The ship eased into the docking bay of the Liberator and as the ion engines kicked off the repulsorlift drives kicked on, floating the customized X-Wing fighter a few meters above the deck. Then it slowly dropped to the deck, and once there the repulsorlifts kicked back off and the bay was once again silent.

The cockpit canopy lifted up and Jason took off his helmet, looking around for a moment. He was the first to get here, there were no other fighters in the bay.

He climbed down out of the cockpit, revealing the fact that he had his normal off-duty clothes on. If anyone had been there to ask him about it, he would have told them that its a long flight from Corellia, where he had stopped to make some slight modifications to his X-Wing.

He knew it was against regulations, but he didn't care. Anything that could keep him alive in combat a little longer was well worth the price. And besides, he was paying for it out of his own pocket, or rather his father's pocket. He wondered how long it would be before his father realized that he still had the Imperial Bank codes to the family account. He smiled thinking of the expression on his father's face when he did find out.

A bleep and a whine from his R2 unit brought him back to reality.

"What is it, Baron?" the droid bleeped harshly at him. "Oh, yeah, of course. Hold on a sec, I'll go find someone to get you out of there in a jiff."

He scanned the bay again for any signs of life. None. He looked up and saw the magnet on the ceiling that needed to be lowered to get Baron out of there, but he didn't have a clue how to activate it.

He started walking to what appeared to be a control panel on a small half-meter tall column several meters away.

Across the top was a single label, with the words "PAD 4 CONTROLS". There eighteen buttons on the left side of the panel, arranged in three columns. The left and center columns were grey colored, with the top half the the last column yellow and the bottom half red. None of the buttons were labeled. On the right side of the panel was a blank display screen.

"Hmmm..." Jason said, examining it, taking his time, knowing it would annoy Baron. "doubt its one of the red or yellow ones. That leaves twelve buttons to try."

There was a thin grey line surrounding the bottom three buttons on the left column, and another surrounding the center three buttons in the center column.

He then noticed a tiny dot in the center of the left bottom button.

"I think I found it..." he yelled at Baron, pressing the center button of the three surrounded by the grey line in the left column.

Suddenly a mechanical whirring could be heard, and the magnet lowered down onto Baron's head. When it made contact, there was a slight metallic "clomp" followed by a whistle and harsh bleep from Baron.

Jason grinned. "Sorry!"

He pressed the button with the little dot in the center, hoping it would activate the magnet. Then he pressed the top button, and the magnet slowly lifted into the air, with Baron hanging from it.

"Told you I'd get it figured out," Jason said in Baron's direction. The droid fired a comment back at him just low enough that Jason could not quite make it out.

When the magnet fully retracted to the ceiling, it moved several meters to the left. Jason pressed the lowering button, as he had done before, and the magnetic clamp lowered the android to the floor. Then Jason again pressed the button with the black center, hoping it would also deactivate the clamp. To his relief, as it pulled up and back into its original positions, it did not still have Baron attached to it.

The little droid came rolling around to the other side of the X-Wing where Jason was standing, groaning and moaning about how it was treated so poorly.

Jason suppressed another grin and said, "Hey, I could have sold you and got one of those new, inexpensive R5 units."

The R2 made a high pitched whistle and got very excited, shaking as it bleeped and bleeted at him.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You're right, I shouldn't joke like that. But who said I was joking?"

And so began Jason Tallen's tour aboard the KDY-301 Liberator, it from the looks of it, it was going to be an interesting one...