Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (5 page)

As nearly as Lando could determine, consignments of life-crystals traveled only via the Brother-In-Law Shipping Company (whatever its local equivalent was actually called), and free-lance haulers were simply out of luck. There would be no cargo for the dashing Captain Lando to
write
manifests on.

Well, that suited him. He’d trade off the cargo tomorrow.

Door-field humming securely, and the bed turning itself down with cybernetic hospitality, Lando undressed, carefully supervising the closet’s handling of his clothing. Vuffi Raa offered its services as a valet, the appropriate skills being well within the capacities of its Class Two architecture, which supposedly approached human levels of intellectual and emotional response.

But Lando declined.

“I haven’t had servants for a very, very long time indeed, my fine feathered droid, and I don’t intend starting again with you. I’m afraid you’re to change hands once more, first thing in the morning. Nothing personal, but get used to it.”

The robot bobbed silent acknowledgment, found an unoccupied corner of the room, and lapsed into the semiactivation that in automata simulates sleep, its scarlet eye-glow growing fainter but not altogether dimming out.

Lando stretched on the bed, thoughts of ancient treasure dancing through his head. Of course, he considered, life-crystals weren’t the only possible cargo he could take away from this place. The ancient ruins were supposedly impenetrable, but whatever race had built them, it hadn’t stinted on strewing the system with more portable artifacts. Museums might be interested—and possibly in the crude statuettes and hand-tools fashioned by the savage natives, as well. High technology past and primitive present: quite a fascinating contrast.

But the treasure …

Come to think of it, there were also a few colonial manufactured goods. But that meant he’d have to chase all over the Rafa just to line up a single decent holdful—with a messy, embarrassing, and possibly dangerous takeoff and landing at each stop along the way, he reminded himself.

Of course, there was always the treasure …

No
. Better stick to the original plan: find a buyer for the
Falcon
. It had been fun for a short while, but he was no real space captain, and she was far too expensive to maintain as a private yacht, even if he’d wanted one. Find somebody to give him a fair price for Vuffi Raa, as well. Perhaps the same suck—
customer
. Then ship out, tens of thousands of credits richer, on the very next commercial starliner.

He whistled the lights out, then had an afterthought. “Vuffi Raa?”

The faintest whine of servos coming back to full power. “Yes, Master?” Its eye shone in the darkness like a giant cigarette coal.

“Don’t call me Master—gives me the creeps. Can you, by any chance, pilot a starship? Say, a small converted freighter?”

“Such as your
Millennium Falcon
?” A pause as the droid examined its programming. “Why, yes, er … how
should
I call you, sir?”

Lando turned over, the smug look on his face invisible in the darkened room. “Not too loudly, Vuffi Raa, and no later than nine-hundred in the morning. Good night.”

“Good night, Master.”

KRAAASH!

The door-field overloaded, arced and spat as the panel itself split and hinges groaned, separating from the frame.

Lando awoke with a start, one foot on the floor, one hand reaching for the stingbeam on the nightstand before he was consciously aware of it.

Four uniformed figures, their torsos covered with flexible back-and-breast armor, helmet visors stopped down to total anonymity, stomped over the smoking remains of the door as the room lights came up of their own accord. Their body armor failed to conceal the sigil of colonial peacekeepers. They carried ugly, oversized military blasters, unholstered and pointing directly at Lando’s unprotected midsection.

He removed his hand from the nighttable, hastily, but without sudden, misinterpretable movement.

“Lando Calrissian?” one of the helmeted figures demanded.

He eyed the wreckage of the door.

“Wouldn’t it be embarrassing if I weren—um, on second thought, let me revise that: yes, gentlebeings, I am Captain Lando Calrissian, in the flesh and hopeful of remaining that
way. Always happy to cooperate, fully and cheerfully, with the authorities. What can I do for you fellows?”

The bulbous muzzle of its weapon unwavering, the imposing armored figure stepped closer to the bed, its companions immediately filling up the space behind it.

“Master of the freighter
Millennium Falcon
, berth seventeen, Teguta Lusat Interstellar—”

“The very same. I—”

“Shut up. You are under arrest.”

“That’s fine, officer. Just let me get my pants—or not, if it’s inconvenient. I’ll be happy to answer whatever questions His Honor may wish to ask. That’s my policy: the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Support Your Local—
Umph
!”

The big cop hit Lando in the stomach with his blaster, followed it with the empty hand, balled into a mailed fist. A second figure went to work on the hapless gambler’s legs. The other two swung crisply around the bed, started in on him from the other side.

“Ow! I said I’d go peaceably—
ghaa
! I—
unhh
! Vuffi Raa,
help me
!”

The robot cowered in its corner, manipulators trembling. Abruptly, it collapsed, curled up into a ball. Its light went out.

So did Lando’s.

S
QUAT
.

Squat and ugly.

Squat and ugly and
powerful—at
least locally, Lando reminded himself with an inward groan as two of the helmeted
officers
dragged him into the presence of Duttes Mer, colonial governor of the Rafa.

Lando hadn’t had time yet—nor the inclination—to inventory
the indignities inflicted on him by the Colonial Constabulary. He seemed to be one solid, puffy bruise from neck to ankles. Avoid trouble with the cops in one system, get it in the next when you least expect it.

It hurt, rather a lot.

Yet nothing really serious had been done to him, he realized, nothing broken, nothing that would show if they ever gave him back his clothes. A thorough, workmanlike, professional beating, it had been, and, for all that it had seemed to go on and on forever, apparently a purely educational one, a few well-placed contusions meant to underline the fact that he was totally at their mercy.

He’d bloodied his own nose, stumbling against the jamb as they’d frog-marched him over the broken door of his hotel room. In hopes of not acquiring any further damage, he wished they’d put a plastic sheet under him now, to keep him from getting blood all over the governor’s fancy imported carpet, the only extravagance apparent in an otherwise spare and utilitarian office.

There was a useful clue, there, if only Lando’s head would begin working well enough to ferret it out.

The governor blinked. “Lando Calrissian?”

At least everybody seemed to know his name. It was a startlingly high-pitched, feeble voice, considering the ponderous bulk it issued from—and perhaps a touch more nervous, Lando thought, than current circumstances seemed to warrant. Gamblers make much more careful studies of such nuances than psychologists. They have to.

Thickly muscled, improbably broad, resembling more than anything else a deeply weathered tree-stump crowned in fine, almost feathery hair, the governor looked like the kind to play his cards close to the chest, never to take wild chances, to be a merciless, implacable player.

Turn the tables and he’d holler like a baby. Lando knew the type well.

In the present context, he felt the information wasn’t terribly helpful. He glanced uncomfortably at the armored visor-wearers either side of him, then back at the governor. It doesn’t matter a whit if a bully’s a coward at heart—as long as he has all the guns.

The governor blinked, lifted a blocky arm, repeating the salutation—or, more likely, the accusation: “Lando Calrissian?”

“Flatten the first A a bit,” Lando answered, more bravely than he felt. “A little more accent on the second syllable of the last name. Keep trying, you’ll get it right.”

He ran a tongue across his lips, tasted blood. His head hurt. So did everything else. Egg-sized eyes under the silly head-thatching regarded him coldly from behind a small, uncluttered, impossibly delicate-looking desk of transparent plastic.

“Lando Calrissian, we have here a list of very serious charges against you that have been brought to our attention. Very serious charges indeed. What, if anything, have you to say for yourself?”

The governor blinked again as he finished, this time as if the very sight of Lando was painful to him. The young gambler bit back a second snappy reply. He wasn’t aware of anything illegal he had done. Lately, anyway. He hadn’t any qualms, particularly, about breaking the law: there were a lot of silly little planets with a lot of silly little laws. It was just that he’d rather—as an aesthetic point, mostly—be caught when he’d actually
done
something.

He decided, more or less experimentally, to add truth to the courteous obsequiousness that had failed with the cops. One never knew, the combination might work on this fat tub of—

“Sir—Your Excellency—I know nothing about any charges. To the best of my knowledge, I haven’t done anything to be charged with.”

He left it at that; a complaint would be carrying things too far.

The governor blinked.

Lando opened his mouth to speak. A loop of fabric from his tattered pajamas chose that moment to slip embarrassingly from his shoulder and swing. He sniffed, lifted it with whatever dignity the occasion afforded, attempted to smooth it back in place.

The governor blinked.

It was not a large room they were in. There was a wide door—but then, it was a wide governor—either side of the desk. Like the door facing the desk, through which Lando had been escorted, both were framed in plain undecorative alumabronze, the spare motif echoed in wainscotting, baseboards, and a border around the high, somehow intimidating ceiling. The pace was tinted a bilious yellow to match the governor’s eyes. Instead of draperies, the windows displayed recorded scenes Lando recognized from other systems: greenish
gravelly beaches, deep orange skies, scarlet vegetation. Entire
worlds
done up in bad taste.

The governor, apparently deciding Lando had been sufficiently intimidated by the longish silence, lifted a thick arm from his desk, regarded the troopers half-holding the much-abused starship captain erect.

“You are advised,” Duttes Mer squeaked menacingly, “to
improve
the best of your knowledge, then, young miscreant.”

Miscreant
? Lando thought, did people really say
miscreant
? The governor perused a printout lying on his desk, raised downy eyebrows.

“Quite a record! Reckless landing procedures. Illegal importation of dangerous animals. Mynocks, Captain—really? Unauthorized berthing of an interstellar—”

“But, Governor!” Lando forgot himself momentarily, struggled free of the policeman on his left—then remembered where he was and clamped the astonished man’s armored hand back around his elbow with a short-lived sheepish grin.

He’d realized, with a sudden, stifled gasp, that the transparent desk the governor occupied was composed entirely of gigantic, priceless life-crystals—enough to extend the life-spans of hundreds of individuals. Power, then, was the key. It explained the barren office. Money and display wouldn’t impress the malevolent lump of wasted hydrocarbons sitting before him; he would be motivated only by the prospect of controlling and disposing of the lives of others.

“Sir, I had all the clearances and permits. I—”

“Truly, Captain? Where? Produce them and the charges against you may be reduced some small but measurable fraction.”

Lando looked down, seeing his own frame—the thought whisked by that this might be an unfortunate choice of words—draped in pocketless pajamas much the worse for their recent intimate acquaintance with Teguta Lusat law-enforcement procedures. He looked back up at the governor. “I don’t suppose you’d let me go back to my hotel … no, I didn’t think so. Well, better yet, check with the Port Authority. They should be able—”

“Captain,” the governor sighed with affected weariness, “the Port Authority have no record whatever of any permits being granted to either a Lando Calrissian, or a …” He checked the list again. “…  a
Millennium Falcon
. Of this I assure you, sir.
In fact, you might say I ascertained the data in the matter
personally
.”

“Oh,” Lando answered in a small voice, beginning to understand the situation.

“There is also,” the governor continued, satisfied now that he had a properly attentive audience, “conspiracy to evade regulations of trade. You see, we know of your attempts to obtain an unlicensed cargo. Carrying a concealed weapon—my, my, Captain, but you
are
a bad boy. Finally: assaulting a duly authorized police officer in an attempt to resist arrest.”

The governor got a thoughtful look on his face, looked down at the list again, picked up a stylus and made a note. “
And
failure to settle your hotel bill as you departed those premises.

“
Now
what have you to say?” The governor blinked, licked fat lips in anticipation.

“I see,” Lando said, barely concealing his glee. His spirits had begun to lift considerably in spite—or because—of the list of charges against him. The governor was someone he could deal with, after all.

Ante:
“My gun was on the nighttable, it wasn’t concealed. And if ‘assault’ consists of willfully striking a constable in the fist with my stomach, then I’d say you’ve got me, fair and square. Governor. Sir.”

Raise:
“Very well, Captain. Or ought I to make that ‘
Mister
Calrissian’—you will not likely be doing very much more captaining from now on. What have you to say to the probability of finishing your days doing stoop-labor in the life-orchards amidst other criminals, malcontents, and morons like yourself?”