Star Wars_ The New Rebellion - Kristine Kathryn Rusch [151]
“My personal army,” Brakiss said. “I won’t hesitate to use them unless you tell me why Skywalker sent you.”
“Skywalker?”
“That protocol droid belongs to his sister. The astromech droid belongs to him. If you value your life, you will tell me what he has planned.”
“Nothing,” Cole said with complete honesty. “I’m here alone.”
Brakiss tilted his head as if he were listening to all the things Cole hadn’t said.
“Traveling alone across the galaxy is dangerous, Fardreamer.”
Cole managed a smile. “I’m beginning to realize that,” he said.
Forty
Droids often came from places like this.
Therefore Artoo-Detoo did not swivel his head as he looked out of the freighter. It was obvious that he was not surprised by what he saw.
He opened the back hatch and rolled out. Once he was on the ground, he began swiveling his head, searching for something.
Artoo raised his video sensor and scanned the area. Then his head swiveled toward the astromech area, eighty meters to his left. He rolled down the concrete walk. Clearly this entire place had been designed for droids.
At the edge of the walk, he encountered See-Ninepio. Brakiss had sent Ninepio to intercept Artoo just before Brakiss came out to greet Cole.
“I say,” Ninepio said. “You’re not one of ours, are you?”
Artoo didn’t answer.
“So really, you should go elsewhere to be recommissioned. I’m certain they could have done it on Coruscant.”
Artoo sped up. The door to the astromech building was shut. Artoo’s video sensor scanned for other entrances.
The astromech building appeared to be underutilized. With the upgrading of X-wings and other ships to do without astromech units, it made sense. But astromech units had other uses besides navigation. The upgraded units had to be manufactured somewhere.
Artoo veered to the left, following the walkway down. The C-9PO hurried after him.
“That facility is off-limits to old droids!” Ninepio said. “You must stop immediately.”
Artoo continued. The decline caused him to speed up even more. He was going slightly faster than usual. The protocol droid couldn’t keep up.
“My master instructed me to have you wait,” Ninepio said with some alarm.
The path forked and Artoo took the right fork this time. It led to an open door. He zoomed inside, put down his brake, and stopped.
Ninepio was still yelling. “The recommission area is aboveground.” It repeated the phrase several times, and then it said, as if speaking to itself, “R2 units. How dreadful. They never listen to their betters.”
Artoo leaned against the wall. He used a tiny glowlight beam to scan for a computer. The computer on the wall was merely a door panel. Whoever had designed this moon had done so with droids in mind.
He couldn’t jack in.
The protocol droid’s prissy voice floated down to him. “I saw it disappear down this path. I believe we must conduct a search for it. It’s not acting rationally.”
Artoo used a glowlight to scan the room. Mostly junk, scrapped equipment, and piles of corroded wire. Another door stood open at the end. He rolled toward the door. Ninepio’s voice grew fainter.
Artoo plunged deeper into Telti’s droid factory, heading into the unknown, alone and unassisted.
It hadn’t taken Leia too long to reach Almania. She had circled the planet for some time before she got another sense of Luke. Then she found a docking bay near the area where she had felt his presence. The bay was perfect for the Alderaan: the right size, the right construction, even the right weight restrictions. She slid her ship into the bay with no trouble at all.
She sat very quietly in the darkness, waiting for something to go wrong. She was so nervous that she didn’t trust what she was feeling.
She was feeling that the entire planet was wrong somehow, that something was completely off-kilter. She had felt that ever since she had slipped into the atmosphere, beneath their sensors, undetected and unwatched.
That had bothered her. They were sending ships after her fleet, and they weren’t watching their own skies? It felt like a trick Vader might pull, a