Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [111]
“What happened? Where are we?”
“Two very good questions,” the captain responded. “We were attacked—I don’t know by whom—and we escaped. But I don’t know to where. Are you all right?” He stopped beside her, assisted her in righting herself. She breathed deeply, made a sketchy self-examination.
“I don’t think anything is broken—although to look at this room, that would require a small miracle. Ohhh, my head!”
“Take it easy, you’re not expected anywhere very soon. That’s me: Lando Calrissian, miracles made to order. You stay there, I’m going to look at our fine feathered fuzz.”
He rose and stepped over the debris toward Waywa Fybot’s sleeping rack. In the bird-being’s case, there had been something less than a miracle. Both the creature’s legs were broken, in exactly the same place, apparently where a bar of the rack crossed them. The arrangement had never been intended for free-fall and high acceleration.
Nonetheless, the avian officer seemed to have a blissful expression on his face, if Lando could rely on his interpretation of it. The gambler felt a presence at his elbow. Bassi Vobah had made it to her feet and across the room. She stood a bit unsteadily, but she wasn’t leaning on anything or anybody.
Lando liked her a little bit more for that, but not much.
“What’s wrong with Officer Fybot, and why in the name of the Eternal is he smiling in that idiotic way?”
“Shock, perhaps,” Lando answered her. “He’s broken both his legs—rather, I’ve broken both his legs. I’m having a bit of trouble regretting it very much, considering the circumstances. Although I wish I knew how to examine him for further damage. I don’t know where he’s supposed to bend, let alone where he isn’t.”
Bassi seemed a bit hysterical all of a sudden, and Lando subtracted a few of the points he’d given her. “Well, can’t you do something? We can’t just leave him lying there!”
He shook his head. “That’s exactly what we’re going to do, after I splint those legs. I don’t think we’d better move him.”
The birdlike creature sat up suddenly, opened his great blue eyes, and said delightedly, “Yes, I’ll have another centipede, Mother, if you don’t mind!”
• XII •
“… AND THIS ONE is worth a negative eighteen—am I clear, so far?” the robot asked. The gigantic yellow avian towering over him at the lounge table nodded, trying to shift to a more comfortable position.
Lando looked up from the covered free-fall dish that contained his long-overdue meal and chuckled, wondering who was going to take whom to the laundry when the bird and the droid had the rules of sabacc straight between them. Vuffi Raa’s literal-mindedness could be a handicap; on the other hand, Waywa Fybot was a bit preoccupied at present, between his injuries and whatever it was he’d seen during the onslaught of the Flamewind.
They’d gotten the narcotics officer splinted up all right: tinklewood fishing rods had turned out to be good for something, after all. Lando had never been able to sell the blasted things back in the Dilonexa. He still had a bundle of them stacked in one of the auxiliary holds.
Ah, well. Things could be worse.
They could all be dead.
Looking up again, he winked and smiled at Bassi Vobah, likewise feeding herself from a covered tray. It had taken them the better part of an hour to manhandle the bird into a position where his broken legs could be treated, even in free-fall. Then, all at once, it seemed they had a million things to attend to, and it hadn’t been until later that they could think of food.
The first order of business had been the Falcon herself.
She’d been pretty badly battered by the desperate flight through the Flamewind and the battle with those tramp fighters—Lando still didn’t know who the Core they were or why they had attacked him. She’d never been constructed for astrobatics with her inertial dampers shut down. The stresses to her hull and frame must have been titanic.