shuttles to large freighters. Human and alien engineers worked on their ships. Stubby Ugnaughts clambered inside access hatches and chattered at each other, requesting tools and diagrams for fixing troublesome engines.
Admiral Ackbar’s carefully picked crew of Calamarian starship mechanics oversaw special modifications to small vessels in the New Republic fleet. Terpfen, Ackbar’s chief mechanic, wandered from ship to ship, status board in hand, verifying requested repairs and scrutinizing the work with his glassy fish eyes.
Lando pried open the access hatch on the Falcon’s outer hull. The hydrospanner clattered out and fell into his outstretched hands, along with burned-out cyberfuses, a discarded hyperdrive shunt, and the wrapper from a package of dehydrated food.
“Got it, Chewbacca,” he shouted. The Wookiee’s answer was muffled inside the cramped access hatch.
Lando looked at the scorch marks along the Falcon’s battered hull. The ship seemed to be one massive collection of patches and repairs. He ran a callused hand along the hull, caressing the metal.
“Hey! What are you doing to my ship?”
Lando jerked his hand away from the Falcon and looked around guiltily to see Han Solo approaching.