[Dark Nest] - 1(12)
“Threepio!” Leia spun around to glare at him. “We don’t need help. Go to the main cabin and shut down.”
C-3PO’s chin dropped. “As you wish, Princess Leia.” He stood and half turned toward the exit. “I was only trying to help. Captain Solo’s last medical evaluation showed a reaction time decrease of eight milliseconds, and I myself have noticed-“
Leia unbuckled her crash webbing.
“-that he seems to be growing-“
She rose and hit the droid’s circuit breaker.
“-rather hesiii t a a a.”
The sentence trailed off into a bass rumble as C-3PO lost power.
“I think it’s time to get his compliance routines debugged.” She pushed the droid into the seat in front of the navigation station and strapped him in. “He seems to be developing a persistence glitch.”
“No need.” The Falcon shot to the right, then shuddered as a dustberg burst against its shields. “Nobody listens to droids anyway.”
“Right-what does Threepio know?” Leia kissed Han on the neck, then returned to her own seat.
“Yeah.” Han smiled the same hungry grin that had been making Leia’s stomach flutter since Palpatine was Emperor.
Han swung the Falcon in behind the lights and began a steep approach toward the surface. The array began to flash more brightly, illuminating the rough, silvery surface of a metallic asteroid. On the ground behind the first beacon, Leia saw the swirling lines of a closed iris hatch, made from some tough membrane that bulged slightly outward under the pressure of the asteroid’s internal atmosphere. The light itself was held aloft on the end of a conical, meter-long stand that seemed to be crawling across the surface of the asteroid on six stick-like legs. At the forward end of the apparatus, the lenses of a large ovoid helmet reflected the glow of the next beacon in line.
“Bugs!” Han groaned and shook his head. “Why did it have to be bugs?”
“Sorry,” Leia said. Han normally avoided insect nests - something to do with a water religion he had once started on the desert world of Kamar. Apparently, a mob of angry Kamarian insects had tracked him down months after his hasty departure, taking him captive and demanding that he turn Kamar into the water paradise he had shown them. That was all Leia knew about the incident. He refused to talk about how he had escaped. “It’ll be okay. Luke seems to feel comfortable with them.”
“Yeah, well, I always knew the guy was a little strange.”
“Han, we have to go in,” Leia said. “This is where Jaina and the others came.”
“I know,” Han said. “That’s what really gives me the creeps.”
They reached the end of the array and passed over the insect holding aloft the amber light; then Leia glimpsed a second iris hatch and they left the asteroid behind. Far ahead, spiraling down the walls of the ever-narrowing passage, three more beacon lines flared to life. Han stayed close to the walls, showing off for Leia by following the contour of the conglomeration’s unpredictable topography.
After a time, the arrays began to grow hazy and indistinct as the dust, being slowly drawn inward by the conglomeration’s weak gravity, thickened into a gray cloud. Han continued to hug the wall, though now it was to make it easier for the terrain scanner to penetrate the powdery fog.
A nebulous disk of golden light appeared at the bottom of the shaft. As its glow brightened, Leia began to see meter-long figures in insect-shaped pressure suits working along the passage walls, dragging huge bundles across asteroid surfaces, repairing the stony tubes that held the jumbled structure together, or simply standing in a shallow basin and staring out at her from behind a transparent membrane.
“You know, Han,” she said, “this place is starting to give me the creeps.”
“Wait till you hear a pincer rap,” Han said. “Those things will really ice your spine.”
“Pincer rap?” Leia glanced over at the pilot’s seat, wondering if there was something Han wasn’t telling her. “Han, do you recognize-“
Han cut her off. “No-I’m just saying…” He raised his shoulders and shuddered at some memory he had kept buried their entire married life, then finished, “It’s not something you want to experience. That’s all.”
The dust cloud finally began to thin, revealing the disk of light below to be a bulging hatch membrane more than a hundred meters across. Several dozen insects were scuttling away from the middle of the hatch, oozing a thick layer of greenish gel from a valve at the rear of their pressure suits. Han eased back on the throttles, then-when the portal showed no sign of opening - brought them to a stop twenty meters above the center.