Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [200]
“Vuffi Raa, speak to me!”
“Yes, Master. I beg your pardon, and I’ll tell you all about it later. No time now—our friends are back!”
This time they came in force. Lando counted seventeen before he got busy, which agreed approximately with the five kills and one probable they’d scored thus far. Lando wasn’t taking trophies; it wasn’t in him to do it. He simply wanted to know how near the end of the fight they were getting. He wanted a cigar.
This time they gave it all they had, as well. Lando slugged it out, and he could sense the drain on the ship’s engines that meant Vuffi Raa was shooting while he steered the ship. Still, the shields were taking a terrific pounding, and yellow lights, to judge from the robot’s shouted reports, were showing up like fireflies on the boards.
Then a bright light bloomed where Lando’s guns weren’t pointed and Vuffi Raa’s couldn’t be. Standing off, without the benefit of shields, was Lehesu. He turned slowly, majestically, “shouted” at another fighter, which turned into a knot of greasy smoke, then disappeared himself, to show up on the other side of the ship.
The fighters broke off at some distance; peace reigned momentarily.
“Lehesu, you old ace! I thought you were with your people!”
“My people are intelligent life everywhere, Captainmaster. I saw you needed help, and—”
The gambler frowned. “I wouldn’t exactly say we needed help, exactly.” Retrieving a cigar from where he’d tucked it in his boot top, he lit it and settled back for a moment.
“I would,” Vuffi Raa said. “Thank you, Lehesu, and thank you for the talk. I seem to have resolved the conflict in my programming.”
Keeping an eye on the indicators for further intruders, Lando asked, “Where are your people, Lehesu; are they waiting to follow my program?”
“No Captainmaster. Instead, they have followed your example. They have gone to confront the fleet instead of waiting for it.”
The entity whom Lando referred to as Sen was gratified. Something far more than a thousand Oswaft swam now behind him, many more than he had counted on, shamed by Captainmasterlandocalrissiansir’s valiant example—and possibly his successes against the first wave of the enemy. He directed a thought toward Fey.
“How many would you say we are, old friend?”
“Perhaps as many as a million. The rest have followed another of the human’s suggestions: they are concealing themselves in the walls of the StarCave.”
A mental shrug. “Well, they may be right, and that may save us from extinction better than doing battle with these monsters. This idea of individual dissent that Lehesu forced upon us may have its uses. Different opinions produce different modes of survival, one or more of which may succeed.”
The fleet grew as they approached it.
“I do not know,” Fey said. “I believe I would prefer to be playing sabacc just now. The notion of being killed—”
“Is faintly refreshing,” finished the older of the two Elders. “Lehesu is right: it is better than sitting around becoming stagnant.”
“Everyone to his own preferences,” Fey answered wryly.
Aboard the Reluctant, a gunner’s mate finally tore his eyes away from the scope. “A million of ’em! Core save us, there’s a million of ’em out there!”
His supervisor hurried over, looked down from the catwalk into the mate’s instruments while the mate looked up in fear and wonder at him. “You’re wrong, son, the computer’s making a new estimate. Make that two million.”
Sen chuckled to himself as he hopped out of the artificial skin he’d just generated, leaving it behind to confound the enemy. Their sensors would now be registering three million Oswaft, and even if they fathomed the trick, they wouldn’t know which outline to shoot at.
One chance in three of getting killed, instead of unity. You could learn things from sabacc. He hopped another hundred meters, paused, and made it one chance in four. Every step his people took this way increased their apparent numbers