- - - - - The Millennium Falcon - - - - -
Two left turns of the corridor and the Millennium Falcon was finally in sight. The three raced up the ramp with Threepio trailing close behind them and Chewbacca waiting for them inside.
"Did Luke get out alright?" Tess asked no one in particular. She secured herself into a seat with acceleration straps before Leia could tell her to do it.
"He's fine," Leia told her. She didn't officially know that he had safely made his way off to the Dagobah System to do whatever he refused to tell her, but she felt it and therefore responded as such. She didn't have time to think too much about it.
Han started fiddling with the ship's controls in a manner that he only used when the ship had not been very trustworthy lately. The Falcon always had the worst timing with its needs for maintenance.
"Would it help if I got out and pushed?" Leia spat. Tess rolled her eyes at Leia's constant need to bicker with the smuggler-turned-captain.
"It might," he retorted sarcastically, ignoring whatever the golden droid was trying to pester him with.
Han made his way swiftly to the cockpit and Leia followed. Threepio trailed close behind, as always, leaving the Wookie and Tess in the main room. They exchanged glances.
"You owe me 72 credits," she reminded him, pulling out her deck of Pazaak cards and shuffling them. "Double or nothing?"
The 7-foot furball shook his head vigorously. Before he could growl his way out of the credits he owed the fourteen-year-old, Han called him over.
Without Chewbacca there to entertain her, Tess figured she'd just turn off Threepio and take his seat up in the cockpit.
By the time Tess got to the cockpit, the fourth seat had not been taken so she snagged it before the golden droid came back. Once again, she faced the race of securing the acceleration straps before Leia told her to.
"We might need Threepio up here, why didn't you stay by the lounge seats?" Leia asked. "You'd probably be more comfortable there."
"We're on my ship now, where I'm boss, and I say Tess stays," Han ordered, only half-jokingly. "You know goldenrod won't sit down anywhere where he can't be fastened in and with these four seats taken that puts him far away from me, just where I like him."
"You just say that because you can never find his power off button," Leia snapped back.
"Um…could we get away from the Empire before you guys start fighting again?" Tess suggested, her eyes widening at the sight of the star destroyers and other Empire ships following them. Leia followed her glance, then shot Han a look.
"They're getting closer," she warned. Han reached forward towards the controls.
"Oh yeah? Watch this!"
Han Solo flipped the control forward. Tess held on to her seat, expecting the jump to light speed before the ship hummed, then the humming decelerated—a clear indicator that the attempt failed. As if things could not get any worse, Threepio entered the cockpit.
"If I may say so, sir," the annoying droid began. "I noticed earlier the hyperdrive motor has been damaged. It's impossible to go to light speed!"
Muttering something about being in trouble, Han raced out the bulkhead door.
"You know, sometimes you should just spit these things out rather than spending so much time getting our attention," Tess suggested to Threepio with clenched teeth. She hopped to her feet, knowing that leaving Chewie to hand Han the tools would just end badly.
By the time Tess caught up with Han, he was already fiddling with the controls and Chewie had already messed up one tool hand-off and rather than looking for the right one, he set the tool box by the opening in the floor that Han had ducked into.
"I'm here!" Tess told him, reaching for the toolbox.
"Tess, go back to the cockpit," he grumbled, tucking his head back into the floor opening that housed the controls. "The last thing I need is a smart-mouth kid to deal with right now!"
The ship shook as something hit the Falcon, moving the tool box to the point that it almost fell on Han's head. After that last comment he made, Tess justified kicking it in as a means for him to learn his lesson about underestimating her.
The plasteel toolbox fell directly onto the smuggler, who cried out in pain and raised his head out of the compartment. Tess pointed an accusatory finger at the Wookie.
"Chewie!" Han growled.
Again, the Millennium Falcon shook with some sort of impact. Tess barely managed to stay on two feet as she watched Han's face change.
"That wasn't a laser blast," he concluded. "Something hit us."
"Han, get up here!" Leia called from the cockpit.
After so much racing about the ship, Tess was almost reconsidering getting out of everyone's hair by sitting in the lounge chair with accelerator restraints towards the other side of the ship. Han, Tess, and Chewie returned to their cockpit seats, suddenly facing their next challenge even before Leia called it. "Asteroids!"
To everyone else's dismay, Han and Chewie started propelling the ship straight into the asteroid field.
"What are you doing?" Leia demanded, standing over Han's chair like the back-seat flier she always insisted on being. "You're not actually going into an asteroid field!"
"They'd be crazy to follow us, wouldn't they?" Han suggested. Leia's eyes widened as she realized he was serious.
"You don't have to do this to impress me."
"Is this because you think I kicked the toolbox onto your head?" Tess interjected. "Because I told you that was Chewie."
Chewbacca growled a whining protest. Threepio entered the room, once again just making a bad situation more annoying.
"Sir, the chances of successfully—"
Tess snapped off his power before he could continue. Han took a moment to turn to the kid.
"You're my new favorite."