Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [204]
Almost hysterically, Gepta tried to burn the tentacles, but they wriggled and squirmed as they came toward him, each limb no longer where it had been when the aim was taken. Closer they came, closer.
Lando fired! striking Gepta squarely in the back. Incredibly, the stingbeam’s energy passed through the sorcerer harmlessly, nearly striking Vuffi Raa’s body, which was backing, slowly, clumsily away from the fight while it directed the tentacles to the attack.
Gepta whirled again, getting off three shots at the gambler. The last one hit him in the foot. There was a puff of steam and a hissing audible only to Lando, then the suit sealed, its medical processes already shutting off the pain. He had no idea how badly he’d been hurt, but he knew that he could still fight. He fired a second of his five shots, again taking the sorcerer in the center of the torso. Again the beam sliced through without apparent damage.
Then a tentacle grasped Gepta around the neck.
The gray-suited figure struggled, trying to unwrap the chromium-plated limb, but it hung on grimly. From his vantage point in the squadron, Klyn Shanga watched, then was suddenly struck blind by a thought:
Vuffi Raa, so-called Butcher of Renatasia, really was a robot!
Nothing else could explain the independent limbs. But if that was true, then what of their mission of revenge? What of the only purpose they had had for living, since the death of their civilization. What of—
Abruptly, there was a surge of motion as the tenuous hold of tractors at a hundredth power was broken and the pinnace moved forward of its own accord, leaving the fighters behind. No one aboard the vessels of the fleet seemed to notice, so much of their attention was riveted on the duel.
But Shanga did.
“What’s going on, there? Who’s in the pinnace?”
“It is I, the Ottdefa Osuno Whett,” came the electronic reply. “I’m going to end this farce, destroy the robot and the gambler—and perhaps Rokur Gepta, in the bargain! None of them are fit to—”
Another blinding flash of recognition. It was the voice that did it, separated now from the assumed appearance. Whett was the Butcher’s aide! Whett was the Butcher’s assistant! Whett was—
—the Butcher himself! It had to be! No other explanation was possible.
Heeling his fighter over, Klyn Shanga thumbed his weapons at the pinnace. The larger vessel’s shields were up, however, shields designed to protect an admiral’s tender person during ship-to-ship and ship-to-planet transfers. Shanga’s fire coruscated off the invisible barrier.
“This is Zero Leader!” he shouted on the squadron’s frequency. “Get that pinnace—the man we seek is aboard! I’ll explain later, if we live!” Desperately, he punched buttons on the remote console that had controlled the pinnace on the trip out. He couldn’t prevent Whett from driving it, nor drop its shields, but he could keep it out of hyperdrive and lock the tractor field.
He did the latter. The squadron snapped into formation. Opening his small ship’s engines all the way, he screamed at his men to do the same. Slowly, inexorably, the assemblage of ships achieved headway.
Abruptly, someone aboard the Wennis noticed the motion.
“Zero leader, this is the Wennis! Halt immediately, or we’ll blast you out of the nebula!” The warning was repeated. Gathering speed now, Shanga steered his squadron and their captive—who was desperately and ineffectually attempting to reverse things from the pinnace—toward the decommissioned cruiser. Faster and faster, skirting the space where the battle between Gepta and Lando and Vuffi Raa still raged, they zeroed in on the larger vessel.
A broad beam of power struck the pinnace squarely