[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(22)

“Threepio, take a look around,” Lando said. “Do you recognize this place? “

The droid’s head swiveled. “Oh. Oh, yes, I see. The Qella vagabond.

I seem to have had an accident.” He turned and clanged Artoo on the dome with his good arm. “And it’s all your fault, you good-for-nothing sabo teur. You belong in a waste compactor, along with all the other—” “No,” Lando said sharply. “It was my fault. I gave the orders. I made the mistake. I’m sorry, Threepio. I promise you, we’ll get you put back to specs as soon as we get home.”

“It is I who should apologize, Master Hambone,” said Threepio. “I am sure that my clamminess was the approximate corpse of my mishop.”

“Don’t try to talk, Threepio,” Lando said. “Just keep running your diagnostics. Your parser will map the damaged regions and relocate those functions.”

“Fairy wall, monster lambda.” The droid’s head returned jerkily to the neutral position.

Lobot shook his head in sympathy. “Lando, the test charge—if that is what it was—has been around four more times. I could see it weaken when it passed your new hole, but other than that, it did not seem to lose any strength at all. I expect that it would still be circulating if the panel had not reabsorbed it the last time it passed.”

Lando acknowledged the report with a nod. “These passages are a nearly perfect energy bottle,” he said.

“This explains a lot about the power of their weapons. It must get pretty exciting when they’re running a capacity charge through here.”

“I believe our consensus is that we have had enough excitement for now.”

“You’re right—we need to get out of here. But there’s something that has to be done first,” Lando said.

“Artoo, I was able to place the limpet on the outside of the ship. I need you to pick up its signal and make it available to Lobot.”

The little droid turned its dome away from Lando and remained mute.

“Artoo, we need to find out where we are. Step two of our plan, remember? I don’t know how long we can count on getting data from the limpet. And we don’t know how long we’ll be in realspace.”

Still the droid was silent.

“Lobot?”

Lobot cleared his throat. “Ah—Artoo just said something rude to me about your leadership ability.

Then he told me to tell you that he’s on strike.”

Working to restrain a flaring temper, Lando said evenly, “Artoo, you’re the only one of us who can receive the data from the limpet. If we don’t have that data, we can’t plan an escape. If we don’t escape soon, we’re going to run out of air, and you’re going to run out of power. Is whatever point you’re trying to make worth the four of us expiring?”

Artoo emitted one small beep.

“Receiving data,” Lobot said. “Artoo said to tell you that he’s doing it for Threepio, not for you.”

“I don’t care if he does it for the Blood Prince of Thassalia, as long as it gets done,” said Lando. “How long will it take to get a navigation fix?”

“Artoo is calculating the triangulation now,” Lobot said. “Lando, only one local star is in the spectral database. Artoo is searching for other reference stars.”

“What? Where the frack are we?”

“One moment,” Lobot said. “Coordinates zero-nine-one, zero-six-six, zero-five-two. Uncertainty due to measuring error, two percent.”

“Triple zeroes? That can’t be right. That would put us in Sector One.”

“Correct,” Lobot said. “We are presently one hundred six light-years past the border of the New Republic, in the Core. The nearest inhabited system is Prakith.”

“Prakith,” Lando repeated. “Foga Brill.”

“Excuse me?”

“At last report, Prakith was controlled by the Imperial warlord Foga Brill.”

“I see. Prakith is eight light-years away.”

“Are there any other ships out there? Any security buoys, drones, probes, anything?”

“None that the limpet can detect. However, the hull of the vagabond blocks a substantial portion of the sky.”

Lando muttered grimly, “Well, we’re sure not going to be putting out any calls for help in this neighborhood.

All right—let’s get out of this accumulator while things are still quiet. We’ll go right back through where I just came out. I don’t know quite where it puts us, but nothing bad happened the first time.”

Artoo trilled.

“What?”

“Never mind,” Lobot said. “You don’t want to hear.”