For a man like Han, who measured his personal freedom by distance and speed, there was nothing more frightening than being immobilized. The way the ship shuddered unnaturally in the pull of the tractor beam carved a hollow terror in Han's chest and left his hands trembling wildly as he left the cockpit. A fight he could handle. Making a run for it, even better, was his specialty. But this hellish wait, this feeling of entrapment, was more than he could bear.
"Alternatives to fighting," he muttered. "Alternatives, alternatives."
The power converters were shot; there was nothing left to them. He calculated how long it would take him and Chewie to swap the new ones in without exterior access: too long. And he suspected they wouldn't help; he'd flashed his afterburners more than once at star destroyers that had locked on their tractor beams, with a power none ever seemed to expect out of a timeworn cargo freighter. But this was no star destroyer. It was a world made of metal, the likes of which he had never imagined.
Chewbacca barked something about the escape pods. Shyriiwook was a hard language at the best of times; it was even harder to understand him precisely when he was this agitated.
"Yeah, if we hadn't dumped Jabba's cargo in them," he agreed.
Chewbacca pointed to the last pod, barely big enough for one—barely spaceworthy enough to get one passenger back to the planet that didn't seem to exist anymore.
"We're in this together pal, okay?" Han cuffed the Wookiee by the side of the neck.
The farm boy almost barrelled into them both, running down into the corridor.
"What about the escape pods?" he asked. Han rolled his eyes.
"They're gone, kid," he said. "Haven't had the money to replace 'em."
"What? You take on passengers without working escape pods?"
"This may come as a shock to you," said Han, "but we're not exactly operating above board here."
"What happened to them?"
"Not the time, kid. I was hauling glitterstim for the Hutts and had to dump it."
"You wasted all your escape pods for people on some cargo?"
Han turned and glared, raised a threatening finger—then smiled.
"People," he muttered. "Cargo. I got an idea. Get your droids and bring 'em down here, double-time. Chewie, fix the logs. We set course for Alderaan, but abandoned ship just out of Mos Eisley to throw them off." A compliant bark was all he needed to hear.
The farm boy went for the droids. The old man, who had stood gawking at the station for far too long, shuffled down the hallway just as Han was unlatching the hidden floor compartment.
"Impressive," said Obi-Wan.
"All right, is the Empire looking for those droids of yours?"
"You might say that," said the old man. "Best to keep them out of sight."
Han nodded; there was no time even for complaint. He heard the metallic groan, felt the shudder in the hull as a remote override lowered the ship's landing gear.
"It's gonna be a tight fit," he said.
As the ship touched town with a dull thud, Luke was racing back with the two droids. He followed Han's frantic gestures to the second compartment latch and slid open the hidden panel in the floor. The R2 unit whistled brightly.
"Get in and power them down," said Han. "They'll send up an armed boarding party first, then clear them out for a scanning crew. We'll have one window to make this work."
YOU ARE READING
A Certain Point of View
Fanfiction"OBI-WAN NEVER TOLD YOU..." With those words, Darth Vader shook our faith in Obi-Wan as a reliable narrator, and told us there was more to his story than we ever knew. It's very rare that I write fanfiction, but this AU story (...or IS it?) takes p...
