But why? He came to the conclusion that it wasn't Whett's appearance he remembered so vividly. The voice, then? A high, whiny, nagging voice it was, full of a high opinion of himself that didn't seem to fit the vague memory Shanga had.
It was like the false memories one experiences in dreams: you wake up suddenly (and often with relief) knowing that the thing you remembered never happened at all. But Whett was real.
“Twenty-three to Zero Leader over.”
“Go ahead, Bern.”
“Sure. How come we're not maintaining comm silence on this run? I thought we were gonna surprise the little-”
“They know we're coming, and there's only one direction we can come from.”
“Kinda like that first raid we made south of Mathilde, after the Betrayal, right?” Nuladeg chuckled at the blood-soaked memory. It was the only thing they could do. The reminiscence wasn't that pleasant, although they'd killed a thousand enemies that morning, caught them on the ground before they got set up for defense. He remembered the shock he'd felt at the invasion, after all the friendly welcoming they'd done for Vuffi Raa and now why did that make him think of Whett again?
“Zero Leader to Twenty-three. Bern, have you seen Gepta's pet anthropologist, Osuno Whett?”
“Can't say as I have. How come?” Shanga could see the other fighter's craft on the opposite side of the formation, its cockpit full of cigar smoke. He wondered how the little man breathed in that atmosphere.
“I don't know, Bern, but there's something nagging me, and it seems to be important.”
“Stop chewing on it, then, boss. Sleep it over. It'll come to you if it's important. Core, you could use a little shut-eye, anyways. Sit yourself back, and I'll take the con for a while.”
“Thanks a lot, Bern, I appreciate it.”
“Just so you don't make a habit of it.
“Roger, Twenty-three, and out.”
The Ottdefa Osuno Whett looked over some highly peculiar data as he sat in the cramped confines of his hiding place. Outside, the stars appeared motionless through the ports. It was an illusion.
According to the almost microscopic spy devices he'd planted on Gepta with only partial success, the wizard had indeed entered that armored compartment aft of the Wennis through a tube scarcely larger than a child's wrist diameter. And somewhere within that tube, according to these readouts, Gepta had ceased to exist, for the dust-mote-sized recorders had drifted in the tube and remained there, recording nothing, until the sorcerer again became himself Whatever that was.
Whett shifted uncomfortably on his couch, not daring to show a light that might be seen from the outside, not believing the readouts, their displays stopped down to near invisibility.
He'd known others in his field - anthropology, not spying - who'd eventually come to believe in the primitive magic they studied, otherwise serious scholars who thought that dancing, after all, at least when performed a certain way by a certain people, could bring rain. Good minds gone to rot from nothing more than overexposure, some malignant form of osmosis. He'd always resisted that, regarded it as a failure both of scientific detachment and personal integrity. Now, he wasn't sure.
All right, the Sorcerers of Tund were supposed to have been capable of all kinds of magic. No one had ever claimed that they were even human; that was a general assumption, and, like all general assumptions, was probably mistaken. Nonetheless...
What species was naturally capable of the thing his instruments had witnessed? Gepta had returned through the tube, the electronic motes adhering to him again as he, what - materialized? And what was that weird, unknown radiation that, despite armor he now realized was not one but two meters thick, incredibly still leaked out when Gepta had been inside the compartment for a few minutes?
And most of all, what, in the Name of the Core, was Rokur Gepta?
XVI
“MASTER, WE'VE GOT company!”
“All right Vuffi Raa, I'm coming!”
Lando jumped up from his seat in the lounge where he'd been programming tactics for the Oswaft. Out of over a billion of the creatures, less than a thousand had agreed to play his game of sabacc, live or die. He ran around the corridor to the cockpit and flung himself into the right-hand seat.
“Where are they?”
The robot indicated a tightly strung series of blips on the long-range sensors. “Fighters, Master, the same kind we fought in the Oseon. I make it twenty - no, twenty-five. I don't know what that big thing in the middle is.”
The gambler nodded. “I wonder if it isn't the same group. They don't look like a tactical fighter wing, and they're using the same formation they did before. Last time it was a battleship engine.” He began throwing switches, bringing the Falcon's defensive armament to full readiness.
“Oh my,” Vuffi Raa said in a subdued voice, “the Renatasians. Sometimes I think it would be better just to surrender myself to them. If only they knew the truth.”
“Cut it out, sprocket-head! They know the truth, it's just too hard to let go of a scapegoat once you've got him by the chin whiskers. Let's surprise those mynock-smoochers by going out to meet them, what say?”
The robot's tentacles began dancing over the boards. “My sentiments exactly, Master, that's what we came here for in the first place, wasn't it?”
Lando rose, steadying himself against a chair as vibrations washed through the ship. “Quite right, although I wasn't sure we'd sucker the Renatasians in, too. Gepta's overdue. How can he resist having us trapped here in the StarCave?”
“Don't worry, Master, he'll show up.”
“Swell.” The gambler made haste aft to the tunnel connecting with the quad-gun bubble, reached the swiveling chair and strapped himself in. “Well, old friend, let's go!”
“Yes, Master” the intercom answered. “Full power coming up!”
As the Falcon rushed to meet the foe, Lando reviewed his plans. The Oswaft wouldn't strike the small group of fighters. He'd cranked his ideas through the computer and, from there, directly into their brains. They now knew as much about tactics as he did.
Refocusing on the task at hand, he limbered up, swung the guns up and down, side to side. The chair followed with them, giving him an exhilarating ride that was probably the real reason he liked the weapon so much. He keyed the intertalkie.
“Test coming up - and don't call me master.”
“Yes, Mas-”
“Got you that time.” Using one of the stars for a point of aim, he pressed both thumbs down on the triggers. Bolts of high-intensity energy shot from the guns as they pumped back and forth in their odd pattern, much like the reciprocating machine guns of old.
Only now, it was to avoid a backwash of power that would have fused the muzzles of the non-firing barrels. He fired the guns again, then looked at the repeater screen to see what Vuffi Raa was seeing up ahead.
“One thousand kilometers and closing, Master. That central object is a ship's pinnace. I believe they used it for towing. Shields up at eighty kilometers. They're beginning to cast off the pinnace.”
“Hold her steady, little friend, let them make the first pass.”
On his screen, Lando could see that the fighters had erected their deflection, too. Fighter shields were notoriously porous, there just wasn't enough engine to support them. That's one thing that made a vessel the size of the Falcon so handy.
“Five hundred kilometers, Master!”
Now the fighters were visible as tiny dots of light, pseudostars against the starry background of the ThonBoka mouth. Lando brought his guns to bear, swinging to meet the enemies' maneuvers, getting a feel for them. Felt like Klyn Shanga's bunch, all right. Apparently they'd teamed up with the sorcerer and the Navy.
Two fighters streaked over the Falcon. Lando poured destructive energy at them, but the pass was too fast for either side to do any damage. They were probably confirming that this was, indeed, the Millennium Falcon, Vuffi Raa, a.k.a. the Butcher of Renatasia, first mate.
The robot heel
ed the ship steeply. “Two coming up from below!”
“Let 'em come!” The ship's beefed-up shields would be a surprise.
Lando held his fire until the last moment, then pounded into the larger ship of the two. Its shielding lasted all of a millisecond, then there was an explosion and the vessel corkscrewed off, badly damaged.
He swung the guns around, but the second fighter had passed overhead and was gone. One down, he thought, and by Vuffi Raa's estimate, twenty-four to go. “Damage report!”
“Nothing to report, Master. Our shields held fine.”
“You do great work. Where'd they go?”
The question was answered as six fighters bored directly for the freighter. Lando sprayed the space in front of them with energy, the ship's lights dimming briefly as he did. They veered sharply, unable to match his fire at that range.
“Master! Bandits straight ahead! Eleven of them!”
“Well, slew the ship! I can't reach them from here! No! Cancel that! I've got trouble enough!”
Four of the original six were back, shooting hard. Lando matched them shot for shot, smoked another, then caught a fighter with a direct hit. It blossomed into an enormous ball of tiny sparks and disappeared. But the others didn't give up yet. Even the wounded ship executed a wide, clumsy circle and came back. Lando centered the lead fighter in his crosshairs, thumbed the ignition, and growled.
Another fireball. Another hit on the crippled ship, which wobbled, skidded off, then suddenly exploded. The remaining fighter fought its way around a corner and lunged out of range.
It'd be back.
“Clear, now! Turn the ship!”
“Too late, Master I destroyed two fighters and the other nine broke off.”
There was a long, startled pause that nearly cost the two their lives. A single fighter came in at top speed, fired all its retros, dumped its load of lethal energy directly onto the stern tubes, the weakest portion of the shielding. Lando started, more frightened at his inattention than by the fighter. He swung the quad-guns aft, fired and fired until the single fighter vanished in a cloud of smoke.
The pilot of that vessel couldn't have been more surprised than Lando was. “You say you shot down two fighters, old pacifist?” This much was true: there was a pair of small guns, usually ineffective against anything bigger than a rowboat, located on the upper surface of the ship and controllable from the cockpit. Lando had wanted them synchronized, which would effectively quadruple their power, and Vuffi Raa had gotten around to it in the last few days.
Still, there was no reply from the control deck.
“Vuffi Raa, are you all right?”
No answer.
The fighter group had broken off momentarily, licking their wounds, no doubt, and sizing up the Falcon. If it was Shanga's people, they were probably surprised to meet two columns of fire coming in.
Or were they? Tactically, they'd known Vuffi Raa couldn't shoot back, yet politically (psychologically? sociologically?) he was the most murderous villain in their history. How did they resolve a conflict like that?
“Vuffi Raa, speak to me!”
“Yes, Master I beg your pardon, and I'll tell you all about it later. No time now – your friends are back!”
This time they came in force. Lando counted seventeen before he got busy, which agreed approximately with the five kills and one probable they'd scored thus far. Lando wasn't taking trophies; it wasn't in him to do it. He simply wanted to know how near the end of the fight they were getting. He wanted a cigar.
This time they gave it all they had, as well. Lando slugged it out, and he could sense the drain on the ship's engines that meant Vuffi Raa was shooting while he steered the ship. Still, the shields were taking a terrific pounding, and yellow lights, to judge from the robot's shouted reports, were showing up like fireflies on the boards.
Then a bright light bloomed where Lando's guns weren't pointed and Vuffi Raa's couldn't be. Standing off, without the benefit of shields, was Lehesu. He turned slowly, majestically, shouted at another fighter, which turned into a knot of greasy smoke, then disappeared himself, to show up on the other side of the ship.
The fighters broke off at some distance; peace reigned momentarily.
“Lehesu, you old ace! I thought you were with your people!”
“My people are intelligent life everywhere, Captainmaster. I saw you needed help, and-”
The gambler frowned. “I wouldn't exactly say we needed help, exactly.” Retrieving a cigar from where he'd tucked it in his boot top, he lit it and settled back for a moment.
“I would,” Vuffi Raa said. “Thank you, Lehesu, and thank you for the talk. I seem to have resolved the conflict in my programming.”
Keeping an eye on the indicators for further intruders, Lando asked, “Where are your people, Lehesu; are they waiting to follow my program?”
“No Captainmaster. Instead, they have followed your example. They have gone to confront the fleet instead of waiting for it.”
The entity whom Lando referred to as Sen was gratified. Something far more than a thousand Oswaft swam now behind him, many more than he had counted on, shamed by Captainmasterlandocalrissiansir's valiant example - and possibly his successes against the first wave of the enemy. He directed a thought toward Fey.
“How many would you say we are, old friend?”
“Perhaps as many as a million. The rest have followed another of the human's suggestions: they are concealing themselves in the walls of the StarCave.”
A mental shrug. “Well, they may be right, and that may save us from extinction better than doing battle with these monsters. This idea of individual dissent that Lehesu forced upon us may have its uses. Different opinions produce different modes of survival, one or more of which may succeed.”
The fleet grew as they approached it.
“I do not know,” Fey said. “I believe I would prefer to be playing sabacc just now. The notion of being killed-”
“Is faintly refreshing,” finished the older of the two Elders. “Lehesu is right: it is better than sitting around becoming stagnant.”
“Everyone to his own preferences,” Fey answered wryly.
Aboard the Reluctant, a gunner's mate finally tore his eyes away from the scope. “A million of 'em! Core save us, there's a million of 'em out there!”
His supervisor hurried over, looked down from the catwalk into the mate's instruments while the mate looked up in fear and wonder at him.
“You're wrong, son, the computer's making a new estimate. Make that two million.”
Sen chuckled to himself as he hopped out of the artificial skin he'd just generated, leaving it behind to confound the enemy. Their sensors would now be registering three million Oswaft, and even if they fathomed the trick, they wouldn't know which outline to shoot at.
One chance in three of getting killed, instead of unity. You could learn things from sabacc. He hopped another hundred meters, paused, and made it one chance in four. Every step his people took this way increased their apparent numbers arithmetically. The real test would come when they reached the fleet and began swimming in its midst.
“Are you ready, old friend?” asked Fey at his side.
“No. Let's go.”
Their first leap took them within firing distance of the Reluctant. Before she could bring their guns to bear, they were gone.
Sen angled his next jump to place him between that vessel and the next in the metallic swarm. He hopped, created a ghost of himself, and hopped again, this time to a safe place where he could watch.
Reluctant belied her name and fired! The powerfully huge bolt, a recent Imperial development, sliced through the false Oswaft, scoring a deep and crippling hit on her sister vessel, who had fired only slightly behind the other ship. This bolt was a near miss, but it caught an escort fighter and vaporized him instantly. The Oswaft outline dissolved and was gone.
Sen jumped again, creating another threatening image of himself.
It had much
the same effect as the first: the enemy counted on a target to absorb the lethal force of his guns before they struck a sister vessel. They were wrong, and discovering it too slowly. A million Oswaft followed Sen and Fey, repeating the same actions. Space was lit with thousands of fierce, futile bolts. Men died by the hundreds until the trick was finally puzzled out.
By then it was too late. Shouting at the top of his voice, Sen crumpled a pair of fighters, then concentrated his energies on a cruiser. Lando was right: her shields were too dense to have any effect. He stopped shouting at everything but the gnat-like fighters, and hopped and hopped, making sure each time to place himself between two capital ships.
For their part, as they saw the destruction of their own numbers by their own guns, the Navy slowed even more, trying to aim its fire so as not to endanger the fleet. This was useless: either there was nothing to shoot at, or the bolt would knife through the observed enemy, blasting a cruiser or a dreadnaught instead.
In fifteen minutes, the fleet was reduced by 11 percent. Then the shooting stopped.
By that time, Shanga's diminished squadron had made two more runs against the Falcon, losing another fighter. With Vuffi Raa at the controls, the freighter had gradually drawn them nearer where the fleet was busily destroying itself. Fire leaped here and there, lighting up the eternal night. Navy fighters blew up, showering their mother vessels with debris, spreading damage further. The Oswaft darted in and out, their numbers very slightly diminished, too, as the sentients grew tired or careless.
Aboard the Falcon, Lando bore down on the quad-gun once again, turning a small spacecraft into drifting junk.
“Say, that wasn't one of our bandits! That was a navy fighter. Where the Core are we, Vuffi Raa?”
From the control room, the robot replied. “Entering the zone of conflict between the Oswaft and the fleet. I'll try to keep us clear of any large ships, since we - There! Got another one! - since we can't maneuver like the spacepeople.”
Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian 03 - The StarCave of ThonBoka Page 14
