Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [82]
“I get it: I see what you see. You know, this could come in very handy: like, say, the next time I’m in a game, and—”
“But Master, that would be unethical!”
“Wouldn’t it just? All right, we’ll talk about it later. Meanwhile, let’s get to work on the damage.”
They both shuffled out of the cockpit, headed toward separate destinations.
Ten minutes later, Lando was again seated in his pilot’s recliner, watching the monitor through the transparent faceplate of a spacesuit helmet. He thought about opening the visor to smoke a cigar, remembered the magic words “explosive decompression,” and desisted. After all, they didn’t know yet how badly hurt the Falcon was. A footfall, no matter how light, in the wrong place might blow a hull panel, which—
On the screen, Vuffi Raa had made it to the site of the explosion. His viewpoint approached a heavily damaged piece of machinery.
“Why, that’s just one of the hydraulic jacks for the boarding ramp,” Lando exclaimed, almost indignantly. “There’s nothing flammable or explosive in that section—and what does it have to do at all with the ultra-lightspeed drive?”
The camera angle tilted downward. A tentacle reached for something wedged between two heavy springs. The object had to be sawed and twisted out of its place, then the tentacle lifted it nearer the robot’s eye.
“What the devil is that?” Lando asked the intercom.
The thing looked like a spring itself, a section of thick-gauge wire coiled and then twisted around into an evasively familiar shape, rather like a doughnut, but with an extra turn, pretzel-wise.
“It’s a Möbius coil of some kind, Master,” Vuffi Raa answered at last. “They’re used as tuners and—my word, it’s an antenna. Master, someone placed a device here to detect the shift into ultralightspeed. You see, there’s a hyperware generated by the—”
“Yes, yes,” Lando interrupted impatiently. “But what’s the point of all that?”
“There would be a considerable point, Master, if the antenna was connected to a controller that, in turn, was connected to a bomb.”
The gambler pondered that. “You mean, someone just walked up and attached it back on Dilonexa, while we were refueling, and when we buttoned up for takeoff, we effectively brought it inside the ship ourselves?”
“Something like that, Master.”
“A bomb. Do you suppose they found out about the wintenberry jelly?”
• IV •
DEEP SPACE.
The officially decommissioned Imperial Cruiser Wennis bored through the blackness like a thing alive, a hungry thing, a thing with the need to kill. It had been built for that, nearly three-quarters of a century ago. Now it was an obsolete machine, displaced by more efficient killers.
Still, it served its purpose.
On the bridge, a uniformed crew quietly attended to their duties. They were a mixed lot, officially—again, officially—civilians. Many were the worst of the worst, the scum and misfits of a million-system civilization. Others were the best that could be had, the cream of the elite.
Like the Wennis, this, too, served a purpose.
All were military personnel, now indefinitely detached to serve aboard the decommissioned cruiser. In this, they served their Emperor (although not without an occasional—extremely discreet—grumble) and hoped for early promotion and other rewards.
In practicality, all served an entity who, although somewhat less elevated than His Imperial Majesty, was nevertheless quite as frighteningly impressive. This figure stalked the bridge as well, draped from crown to heel in the heavy dark swathings people had come to associate with the mysterious and sinister Sorcerers of Tund.
Rokur Gepta, all features save his burning eyes concealed behind the final windings of his turbanlike headgear, barely suppressed a scream.
“Do you have the temerity to tell me you have failed again?