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Did you say something?

[Yeah, sorry Han. Your son checked out mentally about five minutes ago.]

"I was ..."

These days, the old pilot has resting frown face. It's the creases and wrinkles that showed up there one day when he wasn't paying attention. He blames the war. Old Han was one or two more smuggling runs away from getting old and tan on a beach on Umbara before he got involved in the alliance.

Of that, he's sure.

"Oh, nevermind. Can you start calculating the coordinates for our jump, Ben?"

He really wasn't trying to be difficult, but when his dad started rambling about the good old days, Ben had learned it was best just to shut up, tune out, and occasionally say "Uh-huh" for good measure.

"Got it." He leans over the control panel of the Falcon and starts punching in the coordinates. He'd been flying in the old girl since he was born and could've done it in his sleep by now. He didn't get to do it as much, training as he was with Luke these days, but when his dad asked him to go on this run, he jumped at the chance.

To be fair, a younger version of Han himself had no doubt operated the same way. Tuned out on an old timer talking about the glory days, because it doesn't have anything to do with the here and now. He just wouldn't admit to doing it, now that he's the old timer and he just caught himself doing that.

"Thanks." Han murmurs as he catches Ben hitting the appropriate triggers. Solo only pays enough attention to tell that it seems like he's doing what he's supposed to do, before his mind is on something else.

He's been the captain of the Falcon so long that he knows every sound that it's supposed to make. And he also knows every sound that it's not supposed to make. Right now? He thinks he's hearing a faint, out of place clicking.

"You're quiet." And if there was one thing Han Solo wasn't, it was ever at a loss for words. "What's going on?" Then Ben hears it too. There's a distinct clicking noise that most definitely isn't in the Falcon's usual repertoire of sounds.

"I'm gonna go check it out." Ben leaves the copilot seat and heads back into the ship. Everything's quiet for about two minutes and then Ben comes running back in, looking panicked but trying to hide it. "So, uh, we may have a little problem." Translation: There's a big problem and Han better take care of it pronto before the ship ends up in pieces.

For a moment, while Ben's in the back checking out the noise, he's actually feeling good. In fact, proud of his kid that he can recognize the out of place sound and that he's motivated to go check it out. He doesn't always ... know how best to convey those things. Not growing up without any family to speak of, it just doesn't come naturally to him.

He swivels the chair backwards towards Ben, when he hears the rhythm of his boots carrying him back toward the cockpit. He's about to convey his feelings of pride when he sees the look on the younger Solo's face. Aww, hell. (Not unlike his father) the boy, tends to emote in his face and body language exactly what's on his mind. Right now, it ain't good.

With one hand, Han pushes himself up and off of the pilots chair and with his other hand, he rubs the heel of his palm against the headache that is begging to form just above his right eye. Of course they didn't bring 3PO for this trip, because he wanted some peace and quiet.

"You know the hidden panel in the floor about ten meters away from the holochess board? I think there's an old astromech droid in there." He hopes it's still there. "If it is, get it. Grab the toolbox too."

Edited 2016-01-28 13:18 (UTC)

"This ship is gonna be the death of me," he mutters loud enough for his father to hear. Really, he loves the Falcon like he would a cherished family pet, but he wouldn't be himself if he wasn't giving the old man a hard time about things. He goes over to the hidden panel, lifting up the covering and moving it off to the side.

Ben slides his lean body into the panel. This was a lot easier when he was a kid and had more wriggle room. His shoulders scrape as he looks around from the astromech droid. The thing looks ancient, but Ben gets it to boot up with a prayer and a kick that leaves him with a sore toe. It beeps indignantly at him. "Don't look at me. I didn't even know you were in here. Come on."

He climbs back out, hauling the droid out with some huffing, puffing, and a Force push. He pulls the toolbox out from where it's stored. With a little luck, they just might be able to keep the old girl flying.

"Gonna be the death of you?" Han calls back through the rounded corridors of the ship, though he's heading the other way. "You're hilarious, kid, you must get that from your mother."

While the younger Solo has his tasks, the elder needs to grab a few things himself. The problem with a part failing you while you're in space is that, unless you've got a pod or you have a vessel so big that you have smaller ships onboard, you're stuck fixing the problem strictly with what you have on hand.

Believe it or not, this isn't the first time he's had this happen to him, so he has a durasteel crate full of various components he's hung onto over the years. Not as nice as being able to get your hands on new part, but sometimes, life gives you a box of scraps and you have to make new power-coupler out of it.

With both hands on one of the metal handles of the oblong crate, he starts dragging it toward the sound of the clicking. The box is old. With a few carbon scores on one side of it. Like it had been burned by blaster fire. There are curious marks on it as well, old imperial insignia, matter of fact.

Ben comes up behind his father, the astromech droid rolling along behind him. "Get to work, R3." The droid beeps in acknowledgement and begins the task of talking to the ship, figuring out where the worst of the damage is located so that it can be repaired.

The box gets a side-eye from Ben. "How long have you had this box? Since before I was born?" He questions. Yep, they're doomed. A question arises in Ben's mind. If he's here and his father is here, then who is running the ship? Autopilot will be all good and well until they bounce right into an asteroid field or hit a passing comet. He really wishes Chewbacca were with them. The wookiee had a way of being a solid, dependable presence. Not that Ben doesn't have faith in his father, he just knows how often he relies more on luck than actual skill to get through scrapes.

The R3 unit will plug into the diagnostic port nearest to where they're working. It being a YT-1300, there are plenty of them. He had his ideas on what it was the moment that he heard the noise. There are people who work on their own ships and people who don't, and regardless of his son's faith in his proficiency as a mechanic, Han has worked on this ship for a long time at this point.

He's right about one thing, though, it's troublesome not to have anyone in the cockpit. Two people is good enough to crew the Falcon when nothing goes wrong, but ... really, despite his want of a quiet father-son flight, he should know better.

As for the box, the truth of it is, it's his footlocker from his time in the imperial flight academy. Since there were quite a number of years that Han's son has treated the Falcon as his personal jungle gym (to a strange mix of pride and horror of his father), he's no doubt seen it before, maybe even wondered about it. And, no doubt by now, Ben has come to realize that Han has scavenger tendencies - though if they originate from habit or necessity is subject to debate.

"Yeah, it's an old crate. I think I've hung onto it for thirty years or so." The aged pilot confirms as he flips a few clanky metal latches to release the lid. You'll have to forgive him for not having a zippy retort to fire off at that moment, between trying to decide if he should lie about it's origin and trying to focus on the task at hand, he doesn't get the most inspired answer.

Han starts pawing through a mess of parts found in the crate. Occasionally picking one up and setting it aside.

"I, uh, found it after a gunfight on an imperial cruiser. It looked handy."

Edited 2016-02-03 07:34 (UTC)

"I'm sure those parts will work just like you found them yesterday." The sarcasm is strong with this one. Han has no one but himself to blame for Ben's snarky tendencies. As Han pulls parts out of the box, Ben is busy searching through the toolbox for what they'll need to repair the old ship. He gets out a few wrenches and a soldering iron. Come to think of it, a fire extinguisher wouldn't be out of place either.

A shadow of something dark crosses over Ben's face. Whether it's his natural aptitude with the Force or just his closeness with his father, he knows that Han is lying to him and he doesn't like it. "I don't believe that for--" Before he can accuse Han of anything, R3 whips the top part of his head around and starts beeping at the pair of them. Ben listens for a moment and runs a hand through his hair, groaning a little. "He said that the power regulators are fluctuating to dangerously high levels."

They could solve this. All they needed was a few parts, spit, and a whole lot of luck.

"I'll settle for yesterday." He says, though own snarky remark is not served up with as much zeal as the younger Solo. Han is trying to concentrate, after all. "Yesterday everything was working."

It's only because Ben spit out enough of an accusation that he realizes that he didn't buy his lie about the crate. Which, makes him feel like a bit of a jerk, sure, but he still doesn't know how to come clean about his life before meeting Leia. If he known then that at some point he'd have to explain all the choices he made to his kid, maybe he would have made a few different ones.

Then again, most of the time, he felt like he was just playing the hand he got delt.

"Well, that tracks. It looks like the conditioner is about to start sparking." Which you can plainly see when you look into the exposed machinery. "R3 shut down the power to section 7-B. I'd rather not be electrocuted, today."

The astro droid beeps an affirmative and the sound of the power humming through the machines disappears. Ben looks over to a corner where a fire extinguisher has been placed under one of the Falcon's seat. He focused on reaching out with the Force, using it to float the extinguisher over to them. Better safe than sorry.

Ben starts handing the necessary tools over to his father to start repairing the Falcon. He stares at Han with his dark brown eyes, the color more like his mother's than his father's. "So you gonna tell me what's the real story behind that crate or do I have to guess?" Yep, he's not going to be letting that go.

The kid is tenacious as a Mynock that sees an exposed power cable. Or his mother, at any time.

Han sticks a thin flat blade in the seam of an cylindrical shaped part. With a twist of his right hand, the componet pops open and he begins gently removing the useful things that he needs from it - wires and what looks like a transistor. That gets set aside into his helpful pile and the outer shell gets dumped back into the mess of parts.

As for the fire extinguisher, that's certainly not a bad idea, considering. He is going to be using a torch at the end. The displays of the force always makes Han a little ... well, it's hard to describe and it depends on the display of course, but in general it's a strange feeling of awe and unease. It put butterflies in his stomach the one time he watched Luke lift an A-wing during a daring escape on Bestine.

He looks over at his kid. Thoughtful for a second, it's like you can see him mulling over the choices in his mind before he answers again. "When I was your age, I wanted so badly to escape where I was at, that I stole a one man freighter I barely knew how to pilot and answered a want ad for a commercial piloting job. Turned out that job was shipping spice on the outer rim for a bunch of slime balls." As far as Ben can tell, there is honesty in his eyes when he relays this story. "Anyway, when that was over, I just wanted to be on the up and up. I was tired of falling in with different guys who wanted just wanted to take advantage of people and I wanted to do something good, you know? I thought enlisting in the Navy was a good choice at the time."

Ben goes quiet as he listens to this snippet of unknown backstory. Shipping spice for those not on the up and up was hardly surprising. That was a standard Han Solo move. The last bit, though, has Ben blinking in surprise.

"You? The Navy?" Yeah, that does not compute in Ben's head. He knows about his father's past. Han has never been shy in withholding details about his days as smuggler and rogue who had followed his own path. The younger Solo still preferred the other stories he'd been told as a child, the ones where he'd turned around and helped even when there was nothing in it for him, like the time he'd helped his uncle blow up the Death Star. What could he say? He'd never quite grown out of the hero worship he'd held for his father.

Moments.

This father and son tandem don't get as many moments together as they should. He knows that, even though his own parents were essentially a non-presense in his life. He remembers how hard that it was for him not to have them and, you would think it would make him work extra hard to make sure that he didn't do the same to Ben, but ... it happens all to often that the same mistakes get made over and over again in families.

He wishes there was someone in the cockpit right now that would allow them to really embrace this moment. There isn't though. (In some respects, it's an apt metaphor for Ben's whole life. Han and Leia, try to balance him along with the chaos of everything going on around them, but he rarely gets to be the center of their attention.) They're just going to have to have it congruently with fixing this kryffing regulator.

Han holds out his hand, trusting that his son has observed him fixing the family freighter often enough to know that he needs one of the spanners for the next part of the repair.

"Long enough to finish training and fly in the starfigthers for a few years." He says with a thoughtful frown. He uses the term 'starfigthers' which describe the size of the ship, but not the model. He was, in fact, flying in TIE/LN's.

Which, may seem shocking at first, Ben, but when you think about the way your father flys ... the hairpin turns, the displacement rolls, wingovers and pitchbacks. There's only so many places a man learns those kinds of maneuvers, isn't there?

Edited 2016-03-12 13:38 (UTC)