Disclaimer: No matter how much I love the Galaxy Far, Far Away, it's owned by Disney, not me.
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Chapter 4
"Captain Antilles, may I present my daughter, Leia Organa." Bail smiled proudly at his daughter as she reached out to shake the Captain's hand. "She'll be a passenger this trip around."
"What an honor, your highness." Captain Antilles beamed. A slight scar disfigured his cheek, and his dark hair was actually rather long for a Ship Captain. "I look forward to spending the next two days with you. Will you join me in my Cabin for lunch, your highness?"
"I'd be delighted, Captain." Leia replied formally. "And. . . How long did you say we'd be traveling?"
"A total of thirty-nine hours, highness." The Captain bowed graciously. "Shall I call someone to take your bag and show you your Cabin?"
"I have my own Cabin?" Leia glanced up at her father, a little impressed.
"Of course, Leia." Bail beamed and put a gentle hand on her shoulder. "I had it ready for you after Bo told me you were coming."
"Ah, here he is." Captain Antilles grinned as a boy about Leia's age trotted along the passageway toward them. Judging from his uniform, he was an Able Crewman, but judging from his face, he looked as if he might actually be related to. . .
"My son, Wedge." Captain Antilles beamed proudly. "Crewman Wedge, the Princess Leia Organa of Alderaan."
"Honored, your highness." Wedge saluted smartly.
"Pleased to meet you, Wedge." Leia curtsied, suddenly glad she'd worn her long russet dress rather than her casual tan tunic and pants.
"He'll get you all settled." Captain Antilles clasped his hands behind his back. "And he'll give you a tour as well, if you like."
The young man bowed nicely to the Princess. "I am at your complete disposal, your highness." He tried to keep from grinning, but it was hopeless. Leia decided she liked him. A tour of the Tantive would be fun. Wedge Antilles picked up her bag. "This way, please, your highness." He turned back up the passageway with Leia hurrying behind.
"They've hit it off well." Bail Organa smiled fondly at the retreating figures down the hall. "It was good of you to put Leia with someone her own age. But you're not trying to be a matchmaker, are you?"
"Oh, no, I'd never!" Captain Antilles laughed. "Not without your permission first, of course. Your daughter deserves the best escort in the Galaxy however, so I thought I'd provide it. My boy just finished his first course at the Imperial Academy and came home. Too much indoctrination for his tastes, so I let him serve an internship here with me. This'll be his first official voyage."
"Good for you, my old friend!" Bail clapped his friend on the back. "I think they'll amuse themselves until lunch, so what say we go polish up our plans over a glass of old Correllian Whiskey, eh?"
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Scanning Officer, Ensign Mell Krevett of the Imperial Battleship I.S.S Terminator turned to his commanding officer with all the briskness of a proud Imperial soldier. "Sir, permission to report. Scans have indicated a class four Starship approaching on hyperlane T-940. Orders?"
"A Class Four all the way out here?" The Officer stood slowly and then slapped a comm on his wrist. "Bridge to the Admiral, Class Four Ship approaching on Hyperlane T-940, please advise."
"Apprehend the Ship. No Merchant-Ships have permission to enter this sector at the moment." The answer came back in Admiral Tarkin's grating voice. "I will report to the bridge shortly. Tarkin out."
"Understood. Veres out." Captain Veres saluted empty air and killed the comm before briskly barking orders to Scans, Tractor Beam, and Helm.
Mell shivered with excitement. Finally! Perhaps today they would snag some rebel scum at last! He brought up recent scans of the ship as he sent out more. It was a small Merchant-Ship, likely run by a small company or private enterprise, but he could hope that it contained rebel smugglers, couldn't he?
But it was likely a fluke, not a rebel. It wouldn't take long to inventory the stock onboard and redirect the flight path. The entire Mon Cala Sector was under surveillance after the local planetary disaster anyway. Perhaps the Merchant was from the Outer Rim and hadn't heard of Mon Cala's recent destruction. Or maybe it was heading for another system. Whatever the reason, the Senate had ruled to block off the Sector until further notice. And the Tractor Beam was pulling the ship from hyperspace even as Admiral Tarkin marched onto the bridge, dressed to impress, as always.
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"Senator, brace yourself." Captain Antilles grimly folded his hands behind his back and stared out the bridge windows of the Tantive.
"What is it?" Bail Organa squinted up at the blurred starlines. "Not another Imperial checkpoint, surely?"
"Worse." The Captain grimaced. "An Imperial Star Destroyer."
"A Destroyer all the way out here?" Bail scowled. "Well, the last checkpoint scan yesterday did seem a little too easy."
Antilles nodded sadly. "Yes, Sir. And it's got a target lock on us we can't break. In approximately twenty seconds, we'll be pulled out of the water and into their net."
"But the Merchant-Ship codes ought to stop them doing that." Organa objected.
"Apparently not." Captain Antilles issued brisk orders to his men, ordering them to lock down weapons and refrain from deep scans. "We'll just have to play along. We're an Ambassador's ship taking humanitarian aid to the planet, agreed? But we haven't heard about their rebellion, and don't see how that should stop us anyway. Sound good, Senator?"
"Excellent as always, Ray." Bail smiled sadly. "Do I have time to go get Leia?"
"Afraid not, Sir. Look. We're coming out of hyperspace now, and we're in a Tractor Beam. I'll get the welcoming committee ready, you'd best change into something a little more formal, Senator. The scans look an awful lot like Tarkin's new ship."
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"Admiral, permission to report!" Mell Krevett trembled as he spun from his station and gazed up at his commanding officers.
"Proceed, Officer." Tarkin's cultured voice drawled.
"Apparently. . . my scans were all wrong, Sirs. I apologize and take full responsibility. The ship has the markings of a Senatorial Ambassador!"
"That means nothing, Officer." Admiral Tarkin grinned at the ship as it appeared outside the viewscreen like a hungry mynock. "Proceed with your orders. How many aboard, Ensign Krevett?"
"Ah. . . " Mell spun and ran his fingers over his panel, feeling his uniform dampening with sweat. "Scans indicate seventy lifeforms aboard; all human. No telling how many droids."
"Thank you, Ensign, that will do." The Admiral stood and yanked his uniform back into place. "Prepare the boarding party. I want at least a score of Troopers and two scanning teams."
"Sir, permission to join said boarding party!" Mell Krevett spun around and hoped that staring at a fixed place above the Weapons Officer's head wouldn't betray his nervousness. He had to prove he was good at something before they kicked him off the Ship at some Waypoint and made him run maintenance scans for the rest of his life.
"Permission granted." The Admiral replied almost distractedly and hurried off the bridge with his picked Officers trailing him. Quiet Veres took the Admiral's place once again.
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"What's going on? Are we stopping?" Leia felt the change in vibration throughout the deck plating. She knew they'd come forcibly out of hyperspace and even now were grinding to a halt. "Is something wrong?"
"I don't know, ma'am." Wedge replied honestly. "This stop wasn't in the itinerary, that's for sure."
"Should we go check?" Leia's feet were poised to carry her back to the Bridge, recently visited in the tour yesterday.
"Our dads'll handle it, whatever it is." Wedge shrugged and turned around. Apparently, the tour was over already. "My job's to get you safely to your room, Princess."
Leia huffed and folded her arms. "But we just came from there!"
"I know, but. . . Captain's orders, you know?" Wedge hunched his shoulders and smiled sheepishly at her. "Sorry."
Leia frowned at him, her brown eyes glittering with temper. Gosh, she sure looked pretty when she did that. Wedge wondered if she even knew that. "So I have to wait in my room while Dad has all the excitement?"
"That's about it." Wedge grinned and straightened before holding out his arm for her like a gallant Coruscanti gentleman. "Shall we?"
"Huh, I don't think so." Leia coolly replied and then took off at a run down the hall.
"Wait!" Wedge ran after her, surprised more than anything. "Princess, wait! There might be Stormtroopers!"
Leia was glad she hadn't worn a dress today. She was the fastest runner in her school. Not even long-legged Twi'leks could catch her once she started. In fact, nobody could catch her when she started, not even. . . Oooff!
Right; not even golden protocol droids lying in ambush around corners.
"Oh, please excuse me, Miss, I'm terribly sorry!" The protocol droid fluttered in agitation and waved frantically at a blue and white astromech droid behind him. "Do come along, Artoo, we aren't even supposed to be here! Hurry, before the security droids are called up!"
"Unggh. . . " Leia groaned and rubbed her face. There was a fine bruise there, she was sure.
"I'm dreadfully sorry you crashed into me, but I insist it wasn't my fault, Miss." The droid chirped in his ridiculous Core accent. "I do hope you aren't injured. Could I help you up?"
"No!" Leia barked and pushed the gold hand away. She'd felt like smacking the offered hand, but thought better of hitting solid metal with her bare hands. She got up on her own as Wedge came puffing up.
"Oh, Threepio! You caught her. Thanks." He panted and held his knees. "You really shouldn't run off like that in an unfamiliar ship, Princess." He scolded her.
Leia's eyes popped wide in shock and she thrust her fists on her hips as she glared at the young man. "Are you telling me. . . ?"
"Princess?!" The protocol droid exclaimed and waddled around to her front. "You're the Princess Leia, Senator Organa's daughter?! Oh, please do forgive me! I know droids aren't authorized for this level right now, but it wasn't my idea! Artoo insisted I come along, the rebellious mechanical twerp! Please don't deactivate me!"
"It's fine, Threepio, really it is." Leia put up a weary hand and rolled her eyes. Protocol droids were all the same, but this one was overboard in its fussiness. "Who manufactured you?" She glared into the golden droid's metal face and its perpetual expression of surprise.
"I really don't know, Princess." Threepio almost sighed. "I must have had a memory wipe too many. I've always worked here on the Tantive IV. Oh, I'm forgetting my manners! Hello, I am C-3P0, human-cyborg relations! I am fluent in over nine million forms of communications, and have more than twenty secondary functions including vehicle pilot, vaporator-read-out, Climate Control Programmer. . . "
"Unless you want to hear the full list, you'd better shut him up." Wedge grinned at Leia's glazed expression.
"A little late for that." She muttered. The little blue and white astromech gently bumped her legs and beeped cheerfully over C-3P0's ongoing list of skills and languages. "That yellow talking machine sounds like a Neimodian droid salesman." Leia chuckled. Wedge grinned, and the beeps coming from the little droid sounded remarkably like laughter as well. "What a funny duo. A protocol droid and an astromech. Whose are they?"
"My dad's." Wedge nodded at the odd duo. "Artoo and Threepio have worked here as long as I remember, but I think your dad actually gave them to him to use."
"So. . . " Leia grinned mischievously. "They're mine?"
"I guess." Wedge laughed and folded his arms. "You already met C-3P0, but let me introduce you to the real jewel: R2-D2. Yep, that little droid's seen more'n his share if action, and I don't think he's ever been wiped. Makes him peculiar. But everybody loves 'im. I'd trust that plucky little astromech with my life. He saved our lives once by reordering our shield's when Arkadian Pirates fired on us in the Iego System. Said he learned how on a Nubian craft, so it was a real good thing nobody wiped his memory, right?"
"Dad doesn't like wiping droid memories unless he has to." Leia mused. "Bo, our protocol droid butler, hasn't had a memory wipe for at least as long as I've been alive."
"Same here with these droids." Wedge shrugged and nodded at the babbling Threepio. "He can't have had a wipe since I was a baby, at least."
Leia was about to say something when Artoo beeped urgently and wheeled away to plug into a wall socket. Threepio timidly tapped her arm. She turned to look up at him, surprised that he'd finished talking so soon. "Done already, Threepio?"
"Of course not, Princess." Threepio sounded shocked. "But Artoo believes that we have just docked with a much larger ship and he wants to find out why."
"We weren't to rendezvous with the fleet 'til 1900 hours at least!" Wedge protested and checked his wrist-chrono. "Yep, it's only 1400. Why're we stopping five hours early?"
"Fleet? There's a fleet?" Leia didn't know what to think of that, but Wedge didn't reply.
Down the hall, near the door on that end, Artoo beeped urgently and twittered rapidly as he unplugged and wheeled over with more urgency than she'd ever seen in an astromech.
"Pardon me," C-3P0 tapped Leia's arm again as R2-D2 hurried past. "but Artoo says we've been apprehended by an Imperial Star Destroyer and a boarding party is preparing to. . . Oh my!" This last ejaculation was answered by the hiss of the far door opening. No, not door, Leia quickly amended; the boarding ramp. How in the Galaxy had she run the wrong way down the entire length of the ship? Perhaps she didn't remember yesterday's tour as well as she thought she did. Now, she and Wedge, (and the two droids) were the only ones standing in the hall to greet an Imperial boarding party. Leia drew in a sharp breath. And she still didn't know what side she was on!
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Hope you enjoyed the chapter!