Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [166]
The trouble with a man like Klyn Shanga, the sorcerer thought, wasn’t that he was not afraid to die. It had taken Gepta an unprecedentedly long while to figure that out, so tortuous and alien was the line of reasoning involved. Rokur knew many individuals who were not fearful of death, in fact they seemed to welcome the idea, embrace the opportunity. They were eager to die, for their beliefs, for the government or the numerous causes that opposed it, even for Gepta himself. Such men were easy to control and extremely useful. Down deep somewhere they hated and feared life and were anxious to be relieved of the burden of living in a manner that would not disturb their other, contradictory beliefs.
It was clear Klyn Shanga enjoyed being alive, which was what made things confusing. Rokur Gepta was not used to being confused, and it infuriated him. How was it that someone who loved life could be unafraid to die? The first conclusion the sorcerer had reached—not much help in understanding the perverse phenomenon, but of high pragmatic significance—was that the original expedition to Renatasia hadn’t done a thorough enough job. They had done only two-thirds of it, and it badly wanted finishing.
Gepta promised himself to assign that matter the highest of priorities once the current operation was over and he could think about other things. If Shanga was representative of Renatasia’s people, that system could turn out to be a much greater danger to his plans—and to the government—than even the essentially harmless vacuum-breathers of the ThonBoka.
He gazed into the ghastly glow before him, savoring its destructive potential. One cubic millimeter of the substance, established in a self-sustaining manner, would leap from point to point on a planet’s surface, eradicating anything that lived, devouring any organic substrate on which future life depended. It was the ultimate disinfectant, the ultimate sterilizer. There was something wonderfully clean and neat about this substance and the very concept of it.
It cleared up confusion. Life was confusion, and intelligent life the most contradictory and confusing of all, realized Gepta. Klyn Shanga wanted to live, yet was unafraid to die. Such a man could not be controlled, and, when he had something that the sorcerer wanted, he became … impossible! It had not been two hours since he interviewed the man, shortly after the Wennis met his ragtag squadron in deep space. The craft of Shanga’s squadron were not interstellar vessels, and they were to have waited for Gepta at the edge of his home system. But so eager had they been for the ThonBoka (or desirous of leaving Tund) that they had departed early, confident the cruiser would overtake them before they ran into trouble.
“It was insubordination!” the livid Gepta hissed, looking down at Admiral Shanga. Their confrontation was not being held on the bridge because of the possibility that things would be said that would harm discipline.
Shanga threw his head back and laughed. “I am not your subordinate, magician, nor is the least senior of my men. We felt like going and we went. Here we are, closer to the ThonBoka than we would have been, the better rested for having done something constructive to get ourselves there. Is it this that you find objectionable?”
Beneath the bridge of the Wennis lay the captain’s battle quarters, which, like his command chair, had also been preempted by the sorcerer. A duplicate of the command chair was placed in the center of the room before a large viewscreen, which presently showed the depths of interstellar space, as translated by the ship’s computers from the hyperdrive hash of what was really to be seen. The light was gray and even, matching the sorcerer’s clothing and, somehow, his voice.
“You are a military man, Admiral, I oughtn’t to need to explain these matters to you, of all people.”
The military man grinned and shook his head. “I was a military man. Now I am a mercenary in my own employ, fighting, because it