Star Wars - Spare Parts by Pablo Hidalgo

Author:Pablo Hidalgo [Hidalgo, Pablo]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1996-11-26T03:51:24+00:00

“Ten twenty-three reporting. They’re not in the repair bay, sir.” The stormtrooper spoke into his comlink, while Mace squeezed himself tighter into the corner. He was obviously green, Mace reasoned, since he didn’t even take any of the great bits littering the bay. The trooper left, and Mace emerged. He looked at the R5 unit he had claimed, again wondering how the trooper could leave such a fine specimen behind. He would never understand Imperials.

Mace was halfway through loading the power droid onto the speeder when a clank behind him caught his ear. Maybe the trooper had returned. He grabbed a pair of arms off the nearest WED15 unit, and stood perfectly still.

“Mace, nice try. Do you do any celebrity impressions?” Aguilae snickered, pulling herself out of the covered crawltube opening. Without her transliterator, she knew Mace wouldn’t understand her, even more so than usual.

“Aggy!” Mace shouted, running to give the Jawa an embrace. With the robot arms still in hand, Mace succeeded in wrapping the hug around her twice. “Aggy, there’s Imperials-type-trooper-guys right here in crawler-ship-thing!”

“We’ve got to get out of here before —” A sudden shriek of stressed metal cut her off. There was a horrible shudder, and the room began vibrating, resonating through all the little loose pieces of droid anatomy in the chamber.

“Were moving. Odd, what with the stormtroopers —” she was cut off again, this time by the squeal of a blaster bolt, then a sudden roar of an explosion.

“Mace … we … go now!” Aguilae croaked in Basic. She looked at the steam vent piping that lined the chamber, and hoped that the Imperial sensors weren’t looking too closely at the chamber to notice the sudden flare of a repulsor signature. That they didn’t even touch the speeder struck her as odd. What did they want in the first place?

“Coming, Aggy.” Mace crouched next to the main servo of the door-gate for the chamber. Fastened to the servo with syntherope, bonding gel, and what looked like the rubber tread from a LIN droid, was a cluster of vac-tubes, power cells, liquid vials, and wiring.

“You’ve been busy,” she commented. Mace struck a small flamer he kept tucked away in a hidden pocket, and lit an oily rag-wick. He jumped into the speeder, and covered his head.

There was a sharp crack as Mace’s impromptu bomb turned into a thousand sparking filaments, and the servo split in two. With a heavy creak, the ramp lowered. Halfway.

“Crit …” Aguilae cursed. Three more blasts rocked the crawler and the treads began making a staccato wailing that did not sound at all well.

“Hang on,” yelled Mace, pulling on his goggles.

“Wait, Mace …” But there was no waiting. Mace gunned the engines. With the added weight of the two droids in the back seat, the speeder tilted back enough to make the 45 degree steep angle of the ramp. The top thruster barely cleared the doorway.

For a few exhilarating seconds, the speeder was airborne. Whatever forces that controlled time and space seemed to find these two scavengers entertaining at the very least.

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