Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian Trilogy

by L. Neil Smith

  XVII

  MAGENTA CURTAINS SHIMMERED against a stationary tapestry of pale stars as lightning exploded above Bohhuah Mutdah's crystalline dome. And exploded again.

  Startled, Rokur Gepta whirled in mid-gesture as a flash bleached his surroundings for a third time in as many seconds. Somewhere, far away, there was a roar of matching thunder - which should have been impossible - and a breeze began sifting toward its distant source. The broad lawn rippled like the pelt of an angry predator.

  The wind was fully as impossible as the thunder. Yet it rose from an initial flutter to gale force in a twinkling, whipping at the sorcerer's gray cloak, hurling dust and loose papers along with it.

  Lando squinted. The dead trillionaire's lofty architecture had been breached somewhere near the edge of the worldlet. The artificial pull of gravity this side of the asteroid was indolently kinder than at the spaceport, and consequently insufficient to maintain the present atmospheric pressure without help. That help was departing rapidly. The hurricane would roar until things equalized.

  He hoped he'd be able to breathe by then.

  Battered by the powerful current, Gepta lurched against its strength, trying to reach Lando. The gambler realized this was his only chance - and that perhaps the preparations he had made, however elaborate, might be worthwhile, after all.

  Beneath his spacesuit, under the sleeves of his shipclothes, he was wearing his own set of tinklewood splints. In fact, it had been this idea that later served as inspiration when Waywa Fybot broke his legs.

  In Lando's case the intention was to prevent injury. There were half a dozen twenty-centimeter rods, half a centimeter in diameter, running parallel to each of his forearms, tucked through small fabric loops in three neat circumferential rows, near the elbow, wrist, and in between. Vuffi Raa, thrilled at the chance to do some valeting at last, had sewn them on a heavy shirt for his master. Lando had speculated that they might be handy stopping a blow or parrying a blade. They were X-ray transparent, nonmetallic, indetectible by the usual run of security scanners.

  Unlike his pistols.

  He wore similar crude armor around his lower legs, knee to ankle. Wriggling an elbow, he finagled one of the rod ends until it was free of the force cuff on that wrist. This would have been a futile effort while Gepta had the upper hand. Now, fighting the incredible wind blowing into space through the broken dome, the sorcerer was too busy to interfere.

  The rods had added enough girth to Lando's wrist that he was able - very painfully - to tear his hand through the manacle just as Gepta reached him. Quickly, he slipped one of the rods out of his sleeve, jammed it through the turban slit into the sorcerer's eye.

  Gepta screamed, clapped a hand to his shrouded face, and stumbled backward. The wind caught his voluminous cloak and took him away in a tumbling, fabric-covered ball of curses. He vanished into a nearby grove of Thorn trees. There was more screaming.

  Liberating the feet was more difficult. Lando finally pulled his suit-boots off, scraped his way past the restraints, and had begun to gather up his shoes and wits and Mutdah's money, when a silvery snake appeared in the grass before him. It had fingers for a face and a red glassy eye in the palm.

  It couldn't bite; it was programmed not to.

  “Vuffi Raa, you've got to pull yourself together!” There was no response; the independent appendage couldn't talk, and vulgar gestures were beneath the robot's dignity. “I don't know exactly what's going on around here, but it's our chance to get out! Move!”

  Behind the uptilted table, Lando found his suit helmet. He also found a complex pile of electronic equipment, cables leading to a large flat, complexly braided coil that had been situated at the back of his head.

  “I'm a little disappointed,” he said to the tentacle. “And here I'd thought he was doing all that spellbinding by sheer force of personality!”

  Somehow the chromium appendage managed to convey impatience as Lando dawdled. It lay on the ground fidgeting while he pulled on his boots. Overhead - directly overhead - there was a resounding bellow. Jagged sheets of curved plastic began falling.

  “Relax, old boy, I'm pedaling as fast as I can! I wish you could tell me what the deuce is going on!”

  As he shoved his foot into the boot, snapped the vacuum clasps tight, Lando saw the lightning flash of high-powered energy-weapons above them.

  And several of the fighter-craft he'd battled on the way to 5792.

  “Edge take me, that makes things a little clearer!”

  Together the gambler and the disembodied tentacle hued into the deceased trillionaire's deserted mansion, robot appendage in the lead and seeming to know where it was going. Inside, 4hey took an elevator down into the planetoid. Even as they let it bury them, they could feel the asteroid shake and shudder from the assault overhead.

  In the blink of an eye, the carriage passed the ruined door of the library, swung on its gimbals, turning at least one startled occupant on his head, and whisked onward in this new orientation. Adding injury to insult, Lando was nearly dashed to the floor as the machine crashed to a stop inside the spaceport service building.

  Rasping on damage-distorted ways, the pneumatic door ground halfway open, then froze. The gambler squeezed through, chrome snake underfoot, and the pair leaped from the building a fraction of a second before it collapsed in flames.

  Fire and explosions rocked the airport as more fighters strafed and bombed it. A scarlet beam lashed the waiting Millennium Falcon as they approached her. The backsplash nearly fried the gambler. But her shields held.

  Gasping, Lando ran up the boarding ramp, pausing only to punch buttons to retract it, then sprinted forward around the corridor, momentarily outdistancing even the tentacle as it hastened back to its owner. Vuffi Raa had climbed down out of the ceiling access, and was strapped into the pilot's seat.

  Lando took the right-hand position without complaint.

  “Let's get the devil out of here!” he screamed above the chaos roaring outside.

  Reclaiming his leg, Vuffi Raa spared a split-second of attention for the gambler while he helped it connect itself. “You're a hard being to rescue, Master. You don't wait for help. I'll ask you how you got loose from Rokur Gepta later, if we live. Meanwhile, hadn't you better man the quad-guns?”

  “You suggesting an aggressive act? I think you're right.”

  Lando was gone before he'd finished the last sentence. Sliding into the gun chair, he tripped switches and pushed buttons, grabbed the handles of the ungainly weapon, and rested restless digits on the triggers.

  A fighter made a pass at the larger ship as she lifted, her thrusters glowing blue-white.

  Lando made life hell for him.

  The Falcon soared into the multicolored sky, two of the fighters harrying her like angry hornets. They were fast, maneuverable, and good. Too good: Lando hadn't any easy dodge available there, as he had at the fissured asteroid. Nor was he experiencing much success smoking his tormentors. But his steady, accurate, occasionally inspired shooting kept them from having very much luck, either.

  Another frantic pass, another exchange of energy-bolts, to little effect except in generating adrenaline on both sides.

  Oseon 5792 dwindled rapidly beneath them.

  Then somebody manhandling a fighter made a mistake, zigging when he should have zagged. Aboard the Falcon, crosshairs rested firmly on his midsection, waiting for exactly such error. They were still on him as Lando mashed both triggers, tracking all the while, following through.

  The fighter burst into a tumbling ball of sparks and greasy smoke.

  Vuffi Raa rolled the Falcon, skidded, bringing Lando's guns to bear again. He poured her fury into the remaining fighter as it swerved to avoid the fate of its companion.

  Freighters weren't supposed to be able to do that!

  The unnaturally agile saucer suddenly performed a maneuver that, in another place and time, would be called a Luftberry circle, placing her smack on the fighter's back again. Her quad-guns pound
ed.

  The enemy wriggled off the hook once more, but this one made an error, too: he got sore. Veering in a wide, angry, predictable loop, he came back to have his vengeance. Instead, he got four parallel pulsed beams of raw fusion-reactor output straight in the helmet visor.

  And exploded, showering space with incandescent atoms.

  Beneath them, there was a sudden streak of light. Something left the asteroid - faaassst!, headed for interstellar space. At very nearly the same instant, the surviving three fighters, having reconnected themselves with their battleship engine, bored directly for Bohhuah Mutdah's miniature world, fanatically intent on taking their victim with them - and unaware that (whoever it was) he was gone. Detaching themselves at the last second, they slung the giant, throbbing power plant at Oseon 5792.

  One of them had a mechanical failure. His cable wouldn't release. He was pulled down with the engine into hell.

  The other two sheered off frantically.

  Vuffi Raa raced tentacle tips over the Falcon's keyboards. The resulting acceleration could be felt by her captain even through her powerful inertial dampers. His gun seat slewed around violently, slamming itself and its occupant hard against the stops as the guns swung wildly. The asteroid dwindled to a pinprick-and blossomed into a glowing cloud, consuming one of the fighters who thought he'd gotten away, tumbling the other.

  Even the Flamewind paled momentarily as the ravening fireball expanded, growing brighter, brighter.

  Then, from the inside out, it began to dim.

  Lando took a deep breath - discovered he'd already taken one he didn't remember - and let it out.

  “Brace yourself, Master!” screamed the intercom beside his ear.

  BLANG! ZOONG! CRASH! It was like being inside a titanium drum being beaten by a tribe of savages. Debris showered past the Falcon, mostly ricocheting off her shields, some pieces actually getting through at a reduced and harmless velocity. The freighter shook and danced, then steadied.

  Lando released a second breath he didn't recall taking, unstrapped himself from the quad-gun chair, rubbed a couple of sore places on his back, and shambled forward to the cockpit.

  Deep in interstellar space, far from the Oseon and getting farther by the nanosecond, a brand-new one-seat fighter, bruised and battered by the Flamewind and the destruction of a world, took its badly shaken pilot home.

  Rokur Gepta laughed bitterly. The best deception is the one that first deceives the deceiver. Blood stained the voluminous gray robes he wore, and agony pulsed through his ruined eye - another debt he owed Lando Calrissian. Yet Rokur Gepta was a being who took precautions, too. For example, his private fighter, one of the tiniest craft capable of interstellar flight ever constructed. It had saved his life in the Rafa System; now it guaranteed his continued existence once again.

  In a universe that was all illusion, deception was a double-edged sword. As Bohhuah Mutdah, he had nearly sunk into that flaccid degenerate's depression, so thoroughly had he absorbed the role. Only an all-consuming passion for vengeance had helped him to maintain his true identity. Similarly, when attacked by Calrissian, the disguise that he had worn for centuries had nearly been his undoing. He endured the pain a while longer as a lesson to himself.

  There was no truth, no objective reality. Yet it would serve him, as a master of deception, to keep his illusions sorted out better. He would meditate upon this lesson while waiting at the Tund System for the scheduled arrival of the Wennis, due to rendezvous with him after the passing of the Flamewind. He'd left her and her crew on Oseon 6845 and flown the fighter to 5792 to assume the role of Bohhuah Mutdah.

  A pulse of raw anger nearly overwhelmed him, and he concentrated on the pain again to maintain self-control. He'd lost his pet on 5792 - another debt he owed the vagabond gambler, one which he would pay with interest when the opportunity presented itself again. Correction: when he made the opportunity.

  Well, enough was enough. He set his tiny ship on automatic, let the gray-swathed form he usually assumed fade. At long last he occupied the pilot's seat in his true appearance.

  The tinklewood rod dropped to the floor of the small cabin, the bloodsmears along its length vanishing before it hit. Gepta's pain, fully as illusory as his common worldly manifestation, vanished even more quickly.

  Then another rearrangement, another shift of shapes and colors. Once again the charcoal-cloaked, mysteriously masked entity appeared, clean of bloodstains, free of pain. He cut out the autopilot, took the grips of the fighter's controls, and punched in the overdrive.

  The ship became a fading streak against a starry sky and was gone.

  “There it is, Master!” an excited Vuffi Raa called.

  Lando peered into the transparent canopy of the Falcon's cockpit. The radar and proximity indicators were still nonfunctional and would remain so as long as the Flamewind raked the Oseon. He longed for an old-time primitive optical telescope. The electronic magnifier aboard the Falcon was worse than useless here.

  “You've got a sharp eye, little friend. But keep the shields up we don't know whether he's really helpless or just faking.” Lando took another puff on the crudely rolled cigarette. Someday he'd get the chance to buy some more cigars.

  The Falcon swayed and dipped, matching the velocity of the tumbling fighter. Not only had the droid insisted on rescuing its occupant - if said occupant had survived the beating his craft had received - but Lando had agreed in the hope that it might answer a few nagging questions.

  Exactly whom had he offended sufficiently to merit the fantastic vendetta that - he hoped - was drawing to a close this very minute? He'd certainly never won enough money from any single individual to make it understandable.

  The streamers of the Flamewind and the starry background began whirling crazily as Vuffi Raa rolled the ship to match the motion of the disabled fighter. Lando took a final drag, groaned, and cranked himself out of the seat, staggering a little at the disorienting sight.

  The Falcon's artificial gravity and inertia compensators were functioning perfectly, but his sight was fooling his middle ear. He squinted.

  “I'll get topside. Hold her steady, will you?”

  “Be assured, Master - and be careful. I'll join you as quickly as I can.”

  “Right.”

  On the way to the upper hatch, Lando reclaimed his helmet. He hadn't had time to take off his pressure suit, which was just as well. He placed the bubble on his head, gave it the slight push downward and the fractional turn that locked it into place, and checked the telltales on his arm to make sure he had a perfect seal.

  One more stop. He seized a meter-long breaker bar from a socket-wrench set in the engine area. He'd lost his stingbeams on 5792, kept no other small arms aboard the Falcon. Hefting the length of titanium, he swung it experimentally. Not as good as steel would have been, too light, but it would do to crack a helmet faceplate or a skull.

  A muffled clank! reverberated gently through the entire ship.

  Almost as quickly, the robot's voice crackled in his earphones. “We're locked on, Master I'll just stabilize our attitude and be right with you.”

  Lando didn't feel the maneuver. When things were working right (and he couldn't see out a window), he wasn't supposed to. In any case, he was busy turning a large metal wheel set in the hatch over his head. The seal was supposed to be tight with the escape aperture of the fighter; his suit was only a precaution. But he had closed an airtight door behind him when he entered this area of the ship.

  Lando was a man who took precautions.

  The wheel hit its stop, the door slumped downward a couple of centimeters, and Lando swung it aside. Pocked and abraded metal greeted him, a circle of it, set in a broader area that matched it in long, hard wear. The circle had an inset ring at its edge. Lando dug a gloved pair of fingers under it, pulled hard, and a strip of sealant followed it down through the Falcon's hatch. The circle popped out - slightly higher pressure inside the fighter.

  Lando tossed the emergency access p
late down to the chamber floor, stuck a cautious wrench handle through the port, followed it with his head and shoulders. A booted foot hung on either side of his head.

  The boots were connected to a pair of legs that rose to a body slumped in an acceleration chair and strapped in. The body didn't move.

  Straining a little, Lando stretched up and hit the harness quick-release. Tugging gently on the figure's ankles, he got the body started down through the hatch, having to drop his breaker bar to the floor to make room and gain an extra hand. The shoulders jammed momentarily, then slid through. Lando was glad he'd adjusted the gravity in the room to one-tenth normal. The guy would have squashed him on the way down the hatch ladder. He was huge.

  With the rescued pilot lying unconscious on the floor, Lando heaved the hatch back into place, turned the wheel until a green light winked from a small panel beside it, and dropped back to the floor. He read what he could of the pilot's suit telltales. Appearances could be deceptive; the pilot looked human, but it could be ammonia he was breathing inside his suit.

  That wasn't the case. As he detached his own helmet and began on that of the disabled fighter pilot, he heard another clank as Vuffi Raa cast off the ruined craft. Inside the helmet was an aged rugged face, elaborately scarred, and covered with a grizzled week-old beard. Even in repose the face looked tough and wise and experienced. An eyelid fluttered.

  Lando recovered the wrench handle, just in case, then had a second thought. This fellow looked strong enough to take the handle away from the gambler and shove it right up his-

  A hiss sounded across the chamber. Vuffi Raa stepped through the door just as the pilot began to stir. The tough old man shook his gray head slightly, looked up groggily at Lando, blinked, and looked around the room.

  His gaze stopped at the droid, froze there. A look of passionate hatred suffused the pilot's face, and his body tensed for combat.

  “You!” the pilot screamed, “Destroyer of my world! Kill me now, or you shall surely escape death no more!”