Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [131]
Gepta screamed, clapped a hand to his shrouded face, and stumbled backward. The wind caught his voluminous cloak and took him away in a tumbling, fabric-covered ball of curses. He vanished into a nearby grove of thorn trees. There was more screaming.
Liberating the feet was more difficult. Lando finally pulled his suit-boots off, scraped his way past the restraints, and had begun to gather up his shoes and wits and Mutdah’s money, when a silvery snake appeared in the grass before him. It had fingers for a face and a red glassy eye in the palm.
It couldn’t bite; it was programmed not to.
“Vuffi Raa, you’ve got to pull yourself together!” There was no response; the independent appendage couldn’t talk, and vulgar gestures were beneath the robot’s dignity. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on around here, but it’s our chance to get out! Move!”
Behind the uptilted table, Lando found his suit helmet. He also found a complex pile of electronic equipment, cables leading to a large flat, complexly braided coil that had been situated at the back of his head.
“I’m a little disappointed,” he said to the tentacle. “And here I’d thought he was doing all that spellbinding by sheer force of personality!”
Somehow the chromium appendage managed to convey impatience as Lando dawdled. It lay on the ground fidgeting while he pulled on his boots. Overhead—directly overhead—there was a resounding bellow. Jagged sheets of curved plastic began falling.
“Relax, old boy, I’m pedaling as fast as I can! I wish you could tell me what the deuce is going on!”
As he shoved his foot into the boot, snapped the vacuum clasps tight, Lando saw the lightning flash of high-powered energy-weapons above them.
And several of the fighter-craft he’d battled on the way to 5792.
“Edge take me, that makes things a little clearer!”
Together the gambler and the disembodied tentacle hurried into the deceased trillionaire’s deserted mansion, robot appendage in the lead and seeming to know where it was going. Inside, they took an elevator down into the planetoid. Even as they let it bury them, they could feel the asteroid shake and shudder from the assault overhead.
In the blink of an eye, the carriage passed the ruined door of the library, swung on its gimbals, turning at least one startled occupant on his head, and whisked onward in this new orientation. Adding injury to insult, Lando was nearly dashed to the floor as the machine crashed to a stop inside the spaceport service building.
Rasping on damage-distorted ways, the pneumatic door ground halfway open, then froze. The gambler squeezed through, chrome snake underfoot, and the pair leaped from the building a fraction of a second before it collapsed in flames.
Fire and explosions rocked the airport as more fighters strafed and bombed it. A scarlet beam lashed the waiting Millennium Falcon as they approached her. The backsplash nearly fried the gambler. But her shields held.
Gasping, Lando ran up the boarding ramp, pausing only to punch buttons to retract it, then sprinted forward around the corridor, momentarily outdistancing even the tentacle as it hastened back to its owner. Vuffi Raa had climbed down out of the ceiling access, and was strapped into the pilot’s seat.
Lando took the right-hand position without complaint. “Let’s get the devil out of here!” he screamed above the chaos roaring outside.
Reclaiming his leg, Vuffi Raa spared a split-second of attention for the gambler while he helped it connect itself. “You’re a hard being to rescue, Master. You don’t wait for help. I’ll ask you how you got loose from Rokur Gepta later, if we live. Meanwhile, hadn’t you better man the quad-guns?”
“You suggesting an aggressive act? I think you’re right.” Lando was gone before he’d finished the last sentence. Sliding into the gun chair, he flipped switches and pushed buttons, grabbed the handles of the ungainly weapon, and rested restless digits on the triggers.