2024-10-15
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leia moaned and rolled off of han solo's hard sweaty body and testily punched the communicator button beside the bed.

"what."

"sub-commandant skywalker, i apologize for intruding on your scheduled rest period, but there is a critical emergency following a rebel terrorist attack. we need your assistance in order to save the station."

"ugh, it's always something in this place." she looked over at her lover and rolled her eyes. han flashed his dashing smile.

low pitched warning sirens droned from outside of luke and leia's space condo.

"reactor four is overheating and the designated personnel are occupied with the current security situation. we believe you can access a secondary control panel in your basement to shut down the reactor. again, this is a critical emergency."

leia shrugged on a white bath robe and switched on the video feed of the concerned technician's face.

"you want me to what now?" 

the screen updated and was replaced with a glowing cyan diagram of the reactor complex and a map of the residential district.

...

leia is in the basement of her condo, throwing white contraband boxes and plastic wookie christmas ornaments off of a painted metal control console, as han stands by and watches.

"didn't i tell you not to get involved in this empire stuff? it's too much work." han sipped his coffee smugly and looked around. "you got any tobacco in this place?"

leia flashed han an angry look, the crown of braids framing her head looking just like the imperial victory wreath leaning on the shelf beside her.

"it was luke's idea to move here."

finally she uncovered a small white panel which slowly tilted up, revealing a square softly glowing red button. leia pressed the button, with a satisfying analog synthesizer splort noise.

"ah, fuck." leia rubbed the sweat off her forehead with the sleeve of the bath robe.

the button continued to glow. on the screen was a standard imperial error message: access denied.

"it didn't work?"

"it's been six years and luke still has never gotten around to giving me the temperature control access codes for this place, with the war and all."

"i bet he just doesn't want you to change the thermostat. some like it hot!" han winked and grabbed her ass, leaning over to look at the control console with his coffee.

"it's too hot in here." 

leia studied the schematic and the blinking line that represented the coolant duct that passed beneath their condo.

"well there's nothing we can do from here. i guess we should go back to the holo pod and ride it out."

for those unaware, the Death Star was not built with escape pods. imperial statisticians determined that when taking into account the launch procedure, deorbit burn, descent and landing, and survival on an uncontrolled planetary surface in harsh conditions, the chance of death was greater when using a standard escape pod than to shelter in place in a simulated escape pod. the holo pod, which doubles as an entertainment system, consists of a spherical titanium shell and self contained life support system. the holo pod is structurally isolated from the main truss system by twelve magnetotactic actuator struts, so that even in the case of large explosions the force imparted to the occupants is minimal. when an occupant enters the holo pod during an emergency, a holovideo recording of a real escape pod launch and landing sequence is played, and simulated accelerations are relayed through the magnetotactic actuators, giving an emotional cathartic reaction deemed necessary by