THE PARADISE SNARE(11)
Yeah, and when I’m the best pilot around, and I’ve made lots of credits, I’ll apply to the Imperial Academy. I’ll become a Naval officer. Then I’ll come back and get Shrike, arrest him, and he’ll get sent to the spice mines on Kessel. He’ll die there … The thought made Han’s mouth curl up in a predatory smile.
At the far end of his fantasy, Han pictured himself, successful, respected, the best pilot in the galaxy, with a ship of his own, lots of loyal friends, and plenty of credits. And … a family. Yeah, a family of his own. A beautiful wife who adored him, who’d share adventures with him, and kids, maybe. He’d be a good father. He wouldn’t abandon his children, the way he’d been abandoned …
At least, Han supposed that he’d been abandoned, though he couldn’t remember a thing about it. He didn’t even know his last name, so he couldn’t try to trace his family. Or maybe … maybe his parents hadn’t abandoned him…
Maybe they’d been killed, or he’d been kidnapped away from them. Han decided that he preferred that scenario. If he thought of his parents as dead, he wasn’t so mad at them, because people couldn’t help it if they died, right?
Han decided that from now on, he’d think of his mother and father as dead It was easier that way…
He knew he’d probably never know the real truth. The only person who knew anything about Han’s background was Garris Shrike. The captain kept telling Han that if he was good, if he worked and begged hard, if he earned enough credits, someday Shrike would tell him the secrets behind how he’d come to be wandering the streets of Corellia that day.
Han’s mouth tightened. Sure, Captain, he thought. Just like you were going to get Danalis’s face fixed …
The child glanced up at the street signs. He couldn’t read the ones in the native language, but there was a Basic translation beneath each.
Yeah, this was his territory, all right.
Han took a deep breath, then rearranged his features. A green skinned female clad in a short robe was coming toward him. “Lady …” he whined, cringing his way toward her, little hand held out in appeal, please, beautiful gracious lady, I beg your help … alms, just one little credit, I’m so hungreeeeee …”
The little cupped green ears swiveled toward him, then she averted her head and swept past.
Under his breath, Han muttered an uncomplimentary term in smuggler’s argot, and then turned to wait for the next mark …
Han shook his head and forced himself out of his reverie. Time to go and check on the Ylesian Dream’s progress.
Hauling himself up out of his cubbyhole, the young pilot made his way through the cramped passageways until he reached the bridge. The astromech droid was still there, its lights flashing away as it “thought” its own thoughts. It was a relatively new R2 unit, still shiny-bright silver and green, with a clear dome atop its head. Inside the dome Han could see lights blinking as it worked. It was hooked into the ship’s robot controls by means of a cable.
The R2 droid must have been equipped with a motion sensor, because it swiveled its domed “head” toward Han as he clumped boldly onto the bridge in his spacesuit.
The lights flashed frantically as it “talked,” but of course the sound waves didn’t travel in vacuum. Han turned on his suit’s communications unit, and suddenly his helmet was filled with distressed bleeps, blurps, and wheeps.
“Whee… bleewheeeep.., wheep-whirr-wheep!” the R2 astromech announced in evident surprise. Han looked around for its counterpart droid and didn’t see one. He sighed. His suit’s communicator would transmit what he said to the droid, but how was he supposed to actually talk to the consarned R2 without an interpreter? How did whoever had programmed the droid talk to it?
He activated his suit communicator. “Hey, you!”
“Blurpp… wheeep, bleep-whirrr!” the unit replied helpfully.
Han scowled and cursed at the unit in Rodian, trader argot, and, finally, Basic. “What am I going to do now?” he snarled. “If only you had a Basic-speech module.”
“But I do, sir,” announced the droid in a matter-of-fact voice. Its words were flat, mechanical, but perfectly understandable.
Han gaped at the machine for a moment, then grinned. “Hey! This is a first! How come you can talk?”
“Because there was not room aboard this vessel for both an astromech unit and a counterpart unit, my masters programmed me with a Basic-speech transmissions module so I could communicate more easily,” the droid replied.
“All right!” Han cried, feeling a surge of relief. He didn’t like droids much, but at least he’d have someone to talk to, and it might actually prove necessary for the two of them to communicate. Space travel was usually routine, and safe … but there were exceptions.