Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [10]
“Ha!” Han said, clapping his hands once, then rubbing them together in anticipation. “Now who’s losing?”
“Oh, Threepio,” Leia said sympathetically, hiding a smile behind her hand.
C-3PO’s photoreceptors were riveted to the board, but disbelief was evident in his response. “What? What? Is that permitted?” He looked up from the table. “Princess Leia, that move can’t possibly be legal!”
Han leaned forward, his eyebrows beetled. “Show me where the rules say different.”
C-3PO stammered. “Bending the rules is one thing, but this … this is a flagrant violation not only of the rules, but also of proper game etiquette! At the very least, you have performed a suspect move, and very likely a rogue one!”
“Good choice of words, Threepio,” Leia said.
Han leaned away from the table, interlocking his hands behind his head and whistling a taunting melody.
“I suggest we allow Princess Leia to be the final judge,” C-3PO said.
Han made a sour face. “Ah, you’re just a sore loser.”
“A sore loser? Why, I never—”
“Admit it and I’ll go easy on you for the rest of the game.”
C-3PO summoned as much indignation as his protocol programming allowed. “You have my assurance that I’ve no need to emerge victorious from each engagement. Whereas you, on the other hand—”
Han laughed sharply, startling the droid to silence. “Threepio, if I’ve told you once I’ve told you a thousand times: you always have to be ready for surprises.”
“Pompous man,” C-3PO said. When Cakhmaim and Meewalh added their gravelly comments and guttural laughs to the merriment, he threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat. “Oh, what’s the use!”
Abruptly, a warning tone sounded from the engineering station across the hold. The Noghri shot to their feet, but Leia propelled herself from the dejarik table’s arc of padded bench and beat both of them to the communications display.
Han watched expectantly from the game board.
“A surprise?” he asked when Leia turned from the displays.
She shook her head. “The signal we’ve been waiting for.”
Han rushed from the table and followed Leia into the starboard ring corridor, where he nearly tripped over a pair of knee-high boots he had left on the step. Early in his career as a smuggler, the Falcon had been the only home he knew, and now—this past year especially—it had become the only home Han and Leia knew. Whether in their living quarters or in the forward hold, personal items were strewn about, waiting to be picked up and put away. The mess was just that, in desperate need of cleaning—maybe even fumigating. And indeed the dented and bruised exterior of the old freighter, with its mishmash of primers and fuse-welded borrowed parts, was beginning to resemble that of a house, well loved and lived in but too long neglected.
Han slid to a halt just short of the connector that accessed the cockpit, and swung to the Noghri.
“Cakhmaim, get to the dorsal gun turret. And this time remember to lead your targets—even though I know it goes against your grain. Meewalh, I’m going to need you here to help our packages get safely aboard.”
In the outrigger cockpit, with its claustrophobic surround of blinking instruments, Leia was already cinched into the copilot’s chair, both hands busy activating the Falcon’s startup systems and console displays. Han slid into the pilot’s seat, strapping in with one hand and throwing overhead toggles with the other.
“Can we locate them yet?”
“They’re on the move,” Leia said. “But I’ve got a fix on them.”
Han leaned over to study one of the display screens. “Lock their coordinates into the tracking computer, and let’s get the topographic sensors on-line.”
Leia swiveled to the comm board, her hands moving rapidly over the controls.