Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [194]
Whett waited.
As expected, the telltales in his helmet winked off abruptly. Gepta had entered the compartment and was now shielded by what the spy estimated to be at least a meter of incredibly tough state-of-the-art alloy. Slowly he detached himself from the underside of the maintenance vehicle, worked out a few stiff joints, and peered cautiously around the bulge of the craft.
Gepta was gone. There was no sign of him. Nor was there any sign of the means by which he’d entered. One instrument on Whett’s helmet panel flickered fitfully in response to radiation leakage. Something hot was going on inside the shielded compartment, but he couldn’t tell what. Whatever it was, it was unfamiliar.
He jetted up smoothly to the rear of the compartment and inspected it closely. As he had guessed, there was no airlock, no door of any kind. He rounded the corner and inspected a side, then another and another and another. No sign. He applied sophisticated instruments, highly developed skills. It was a solid box of metal, approximately ten meters on a side, featureless, except …
But that was ridiculous. Precisely in the center of the aft-most surface was a service petcock, opening on a pipeway no more than four centimeters in diameter. He didn’t dare lift the cover, but he hung there in free-fall for a dangerously long while pondering, running through a catalog in his head of species and their capabilities.
The Sorcerers of Tund. No investigator—spy or anthropologist—had ever gotten a crack at those mysterious old prunes. He’d regretted Gepta’s decision to pick him up in transit, he’d wanted to see Tund, be the first. His employer would have liked that, too.
The Sorcerers of Tund were reputed to have some mighty powers—if you believed in that nonsense—but he couldn’t recall any legends about dematerialization or the ability to squeeze through tiny apertures. Magic? Perhaps there was something, after all, to the idea that …
But that was ridiculous.
• XV •
ABOARD THE WENNIS, Rokur Gepta prepared himself for battle.
There were mental exercises peculiar to Tund, disciplines of ancient ancestry; weapons to inspect, both personal and aboard the cruiser; personnel to instruct and threaten. Communications had begun flowing from the fleet. Gepta occupied the bridge, watching, listening, replying. A steady traffic of messengers rushed back and forth between the sorcerer and a hundred points within the ship.
“No,” Gepta hissed at the monitor before him, “you will not deviate from your designated position, my dear Captain, even to pursue escaping vessels—especially not to defend yourself, is my meaning clear, sir? You are a ship of the line. You are expected to perform your duty as specified, never to question orders, to consider yourself and your command expendable in the service of society.
“We have now spoken for two minutes too long on this subject. Out.”
He waved a hand; the disappointed features of the captain of the Intractable faded from the screen. It was the third such conversation he’d conducted within the hour, and he was growing weary of it. Only the thought of what lay aft in its armored compartment, the lovely green death, enabled him to remain calm.
“General Order!”
An electronically equipped secretary hurried to his side, a recording device clutched fearfully in hand. “While it should not be necessary,” Gepta dictated, “to instruct officers of the line in their duties, some question has arisen as to the advisability of their writing their own orders upon no other discretion than the wish to preserve their ship or their personal interpretation of their purposes in being here.
“To resolve these uncertainties,