Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian 03 - The StarCave of ThonBoka

by L. Neil Smith

  “You know what they say, Boss, sometimes you trick the sorcerer, sometimes the sorcerer tricks you.” He pursed his lips, tongue protruding generously, and made a rude and juicy noise.

  An alarmed look playing momentarily over his broad and deeply seamed features, Shanga glanced around reflexively for listening devices.

  His smaller associate laughed. “What're they gonna do, throw me in the clink for insubordination? That'd be like jailing a murderer for littering.” Harsh light from the naked overhead bulb reflected from the man's equally naked scalp. Where he did have hair, on the sides and back, it was clipped into a dirty gray stubble.

  Shanga sat down on the cot beside his friend, extracted a pair of cigars from a pocket. There was a brief silence while they got them lit. “Well, I've got to admit, when you tried hijacking that auxiliary, you climbed pretty high on the wanted list. I wish to the Core you'd consulted me before you-”

  “What, and have you wind up here, yourself? Boss, you know you'd have done the same thing I did. There are five pinnaces tucked away aboard this scow with the capability for faster-than-light travel, and our fighters can't hack it. If that blockade fleet moves in before we get to the nebula, we're gonna lose the Butcher!”

  And our reason for living, Shanga thought, reading the same thoughts displayed on his friend's face. Bern Nuladeg was the only member of his squadron who went back with him to before his original retirement. They'd served their country together in d brief but bloody conflict with one of its neighbors, earning their wings, both of them becoming aces. When Shanga retired, Nuladeg had gone on to become a flight instructor, finally the commander of his nation-state's flight academy. The invasion from the stars had changed all of that.

  Now they flew together in a squadron made up not only of their fellow countrymen but of personnel belonging to their former enemy, individuals from other nations, other planets in their system. They were all Renatasians, and they all wanted the same thing. Vengeance.

  “I know, Bern, I know. That's why you did it on your own didn't take any of the others along. You were going to steal that lighter yourself - then what?”

  The small, bald-headed figure chuckled. “Hadn't gotten that far along in my plans. Days before we reach the ThonBoka at this speed, Klyn, days! What can Gepta be thinking of, permitting the invasion to begin before we get there? I heard the story - had the ring of truth to it - and acted. Guess I would have swung around and offered you fellows a ride, if I'd had the chance. I dunno. What're they gonna do to me, do you suppose?”

  Shanga shook his head. “I have a meeting - an 'audience,' he'd like to style it - with our gray-robed cousin in an hour or so. We're going to talk about it then. I won't lie to you, it doesn't look good. You should see the way he treats his own people.”

  Nuladeg's laughter was practically a giggle now. “I know! That's what made swiping that machine so blasted easy: everybody was afraid to move for fear of getting terminally reprimanded! Whoever said dictatorship's efficient, Boss? It'd be funny if it weren't so downright stupid.” He drew on his cigar, blew a smoke ring toward the bulb in the ceiling. Then his laughter died along with the smile creasing his face.

  “Klyn, promise me one thing: don't worry about me enough to stop this mission. Whatever you do. I mean it. I can take whatever they dish out, but I can't stand the thought-”

  Bern Nuladeg's entire family had been killed by Imperial troopers enjoying a few hours off-duty time. It had been a lark for them, and had only finished what they'd actually been guilty of. The field commander for the group had dismissed it as a prank - the same commander was found the next morning, in his own bed, with a bayonet thrust through his lower jaw into his brain. No one had ever solved the mystery of how it had been done in a heavily guarded building on the grounds of the former flight academy, nor of who had done it or why.

  “All right, old friend,” Shanga sighed. He'd always thought that Nuladeg, who was the better pilot, experienced with command responsibility, ought to have been running the tattered squadron. The little man had refused even the number-two position, citing an impulsiveness that no one had truly believed in until now. “I'll see what I can do. You're right, I'm afraid. I was thinking about those pinnaces myself, when I heard about the moves against the StarCave. I'll see what I can do and be back with you as soon as possible.”

  He rapped loudly on the wall, pointedly ignoring the call button beside the force-fielded door. “Guards! Let me out of here! I have to see a toad about a man!”

  A quarter of a galaxy away, the One, the Other, and the Rest raced to keep a rendezvous. They had come from even farther, and their speed was something no one in what Lando and his friends regarded as a civilization would have believed.

  “We move so slowly!” the Other complained, plunging through hyperspace beside the One. “I fear we shall not get there on time!”

  The One allowed himself to be distracted from his headlong course long enough to indicate a smile. “Impatience from you, after all this time, my friend? Truly, this is an era of changes. Never fear, we shall learn what we shall learn, regardless. I, too, would prefer that we-”

  The Other interrupted. “Events move of their own accord! What shall come to pass is unpredictable! It is Chaos, I tell you, Chaos!”

  “And there ought to be a law? Remember, comrade, that it is this state of unpredictability which nearly every race endures for all of its life-span. It is in this state that we began, and we are unusual in surviving it. We very nearly died of boredom; would that have been more desirable?”

  “Don't lecture me!” the Other replied with uncharacteristic sharpness. “I know as well as you do of the dangers that confronted us. I was the first to consent to your plan. Do not begrudge me the right to complain of some of its consequences; it assists me in adjusting to the inevitable.”

  Laughter crackled through the distorted space around them. “Nothing is inevitable anymore, dear comrade, nothing! That is the entire point of the experiment!”

  “Well, I hope your experiment will produce a cure for smugness, then. I personally shall take great pleasure in restraining you while it is forcibly administered!”

  Once again laughter sundered the twisted ether as the One, the disgruntled Other, and the Rest, in various states of mind, plunged onward.

  “Nonsense!” Rokur Gepta hissed from the corner of his apartments below the control deck. “He is mine to deal with, and I tell you he shall be sectioned alive before the entire crew - yours included, Admiral Shanga - as an example!”

  It was the first time the fighter commander had ever seen the sorcerer pace nervously. The time was growing near for the resolution of a number of crises, and the Renatasian had a suspicion that Gepta, too, feared he would be robbed of his victory by a trigger-happy fleet Commodore. Carrying disrespect to new heights because he felt the effect was necessary, Shanga flopped into the sorcerer's huge chair.

  “Gepta, you old charlatan, you know better than that, and if you don't, I'll tell you now. Keep Bern Nuladeg in the brig, if you wish, until we get to the ThonBoka. He could use the rest, and it'll keep him out of trouble. Not to mention saving your well-concealed face. But execute him, and I'm through with you. I'll take my squadron and-”

  “You'll do what you are told!” Gepta made a threatening magical gesture.

  Shanga laughed. “Save your parlor tricks, old man! We stopped doing what we were told when your precious Navy destroyed anything we had to lose by disobeying. Twenty-three loose cannon, Gepta, and they're all pointed at you unless you-”

  “Silence! I have no further need for you, Klyn Shanga. You have foolishly told me where Lando Calrissian might be found. We will soon be there, and he is trapped by the fleet, cannot get away from the justice I shall mete out. You serve no purpose. You are dispensable!”

  Shanga obtained another cigar from inside his suit, lit it, and spat out a flake of tobacco onto the carpeted floor.

  “Yeah? Well, I spent a little time with your pet
professor today. You'll recall you instructed him to be free and easy with information bearing on combat operations in the nebula? What he had to say about the stuff relayed this morning from the fleet was very interesting. Very interesting, indeed.”

  Gepta, his back turned to the squadron commander, spoke to the wall. “And what was that?”

  “Ask your own people if you don't believe me. We're up against it, Gepta. There are something like a billion Oswaft in that sack, every one of them as dangerous as a fighter ship. Something about folks like us being electrochemical in nature, our nervous systems, anyway. Well, the Oswaft are what your boy is calling 'organoelectronic.' I don't know exactly everything that implies, but they can think and act and maneuver a lot faster than we can. What's more, a flock of them destroyed the Courteous. Nobody knows how.”

  Gepta whirled on Shanga. “What has this to do with disposition of your group, Admiral?” The way the sorcerer pronounced his title may have been the most sarcastic thing that Shanga had ever heard. With difficulty he shrugged off the implied threat, returned to calculated insult.

  “So you think you're going to get anywhere with the clumsy children you've got manning this ship? I told you, Gepta, they're amateurs, and they're so scared at balling things up, they'll ball them up anyway! I think what Bern Nuladeg tried this morning ought to demonstrate pretty well how frightened we are, of you, or of anything else. You need us, you pretentious idiot, and you're going to lose this operation without us. You may have already. Have you heard from the fleet?”

  There was a long, long silence while Rokur Gepta gained control of himself. No one, not for perhaps twenty thousand years, had spoken to him in such a manner and lived - or even died a quick and merciful death. In fact some of them had lasted, under one instrument of both torture and regeneration or another, for centuries. Klyn Shanga might be one such, after this was over.

  Very well, then, the sorcerer reasoned, it should not matter what immediate disposition he made of Shanga or his underlings. They would serve their purpose in the coming conflict, and any who survived...

  But he had one more source of information to consult. He strode rapidly to the chair that Shanga occupied, ignored the man, and pressed a button. “Send me the Ottdefa Osuno Whett immediately.”

  Not three minutes later, the compartment door whisked aside, and the anthropologist stepped in. The tall, emaciated professor took in what was to be seen, sensed conflict momentarily postponed, and vowed to himself to get out of the way as soon as he could manage it.

  “You have been following the information from the fleet?” the sorcerer asked without preliminaries.

  “Of course, sir, I-”

  “What do they tell you of the capabilities of the Oswaft?”

  Shanga grinned, but kept his silence.

  “Well, sir, it is a confirmation of my earlier studies. In a cellular sense, these beings seem to exist on a sort of solid-state level, something like primitive electronics. This accounts for their communications abilities and-”

  “How is this known? Is it merely surmise, or are there data?”

  The anthropologist's astonishment grew every time Gepta snapped at him. Along with his fear. “Sir, a number of vessels did a full-range scan at the moment the creatures were destroyed. Most of them were vaporized when the Courteous went up. In fact, it's possible that not one of them was injured by fire from the fleet. They simply miscalculated the destructive radius of an exploding cruiser. The Courteous did open fire, but there wasn't any time t-”

  The sorcerer raised a hand and the scientist halted. “By what means did the Oswaft destroy the cruiser Courteous Ottdefa? And how vulnerable do you suppose they are to the Navy's weapons?”

  When hesitated before he began again: “Sir, as difficult as it may be to believe, it appears that simple microwaves were the method, but at incredible power levels. This is consistent with their ability to hyper-travel, since it, too, is an energy-intensive phenomenon. There is also the fact to consider that the Courteous was unshielded - I believe the circumstances are referred to as 'garrison discipline'? Shielded, I believe a ship would be quite safe. To answer your second question, there is no reason to believe that the Oswaft would be any more impervious to disintegrator beams, tractor-pressor beams, disruptors, and the like, than any other living thing.”

  The sorcerer stood deep in thought, one hand where his chin should have been under his wrappings. Shanga sat, apparently relaxed and smoking his cigar, while Whett stood nearly at attention.

  “One final question, Ottdefa: how many Oswaft are there?”

  “Sir, there is no direct way of knowing. Estimates range from several hundred million to a few billion.”

  Shanga laughed. “Since when do the words 'few' and 'billion' belong in the same sentence. Gepta, they could whittle down the fleet by sheer attrition, and-”

  “Silence,” the sorcerer said with unusual gentleness, “I must think. Ottdefa, I will speak with you later, thank you for your report.” The door whooshed open and closed behind the grateful anthropologist.

  Then Gepta addressed Shanga. “Admiral, you are no friend of mine, and, after this operation, will never again be an ally. But you have spoken the truth to me, and I am compelled to recognize it. Very well, we shall do as you have suggested. Your man - what was his name? - will remain confined until we reach the nebula, whereupon he will revert to your command. I trust you and your squadron will serve me as you have implicitly promised.”

  The fighter pilot rose wearily and stubbed out his cigar. Rearranging his newly recovered blaster on his leg more comfortably, he walked toward the door, turned back to the sorcerer at the last moment.

  “I haven't any reason to want to send you flowers, either, old man, but we've got a common enemy. We'll stick with you until that's taken care of. Talk to you later.” He stepped through the door and was gone.

  Scarcely noticing the man had left this time, Rokur Gepta paced awhile more, then, with a more determined stride than before, turned to his chair. He seated himself and activated several cameras. He pushed a button. “For immediate recording and beamcast to the fleet,” he directed unseen technicians: “Upon my own unanswerable authority, I order you to cease all combat operations upon receipt of this transmission and to return to your positions on the original blockade perimeter.

  “Evasion or failure, on the part of any officer, at any level, to comply swiftly with this direct order will be punishable by summary revocation of all rank and privileges, judiciary and ceremonial impoverishment and sale into bondage of all family members within five degrees of consanguinity, and for the perpetrator himself, slow mutilation and death upon public display.

  “I, Rokur Gepta, Sorcerer of Tund, command it.”

  The camera lights went out.

  Gepta sat back in his chair, feeling much better. This would buy them all some time, and resolve part of the conflict between Klyn Shanga and himself. Odd, he hadn't had a real adversary to stand up to him for thousands of years. No one dared oppose his ruthless exercise of power. Everywhere he went, people in their masses, and as individuals, feared, hated, and served him.

  Except for Lando Calrissian.

  And now, possibly even worse than the itinerant gambler - because the affront seemed deliberately calculated - there was Klyn Shanga.

  The most peculiar aspect of it was that, somehow, it felt good.

  XII

  THE OTTDEFA OSUNO Whett reflected.

  Shuddering in the relative security of his assigned quarters in officer's country, he considered himself extremely lucky just to be alive that morning. He'd seen others broken, figuratively and literally, at the malignant whim of Rokur Gepta, individuals guilty of nothing more than reporting a purely mechanical failure or bringing him information he didn't want to assimilate. To be trapped in the middle of a dispute between the evil sorcerer and his reluctant - and no doubt soon-to-be former - partner, that barbarian Shanga...

  He crossed the cramped living-sleeping
space allotted him, noting that he'd forgotten to fold the cot into the wall in his earlier haste to answer Gepta's summons. So - he was still accustomed to depending on a servant after all this time. It was a weakness to make note of and correct.

  The gray military wallcoat of the compartment still oppressed him, despite the decorations - ceremonial masks, garish shields, primitive hand-powered weapons - he'd hung up here and there. He'd have to see what else he carried in his luggage down below in the storage hold. It would brighten the place up and strengthen the official “cover” that allowed him to travel thus encumbered in the first place.

  Entering the tiny head, he sloughed off the casual civilian shipsuit he'd been wearing, now soaked through with perspiration and smelling foul. He wasn't on the schedule for a shower at this time of day, and hadn't had time for it when the fixtures had been operational.

  Thank the Core for the mixture of intelligent species whose differences in personal habits and physical characteristics made individual quarters (at least at his level of rank) a necessity rather than a luxury even aboard this spartan vessel. At that, it could be worse: he could be quartered with the noncoms or conscriptees. It wouldn't have been unprecedented; his long career had seen him assume many stranger poses. Now all he desired was a refreshing wash, which he attended to at the small sink (set into the shower stall along with the toilet) with its trickle of lukewarm recycled water. An ironic expression greeted him in the mirror above the sink.

  Well, he had survived, as he had always survived. All it had required was layer upon layer of carefully prepared deception. It was the sole art to which he could truly lay claim, the only way he could expect to get out of this mess with his skin intact.

  That accursed robot: it had been responsible for all his troubles in recent years. Gepta and Shanga were headed toward the ThonBoka nebula - from Tund, on the outskirts of one side of civilization, to the StarCave, on the fringes of the other side - for nothing more than revenge. Perhaps he, himself, the soi-disant Ottdefa Osuno Whett, would be enjoying a little vengeance, too, when the Wennis finally arrived at its destination.