Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (57 page)

“
How can we do that? We have no weapons, and the fleet, with its shields up, is no longer vulnerable to our voices, as was the
Courteous.
It has occurred to me that it was a good thing I was in a weakened condition when I met you, otherwise I might have destroyed you in the same manner
.”

The gambler waved a negligent hand at the monitor. “There was only one of you, whereas I’m told there were a thousand Oswaft in the party that met the
Courteous
. Never mind that, we’re going to let the fleet destroy itself.”

“How?” Both Vuffi Raa and Lehesu spoke this time.

“I have some questions to ask you first: it’s really true you can understand interfleet communications?”

“
Yes, Lando, so could any of my people, given a few moments’ thought
.”

“Hmmm … All right, what about this synthesizing business. Can you make
any
substance I ask you to?”

“
As long as it’s relatively simple and there are raw materials to hand, as it were
.”

“And the nebula: your elders tell me that there isn’t any food there for you, that it was all ‘grazed’ out, long ago. Yet there are raw materials …”

“
Yes, Lando, where is all of this leading
?”

“Out of a mess. One more thing: how long do you have to rest between hyperjumps, and how accurately can you predict where you’ll break out?”

“
Lando
,” the Oswaft said in exasperation, “
I think I see
where you’re going with this. You want us to make bombs or something and plant them on the fleet’s vessels. In the first place, from what Vuffi Raa has told me of weaponry, bombs aren’t all that simple. In the second—
”

“No, no. Nothing to do with bombs at all, and besides, those ships’ll be coming in here shielded to a fare-thee-well. And in the second, I said we’ll let them destroy themselves, didn’t I? I have a plan to make the war expensive, that’s all.”

He hunched over the monitor, conspiratorially. Vuffi Raa leaned toward him, consumed by curiosity. Lando was clearly enjoying this part, and the robot wasn’t sure that made him happy.

“Now here’s what we’ll do …”

“G
ENTLEMEN, MAN YOUR
fighters!”

Klyn Shanga gazed across the cavernous cluttered hangar deck inside the
Wennis
as his squadron climbed into their tiny spacecraft. Even good old Bern was there, snaking up the ladder into his cockpit. He’d served his sentence in durance vile. Gepta had, surprisingly enough, been as good as his word about that.

It worried Shanga. He wondered what the old trickster had up his long gray sleeve. Keeping promises wasn’t an expected part of the magicians’ repertoire, and the fighter commander felt it boded evil.

The noise was deafening as impellers whined, refueling lines were tucked away, commands snouted here and there. There was a constant steady rumble of eager machinery. In a few moments the hangar crew would clear the deck, all inner doors would be sealed, and the huge belly doors of the cruiser would cycle open, giving the Renatasians access to open space.

* * *

“This is the confrontation we’ve been waiting a decade for,” Shanga had told his men, all twenty-three of them, lined up at a ragged, ill-disciplined attention in their shabby, mismatched uniforms. They represented a dozen old-style nation-states, most of which no longer existed. They flew craft purchased, borrowed, leased, and stolen from as many systems, the ships equally threadbare. In common the flyers shared only a thirst for revenge.

“The Butcher awaits us out there,” Shanga had said, pointing vaguely toward the hangar doors overhead. Artificial gravity in the hangar had been reoriented to allow easier servicing and launching of the squadron. “He’s laughing at us, you know. His very existence, ten years after his crimes, is a mockery of justice. Well, we will silence that laughter, bring justice back to the universe!”

There was no cheering. Some of the warship’s crew members working on the Renatasian squadron had looked up momentarily, impressed more at Shanga’s vehemence than at any eloquence he might have possessed. To individuals in a hierarchy such as they served, strong feelings openly expressed were a threat to survival, the highest virtues moderation, compromise, a deaf ear and a blind eye to injustice.

There was nodding among the twenty-three at Shanga’s words, acceptance, a grim agreement, a pact. They looked at their commander and at one another, realizing that it might be for the last time.

“And afterward?” Bern Nuladeg lounged against the outstretched wing of one fighter at the end of the line of men, chewing an unlit cigar. “What’ll we do then?”

“Afterward, we’ll …” Shanga tapered off. He hadn’t planned for there to
be
any afterward. There were a billion or more Oswaft out there, of uncertain capability, allied with the unspeakable Vuffi Raa. The chances any Renatasian would survive the next few hours were slight. Moreover, their safety afterward, in Gepta’s hands, was questionable. The sorcerer would be completely unpredictable once he’d won his victory. There’d be nothing to come back to, not in a fleet commanded from the
Wennis
.

Shanga shook his head as if to clear it of useless speculations. “Afterward you’re on your own. Rendezvous with whatever ship will pick you up. Get home the best way you
can—if you want to go home. For the time being, my friends, we live only for justice, only for revenge.”

There was muttering, but it was in resigned agreement with what their commander had said. If there was any future, let it come on its own terms, its very arrival a surprise.

They boarded their fighting vessels.

Shanga strapped himself into his pilot’s couch, made sure the canopy seals were good, that all mobile service implements had been properly detached and the access ports dogged down. He watched the hangarmen file out through various oval doorways in an unpanicky haste as the big red lights came on to signal the beginning of the cycling process. In effect, the hanger now became a huge airlock; he knew from long experience that, despite the best efforts to filter and scrub the salvaged air, the rest of the ship, from control deck through officer’s country down to the scuppers, would smell of aerospace volatiles for several hours.

It was a good smell, he thought to himself, an agreeable one to die with in your lungs if you couldn’t arrange for soft grass and evergreen boughs.

He flipped switches and the whining of his engines raised in pitch, the cockpit vibration skipped a beat and settled in a newer discordance with the other machine noises. Adrenaline was rushing into his bloodstream. By the Core, he was a
warrior
. Say what you like about that, you simpering peace-dogs, he was born and bred to
fight
!

The hangar doors above him ponderously ground aside.

“
Five and Eighteen out
!” a voice said in his helmet. Two fighters filled the hangar with exhaust mist as they lifted and roared out into space. The vapor cleared quickly. “
Fourteen and Nine out
!” “
Six and Seventeen
!”

In pairs his men took to the void, as eager for a fight as he was. His onboard computer held a three-dimensional map of the ThonBoka with probable locations for the
Millennium Falcon
marked therein. It was known that there were three small blue-white stars, and some artificial structure, much larger than the freighter, at their center. That would be the prime area for the search.

The “destroy” part would follow immediately.

“Two and
Twenty-one
!” another voice shouted, then Shanga himself felt a severe jolt and the blood stress of acceleration as the hangar catapult-pressor latched onto his command ship and
flung it into space among his men. Others continued to pour from the
Wennis
in the same manner, in an order tactically determined by the motley mixture of ship types and models available to them. “
Nineteen and Four
!”

They assumed a complicated formation, hovering until all of the squadron was free of the hangar bay. In the center of the group lay Pinnace Number Five, the very auxiliary Bern Nuladeg had been apprehended trying to steal. Her after section glowed and pulsed with pent-up energy. They were still a relatively long way from the nebula, at least where the small fighters’ capabilities were concerned. Even once they got there, it was six light-years to the center—approximately twenty-five times their own maximum flying range.

The pinnace, capable of faster-than-light travel, had been fitted with a tractor field. Unmanned, controlled remotely by Klyn Shanga, it would tow them into the heat of battle, returning parsimoniously on its own to the
Wennis
. He and his best computer doctor had checked the lend-lease auxiliary carefully from bow to stern for ugly practical jokes and delayed-action booby traps. He just couldn’t bring himself to trust Rokur Gepta’s generosity.

That worthy had been unavailable at debarkation time, apparently gone off to meditate or something. Just as well: his orders to release the Renatasian squadron had been there in his place. To the Edge with the sorcerer, Shanga thought. With any luck at all, they’d never see each other again.

He tapped the keyboard, checking the positions of his tiny fleet clustered about the pinnace. “This is Zero Leader,” he announced. “Eleven, tighten up a little on Twelve—that’s it. Twenty-two, you’re idling a little ragged, aren’t you? What’s your toroid temperature?”

The fusion-powered fighters would conserve reaction mass, relying on the cruiser’s auxiliary to do the work, but they must keep their systems up for instant combat readiness. Belt and suspenders, Shanga thought, belt and suspenders. The old saw was wrong about old, bold pilots, but this was the only way it could be done.

“
Nominal
,” Twenty-two replied. He was a young kid from a continent half a world away from Mathilde, Shanga’s nation-state. There’d been a time when he’d been supposed to hate that accent. “I
think the trouble’s in the telemetry, sir
.”

“Don’t call me sir, Twenty-two, and watch that temperature. I want the Butcher just as badly as you do, but charging in
there with a malfunctioning ship isn’t going to help any of us accomplish that. I don’t trust those maintenance people to clean their own fingernails. You’d better be telling me the truth, son.”

“
Well, sir—Klyn—maybe I’m a little in the red, but I think this hop will burn out the hot spots
.”

“All right,” Shanga replied grudgingly. “Twenty-three, what the Core’s wrong with your life-support? I’ve got red lights all over the readout!”

“Just lit my cigar, boss. The atmo-analyzer don’t like it much.” Bern Nuladeg laughed. “Can’t get into a dog-fight without I got a stogie in my mouth, I’d bite my danged tongue!”

Shanga grinned inside his helmet, suppressed a chuckle. “Roger, Twenty-three, it’s your funeral. All right, men, synch your navi-mods to me. We’ll move on the tick. Four, three, two, one—
unh
!”

As a unit, the entire squadron lurched forward, propelled by the pinnace, began accelerating smoothly, and moved off toward the ThonBoka. Now, before the coming disorientation of the jump, Shanga and his men had time to look around them.

Ahead, the StarCave looked like a huge eyeball seen in profile. They approached the entrance obliquely to maximize the element of surprise. It was a stupid ritual, Shanga realized; they’d be seen coming anyway. But it was something to begin the program with; it didn’t really matter. A huge gray eyeball with no iris, a pupil that twinkled with three tiny, blue-white highlights. Down deep inside that thing was the Enemy. Deep down inside that thing was death.

With a joyous shout of violated natural law, the squadron leaped toward it.

W325
was the designation of a very small bathtub-shaped object whose size and power output did not quite earn it the status of an auxiliary vessel. More than anything else, it was a rigid, powered spacesuit, used to inspect and repair the hull of the
Wennis
while she was in deep space—but most assuredly
not
under way.

At the moment,
W325
was electromagnetically tied in place well aft of the hull to a boxlike addition to the superstructure supporting the cruiser’s main drive tubes. While their fires were momentarily quenched to allow the launching of Klyn Shanga’s squadron, they still glowed with waste heat energy. Attached to
the underside of
W325
was a decal in the shape of a human being. More correctly, a human being in the shape of a decal.

The
Ottdefa
Osuno Whett, anthropologist and master spy knew he was taking a terrible chance. That was always the case when serving two masters. He owed Rokur Gepta his assistance and advice—and stood to benefit by it to the tune of the destruction of his enemies. To one other, he owed everything, including his life, if need be. His immediate assignment was keeping an eye on the perfidious sorcerer. Gepta was not trusted as naively as he may have thought, gift cruiser or no gift cruiser.

Thus, encased in a slim, flexible spacesuit whose color had been adjusted to match that of
W325
, the anthropologist lay spread, arms and legs stretched wide, as tightly as he could to the undersurface of the little space-faring object while its master was otherwise occupied. Whett’s own attention was elsewhere; he watched the readouts in his helmet closely, his curiosity and excitement mounting.

Above, Rokur Gepta cycled out of the small vessel, moved across to the rear surface of the superstructure addition. Whett had already determined, by means of various probes and rays, that the unconventional add-on was composed of hull armor, thicker than most and impenetrable to his devices. He’d suspected something like this and come forearmed. It had not been easy to strew the sorcerer’s path with a dozen information-gathering devices, each the size of a single dust mote, but he had done it. Some of them read out in real time. They would be useless in another moment. But some absorbed what they witnessed and would spew it all out in a fraction of a microsecond once Whett was within receiving range again.