“Sorry.” Luke led the way forward. “Are you ready?”
“Don’t I look ready?” Ghent asked. “All I have to do is snap the omnigate back in place.”
“Oh,” Luke said. “When I saw all the circuits-“
“Standard maintenance,” Ghent interrupted. “No wonder this droid acts up. Some of those circuits haven’t been cleaned in twenty standard years. They had carbon molecules stacked a hundred moles high.”
As they drew closer, Jacen realized the slicer must have been working on R2-D2 for a couple of days straight-at least it smelled that way. In any case, Ghent had clearly not found time for a decent sanisteam lately. They stopped several paces away and watched as he snapped a circuit board back in place.
“All set.” He rocked back on his heels, then looked up and said, “I don’t think you should do this, you know.”
“You told us already,” Mara said.
Ghent’s brow rose. “I did?”
“Several times,” Luke said.
“Oh.” Ghent ran a hand over his tattooed head, then said, “It’s just that I’ve almost got the omnigate figured out. Another three weeks-no more than six, really-and I’d have it for sure. Then you could look at these files anytime you liked.”
“We don’t have six weeks.” Luke checked his chrono. “We’re due to launch in six hours.”
Ghent’s eyes widened. “That soon? I thought we had three days!”
“It has been three days,” Mara said patiently.
Ghent looked around him in a daze, then said, “I guess he was in worse shape than I thought.”
“Ghent, we really need to see that holo now,” Mara pressed gently. “A lot depends on it.”
“Yeah, I know,” Ghent said. “But I don’t think you understand. That’s the Intellex Four designer’s original back door. If we fry it before we’ve copied it, we’re destroying a whole sub-era of computer history.”
“Ghent, it’s really important,” Luke said.
The slicer sighed, then flipped R2-D2’s primary circuit breaker without saying anything more.
The droid came to life with a startled bleep, then swiveled his dome around, carefully studying the stacks of tools and discarded circuit boards around him. After a moment, he began to roll back and forth on his treads, extending various utility arms and whistling in approval.
Then R2-D2’s photoreceptor swung past Ghent’s face. He gave a startled buzz, then looked at Luke and began to back away.
“Artoo, stop it!” Luke ordered. “Come back here. We need to see what happened to my mother after my father came back from Mustafar.”
R2-D2 tweeted an explanation in machine code. Jacen was not really surprised when Ghent translated it. “He says Anakin Skywalker didn’t come back.”
“He didn’t?” Luke frowned. “What happened?”
R2-D2 remained silent for a moment, then abruptly blurted out an explanation.
“Padme went to see your father,” Ghent reported.
“Then show us that,” Luke said to R2-D2. “And no tricks. I need to see this.”
R2-D2 whistled doubtfully.
“He says-“
“Artoo, just do it,” Luke interrupted. “We’re going into combat soon, and you need time to calibrate yourself with the StealthX.”
The droid trilled an excited question.
“If Ghent thinks you’re up to it,” Luke said. “And if you don’t keep stalling.”
R2-D2 tipped forward and activated his holoprojector. The image of a green starfighter appeared on a landing platform on some distant world that could not be identified from the image. A young man in a dark robe appeared, running into the image from the direction of the starfighter. As he drew closer, it grew apparent that he was Anakin Skywalker. He appeared tired and grimy, as though he had just come from battle. That fit what he had told Padme in the last holo that Jacen and the Skywalkers had seen together: that he was going to Mustafar to end the war.
“Padme, I saw your ship,” Anakin said.
Padme appeared, entering the image from the opposite direction, and they embraced.
“Anakin!” Her back was to the holocam, but it was clear that she was trembling.
“It’s all right, you’re safe now.” Anakin looked down into her eyes. “What are you doing out here?”
“I was so worried about you!” Padme’s voice was somewhat muffled, since she was still facing away from the holocam. “Obi-Wan told me terrible things.”
Anakin’s face clouded with anger. “Obi-Wan was with you?”
“He said you’ve turned to the dark side,” Padme continued, avoiding a direct answer. “That you killed younglings.”