Star Wars_ The New Rebellion - Kristine Kathryn Rusch [96]
The Mon Calamari guard shrugged its narrow shoulders.
“Well?” General Antilles asked.
The guards looked at Cole.
He glanced at all of them before feeling that it was safe to respond. “Yes, sir. Luke Skywalker left it with me to supervise the repairs on his X-wing.”
General Antilles put a hand on top of Artoo’s dome, then let his hand slip off slowly, as if he regretted the condition Artoo was in. “You”—he said to the Kloperian—“get this little droid running again.”
“I beg your pardon, sir,” Cole said, “but Artoo has had some bad experiences with the Kloperians. He—it—he—says they tried to kidnap him a few days ago.”
The general’s eyes narrowed. “Who did this to Artoo?”
“I did,” the Kloperian said. “It was trying to escape.”
“Escape?” the general asked.
“We found these two in the middle of sabotaging the X-wing prototype,” said the female guard. “They put a detonator in the computer.”
“Artoo did that?” the general asked. “I find that hard to believe. Who are you, son, and why did you send for me?”
Cole swallowed. “My name is Cole Fardreamer, sir. I work on the X-wings normally. Luke Skywalker spoke highly of you, and I thought when they came in here that you at least would listen to me.”
“Were you sabotaging the prototype?”
Cole shook his head. “I was checking it. Artoo and I found a bomb in the Jedi Master’s X-wing, and we found another in a second reconstituted X-wing, and I thought maybe it might be in the new ones too and I was checking it when the guards appeared. They wouldn’t listen to me, sir.”
The Mon Calamari guard walked over to the X-wing and pointed at the computer. “If you examine this, sir, you’ll see what this young man and his droid were up to. There is an Imperial insignia on the back of this computer. It is a detonation unit.”
General Antilles leaned over the X-wing. He examined the computer. Cole couldn’t see his hands, didn’t know if the general was moving things he shouldn’t be. Cole’s heart was pounding.
“Be careful, sir,” he said. “The wrong move might set it off.”
“Thanks,” the general said. But he didn’t move. The entire room was hushed. Cole could hear his own breathing, and the small rustling sounds the general made. “This Imperial device is built into the computer.”
He stood. His body was thin and powerful, and he had the hardened look of a man who had seen too many fights, too many difficult days. His gaze drilled into Cole once more.
“Where did you assemble the computer?”
“I didn’t, sir. They’re ordered in bulk. We just install them.”
Then the door hissed open, and a protocol droid entered, its golden hands in the air.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear, oh dear,” it said, stopping in front of Artoo. “They’ve destroyed Artoo.”
“It can’t be as bad as all that,” a woman replied as she entered. She was small and thin, her hair flowing around her in a curtain. She wore ripped fatigue pants and a shirt that was too large for her. It took Cole a moment to recognize President Leia Organa Solo. Up close, she looked young, vulnerable, and beautiful, a princess to be sure, but not a political leader of great power. And certainly not the veteran of half a dozen battles against the Empire.
“Leia,” General Antilles said.
She glanced over at him, and smiled, but the smile only accented the exhaustion in her face. “Wedge. What are you doing here?”
“We have some kind of problem,” the general said.
“I can see that.” So far she apparently hadn’t noticed Cole. She walked over to Artoo. The protocol droid was moaning over him, alternating between accusing him of getting into the wrong mess, and worrying that he would never recover. The Chief of State crouched in front of Artoo. “Artoo?” She rubbed some of the carbon scoring off his small head. “Artoo?”
“He’s gone, Mistress Leia. The Kloperians have destroyed him.