Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [161]
“The Courteous, sir,” he answered finally, “part of the blockade line at the ThonBoka. In fact, sir, at the time, she was the closest vessel to the nebula. I listened to the traffic, sir, as I had been about to report aboard the flagship on your orders, and was awaiting docking clearance. This Em Falcon, an ugly old tub of a tramp freighter, was supposed to rendezvous with Courteous for purposes of trade. She’d been through the whole fleet that way, peddling tobacco and other civilian stuff like a vendor droid at a ballgame. Instead, she attempted to evade the cruiser and made high speed for the mouth of the nebula. That’s when Courteous caught her. I never saw a beam like that before, sir. Must be something new.”
Gepta leaned forward even farther, towering from his pedestaled chair over the young officer. “And the Millennium Falcon! What of her?”
The pilot gulped again, appreciating well the fate of innocent bearers of bad tidings. “Vaporized, sir. She took the full force on her after shields and overloaded. It was visible all over the fleet. Sir.”
“So …” The sorcerer considered these data, the scout virtually forgotten as the young man stood before him, trembling at attention, his helmet under his arm. A runnel of sweat slowly crept down the side of the pilot’s neck into the metal pressure collar of his suit.
The gray-swathed sorcerer glanced up again a moment later, almost absently. “Are you still here, Lieutenant? I suggest you report back to your section immediately.”
The room fairly creaked with sudden relaxation.
An astonished and highly relieved young courier saluted his commander gratefully and departed the bridge amid the silent cheers of the cruiser’s conspicuously disinterested crew members.
Looking forward to a good meal and something tall and cool to drink in the pilot’s lounge below, the lieutenant passed through the bulkhead doors with a new spring in his step. The panels whispered closed behind him as he stepped into the companionway.
A large security trooper, one of Gepta’s personal bodyguards, came up behind him, laid a hand the size of a telecom directory on the young man’s shoulder. The lieutenant nearly jumped out of his spacesuit.
“Thought you’d bought the farm there, didn’t you, son?” The older man’s face crinkled in a grin that was difficult to interpret. “Say, I’m just going off duty, and seeing as how I was aboard the first time we ran into that garbage scow the Falcon, and seeing as how I’m just as pleased she’s a cloud of radioactive dust, what do you say we both go below for some liquid celebration?”
The lieutenant looked up uncertainly into the trooper’s face. The clamplike grip on his shoulder gave him little choice. He nodded without enthusiasm, and the two dwindled and disappeared down the corridor.
A short time later, Rokur Gepta stirred from futile contemplation, held up a gloved hand, and snapped his fingers.
From somewhere aft and overhead there came a rustle of dry, hairy wings as one of his pets lurched out of its darkened, foul-smelling niche, flapped across the room trailing an indeterminate number of scrawny, many-jointed legs. It came to rest, perching blindly on Gepta’s outstretched wrist, salivating in anticipation just as the bodyguard entered the bridge with a small, shallow tray.
With his free hand, Gepta accepted a pair of plastic tongs, reached for something on the tray, and held it up before his pet. The creature had nothing resembling a face, simply a gummy puckered opening toward the front of its body, set between the wings. The cavity distended greedily at the touch of the offered morsel.
There was a moment of enjoyment, some sucking, digestive noises.… It belched.
• VII •
LEHESU CAME AS close to nervous pacing as any Oswaft could. The giant raylike creature drifted in the relative