Star Wars - Black Fleet Crisis - Shield Of Lies

by Michael P. Kube-Mcdowell

  "Don't try to talk, Threepio," Lando said. "Just keep running your

  diagnostics. Your parser will map the damaged regions and relocate

  those functions."

  "Fairy wall, monster lambda." The droid's head returned jerkily to the

  neutral position.

  Lobot shook his head in sympathy. "Lando, the test charge--if that is

  what it was--has been around four more times. I could see it weaken

  when it passed your new hole, but other than that, it did not seem to

  lose any strength at all. I expect that it would still be circulating

  if the panel had not reabsorbed it the last time it passed."

  Lando acknowledged the report with a nod. "These passages are a nearly

  perfect energy bottle," he said.

  "This explains a lot about the power of their weapons. It must get

  pretty exciting when they're running a capacity charge through here."

  "I believe our consensus is that we have had enough excitement for

  now."

  "You're right--we need to get out of here. But there's something that

  has to be done first," Lando said.

  "Artoo, I was able to place the limpet on the outside of the ship. I

  need you to pick up its signal and make it available to Lobot."

  The little droid turned its dome away from Lando and remained mute.

  "Artoo, we need to find out where we are. Step two of our plan,

  remember? I don't know how long we can count on getting data from the

  limpet. And we don't know how long we'll be in realspace."

  Still the droid was silent.

  "Lobot?"

  Lobot cleared his throat. "Ah--Artoo just said something rude to me

  about your leadership ability.

  Then he told me to tell you that he's on strike."

  Working to restrain a flaring temper, Lando said evenly, "Artoo, you're

  the only one of us who can receive the data from the limpet. If we

  don't have that data, we can't plan an escape. If we don't escape

  soon, we're going to run out of air, and you're going to run out of

  power. Is whatever point you're trying to make worth the four of us

  expiring?"

  Artoo emitted one small beep.

  "Receiving data," Lobot said. "Artoo said to tell you that he's doing

  it for Threepio, not for you."

  "I don't care if he does it for the Blood Prince of Thassalia, as long

  as it gets done," said Lando. "How long will it take to get a

  navigation fix?"

  "Artoo is calculating the triangulation now," Lobot said. "Lando, only

  one local star is in the spectral database. Artoo is searching for

  other reference stars."

  "What? Where the frack are we?"

  "One moment," Lobot said. "Coordinates zero-nine-one, zero-six-six,

  zero-five-two. Uncertainty due to measuring error, two percent."

  "Triple zeroes? That can't be right. That would put us in Sector

  One."

  "Correct," Lobot said. "We are presently one hundred six light-years

  past the border of the New Republic, in the Core. The nearest

  inhabited system is Prakith."

  "Prakith," Lando repeated. "Foga Brill."

  "Excuse me?"

  "At last report, Prakith was controlled by the Imperial warlord Foga

  Brill."

  "I see. Prakith is eight light-years away."

  "Are there any other ships out there? Any security buoys, drones,

  probes, anything?"

  "None that the limpet can detect. However, the hull of the vagabond

  blocks a substantial portion of the sky."

  Lando muttered grimly, "Well, we're sure not going to be putting out

  any calls for help in this neighborhood.

  All right--let's get out of this accumulator while things are still

  quiet. We'll go right back through where I just came out. I don't

  know quite where it puts us, but nothing bad happened the first

  time."

  Artoo trilled.

  "What?"

  "Never mind," Lobot said. "You don't want to hear."

  Lando thought dark thoughts about lax maintenance schedules and the

  consequences of letting droids go too long without a memory wipe. Your

  decision, Luke, but they've both got entirely too much personality for

  my taste. But he kept those thoughts to himself.

  "Once we're through," he continued, "I'd like to see if we can avoid

  blowing any more holes in the walls--" Lobot nodded approvingly at

  that.

  "--but that means one of us is going to have to solve the puzzle of

  what a Qella door looks like and how to open it," Lando said. Then he

  looked directly at Artoo. "So the first thing we're going to do when

  we get over there is get six hours' rest--all of us. I should have

  insisted on it sooner. I'm sorry, Artoo. I don't know if it would

  have changed anything. But I never meant for Threepio to get hurt."

  Artoo's dome swiveled back toward Lando. "Chirrneep-weel," he said.

  "He told me to tell you that he is considering giving you a second

  chance," said Lobot.

  Lando nodded, drawing the blaster from its pouch.

  "You tell him for me that that's all a smart player should need."

  CChapter 4

  The nudge that finally awakened Lando was provided by a dehydration

  headache and a stomach knotted with hunger. The dream that lingered in

  his awareness was of being pursued through a dark city by a

  soft-voiced, unseen assassin, and he was eager to chase it from his

  senses. Reaching up, he switched his helmet lamps to the low setting

  and looked for the others.

  Lando found he was the only member of the team who was conscious.

  Lobot was floating near the wall below him, a few meters away. His

  arms were raised beside his face and his legs drawn up and bent at the

  knees like a child's. Artoo was still holding Threepio protectively

  with his grasping claws, and the duo spun slowly in the air at the far

  end of the chamber as though dancing to music only they could hear.

  Glancing down at the controls on his left forearm, Lando checked the

  timer he had started before closing his eyes. He was startled to see

  that the six-hour rest he had proposed had stretched to more than

  sixteen hours.

  He and Lobot had both slept through their alarms, and the droids were

  still powered down, waiting for an awakening touch.

  For a-moment he felt a flash of guilt over the lost hours, but he swept

  that away with the realization of how necessary the rest had been. The

  body knows what it needs, he thought, looking at Lobot's blissful

  exp ression.

  But sleep had not healed all the insults. Lando's hunger was keener

  than ever, and the water from the helmet pipestraw only spurred wishful

  thoughts about bottomless ice-filled glasses of charde and skoa.

  More than anything, though, he wanted out of his contact suit. The air

  inside was decidedly rank, and his own breath came back to him off the

  sneeze-spotted faceplate as a foul cloud. His scalp and a half dozen

  other unreachable places itched maddeningly. His skin felt greasy, and

  he craved a hot shower. And the suit was a prison, preventing him from

  stretching out tight muscles and deep aches.

  The makeshift glove on Lando's right hand was clinging lightly to his

  fingers, a sign that the atmospheric pressure in
the compartment was

  slightly higher than the one-normal of the suits. Lando began

  fingering the helmet release with his other hand, absently betraying

  his thoughts.

  It's not as if there's anything poisonous in the ship's air--it's just

  a bit on the chewy side. I held my breath for six minutes once in a

  tank test. That's plenty of time to wipe my face and scratch

  my-Lobot's voice interrupted Lando's thoughts. "I would like to know,"

  the cyborg said, "which agency you used to make the arrangements for

  this vacation.

  The accommodations have not been up to expectations."

  An easy smile creased Lando's face as he turned toward Lobot. "You're

  just cranky because I ate your complimentary breakfast while you were

  sleeping in."

  "Which is just one of several hundred reasons why I'm never traveling

  with you again." dren," Lando said. "I hear today's going to be one

  of the highlights of the tour."

  By mutual agreement, they activated Threepio first, so that Lando could

  have a few minutes to diagnose his status without Artoo's protective

  interference. It took only a short conversation with Threepio to

  discover that the droid had regained most of his verbal faculties and

  with them, most of his dignity. All that remained of his vocal injury

  was a background buzz when he spoke, a rasp in the speech synthesizer

  that made it sound as if the droid were suffering from a sore throat.

  "Threepio, I'm very glad your language systems came around," said

  Lobot. "I may have to raise my estimation of Bratan Engineering's

  cybernetic productsg--my first neural interface was from Bratan, and I

  had nothing but trouble with it."

  "Thank you, Master Lobot," said Threepio. "I, too, am greatly

  relieved. A protocol droid with a malfunctioning synthesizer is hardly

  any use at all."

  "Unless you want to do business in one of the nine thousand fifty-seven

  sign languages," said Lando.

  The droid looked down at his damaged arm. "In my present condition, I

  would not be able to offer you even that service. If my synthesizer

  fails, I would be nothing but a burden to you. You might as well

  cannibalize my power cells and leave me behind. I'll understand--"

  "Don't worry, we're not going to leave you behind," said Lobot. "I

  don't want to have to depend on me to communicate with Artoo."

  "Why is that?" Lando asked. "You seemed to be doing fine back in the

  passage."

  Lobot shook his head slowly. "Artoo thinks in that same binary

  polyglot he speaks, and I can't understand a byte of it. He can leave

  short messages in Basic for me in his memory registers, but that limits

  us to whatever he knows of Basic. And from what I've seen so far, he

  seems to have learned most of his Basic vocabulary from a

  nerf-herder."

  "Oh, he can be quite rude," Threepio agreed conspiratorially.

  "He constantly says the most outrageous things--you can't imagine. I

  don't dare repeat half of his comments. Sometimes I think that he

  means to trick me into embarrassing myself." Threepio looked past

  Lando to where Artoo was floating at an angle, his STANDBY lamp still

  glowing, and added worriedly, "He hasn't been damaged, has he?"

  "No--he's just the last one up this morning," Lando said. "I'm going

  to take care of that right now."

  "Perhaps it would be better if I did it," Lobot said, stopping him with

  a touch. "Artoo may not have recovered from Threepio's accident as

  well as Threepio has."

  "Just how many diplomats are on this mission?"

  Lando asked lightly. "No, if Artoo still has a problem with me, he can

  start getting over it right now. This is my mission, and I'm not

  handing it over to a petulant droid.

  No offense, Threepio."

  "None taken, I'm sure," said Threepio. "I know exactly what you

  mean."

  Artoo's system lights came on all at once, and his sensor dome rotated

  a half turn in each direction. Rising, he moved away from Lando and

  jetted toward Threepio, loosing an unusually long chatter of sounds.

  "What's he saying?" Lando asked.

  Threepio chattered back at Artoo in the same dialect before answering,

  and Artoo replied at even greater length.

  "Well?"

  A crackle of static made it sound as though Threepio had cleared his

  throat. "Master Lando, Artoo says that he has the greatest enthusiasm

  and confidence in the mission."

  "Threepio--" "Lando, I suggest you take it at face value," Lobot said

  quietly.

  Lando looked hard at Lobot for a moment. Then, frowning, he said,

  "Thank you. I have trouble sometimes hearing clearly over what's not

  being said." He reached for his control pad and brought his helmet

  lamps up to full brightness.

  "Lobot, is there anything going on outside?"

  "All of the limpet's sensors are clear. The vagabond's forward speed

  is negligible."

  "Just another oblong asteroid, drifting along a long way from anywhere,

  eh? All right, then. Artoo, can you help us with some light? Let's

  see what we have here."

  What they had was a chamber fifteen meters long and nine meters wide,

  and as infuriatingly seamless and featureless as the airlock.

  "Kind of have the feeling that I've been here before," said Lando,

  scanning. "And I don't mean yesterday, when I burned through here on

  the way to the hull."

  "I understand," Lobot said. "Perhaps the highest form of art on Qella

  was the locked-room mystery."

  Lando laughed. "Which would make this ship their hall of fame

  anthology, I guess. But it wants for variety."

  "The apparent consistency of design principles should serve our

  interests."

  A grin appeared. "You want me to see if I can lose the other glove

  this time?"

  "The Qella esthetic demands that nothing be evident until it is

  needed," Lobot said. "But how does the structure know when a concealed

  feature is needed?

  How do the Qella communicate their desires to their creations? We know

  at least one answer--we know that it responds to touch."

  The grin faded into a frown. "The last time I touched this ship, it

  tried to leave us out as a meal for space slugs."

  "I am not convinced that this vessel means to do us harm."

  "What exactly would you consider compelling proof? A fatality?"

  "I've been reconsidering the incident in the airlock in light of

  Threepio's accident," Lobot said. "It's possible that we

  misinterpreted the message which Artoo found in the airlock. It's

  possible that the control you activated was an emergency lock close

  switch, which functioned exactly as intended."

  "What? No, that doesn't make sense."

  "It's even possible that we asked the vagabond to attempt an escape,"

  Lobot continued. "The prominence given to the symbology Artoo detected

  parallels the use of red and yellow as alert and caution colors, and

  arrows as pointers, in human artifacts."

  "You're saying that if Threepio could read Qella, we'd have seen a sign

  saying 'In case of emergency, pull here."" Lobot nodded. "Isn't the
/>
  most prominent marking on the outside of a snub fighter the canopy

  release? What if we walked up to one knowing the meaning of an arrow

  but unable to read the word 'Rescue'?"

  "Here's the problem with your theory that we hit the panic button,"

  Lando said. "The next time this ship had a chance, it tried to spit u

  out again--without us ever getting near that control yoke."

  "That 'next time,' we were burning a hole in an element of the primary

  defense system--a hole that the repair mechanisms were unable to close

  in the usual amount of time."

  "I take your point," Lando said. "But after we did that, the ship has

  to have known we weren't Qella and we weren't friendly."

  "If the ship had the consciousness you attribute to it, and had formed

  an intent to remove us, it could have done so at any time while we were

  in the accumulator," said Lobot. "It could have disposed of us while

  we slept just now. It could have opened the hull under your feet while

  you were placing the limpet. Yet it has done none of these things."

  "Hmm. And what kind of security system would forget about us once we'd

  managed to break in, eh?"