Two days after Victory Day


Luke was officially worried. As soon as he was free from the meeting, he trotted down to the CIC bunker to do a little personal investigating and was glad to see Yana Deitrik available for the task. "I need your help to find my Artoo unit."

Yana leaned back in the office chair. "Okay."

Luke folded his arms at his chest and looked like he was a little angry about it. "He's not answering his comm and he hasn't reported in to me, Rogue Group, or the Minister's office. And he's never been gone this long without finding some kind of trouble."

Yana took this in with a grin, "When was the last time you had contact with him?"

"Victory Day, so two days?" His eyes stretched away to recall the details. "After the Memorial ceremony I told him he could either go celebrate with Threepio or be shut down for the night at home. He chose Threepio."

"Do you usually shut him down at night?"

"No, he usually puts himself on standby. But this was um. . . ." Luke grinned awkwardly. His first instinct was to sidestep the truth but he realized Yana would have undoubtedly noticed that her roommate didn't come home that night either.

Yana rubbed her lips together to hide her smile and swiveled her chair back to the terminals. "And Threepio hasn't seen him," she verified.

"No, he said they split up at 22 hundred on Victory night."

"Okay," Yana said and stopped a beat to think. "I take it he doesn't wear a restraining bolt. Does he have a locater?"

Luke rubbed his palm over his face. "I deactivated his locator on our last op and I never got around to turning it back on."

Yana was ready to type but lifted her hands into the air. "No restraining bolt. No locator." Her legs pushed her away from this terminal and she got up to walk to the one at the end of the row. "Okay. I'll start with the manifests to see if he shipped out with anybody. Has he ever run away before?"

"Artoo? Run away?" Luke winced a little, but his expression relaxed to an indiscernible pout. "Well, yeah, I suppose he has."

Yana glanced at him between reading messages on the black and yellow screen. "How did you break it to him on Victory Day?"

"Break what to him?"

"Well, I mean," she began to smile anew, gentle to address it openly. "He didn't run off in a jealous rage, did he?"

"Er, no. He and Kess get along just fine."

"All right," she sighed, "In the last forty eight hours, we have shipped out seven R2A1s, a few R2F7s, R2G3s, eh… there's a long list of the R2 units assigned to the Eighth fleet. And they all left yesterday morning."

Luke stepped up behind her. "He's a D2. Can you search for that?"

Yana typed in a search specifically for an R2D2. "Okay. Two. R2D2 Owned and assigned by Chief Wister, private repair engineer for Tisker Ve Uld, Chi System representative currently traveling with the Eighth Fleet on the Hopockia. And R2D2. Property of White Group, B wings, stationed aboard the Mon Eferet, also with Eighth fleet."

Luke leaned in to search the screen data over her shoulder. "Can you see how long they've been in service with Eighth? I can't imagine our own military steeling my R2 unit."

"I doubt they would too, unless they didn't realize he was yours." She typed and folded her arms on the desktop. "Chief Wister got his from Ord Mantell about three years ago." She punched a key. "And White Group got theirs from Siv Alsta of Correllia ten years ago." She looked over her shoulder at him. "I would say that means he's still on Yavin 4."

Luke glanced a smile to her comment. "He'd better be." And Luke noticed that Yana had green eyes.

Yana didn't notice his slant double-take because she pushed away from the desk and stood tall. "According to those numbers, we should have six R2D2 units planet-side right now." She moved to a different wall and turned on the holo generator, switched it to digital map mode, and zoomed in to the base.

A few more keypunches and blue notches blinked on amongst the yellow representations of structures. "Blue are the bug catchers." She typed a little more and red dots appeared. "And red are your R2 D2s passing through the bug catchers . . . 182 times in the last 48 hours."

Bug catchers: checkpoints throughout the base that scanned for transmitters and recording devices. Most of them were in the Council Building and more spread out in tidy patterns in the Pad Complexes. There were a few, as always, in random places on the base such as a barracks hall, a few doors in med lab and, at Luke's own request, on the grinder. What's more is that many of them were moved from month to month just to keep the pattern dynamic. Since working droids by design had memories and recording devices that tripped off the scanners, each droid had to identify itself by model and serial number when it passed by a bug catcher. The event was instantaneous. The droid didn't have to pause its travel to do so, like holding a badge out to pass a familiar security kiosk unhindered. And the scanners were always hidden in the walls. The only way a person could know where the checkpoints were was by looking at this map in the CIC bunker, or by carrying unregistered spy equipment and setting off the alarm.

Luke and Yana looked up Artoo's 26 digit serial number that contained letters and numbers from three different languages and methodically expanded the information on each of the 182 markers to cancel out the one's that weren't Artoo. It took them twenty minutes to do it, but the result was an excellent lead and already a partial explanation. The only red markers left were his favorite droid and, when played in time stamp sequence, they could follow Asrtoo's movements through most of the base.

Yana summarized the events with humorous ease. "So, you kicked out your roommate so the you could be alone with a date at which time the droid went off to go find his own damn party. Artoo hit three checkpoints in the Council Building, probably following Threepio around until he too was relieved of duty. An hour after he left there, he hit the checkpoint at a Droid Repair Shop south of the quad where he got himself a '180 VAC Recharge and an 86w Oil Wash.'

Luke blinked twice. "My Artoo unit went to a health spa?"

"Sounds more like dinner and drinks but, yeah, something like that."

"I should give him the day off more often."

Yana's green eye grinned over. "Will you give me the day off so I can go to a spa?"

Luke had no authority to do so, but he quipped back anyway. "No need. Someday your roommate will kick you out for the night so she can have a date over."

Yana warmed to his humor. "For the record, I'm happy for you."

"Yeah, me too." He sighed hard and looked at the screen again. |Do we know where he went after the 'Droid Spa'?"

Yana she typed and read. "Looks like he left base. He hit two checkpoints in Complex B, entering and leaving, and the last checkpoint marker was leaving through the south gate… at 22:20, day before yesterday."

"He split off from Threepio about 2200."

"So. After being rudely booted from his own recharge station so you could go to the dark side with my roommate, your little guy went to a health spa on a holiday, met up with some friends in Complex B, and took off to find more fun when his buddy had to go home for curfew."

Luke turned his eyes to her. "You have an interesting way of seeing things, Lieutenant."

"And you, Master Jedi sir, don't party enough."

Luke looked back at the map and focused on the last red marker where and when Artoo left for South Base in which the civilian community had no checkpoints to trace through. Artoo had no real reason for being off base unless he were looking for someone or was on an errand for someone. And everyone that he would run errands for, or look for, was on base that night.

Worried again, Luke blew out a sigh."Show me a map of South Base."

Luke's joking demeanor had evaporated, and therefore Yana got serious and quiet again. She zoomed in on a map of the section of the civilian city known only as South Base and added text to identify the buildings as registered in the public mailing list. Luke studied the map only to commit it to memory. He noted one, out of the way, unlabeled building and pointed at it. "What's that?"

Yana turned smiling green eyes to him. "Proof you don't party enough." She flicked her chin at it. "That's the South Base Warehouse."

His tongue tucked thoughtfully to his molar as he considered the place at length. He'd never been there himself but he'd heard the stories, and he'd heard them even before he knew Kess. The South Base Warehouse started out as an overflow barracks during the Battle of Yavin days. The permatemp building received some structural damage, making it non-transportable, and was left behind when the Rebellion fled to Hoth with their tails between their legs. When they returned to the moon years later, the New Alliance had more supporters (and therefore, more money) to build stronger, permanent buildings for their first visible base. The warehouse was forgotten by most, yet the veterans of the early Rebellion could not forget the Victory party it housed that day when young Luke Skywalker blew up the first Death Star and saved all of their lives.

How many times had Wedge tried to get him out there to partake in all that hero worship? Luke didn't care to count. He often responded by noting there were a lot of heroes that day. Even if you only counted the team that fired the fatal shot, Luke had to share this pesky 'Legend' status with Red Five and Artoo Detoo.

Five, if she had an opinion, couldn't care less about hero worship. Artoo Detoo however . . . .

Luke exhaled a grinning groan, thanked Yana with a quiet voice, and noted that his commlink was on in case anyone came looking for him.


Luke took in the landscape of the base as he drove the topless speeder out to South Base. In a couple of places, housekeeping droids were still unraveling streamers from lampposts and picking up slivers of confetti from the grass. Luke realized how trained people were not to see droids. Nobody noticed them unless they were needed or in the way. The droids that worked restlessly on cleaning the grounds, taking out the garbage, operating the checkpoints, monitoring ICU patients… they never got recognition. Not that they cared. Most droids weren't designed for that sort of thing. Only after many years of not getting one's memory wiped did a droid begin to develop a personality and opinions.

Upon this thought, Luke considered peaking into the depths of Artoo's memory data to see how long the little guy had been around. He wondered why he never wondered about Artoo's history. Of course, he'd have to find the Bolt Bucket first.

He drove slowly through the gate and looked up and down commercial streets whilst considering an android's capacity for emotion. Did Artoo get offended when Luke kicked him out that night? How would Luke have known if he had? Droids didn't leave prints on the Force; no more than an X-wing did anyway.

Then Luke wondered what Five could say if she could talk.

Come play with me.

The thought made him smile.

As he slid down the road in his speeder, Luke sensed out to the moods inside each of the businesses checking for the fear of deception or the thrill of stealing. There were a few short-tempered managers and several angry employees, probably in regards to Victory Day clean up still incomplete, but no one seemed preoccupied with a feisty R2 unit.

Before he reached the end of the block, where commercial met residential, Luke pulled over and parked the speeder. He wasn't sure why he hesitated to go out to the South Base Warehouse alone, especially in the middle of a workday when it was probably empty. He set his elbow on the door, dialed his commlink and brought it to his mouth.

"I have forty-five seconds," Leia said.

"I need to talk to Threepio. Artoo's missing."

"Missing?" Leia echoed. "How long?"

"Since Victory night."

"He wasn't with you?" Her voice began to smile.

Luke tried not to sound bashfully guilty. "I was busy."

Leia's dark laugh was warm and mature. "Good for you."

Luke rubbed his lips closed and bit them.

"Here he is." Sounds shifted and static spurted.

Then Threepio's voice came on the line. "Master Luke, what a delight to hear from you. Have you spoken to Artoo recently? He's not answering my calls."

"No, Threepio. I'm actually looking for him right now. Did you two get in a fight on victory night or something?"

"Not at all. We parted in quite friendly circumstances. I was recalled to the Solo residence earlier than anticipated. Artoo left with others to 'kill some time' was his explanation. He said something about not being able to go home so soon."

"Did he say where he was going?"

"No, sir. He did not."

"Those three others? Who were they?"

"IX-34C, R5F5, and S4-77: a supply distributor, an astromech, and a repair diagnostics translator, respectfully, all assigned to duties in Complex B."

"Friends from work," Luke grinned quietly.

"I feel compelled to mention that S4-77 has a history of knocking over of sentient beings when they are intoxicated and IX-34C has a tendency to pick up unclaimed parts when no one is looking."

"Sounds like Artoo has fallen in with a rough crowd."

Threepio was dead serious. "I heartedly agree. I implore you to give him more challenging assignments. I'm concerned for his well being."

"I understand," Luke consoled. "Thanks for your help."

"You're welcome, sir! Anytime I can be of service to you is a pleasure. And if I may, please inquire on me from time to time about his off-duty activities. The things he gets into—"

"Thank you, Threepio. I need to go now."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir. C-3PO out."

Luke's chuckle continued after Threepio hung up. "Next he'll be snorting spice and goosing girl droids in restaurants."

Yana mentioned it too easily that Luke didn't party enough. Kess had been harassing him about it for as long as they'd known each other. Wedge, Han, and Lando had practically given up on him. And now even Artoo was wandering off to have fun without him.

Luke realized there was something about celebrating these victories that he'd been avoiding, something specific to this base and that warehouse. For a long time, he brushed it off as a careless avoidance to that blasted hero worship he didn't solely deserve, but now that he considered it consciously. . . .

He chewed on his lower lip, checked for traffic, and shifted the speeder back into gear.


A right turn onto an overgrown road and a half mile out to nowhere, Luke drove slow and easy through the jungle so he could soak up the feel of the surroundings. The sports speeder bumped over lumps in the mud toward the abandoned warehouse and Luke slowed to a stop when the big structure came into view. He rested his arms and elbows on the handlebars so he could look the place over and squinted seriously for the signs of activity, new and old.

A half an acre was cleared of trees and grass tried to grow in the mud, but speeder after speeder drove over and parked, stomping out growth just as it got the opportunity to sprout. The warehouse itself was beginning to lean to the right, not enough to notice really; just enough to make the building look drunk too. The original brushed steel walls were starting to rust on the edges. One panel had been smashed, probably by a speeder, and graffiti advertised the proud maker of the dent. Litter speckled the mud and weeds around the building, but all of that was recent. A landscaping droid probably made it out here from time to time to clean up the party mess but that would be lower priority than the rest of the base today.

Luke climbed out of his speeder. His boots sank a little into the mud as he plucked carefully across the open space. Double doors were closed but not locked. He pushed one to slide open. It screeched metal on metal. Light sliced in and lit up the wet pollen in the air. Luke shoved the door open farther so he could use the daylight to look around.

All the furniture was old and used up, recycled for use here instead of getting melted it down for raw material. Bedding, crates, a desk, pieces of a broken runner, all managed to end up here. His boots echoed on the moist concrete floor. This place was like a giant playhouse hidden the back woods.

Luke grinned.

"Artoo?!" He called out, not expecting an answer. The clutter gave him probable cause to find Artoo here, but Luke somehow wasn't expecting the droid to be conscious. He walked the length of the building but found only used paper cups, empty bottles of liquor, and an occasional piece of clothing. He stopped at the plastic crates at the end of the room that resembled a bar and turned around. He stood tall and looked back over the whole of the place.

Why did he avoid this place? Farmboy shyness? Jedi seriousness? Commander superiority? No. None of the above. It was something else.

Luke closed his eyes and tried to feel it.

Laughter. Drama. Frustration let loose. Desires unleashed. Drinks raised in his name. The Living Legend. The super hero that blew up the Death Star. Luke snorted a parental grin. They didn't need him; they needed an excuse. The warehouse carried the very essence of soldiers letting off steam.

He tried to remember it for himself, places like this, times like that, but it was a lifetime ago. The music was different now, the dances were weirder, the slang evolved to an entirely different language than what Luke understood. And yet he felt hope for the galaxy that places like this, and times like that, still occurred throughout the New Alliance.

He also realized why he could never attend, and why Kess had to stop. The Jedi couple had the clearing to control it, to diffuse it, to impair it. Everyone else had this warehouse to wind it up and let it go wild.

"There's more than one way to skin a mugrat," Han once said in reference to the same issue. Luke understood the comment now, but Jedi politics had nothing to do with Luke's fear of this place.

Fear?

It stopped him short.

His hands opened beside him as if shrugging at a ghost. His brows knitted over his nose. His eyes shifted around the unkempt building, reaching out every sense, only to detect this peaceful day, the singing birds, the ripple of lust and laughter left over from the party that raged in this room.

Luke searched deliberately inward for an answer. It wasn't the party he feared - it was something under the party, if that made any sense. There was something about victory parties that, to him, weren't so victorious.

He resumed his stroll through the building and tried to remember parties he'd attended. He remembered that one Victory Day on Endor when his father, Yoda, and Ben all glowed up together for a brief, resolving hello. He was glad to see his father's image without the helmet and re-breather; he was glad to see Ben and Yoda both with approving smiles in his direction, but that victory was bittersweet at best, for obvious reasons.

Another time, he remembered laughing so hard that alcohol snorted out of his nose. That must have been on Hoth because the guys were teasing him about his parka. They had huddled together in that frozen corner of base, sipping sharp liquor after watch, cracking jokes with Wedge and Wes and Han and Hobbie and Klivian and Zev and Dak. . . .

Luke's stomach hollowed.

Out of that whole list, only Wedge and Han were still around.

And all of them sat around that portable heater warming their liquor in empty CO2 canister cases, telling tales about the 'good old days' . . . back when and Rue and Ralo and Puck and Porkins and Branon and Biggs were all still around.

Biggs Darklighter. . . . strutting through dust outside Toshe's Station, warning Luke to be careful behind the stick or 'Wormie' would end up as a "damp spot on the dark side of some canyon someday."

Luke eyes turned up to the ceiling of the South Base Warehouse, where the troops now gathered by tradition to raise their drinks and toast only Luke Skywalker as the hero of the Battle of Yavin.

Luke shook his head and stepped—

Something rustled under a dirty blanket. Luke's paused his boot to let the mouse scurry away without further trauma before returning his attention to his search.

Luke roamed his way out of the building's back door and mumbled aloud, "If you guys are going to toast a hero of the rebellion, you really should be toasting Artoo."

More crates and old seats littered the slim back yard like an asymmetrical patio. Legless couches and broken tables were draped with resin covers so that the rain didn't rot them out. The varying shapes and sizes of furniture littered with varying shapes and sizes of garbage made the place look like a junkyard.

But this junkyard looked like a Hidden Object game of old battles. Luke's eyes picked out the black metal angle of a TIE fighter's window frame, the laser focus of an X-wing gun, the foot-ramp of an Imperial shuttle.

Luke set his boot on the black sheet metal, now in use as firm foot rug for a couch, He wondered if this came from that one Delta shuttle in which they had found Kess's dead body.

For a split second, his stomach began constrict again, but he quickly cancelled out the feeling by focusing on the truth of it. She didn't die. She's alive.

She's alive. He huffed a hard sigh of relief and let himself smile at recent memories. Very alive.

It made him feel better. It made him strong enough to 'handle it', and yet, he stared at his boot on the foot-ramp a moment more, trying to identify what it was he needed to 'handle'.

Kess is alive, he thought, but Biggs isn't.

He strolled through the scattered wet furniture and kicked over half-empty drink cups but now was distracted to remember faces from the past. Smiles of soldiers now dead. Fists raised in rebellion before launch.

"Pull up!". . . "No, no! I can' handle it—(explosion).

"We've lost main fire control!" . . . "Just hang on!"

CO2 canisters clanked over the portable heater as their voices raised in salute. "To Biggs!"

Luke rubbed his palm over his eyes and nodded at himself with a Master's discipline. As soon as he was finished with Artoo today, he'd go away somewhere where he could meditate and try to resolve all this survivor's guilt alone.

But a niggling fear wouldn't be set aside.

What if he'd now lost Artoo as well?

Luke raised his face with panic, now taking in the hidden object game with purpose and looked specifically for signs of droid parts. But he found none, only couches and tables draped with resin covers to protect them from the jungles relentless rain.

Then he realized—

Luke stomped to the nearest table yanked off its brown resin cover.

The 'table' was a stack of ammo boxes.

He stepped to another waist-high piece of furniture and yanked a red tarp from it. This one was a broken waiting room chair turned sideways. Luke began to grin as he stomped across the hard mud, ripping off dirty covers and ripped tarps from the various pieces of 'furniture' until, at long last, he found Artoo Detoo hiding under one of them as well.

The mustard-colored resin cover and half-filled paper cups went flying when Luke's fist yanked it free from Artoo's head. The droid wore a crown of a giant sewage washer that allowed his dome to stick up in the center, creating a ring of flat surface around his dome on which to rest red solo cups of alcohol. Only in patches was he still scrubbed clean from the droid spa before the party, but in more places he was smudged with brown mud, graffitied with an orange crayon, and smacked several times with bright red lipstick. A broken string of withered daisies drooped around his shoulders and the cylindrical end of a storm troopers rifle had been secured to the front of his right leg so it would look like the droid was carrying a lightsaber hilt.

With bright eyes and a quiet laugh, Luke lowered to one knee in front of the sleeping machine and admired his clout. "You sure know how to have a good time, don't you?"

Artoo was silent and still.

"Wake up." Luke said, tapping his chassis. "Are you on?"

Artoo didn't flicker.

Luke pressed his mouth and leaned over to open a panel. He had to rip off the toy lightsaber to get it open. He flicked a switch. "Come on, Artoo. It's time to wake up."

The droid wasn't moving.

Luke backed to his knees again. His mouth twisted to the side, considering, then he pulled out his commlink and dialed as he checked Artoo's power circuitry.

"Lendra," she said with a sigh.

"Hey, it's me. You busy?"

"Um, yes." Her voice smiled to admit, "But I'm stuck. What do you need?"

"Er." Luke wrinkled his nose and dug his index finger in to Artoo's innards. "If you need a break, I need some help. I found Artoo but he looks to be," he sat up and snarled at a metal piece of something that was loose inside the droid, "a little under the weather."

He could hear Kess move her comm call out to the hallway. "What happened?"

"I'm not sure. But I can't get him to turn on. I could use a few tools and a second opinion."

"Have tools, will travel." She offered. "Where are you?"

"The South Base Warehouse," he announced with a grin.

She paused a beat, then her voice peeped brightly. "No shit?"

Luke returned to his feet with a smile. "And see if you can bring a pallet runner in case we can't revive him. He won't fit in my speeder." He started to walk back to his speeder to see if he had at least a screwdriver in there somewhere.

"I'll see what I can do," she said. "Give me a few minutes."

With that, they both clicked off. Luke shoved his commlink back to his belt and rummaged around the trunk a while. No tools, but Kess showed up driving an empty pallet runner within minutes, as promised.

The woman was already laughing at him when she parked it beside his speeder. "You are the most unlikely sight to find in this place. Do you know that?"

He gave up on finding tools in his trunk and closed it. "Yes, I do."

She climbed off the runner, grabbing a tool bag in one hand and a toolbox with the other. Kess stepped to him with a secret grin, flirtations tickled on the Force like she was about to ask what he was doing later. Luke could only grin with relief that she didn't die. She was alive.

So many others weren't, but she was. How did he get to be so lucky?

She hardly noticed his darker mood. "Every time they have a party here, the first drink is always toasted to you? Did you know that?"

"But it shouldn't be." He took the toolbox from her hand and turned to walk her to the building. "They should be toasting Artoo."

"Sometimes they do." She noted, "Sometimes they toast a whole ton of people. But here at the warehouse, the first drink always goes to you."

Luke tried to keep the topic off-topic. "Don't they ever toast Lando, or Nieb, or Crix?" He led the way across the cold concrete floor to the back.

"I'm sure they would if the party was on Endor," she pointed out.

Luke shrugged a brow. "Fair point."

He stepped out the back door and across the cluttered yard. Kess stopped her boots to look over the mess with a laugh. "Looks like a missed a doozy!"

Luke turned around in his stroll and teased her for it. "Our party wasn't a 'doozy' enough for you?"

She met his eyes with a darkened smile. "Heh. 'Doozy' is an understatement."

"Agreed." He picked over to Artoo's resting place, who looked like he'd enjoyed a 'doozy' of his own. Luke's heart warmed, at the droid, at the banter with her. He felt light and bright again, floating up and away from that sad melancholy that haunted him a few minutes before.

Kess blurted when she saw him. "Holy smokes, Artoo!" She laughed and fell to her knees on the hard mud in front of the droid. "What the-!"

"He was dressed up as a table."

Kess smiled wildly at the droid's warpaint. "You are so busted!"

Luke remained on his feet behind her. "I can't get a shock out of his battery."

"Uh oh," she murmured and peaked into a panel. "I hope they didn't steal it."

"That would erase his memory, wouldn't it?"

"Over time, it would. If they did it wrong, it would. He may have gaps but… She reached in with a finger and couldn't get a shock out of it either. She set back with a huff.

"I just told you I tried that."

The moistness of the mud was starting to soak into the knees of her uniform. She turned up to face him. "Well are you gonna stand there and back seat pilot this? Or are you gonna get down here and help me?"

Luke already had a wet mud smudged spot on one knee from doing the same, but it blended in with his black uniform. He lowered to both knees this time and tapped open another panel.

"He's still got his power cells."

Kess was squinting in to the other one. "Are they charged?"

He pulled his head out. "Did you break a meter?"

"Well, yeah, but you don't need one for that. Just stick your finger in it."

Luke's flattened his mouth at the grease grunt trick but he did it anyway. He sucked a layer of spit onto his index finger and jammed it between the two leads.

Zap!

He whipped back his hand and wagged his fingers, gritting his teeth at her, trying to be angry for it. "Yep, they're charged."

Kess sat down on her hip to get out of the way and ripped open the blue lock levers that tied the droid together at his midsection. "I can see his lithiums, but I can't see what would have drained them."

Luke pulled the mystery metal piece out of his pocket. "I found this floating around in there."

"That's a piece of a safety seal to a liquid mercury canister."

Luke looked at the piece and his eyebrows rippled, then he looked at Artoo and raised one of them. The parallels continued to jut into Luke's mind. He tried to imagine Artoo slugging down a bottle of liquid mercury and choking the safety seal.

Kess unraveled her hand from Artoo's abdomen and sighed to look at him. "To tell you the truth, I think the guy just needs a jump start."

Luke nodded. That was his assessment as well, but he brought her out for a second opinion about it: "If whatever it was that turned him off, if it's still in there, it could short him out and blow him up if we try."

Kess sighed through her nose and nodded to that.

He was dead serious. "Is it still there?" He fiddled with the safety seal in his hand. It could have been the problem yesterday and it could have been a loose piece tucked harmlessly in an unseen corner for decades.

Kess licked her lower lip and nodded at his severity. "Okay, why don't we open all the hatches and check every exposed circuit so we don't miss anything."

Luke nodded again. "Two pairs of eyes. I don't want to miss something just because one of us doesn't know what we're looking at."

Meticulously, the couple opened every little door and compartment the droid had. They visually inspected every bolt and circuit for foreign objects.

"What's that?" Kess pointed to odd contraption just below Artoo's dome.

"Oh. Check this out." Luke stood on his feet. He demonstrated by pushing open the door with his finger and dropping his lightsaber hilt into the hollow. "And then, on command, he can throw it out at me."

"Clever," Kess complimented.

Luke reached to pull the lightsaber hilt out of Artoo's head, "we used it on—

Clank!

The spring release manually triggered, causing the harness to jam the hilt against the inside of Artoo's dome. Luke jumped back in case the blade ignited. It didn't, but now his lightsaber hilt was stuck in the old and broken launch mechanism inside Artoo's comatose head.

Gingerly, and with a pursed mouth, Luke peaked over the top of him to see the whole mess caught crookedly in Artoo's head, like a screwdriver preventing an overstuffed desk drawer from opening. "Blast."

Kess stood on her knees and peaked carefully over the dome too. "Not quite working as designed anymore, eh?" She grinned up at Luke. "Maybe we should take that out?"

Luke nodded. "Good idea." With a self-depreciating grin, he lifted his fingers aside and closed his eyes to concentrate. Kess was reaching into Artoo's belly with a socket wrench, but she paused that to back away and wait. She knew what he was up to.

In seconds, the lightsaber's powercell separated from the hilt.

And jammed the whole thing a millimeter more.

Now the powercell, the hilt, and the launch harness were all loose objects spring-jammed inside Artoo's dead head.

"Well, I think we know what caused it." Kess pulled out a loose bolt from the 'lightsaber launcher', showed him and set it aside.

"Yeah I think you're right." Luke lowered to his knees beside her and reached in through a different panel with a hand. Twisting his wrist around other modules, Luke grabbed the launch frame and pulled against the spring so Kess would have an easier time removing the remaining bolts.

He watched her nose wrinkle as she peaked in for the next bolt to remove, then watched her cheek as she pressed it against Artoo's belly, wrapping her whole arm under and around other parts in order to get the socket wrench to the right place at the right angle. He brown eyes shifted up and away while her hand blindly groped the guts of his droid. Blond hair frayed from her braids. Mud smeared green coveralls. Her lips peeled away from her teeth her face contorted with grinning focus. She was grubby. She was beautiful. She was alive.

And she was startled, when, without warning, he stood on his knees, took her face with his free hand and kissed her.

Her eyes fell closed to it. She didn't pull her arm out of Artoo, and neither did he, but her body fell toward him. It was just one kiss, but long and lingering. They both pulled back with a new smile and a dizzy sigh.

Refreshed and fuzzy, they resumed work on removing the launch harness. Kess reached in through one panel to get to the pieces while Luke kept his grip inside another panel to keep the spring frame from jamming anything any further.

After a few bolts came out, Kess pulled her arms from the mess and sat back on her feet, eyes above Artoo's head. "Alright. Let it go." Carefully, he adjusted his feet so he could leap for it if need be. He too aimed his eyes at the space above Artoo's open dome panel . . . and let go.

The hilt jumped out of Artoo like a frog, apexed a meter above their heads and came down at an angle. In one fluid move, Luke reached hard, caught it squarely in his palm, and froze.

He grinned over.

"Show off," she grunted, but her eyes were too bright for it to sound like an insult.

He set the hilt down and reached inside Artoo to pluck the power cell out too. Her finger pointed amongst the mess. "Hold that back." He did, and watched her hand come in through a different panel to take out more pieces.

She pulled out an elongated black cap and laughed. "What the hell?" She showed it over the top of Artoo's head at Luke. "Check it out."

"What is that?"

"The cover of a lipstick case."

"Is it yours?"

"No, man, looks like some Nubian brand." She handed it to him so she could reach in for some more. "I even didn't know we had any Nubians on base."

"Force only knows how long it's been in there." Luke fingered the lipstick cover and thumbed over the Nubian script, wondering about the owner of it. He angled a grin of pride at Artoo's lightless eye. "You old rascal."

Sproing! The spring launched out of Artoo's head and sailed away. They watched it go but neither bothered to catch it. Instead, they worked in careful concert to remove all the remaining pieces of that decrepit project.

Then they got serious and looked over everything again for any other loose pieces and parts tucked into the rest of him. Once they were convinced his case was clear of debris, Luke reached around to the side of Artoo's head and tried the power switch again.

Nothing.

"Damn." Luke began to fret. He didn't want to jump start the little guy for the risk of wiping his brain, but they were out of options.

With all doors and panels wide open, Kess reached up and petted a safe spot on his dome head. "Almost there, buddy."

Luke reached for the PSB12 and handed Kess the battery case. She held it in her lap as he tried to clamp the big, copper alligator clips onto Artoo's power couplings, but the space was tight and the connections unsecure.

"You're hands are smaller. Can you get in there?"

He shifted out of the way and she shifted onto his lap to reach in his stead. She squinted in with the clips and managed to get them in place. Luke scrunched down over top of her to peak in through the same panel.

"You got them in the right way?"

"Yeah."

"Are you sure you've got them in the right way?"

"Yes." She tried to sit up but his body was blocking her from backing up.

Luke leaned closer to check. "They're not backwards?"

Kess chuckled and shoved him away. "Would you get out of my lap?"

He sat up again and took the unit from her. "I'll do it."

She gave it over. "Why?"

"Because he's my droid," Luke said with a stiff face on Artoo.

Kess scooted away so Luke could have control of the procedure. He checked one last time that the cables were clipped to the right places, hit the spring-loaded circuit breaker switch inside Artoo's collar, and pulled his hand away to press his thumb on the power charger and-

Snap!

"Yeeeeoooooww!" Artoo screamed. Every little light shined wild and strait and every iris went wide open as Artoo's body and mind were slammed rudely awake. His mechanical scream acquiesced to a sentence of beeps and clicks and warbles as he rattled out a long string of droid-slang cuss words at the two of them.

"Good morning," Luke smiled big.

Artoo's noises were the equivalent of grumbling. He turned slowly to see Lendra and turned back to squint his iris at Luke. His sentence ended with the sound of rancor flatulence.

Luke smiled, proud and relieved. "I guess droids get hangovers too, huh?"

The dome head swiveled back and forth in confusion, warbling a new question.

Kess shrugged. "Yeah, we had to take it out. You had a lot of loose parts floating around in there."

Artoo gurgled something derogatory.

"Yes, I do." Luke assured easily and reached carefully in to take the cables off. He was just happy the droid was going to be okay. "Think you can get around, buddy?"

Artoo whistled affirmative.

Kess grabbed some tools from the ground. Luke rose to his feet and stepped out of the way, waiting for Artoo to find his balance again. The droid struggled a little because his weight had sunk him uncomfortably into the earth, but he lifted himself up, tilted back, and set his best wheel forward to 3WD himself out of the mud.

Kess moved around to pick up all the tools and wrap up the jumper unit. Luke walked with Artoo, kicking garbage out of the way to ease his path, and offered him a nice long visit to the 'Droid Spa' before he grounded Artoo with a restraining bolt.

Artoo tried to argue that it was he that customarily took care of Luke and therefore any restraining bolt that was to be applied would be to secure Luke's fly closed so that Artoo was no longer left to fend amongst the wild mammals.

Luke and Artoo continued to scold each other as the human maneuvered the pallet jack so the droid could roll himself onto it. Kess put the toolbox and bag back in the seating compartment and paused when Luke climbed into the driver's seat of the pallet runner.

"Take my speeder back?"

Kess had already started to feel like she was intruding. She nodded, waved Luke off, and gave Artoo a smack on his dirty silver dome. "Be good."

Artoo turned to watch her hop into the red speeder and drive off. His head swiveled to follow her until it landed on Luke in the driver's seat behind him.

"What?"

"She kissed me," Artoo beeped.

"So?" Luke set the machine in gear.

"You're not jealous?"

Luke laughed softly and pointed out, "You're an android, Artoo."

"So?" Artoo swiveled his head to watch the ride from the front row seat. "I've heard stories," he warbled. "3PO says they're disgusting."

Luke turned and drove the pallet runner out to the dirt road and agreed. "Considering the lipstick smeared on your quarter panels, Artoo, I don't want to know any more of your stories."