Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia (23 page)

Now it looked like a microcredit’s worth of asteroid mine-tailings.

Unconscious of a gesture he had acquired from long association with human beings, Vuffi Raa raised his free tentacle to scratch at the upper portion of his five-sided torso—the closest thing he had to a head. The little droid was pentadextrous, having no preference as to which of his five sinuous limbs he used for getting around on, which he used for holding, carrying, or manipulating objects. Such as treacherous lumps of recently molten quartz and platinum.

A well-rounded, versatile, and radially symmetrical fellow was Vuffi Raa.

And a very worried one.

His brisk but absentminded pace carried him past a leaf-shaded decorative pond where something between a green
mammal and a small many-jointed insect dabbled a line—actually an extension of its right front leg—into half a meter of water. There was a modest ripple, a splash, then a
snap
! The creature reeled in a tiny, colorful fish, devouring it on the spot and spitting the bones back into the water.

Vuffi Raa never even noticed.

At long last he reached the expensively decorated surface entrance of the exclusive Hotel Drofo. With a brotherly salute, Vuffi Raa strode past the door-being, a robot painted in the garish gold and purple livery of the establishment, and went directly to one of the eight down-shafts leading into the hotel proper.

On an asteroid, even one like Oseon 6845, and even where a first-rate hotel is concerned, surface area comes dear. Volume is cheap.

Selecting
LOBBY
on the miniature display beside the entrance to the down-shaft, he waited for the elevator to take his measure, then fell—“drifted” might be a better word—at a fraction of the augmented surface acceleration of the asteroid gently downward several dozen meters, coming at last to a cushioned rest at the bottom of the shaft. He stepped out into the whispery bustle of the underground hotel.

Plenty of other droids were in evidence, mingling freely with the humans, humanoids, and nonhumans present. Most of the automata here were in service of one sort or another; they were unusually conspicuous in their number and visibility.

The galaxy over, robots were the object of harsh and persistent prejudice. The Oseon was different, however. Cynics pointed out that neither its current inhabitants nor their ancestors were ever likely to have worried much about losing a job. The place was filled with exiled and vacationing nobility. Captains of industry, active and retired, gravitated here, along with majors, colonels, and generals. Mercantile—and literal—pirates who had purchased themselves a little class, sometimes from that selfsame deposed aristocracy, rubbed shoulders and less human body parts with media stars from a million different systems.

The little droid knew the man he was seeking would be in one of the small, comfortably furnished gaming salons just off the Grand Lobby, here on the first, or bottom, floor. Finding the room wouldn’t be any problem, but getting in might be. Gamblers tended to be jealous of their privacy. He “shouldered” his way through the richly dressed crowd, thinking
about the news he had for his master—and how very reluctant he was to deliver it.

A human being can only stand so much bad news.

It had begun with an adventure. His master had won a starship—a small converted freighter, actually, called the
Millennium Falcon
—in yet another card game, and had whimsically decided to add “captain” to his other professional titles: gambler, rogue, and scoundrel. He was proud of every one of them, though he preferred “con
artiste
” to what the authorities usually had upon the tips of their sharp and unforgiving tongues.

He’d been a perfectly terrible pilot in the beginning. Vuffi Raa, an accomplished ship-handler by virtue of inbuilt programming, was gradually taking care of that in two ways: piloting the
Falcon
when the need arose; teaching his master to do it for himself whenever they had time.

He’d won Vuffi Raa in a card game, as well. That had triggered a series of events that culminated with their leaving the Rafa System with the very last full cargo of the fabulous life-crystals ever harvested there. The only load ever removed from the system legally by a private cargo vessel.

And they were rich.

Temporarily.

Yet his master hadn’t seemed very happy, filling out landing-permit forms, going over bills of lading, figuring overhead and profit margin. Even with Vuffi Raa along to make the workload lighter … It was too much like going straight. The gambler yearned to practice his original profession once again.

Thus, when the invitation had suddenly arrived out of nowhere to come and play
sabacc
in the Oseon, where the pickings were the richest in the galaxy, the pair’s free-lance cargo days had come to an abrupt and highly welcome end. They’d blazed across a hundred parsecs to be here on time. The
Falcon
’s speed, in competent tentacles, was legendary. And here they were.

Trouble was, someone had attempted to assure that they be not only here, but also back in the Rafa, out on the Edge, down at the Core, and everyplace else tiny little pieces of their respectively organic and mechanical existences could be scattered.

That someone, it would appear, didn’t like them very much.

Vuffi Raa approached the heavy antiqued wooden double doors. Standing before these was an enormous humanoid in an
elegantly tailored groundsuit at least four sizes too large for any other two men in the hotel. Beneath the hulking fellow’s stylish armpits the robot could make out the twin bulges of a pair of Imperial-issue blasters.

“Excuse me, gentlebeing,” offered the little droid, “I have a message for one of the players inside.” He produced a card his master had given him for use in just such a circumstance.

To Vuffi Raa’s overwhelming relief, the bouncer/bodyguard looked at the holocard as the letters of instruction danced across its surface, nodded politely, and stepped aside. The doors parted slightly; Vuffi Raa squeezed past them.

The air inside the small, luxurious chamber was full of smoke, at least a dozen different, mingling odors, despite the best efforts of its starship-class life-support systems. In the center, seated at a table ringed with players and kibitzers, lounged his master, resplendent in tasteful and expensive velvoid semiformal shipclothes.

The robot approached, waiting until the hand was finished—his master raked in a substantial pile of credit tokens—then tugged gently at the hem of his short cloak.

“Master?”

The figure turned, looked down. White teeth in a dark face, irresistible smile, intelligent and mischievous eyes.

“What is it, Vuffi Raa—and how many times have I asked you not to call me master?”

They were both whispering against a noisy background.

The droid held up the oddly shaped clump of debris for his master’s inspection. “There wasn’t any spontaneous breakdown in the phase-shift controls aboard the
Falcon
, Master. I’m afraid you were right, that this makes two such incidents.”

His master nodded grimly. “So it was a bomb.”

“Yes, Master, someone is trying to murder you.”

L
ANDO
C
ALRISSIAN SHOOK
his head ironically and grinned.

He had good reason. His first evening in the Oseon, his first
sabacc
game, and already he was ahead some twenty-three thousand credits.

The dashing young gambler stood, dressed impeccably at an hour when most people were rumpled and tired, before a full-length mirror, stroking the brand-new mustache he’d begun only a few weeks ago, when things looked so much bleaker. Yes, by the Core, it did give him a certain panache, a certain elan, a certain …

And without filling out so much as a single form in triplicate (if that was logically possible)—his mind was drifting back again to the money tucked into the pockets of his velvoid semiformals—without acquiring a permit, easement, license, variance, or Certificate of Mother-May-I.

Here was one fat bankroll that wasn’t going to evaporate when he wasn’t watching it!

What added amusement to triumph was that
sabacc
was a game considerably more complex and infinitely riskier than the entrepreneurship he’d been attempting since he’d acquired the
Millennium Falcon
. It called for quicker judgment, greater courage, and a more sophisticated understanding of human (in a broadly tolerant manner of speaking) nature.

So why was he so casually accomplished at the former and so miserably rotten at the latter?

He shrugged to himself, crossed the hotel room from the door he’d closed and locked securely not very many moments before.

Let’s see—just the most recent example. He’d won the
Falcon
and Vuffi Raa, then proceeded to earn a handsome fee
(work he’d been coerced into doing) that, by all rights, ought to have set him up for life. Orchard crystals from the Rafa System had never been cheap to begin with. Humanoids who wore them found their life spans extended, their intelligence somewhat enhanced. They were both valuable and rare. They grew in only one place in the universe.

Lando had known, when he and the bot had quit the Rafa, that there would be no more life-crystals, at least for a while. The colonial government there had been overthrown by insurgent natives. Thus, he’d held out for the highest possible prices. Yet, somehow, the money—several millions—had seemed to disappear before his very eyes, eaten up in spacecraft maintenance, docking charges, taxes, surtaxes, sursurtaxes, and bribes. Every time he closed a deal, no matter what margin he’d built in at the beginning, he wound up losing. It didn’t seem sensible: the more money he earned, the poorer he became.

If he got any richer, he’d be broke.

Perhaps he simply hadn’t been playing in the right league. One of the rules of this new game (new to Lando, anyway) was that they didn’t tell you the rules until it was too late. His figurative hat was off to anyone who could
survive
in the world of business, let alone prosper.

A small noise in the next room alerted him. He peeked in: Vuffi Raa was laying out tomorrow’s wardrobe for him. He’d told the little fellow a hundred times that it wasn’t necessary. He needed no valet, and long ago had begun thinking of the robot as a friend more than anything else. But exactly like a good friend (or consummate servant), the droid understood the gambler’s need for some time alone without conversation, while he unwound from the evening’s tense preoccupations. Lando suspected that Vuffi Raa actually wanted to discuss the bomb he’d discovered—the second since their last planetfall. Well, morning was time enough for that. He closed the connecting door softly and returned to his private thoughts.

A second irony struck him as he watched the bed turn itself down. He shucked out of his dressy bantha-hide knee boots and reclined, one foot dangling over the edge of the bed to the floor.

The very individuals who had prospered most, either at legitimate businesses like freight hauling, or shadier ones such as smuggling (the avocation, in fact, for which the
Falcon
had originally been constructed), those who had made their way to
the top, lived here in the Oseon, where one Lando Calrissian, a dismal failure by their standards, experienced little difficulty at all separating them from their hard-won money.

It was their own fault. They’d invited him …

Fire streaked from the starboard weapons turret of the
Millennium Falcon
.

In desperate haste, Lando swung the quad-guns down and to the left as the drone squadron whooshed by, their own energy-guns coloring the misted space around the freighter.

“
Missed
! Vuffi Raa, hold her a little steadier!”

The ship ducked and swooped, narrowly avoiding being skewered in a cross fire as the drone fighters split up, attacking from both sides.

“
Master, there are too many of—good
shooting,
sir
!”

The little droid’s voice issued from an intercom beside Lando’s ear. The gambler made an imaginary chalk mark on a purely mental scoreboard, manhandling the guns around for another shot. The drone he’d splattered was an incandescent and expanding ball of dust and gas, augmenting an already dirty region of space.

Anyone else might have whooped! victoriously.

Lando fumed in the transparent gun-bubble.

All right, so it
had
been his idea to shortcut through this small nebulosity on the way to the next port. Blast it all, he was carrying valuable, somewhat perishable cargo. Crates of wintenberry jelly. Stacks of mountain bollem hides. Expensive tinklewood fishing rods. In short, the produce of a frontier planet. His corner-cutting could save them precious days, compared to routes preferred by scheduled cargo haulers.

The shields pulsed with coruscating brilliance. They were taking hits again!

He slewed the quad-guns hard, pressed the double triggers. Bolts of ravening energy rammed directly into a pair of tiny unmanned fighters screaming toward the ship. One exploded, the other, severely damaged, cork-screwed crazily out of Lando’s line of vision.

Vuffi Raa rolled the ship, skated into a wild, stomach-wrenching yaw, adroitly avoiding a direct hit. They were a good team together, Lando thought.

Besides, it wasn’t much as nebulosities go. Even deep inside the scruffy patch of gas, a few molecules every cubic meter produced very little visible clouding. They did slow a ship
down, however, making it dangerous to use the faster-than-light drive. That’s probably why the regular lines avoided the place. But Lando, calculating distance over time, had figured that, even at a substantial reduction from lightspeed, they’d still gain time and profit thereby.

He’d been wrong.

Six more meter-diameter drones bore directly for his turret. The enemy seemed to have an endless supply. Lando caught a glance of their mother vessel, a pirate lying off and directing the attack in relative safety. She was approximately four times the displacement of the
Falcon
, clumsily built, a large sphere attached to a slightly smaller cylinder, the whole awkward assembly patched and mottled by hard use and long neglect.