Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (43 page)

With the deck-plate gravity switched off, he would sit in the middle of a room—equidistant not only from its walls, but from its floor and ceiling as well—parked comfortably on a cushion of thin air, cogitating. But the cast got in the way.

Lando also had a black eye and a broken toe. But, considering everything else that had happened, those were minor annoyances. He flicked expensive cigar ash at a vacuum hose he’d arranged to hang conveniently nearby, and spoke in the
direction of an intercom panel set in a table somewhere beneath him.

“Vuffi Raa, what’s our ETA again?”

The instrument returned a voice to him, soft-spoken and polite, fully as mechanical in its origins as the instrument itself, yet rich with humorous astute inflection.

“
Seventy-six hours, Master. That’s a new correction: this region is so clean we’ve gained another four hours since I made the last estimate. I apologize for my previous inexactitude
.”

Inexactitude! Lando thought. The Core-blessed thing talks prettier than I do, and
I’m
supposed to be the con
artiste
around here!

The
Millennium Falcon
’s velocity, many times greater than that of light, was limited only by the density of the interstellar medium she traversed. Ordinary space is mostly emptiness, yet there are almost always a few stray molecules of gas, sometimes in surprisingly complex chemical organization, per cubic kilometer. Any modern starship’s magnetogravitic shielding kept it from burning to an incandescent cinder and smoothed the way through what amounted to a galaxy-wide cluttering of hyperthin atmosphere. But the resistance of the gas was still appreciable through a reduction in the ship’s theoretical top speed.

The particular area the
Falcon
was then passing through seemed to be an exception. Bereft of the usual molecular drag, the
Falcon
was outdoing even her own legendary performance.

The captain pondered that, then addressed the intercom again. “Better back her off a few megaknots. I need more time than that before this confounded dingus comes off my arm. And you’ve still got a dent or two yourself that needs ironing out. And Vuffi Raa?”

“
Yes, Master
?” was the cheerful reply. Lando could hear the clack-clack-clack of keyboard buttons being punched as per his instructions. The vessel slowed, but that could not be felt through her inertial dampers.

“Don’t call me master!”

That had been very nearly reflexive. He’d long since given up wondering what the robot’s motivation was for the small but chronic disobedience. Actually, Lando was concerned about his little mechanical friend, and not just because Vuffi Raa was such a terrific pilot droid. Or at least not entirely. These sporadic violent attacks they’d been suffering lately were getting to be a serious matter where they had only been
minor nuisances before, and knowing
why
they were happening, to Lando’s great surprise, hadn’t helped a bit.

The gambler sneered down at his foot where another, tinier set of coils pulsed healing energies into his flesh. Somehow,
that
was the final insult—that and the black eye. It was one thing to attempt to murder an enemy. That was what a vendetta was all about, after all. But to do him in by millimeters, an abrasion here, a contusion there? Fiendish, Lando was forced to admit—if it wasn’t simple ineptitude. Somehow the enemy realized that a man otherwise willing and capable of bare-handedly confronting a ravening predator his own size, sometimes panics at the sound of a stinging insect barnstorming around his ears.

Well, the gambler told himself, that’s why we’re on this so-called errand of mercy. I’m going to put a twelve-gee stop to all of this juvenile assassination nonsense, one way or the other, once and for all.

Sure, it was a risky proposition; the stakes were as high as they could be. But above and beyond every other consideration, Lando Calrissian—he told himself again—was a sport who’d wager anything and everything on the turn of a single card-chip.

That’s how he’d gotten into the mess in the first place.

It seemed that, some time before, a talented but essentially prospectless young conscientious-objector-of-fortune had won himself a starship—actually a converted smuggling freighter—in a game of seventy-eight-card
sabacc
. A little while later he had, quite unintentionally, acquired a pretty peculiar robot in much the same fashion. Together, the two machines and their man had set out upon a series of adventures, some more profitable than others. In the process, they had made a number of enemies, one of them a self-proclaimed sorcerer who had plotted to Rule The Galaxy, and had tripped over Lando on his way to the top. Twice.

The fellow had resented that, blamed Lando for his own bumbling and bad luck, and the vendetta had begun. Until now, it had been an unrequited, entirely one-sided relationship. All Lando wanted was to be left alone. He’d tried explaining, via various media, that he didn’t care who ran the universe—he’d break whatever rules it suited him to disobey in any case, whoever was in charge—and that the sorcerer was perfectly welcome to all the power and glory he could grab. Alas, these
blandishments, reasonable as they sounded to the gambler, had fallen upon inoperative auditory organs.

Just to make things really complicated, Vuffi Raa had already had enemies of his own. Although the robot hadn’t known it. His previous master, while spectacularly untalented at games of chance, had been a highly effective government employee in the spy business. This fellow, ostensibly an itinerant anthropologist, had used the little robot, forced him to help undermine a previously undiscovered system-wide civilization in a manner that had resulted in the brutal military extermination of two-thirds of its citizens. The remaining third, understandably perturbed, had sworn eternal hatred for the droid, and had enthusiastically begun to do something about it.

Subsequent attempts at negotiation, as in Lando’s case, had been nearly lethally futile. Some people just won’t listen.

Well, life is like that, Lando thought as he hovered in what had been designed as the passenger lounge of the
Millennium Falcon
. It served as their living room; just then, it was the gambler’s private thinking-parlor, and the thoughts he was thinking were reasonably ironic. He took another puff on his cigar.

The trouble with two partners having separate sets of mortal enemies is that said enemies don’t always make distinctions. Particularly when using fragmentation grenades. Poor Vuffi Raa had gotten badly dented by an assassin in the employ of the sorcerer at their last port of call. The idiot had confessed before expiring; with the nervousness of a beginner, he’d thrown the pin instead of the grenade. The robot’s injuries would work themselves out after a while. He had excellent self-repair mechanisms.

In another incident, Lando had been pushed over a rail into a vat of vitamin paste he had considered acquiring for that very trip, somehow fracturing both arm and toe and picking up a shiner. What really hurt was that he’d simply
ruined
his second-best velvoid semiformal captain’s uniform. He was certain Vuffi Raa’s enemies were responsible. It felt like their style. Clumsy.

Nor was the
Millennium Falcon
considered immune. In fact, she’d rather taken the brunt of things, with bombs planted inside her (two of which had actually gone off) and having felt the fury of several small space battles in recent months. A fighter pilot had deliberately rammed her, crumpling her boarding ramp. She’d strained her engines getting them in and out
of various places in a hurry. Her battery of quad-guns, under Lando’s capable direction, had staved off the occasional pirate vessel, who probably hadn’t anything at all to do with vendettas. Surprised at the ferocity with which her captain had taken it all out on their hides, defeated pirates were giving the battered old freighter quite a reputation.

Pirates they could handle. The
Falcon
was a good deal faster than she looked, terrifyingly well armed; he and the robot were pretty hot pilots, but Vuffi Raa had taught Lando everything he knew in this regard. Lando told himself again that the business at the StarCave would pay off all other debts, as well. He was thoroughly fed up, loaded for whatever furry omnivorous quadruped the fates cared to place in his path.

Tugging gently at the vacuum ashtray hose, Lando drifted to the ceiling of the lounge, gave a little shove against the overhead, which propelled him near the floor. He switched on the gravity and walked both forward and starboard around the
Falcon
’s curving inner corridor, to the cockpit, which was set in a tubelike construction projecting from the front of the ship.

In the left-hand pilot’s seat, an equally weird construction perched, a five-limbed chromium-plated starfish with a single glowing red eye set atop its pentagonal torso. Its tentacles were at rest just then, having reduced the
Falcon
’s speed as Lando had requested.

The meter-high entity turned to its master. “I believe you’ll be able to make out the nebula now, Master. See, that blurry spot ahead?”

Lando strained his eyes, then gave up and punched the electronic telescope into activation. Yes, there it was: the ThonBoka, as its inhabitants called it. It was a sack-shaped cloud of dust and gas, enterable only from one direction, rich with preorganic molecules even up to and including amino acids. Inside that haven, life had evolved without benefit of star or planet, life adapted to living in open empty space. Some of that life had eventually acquired intelligence and called itself the Oswaft. But at the moment, they were under seige.

“What about the blockade, can you locate that?” Lando strapped himself into the right-hand seat, ran a practiced eye over various gauges and screens, relaxed, and plucked a cigar out of the open safe beneath the main control panel.

“Yes, Master, I’m overlaying those data now.”

Vuffi Raa’s tentacles flicked over the panel with a life of their own. He was a Class Two droid, with a level of intelligence
and emotional reaction comparable to those of human beings. He had a good many other talents, as well. To Lando’s occasional disgust, however, the robot was deeply programmed never to harm organic or mechanical sapience, and was thus an automatic pacifist. There had been times when that had been inconvenient.

On the main viewscreen, showing the sacklike ThonBoka nebula, a hundred tiny yellow dots sprang to life.

Lando whistled. “That’s quite a fleet for bottling up one undefended dust cloud. What do they think this is, the Clone Wars?” He leaned forward to light his cigar, but was stopped by the offer of a glowing tentacle tip. Yes, Vuffi Raa had a lot of useful talents.

“That isn’t even half of them, Master. Although I can’t understand why, some of the fleet out there have modified their defense shielding into camouflage to conceal themselves. I also believe they’ve mined the mouth of the nebula.”

Puffing on his cigar, Lando forced calm. “And we’re going to run that blockade. Oh, well, it’s been a short life but a brief one. Can you do anything about shield camouflage for us?”

The robot wiped the screen display. “I’m afraid not, Master, it’s very sophisticated technology.”

“Which means that everybody in the universe is using it except civilians. Well, then, what’s our plan?”

There was a startled pause that might have been filled with a blinking red eye had Vuffi Raa been capable of such a thing. “I thought
you
had the plan, Master.”

Lando sighed resignedly. “I was afraid you’d say that. To tell the truth, I had a plan, but it seems pretty insubstantial, here and now. I shall repair to my free-fall cogitorium once more and reconsider. I’ll get back to you as soon as possible. Don’t hold your breath, it may very well be a century or three.”

He unstrapped himself from his chair, took a final disgusted look through the sectioned canopy, and removed himself from the control area with his cigar. Around the long, heavily padded corridor, out into the cluttered lounge, off with the artificial gravity, and back to the geometric center of the room, where he sat and smoked and tried to think.

It wasn’t one of his better days for that.

“
Master
?” The voice coming over the intercom was agitated. It startled the gambler out of a dream in which, no matter what
sabacc
hand he held, his cards kept changing to
garbage, while a faceless gray opponent held a newly invented one, the Final Trump, which was an automatic twenty-three.

“Zzzzzz—what?”

Lando blinked, discovered that he was covered with sweat. His velvoid semiformals were soaked through, and he smelled like a bantha someone had ridden half to death. He stretched, trying to remove kinks from his muscles that shouldn’t have been there in zero gee.

“Vuffi Raa, how many times have I told you never to call me—”

“
Master
,” the robot interrupted, sounding both worried and eager at the same time, “
its been nearly three hours. Have you come up with a plan
?”

“Uh, not exactly,” the gambler replied, shaking his head in an unsuccessful attempt to clear it. “I’m working on it. I said I’d call you when—”

“
Well, I think we’d better talk it over now, if you don’t mind. You see, there’s a picket cruiser sitting not more than a hundred kilometers off our starboard bow. I didn’t see them, so well camouflaged were they, and they’ve fired two warning shots already. Master, they say they’ll cut us in half with the next shot unless we stand by to receive boarders
.”

Lando grunted. His mouth tasted like a mynock cave. “That’s the Navy for you, no consideration at all.”

C
ONCEALED BEYOND THE
reach of civilization lay a place called Tund, a name of legendary repute, one seldom spoken above a whisper. That whispered word named a planet, a system, or a cluster of stars—no one was quite certain which—rumored for ten thousand years to be the home of powerful and subtle mages. Fear was associated with the name, the sort of fear that
inhibits mentioning, even thinking about, the thing it represents, so as not to invoke its omniscient, omnipotent, and malevolent attention. Almost no one knew the even more hideous truth.