Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [180]
“All right, old friend,” Shanga sighed. He’d always thought that Nuladeg, who was the better pilot, experienced with command responsibility, ought to have been running the tattered squadron. The little man had refused even the number-two position, citing an impulsiveness that no one had truly believed in until now. “I’ll see what I can do. You’re right, I’m afraid. I was thinking about those pinnaces myself, when I heard about the moves against the StarCave. I’ll see what I can do and be back with you as soon as possible.”
He rapped loudly on the wall, pointedly ignoring the call button beside the force-fielded door. “Guards! Let me out of here! I have to see a toad about a man!”
A quarter of a galaxy away, the One, the Other, and the Rest raced to keep a rendezvous. They had come from even farther, and their speed was something no one in what Lando and his friends regarded as a civilization would have believed.
“We move so slowly!” the Other complained, plunging through hyperspace beside the One. “I fear we shall not get there on time!”
The One allowed himself to be distracted from his headlong course long enough to indicate a smile. “Impatience from you, after all this time, my friend? Truly, this is an era of changes. Never fear, we shall learn what we shall learn, regardless. I, too, would prefer that we—”
The Other interrupted. “Events move of their own accord! What shall come to pass is unpredictable! It is Chaos, I tell you, Chaos!”
“And there ought to be a law? Remember, comrade, that it is this state of unpredictability which nearly every race endures for all of its life-span. It is in this state that we began, and we are unusual in surviving it. We very nearly died of boredom; would that have been more desirable?”
“Don’t lecture me!” the Other replied with uncharacteristic sharpness. “I know as well as you do of the dangers that confronted us. I was the first to consent to your plan. Do not begrudge me the right to complain of some of its consequences; it assists me in adjusting to the inevitable.”
Laughter crackled through the distorted space around them. “Nothing is inevitable anymore, dear comrade, nothing! That is the entire point of the experiment!”
“Well, I hope your experiment will produce a cure for smugness, then. I personally shall take great pleasure in restraining you while it is forcibly administered!”
Once again laughter sundered the twisted ether as the One, the disgruntled Other, and the Rest, in various states of mind, plunged onward.
“Nonsense!” Rokur Gepta hissed from the corner of his apartments below the control deck. “He is mine to deal with, and I tell you he shall be sectioned alive before the entire crew—yours included, Admiral Shanga—as an example!”
It was the first time the fighter commander had ever seen the sorcerer pace nervously. The time was growing near for the resolution of a number of crises, and the Renatasian had a suspicion that Gepta, too, feared he would be robbed of his victory by a trigger-happy fleet commodore.
Carrying disrespect to new heights because he felt the effect was necessary, Shanga flopped into the sorcerer’s huge chair. “Gepta, you old charlatan, you know better than that, and if you don’t, I’ll tell you now. Keep Bern Nuladeg in the brig, if you wish, until we get to the ThonBoka. He could use the rest, and it’ll keep him out of trouble. Not to mention saving your well-concealed face. But execute him, and I’m through with you. I’ll take my squadron and—”
“You’ll do what you are told!” Gepta made a threatening magical gesture.
Shanga laughed. “Save your parlor tricks, old man! We stopped