A FEW PARSECS FROM CORUSCANT, 40 YEARS ABE:
The cockpit of the Millennium Falcon was in disarray. Open panels exposed nests of wiring and diodes on the walls blinked in frantic, irregular flashes. The golden protocol droid C-3PO sat in the navigator's chair, his stiff body limp and his round eyes flickering. Wires stretched from his chest, neck, and hand to ports on the cockpit wall. Leia Organa-Solo sat in the chair usually claimed by Chewbacca, a datapad in her hand and a frown on her lined and lovely face. She was still dressed in the now-stained white robes she had been wearing at the aborted peace-signing but her face and hands were clean again and her cuts glistened with the faintly greenish gleam of bacta balm. A white bandage wrapped around a larger wound on one hand and another patch of white medical tape covered the gash where her chin had hit the permacrete.
The pilot's seat next to her held no pilot, but a pair of battered black boots protruded from beneath the cockpit controls and rested uncomfortably against the back of the seat. Aside from the periodic clatter of tools, jumping sparks, and swearing that rose from below those boots, there was nothing else to indicate the presence of Han Solo in his beloved ship. Of Chewbacca, there was even less visual sign but the distant and irregular grumble of Shyriiwook echoing down the corridor attested to his presence elsewhere on the Falcon.
Bail, still soot-stained but no longer giving off puffs of smoke, walked into the cockpit with a datapad in each hand. "I think we're in the Taanab system," he announced. "Chewie and I ran a visual analysis of the visible star patterns and managed to match them to archival-"
A loud clang from beneath the cockpit controls was followed by a louder curse and Han's boots swung out of view. With assistance from his wife, the old Corellian squirmed laboriously out from under the control panel. Rather than stand, he glared up at his son from where he sat wedged on the floor between the two front seats. "Taanab?" Han repeated, panting slightly. He sounded excited. "That means we're near the Perlemian Trade Route." He wiped the back of one half-gloved hand across his forehead, adding another smear of grease to the pattern already decorating his rugged features.
"What good does that do us?" asked Leia briskly. "Our personal comms still don't have enough range to reach Taanab from here. We'd have been picking up local signals already if we were close to any inhabited planets."
"Yes," Bail agreed politely, "but at least we know where we are. Chewie and I think that we can start reconstructing our navigational charts through visual scanning-"
"That will take weeks!" Leia exclaimed.
Bail nodded, his face drawn. "I know, mom. But it's the best we can do."
"The New Republic doesn't have weeks," said Leia.
"We don't need 'em," Han interrupted. His wife and son turned to stare at him with near-identical expressions of baleful concern on their faces. Han was grinning. "We can manage another jump or two before the hyperdrive crashes-right, Bail?" he said.
Bail nodded reluctantly. "Probably," he allowed.
"Then all we need are a set of destination coordinates. We can plot the jump manually."
Bail's eyebrows shot up toward his hairline as Leia's eyes narrowed to slits beneath tightly drawn brows. He opened his mouth, but she spoke first, her voice sharp: "You need more than a start point and an end point to plot a hyperspace jump."
Han levered himself to his feet-this time without any help from his wife, who had folded her arms over her datapad and was scowling at him-and rolled his eyes. "I know that," he said testily, rubbing his back and leaning over C-3PO's motionless form to start prodding at the navicomputer buttons. "But a little visual mapping will give us rudimentary stats of the local charts, and Chewie and I know the Perlemian Trade Route well enough to cobble-together a basic outline-"
"-which still only gets us local space," Leia reminded Han, "and no destination coordinates. Unless you're telling me you have Taanab's location memorized?"
Han shook his head. He glanced over his shoulder to grin at his wife. "Not Taanab," he said. "But we know someone who recently set up shop on Norulac…"
Leia sighed and lowered her forehead into the hand that wasn't currently full of datapad. "Lando," she said.
"Lando," Han confirmed. "And luckily, I happen to remember the coordinates he sent…"
Bail's eyes lit up. "We're going to see Uncle Lando?" he said.
"Providing the engines don't burn out on the way," Leia muttered. "And your father calculates the orbital drift right so we don't materialize inside a moon or somewhere on the other side of the galaxy…"
"Go tell Chewie to stop messing-around with the engines and come help me run these numbers," Han told his son. Bail raced off down the corridor as Han flicked the switch on C-3PO's neck and bellowed, "Hey, Goldenrod! Wake-up! We need your processors."
"Oh my," Threepio exclaimed as his eyes flickered back to their usual steady luminescence. "What have I missed?"
"Lando," Leia said. "We're going to Lando."
An excited Wookiee bellow reverberated down the hallway as C-3PO murmured, "Oh dear."
Author's Note: if you want answers or replies to your reviews you need to log-in (or ask on AO3) as I cannot respond to anonymous reviews on FFnet and I'm not going to be replying to individual reviews within the fic itself, sorry.
