But once a year (by what reckoning Lando forgot even as he read it), the Oseon System's sun flared in a peculiar manner (giving rise to the theory about a unique element blowing up the planets). As the flares tore streamers of excited vapor from the nearest of the asteroids, the entire system fluoresced, pulsed, resonated, generating enormous bands of shifting color, fairy brilliance, millions of kilometers long and wide, like the spokes of an enormous wheel. Colors ranged across the humanly visible spectrum, exceeding it broadly at both ends.
There was, very possibly, nothing else quite so impressively beautiful in the known universe as the Flamewind of Oseon.
Lando did a rapid calculation: yes, if his luck ran well for long enough, he and Vuffi Raa would be there at the right time. Perhaps that had been intended by Lob Doluff as an incentive of sorts. How nice: a kind of bonus they could both- BLOMMMMM!
The Millennium Falcon pitched end over end with sudden violence.
Through the ports, stars whirled crazily about them in a meaningless pattern. Alarms went off, filling the cabin with an ear-splitting wail. Smoke began seeping into the room as random bits and pieces - Lando's cards, his cigars, an old pair of socks - slung in odd, unpredictable places, responding to the primitive artificial gravity imposed on the ship by its wild head-over-heels spin.
“Vuffi Raa!”
Grasping the nearest bolted-down furniture, Lando shouted at the intercom. “What in the name of the Eternal was that?”
There was no response.
Pulling himself hand over hand against the nonsensically vectored drag, Lando made slow, unsteady progress to the bridge. Klaxons beat upon his head, their noise a tangible thing. The final turn of corridor was like crawling up a vertical sewer pipe, each rung of the emergency ladder coming with greater difficulty as he climbed above the ship's new center of gravity.
Once in the cockpit, he climbed exhaustedly into his seat and strapped himself in, trying without much success to catch his breath.
Rendered virtually invisible by their speed, Vuffi Raa's tentacles were flying over the controls. It must be some emergency, thought Lando, if even the multitalented robot was too busy now to talk. To the continued tune of shrilling alarms, Lando began assisting him, newly acquired knowledge coming sure and true to his fingertips.
First, they stabilized the ship's insane changes of attitude. Up became up once again, down, down.
Next, they located the source of the explosion. It was in the bottommost level of the Falcon, seemingly just under the belly skin.
They triggered canisters of firefoam, then jettisoned the resultant mess into open space. Temperature indicators relaxed, a few red lights winked to green. The alarms shut off - a deafening silence reigned.
Finally, Vuffi Raa laid the proper course back in, and they were on their way to the Oseon once again, although at something less than normal interstellar cruising speed.
“How bad is the damage?” Lando was already unstrapping himself He wiped a shaking hand over his dampened forehead.
Vuffi Raa looked over the control panel, several sections of which were still ablaze. with red and yellow lights. “It would appear, Master, to be superficial. The difficulty began when I shifted into faster-than-light drive. We shall have to inspect it close up, however. I don't trust the remote sensors.”
“Very well,” the gambler answered, “let's get below. I'll put on a pressure suit and-”
“Master, it is standard procedure in such instances for one crew member to remain at the controls, while the other-”
“All right, then,” Lando said, a trifle irritated, “you stay here. I'll suit up and-”
“Master, I can operate perfectly well in a hard vacuum without a suit. Explosive decompression doesn't bother me. And I know how to weld. Do you?”
The little droid, of course, showed no expression, but Lando felt as if there were a pair of human arms somewhere inside its shiny chassis, folded across an imaginary chest, beneath an unbearably smug grimace.
“Have it your own way, then! I'll still suit up. It seems a sensible safety precaution, just in case you open the wrong door somewhere. Keep me informed, will you - and don't call me Master!”
Vuffi Raa unstrapped himself from the copilot's seat, rose, and strode to the back of the control area. “I'll do better than keep you informed, Master. Observe that monitor nearest your left elbow.”
Swiveling his neck, Lando was suddenly seeing himself, quite plainly if somewhat distortedly, as if by a wide-angle lens held too close to its subject. The colors seemed a bit off, and the gambler realized he was seeing a translation of infrared and ultraviolet information in addition to the usual spectrum.
“I get it! I see what you see. You know, this could come in very handy, like, say, the next time I'm in a game, and-”
“But Master, that would be unethical!”
“Wouldn't it just? All right, we'll talk about it later. Meanwhile, let's get to work on the damage.”
They both shuffled out of the cockpit, headed toward separate destinations.
Ten minutes later, Lando was again seated in his pilot's recliner, watching the monitor through the transparent faceplate of a spacesuit helmet. He thought about opening the visor to smoke a cigar, remembered the magic words “explosive decompression,” and desisted.
After all, they didn't know yet how badly hurt the Falcon was. A footfall, no matter how light, in the wrong place might blow a hull panel. On the screen, Vuffi Raa had made it to the site of the explosion. His viewpoint approached a heavily damaged piece of machinery.
“Why, that's just one of the hydraulic jacks for the boarding ramp,” Lando exclaimed, almost indignantly. “There's nothing flammable or explosive in that section - and what does it have to do at all with the ultra-lightspeed drive?”
The camera angle tilted downward. A tentacle reached for something wedged between two heavy springs. The object had to be sawed and twisted out of its place, then the tentacle lifted it nearer the robot's eye.
“What the devil is that?” Lando asked the intercom.
The thing looked like a spring itself, a section of thick-gauge wire coiled and then twisted around into an evasively familiar shape, rather like a doughnut, but with an extra turn, pretzel-wise.
“It's a Moebius coil of some kind, Master,” Vuffi Raa answered at last. “They're used as tuners and - my word, it's an antenna. Master, someone placed a device here to detect the shift into ultra-lightspeed. You see, there's a hyperwave generated by the-”
“Yes, yes,” Lando interrupted impatiently. “But what's the point of all that?”
“There would be a considerable point, Master, if the antenna was connected to a controller that, in turn, was connected to a bomb.”
The gambler pondered that. “You mean, someone just walked up and attached it back on Dilonexa, while we were refueling, and when we buttoned up for takeoff, we effectively brought it inside the ship ourselves?”
“Something like that, Master.”
“A bomb. Do you suppose they found out about the wintenberry jelly?”
IV
DEEP SPACE.
The officially decommissioned Imperial Cruiser Wennis bored through the blackness like a thing alive, a hungry thing, a thing with the need to kill. It had been built for that, nearly three-quarters of a century ago. Now it was an obsolete machine, displaced by more efficient killers.
Still, it served its purpose.
On the bridge, a uniformed crew quietly attended to their duties. They were a mixed lot, officially - again, officially - civilians.
Many were the worst of the worst, the scum and misfits of a million-system civilization. Others were the best that could be had, the cream of the elite.
Like the Wennis, this, too, served a purpose.
All were military personnel, now indefinitely detached to serve aboard the decommissioned cruiser. In this, they served their Emperor (although not without an occasional - extremely discreet - grumble) and hoped for
early promotion and other rewards.
In practicality, all served an entity who, although somewhat less elevated than His Imperial Majesty, was nevertheless quite as frighteningly impressive. This figure stalked the bridge as well, draped from crown to heel in the heavy dark swathings people had come to associate with the mysterious and sinister Sorcerers of Tund.
Rokur Gepta, all features save his burning eyes concealed behind the final windings of his turban-like headgear, barely suppressed a scream.
“Do you have the temerity to tell me you have failed again?”
The officer he addressed was not happy with his present assignment. In the first place, his uniform had been stripped of all rank and unit markings. It made him feel naked. In the second place, he could not understand why a battle-ready cruiser and its full crew were pursuing a single tiny tramp freighter.
The officer gulped. “I only mean to say, Sir, that the device our agent planted seems to have gone off prematurely. It was supposed to explode, on your orders, just before atmospheric entry at their next port of call.”
“So you have failed twice! You idiot, they're en route to the Oseon - there will be no atmospheric entry! I have had enough of this!”
The sorcerer made a gesture with his gloved fist. The officer groaned, sweat sprang out on his forehead, and he sank to his knees.
“You see how much more effective it is than mere pain, don't you? Everyone has memories, little items from their past best left buried: humiliations, embarrassments, mistakes...sometimes fatal ones. All the ways we have failed those we have loved, the ways they have failed us!”
Gepta made another gesture.
“No, you can think of nothing else! The ignobility races round and round your mind, amplified, feeding on itself!”
The officer's face went gray, he swayed on his knees, his back bowed, his clenched fists began dripping blood where the fingernails cut into the palms. A little froth appeared at one corner of his mouth, followed by more blood as he gnashed at his lips and tongue. Finally, he lost all control, collapsed in a heap and lay there, twitching, moaning.
Gepta released him.
A pair of orderlies appeared, dragged the broken man from the bridge. Oddly enough, he was far from destroyed. Gepta had noticed, in the past, a certain increase in efficiency, perhaps even slightly enhanced intelligence after one of these crises. So why not make a good tool better? The tool was not in any position to complain of the stresses involved. Did it hurt a knife to grind it to razor sharpness?
Who cared?
Slightly invigorated himself, the sorcerer turned, strode back to the control chair he usually occupied on the bridge. He was not captain on the Wennis, but he liked to stay on top of things.
He sat. Beside the chair was a pair of cages, each perhaps half a meter cubed. In the first, he kept his pet. It was scarcely visible in its bed of gray-green muck, simply three stalky black legs sting upward crookedly, curving inward with a certain hungry, greedy energy perhaps only Gepta could see and sympathize with. The legs were sparsely hairy.
In the second cage, Gepta kept another type of creature. There were half a dozen of the things; soon he'd need a new supply. They were about the size of mice, very like mice, in fact, but with curly golden pelts and impossibly large blue eyes. Each creature was sleek and clean, seemed to radiate warmth. Each had a bushy tail, rather like that of a miniature squirrel.
Suppressing a shudder, Gepta reached into the cage of the furry creatures. Using a large pair of plastic tongs, he seized one - it squeaked with surprise and pain - and transferred it from its cage. He opened the top of the other cage, dropped it into the center of the upraised hairy legs.
There was a squelch!, another terrified squeak, which was cut off sharply, then a crunch! Gepta let the lid drop, a warm glow inside him as his pet preened itself, one dark, many-jointed leg grooming another until all three were clean of the blood and fur of its meal.
It did him good to imagine that the small, furry, helpless creature he had just destroyed was Lando Calrissian. It did him a great deal of good. Others had attempted to interfere with Gepta's plans before. Only one had managed to survive. Why, of all people, this insignificant vagabond, this itinerant gambler and charlatan should so frequently come between the sorcerer and his plans was a mystery. Yet it had happened.
Very few individuals understood how much-and how little-the Sorcerers of Tund believed in magic. Even fewer were those who lived to pass the knowledge on to others. Calling up the Wennis's captain's ugly memories, for example, amplifying them, driving out everything else-there was nothing to it, nothing that couldn't be done by anyone, given the proper electronics.
Yet those of Tund had their own beliefs about things that transcended science, and Rokur Gepta was a superstitious soul. He believed that some perverse kind of luck, some fate, karma, kismet, or destiny kept throwing Calrissian in his face. Sometimes it appeared the young gambler wasn't even aware that it was happening.
Now the sorcerer would have an end to it.
He pressed a button set in the arm of his chair. An officer materialized, one a little younger than the captain.
“You are the second in command?” Gepta hissed.
The officer saluted uncertainly. He'd seen his superior dragged from the bridge. “Y-Yes... yes, sir, I am, er...shall we maintain our course for the Oseon, sir?”
Rokur Gepta waited a while to reply, knowing that the prolonged silence would further ravel the young officer's nerves.
In a military hierarchy there was always something to feel guilty about. It was designed that way, so that an individual couldn't go through a single day without having to stretch, bend, or break a rule. This, of course, worked to the advantage of those at the top of the pyramid.
Just as it was working now.
When a fine sweat sprinkled the officer's brow, Gepta finally spoke.
“No, no. We shall digress for a short time. I'll give you the heading. Your captain will be indisposed for several hours, and I want to be well on my way by the time of his... recovery.”
Many parsecs away, in space equally as deep as that which enveloped the cruiser Wennis, a strange apparition manifested itself.
At its center lay the naked core of a dreadnaught-class ultra-lightspeed drive engine, pulsing, glowing, seeming to writhe with unholy energies as it twisted space around itself to deny the basic laws of reality. A closer examination would have disclosed that it was old, very old, patched and welded together out of many such drive engines, long past obsolescence, verging on dangerous fatigue.
Surrounding it were at least two dozen equally weary and obsolete fighters of nearly as many separate pedigrees, some constructed by inhuman races and sloppily converted. They were connected to the drive core with gleaming cables that glowed and sparked and writhed in time to its fundamental frequency. The fighters appeared to be towing the engine. In fact, the reverse was true. These small craft were incapable of making the translation to faster-than-light velocities themselves.
They let the core field do it for them.
Nfititia Leader Klyn Shanga sat before the controls of his aged spacecraft, his eyes unseeing, his mind turned inward. It had been thus for over eleven days – and thus was the most excruciatingly dull voyage he had ever endured. Yet it was necessary: honor demanded it.
Though alive with lights, his controls were, for practical purposes, inert, locked into the controls of all the other fighters, each of them in turn slaved to a cobbled-together navigational computer on the chive engine.
There was nothing to do, and all the time in the universe to do it.
He had long since stopped thinking of his home, a little-known backwater planet, settled long generations before the present wave of Imperial colonization - settled even before the Old Republic had sent its own explorers outward. He had long since eased thinking about his family. There was little point: it was highly unlikely he would ever see them again.
He had devoted even less time to thin
king about his present task, the mission of this motley group of militiamen, retired policemen, adventurers, and professional soldiers as ancient and obsolete as the craft they flew. They were their culture's expendables. The task was simple and straightforward: find someone and kill him. It didn't matter that their target, their enemy, had damaged their civilization severely, exposed it to a galaxy-wide culture more potent and wealthy, stripping away its hidden safety. It mattered less that the life they sought to take was the very embodiment of evil. Evil or not, it would pass out of existence if they did their work right.
If they didn't, their fates were academic. Evil abounded in the universe, and one life more or less wouldn't make much difference. The damage was done; this was for revenge, pure and simple - and perhaps to protect other helpless, defenseless worlds.
Klyn Shanga glanced through the canopy of his fighter at the rest of the group clustered around the battleship engine.
All together, they looked laughable - the same way, no doubt, their world had looked to the intruder. They resembled nothing more than a grotesque, desiccated plant, an interstellar tumbleweed being blown wherever the fates would have it. Shanga tried to take comfort in the notion that nothing could be further from the truth, that they were a spare and deadly force who would take their adversary completely by surprise.
At that moment, his communications console sprang into life.
There were no greetings, no salutations. The beam was tight, intended only for the cluster of fighters. It boomed and faded with the galactic drift.
On the screen, a young military figure was visible, his gray uniform unadorned by rank or unit markings. Shanga knew him to be the second officer of the decommissioned Imperial Cruiser Wennis.
The figure did not speak, but only nodded.
Keying his transmitter, Shanga asked, “He is on his way, then?”
The figure nodded again, but hatred and fear burned in his eyes, just as it burned in the heart of Klyn Shanga and all his men.
“He will be there when we arrive?” asked Shanga.
Star Wars - The Adventures of Lando Calrissian Trilogy Page 19
