Star Wars_ The New Rebellion - Kristine Kathryn Rusch [36]
“This is a restricted area,” the boy said. He wasn’t much older than Luke had been when his aunt and uncle died.
“I know,” Luke said. “I was sent by Orders and Requisitions. Apparently you have my X-wing down here.”
The boy shrugged. “If we do, we’re working on it. It’ll be done as soon as we can get to it.”
“It’s not supposed to be here.”
“You’ll need to take that up with Orders—”
“Look.” Luke stepped into the light, his Jedi cloak flowing behind him. “I don’t have time for this kind of runaround. I need the X-wing this afternoon. I was told it’s in pieces—”
“Then you won’t get it until it’s done. I’m sorry. Orders should never have sent you down here.”
“Perhaps not,” Luke said. “But they did. Let’s see if we can resolve this, shall we?”
The boy looked up. Apparently he hadn’t expected Luke to be reasonable. Artoo moved closer. “Your astromech unit shouldn’t be here either, you know.”
“I know,” Luke said. “But I need my X-wing today. Artoo works it with me.”
The boy pursed his lips as if the idea disgusted him. “You really didn’t plan to have your X-wing here, did you?”
“No,” Luke said. “Just regular maintenance, as I always do when I come to Coruscant.”
“Didn’t you see the memo from General Antilles?”
Wedge? What had Wedge to do with Luke’s X-wing? “Apparently not,” Luke said.
“Routine maintenance includes upgrading all X-wings to current clean fighter status.”
“That sounds costly,” Luke said.
The boy frowned. “Where did you say you came from?”
“I didn’t,” Luke said. “Where can I find Wedge?”
“General Antilles?” The boy gasped at Luke’s forwardness.
“I don’t know. I’ve never spoken to the man. Do you know him?”
Luke grinned. “A bit. We were in the same squadron at the Battle of Yavin.”
The boy dropped his rag. “Forgive me, sir. I had no idea. I—uh—I can leave a message for him on the system.”
“I can contact him myself if you just lead me to my ship.”
“Sir, the area is restricted.”
“We’ve been through this before,” Luke said. “My name is Luke Skywalker. All I want is to see the state of my X-wing and—”
“Luke Skywalker?” The boy’s voice squeaked. “The Jedi Knight? Why didn’t you say so in the first place, sir? I would have pulled some strings.”
“It’s not the Jedi way to take unfair advantage,” Luke said, although that wasn’t precisely true. “Let’s check on the X-wing, shall we?”
The boy punched up some codes in the computer, then wiped his hands on his brown mechanic’s pants. “If you’ll follow me, sir.”
Luke crossed the main bay. Artoo followed.
“You might want to leave your astromech unit here, sir. The equipment in the new X-wing bay isn’t droid-friendly, at least for R2 units.”
“Will he be in any danger?”
“No, sir, but the Kloperians don’t really like R2 units.”
“He noticed that the first time he was down here. Apparently he was imprisoned for a while.”
“Imprisoned?” the boy glanced over his shoulder. “Forgive me, sir, but you can’t imprison a droid.”
The boy thought Luke was being dramatic. Luke folded his hands over his robe, rather like Ben used to do. “He’s more than a droid,” Luke said. “Just like my X-wing is more than a tactical fighter.”
The smell of X-wing cleaning solvent was strong inside the new bay. More X-wing pieces were scattered about some already-reassembled ships. The new ships were streamlined. The long nose cone remained the same, but the area in the back that housed the astromech droids was gone.
The hair tingled on the back of Luke’s scalp. “Tell me about General Antilles’s order.”
“It came down last year, sir, after the prototype of the new X-wing arrived here. The new design works better in battle. It combines the computer system and the astromech unit into one complete system.”
“But that was tried a long time ago, and they discovered that if the unit broke down, the pilot was in grave danger.”
The boy shrugged. “They’ve overcome that bug, sir. The changes in droid and computer technology just in the last six months have been astonishing. We can do things that we’ve never been able to do before. Where’ve you been that you didn