Star Wars_ The Adventures of Lando Calrissia - L. Neil Smith [91]
The uniform, if that’s what it was (hard to tell with only one of the things around) was patched and faded, many times mended. It seemed to match the wearer’s condition. He was a large man, gray and weathered, his face deeply furrowed with age. Lando didn’t recognize the insignia. In a million-system civilization, chances were he wouldn’t.
What to do now?
In the big cities of many a civilized planet, one was far wiser, having disposed of a mugger or burglar, simply to pass on, leaving a small mystery behind for the authorities. Such was Lando’s inclination. They were accustomed to it, as they had every right to be. They were the ones who had made the act of self-defense a worse offense than the crime that had provoked it.
In the Oseon, would that be the case? Lando didn’t know. He couldn’t very well afford simply to walk away. A dead body, at the docking entrance of his ship, plenty of other physical evidence scattered around, and a partially discharged energy-weapon in his hand. Embarrassing, to say the least.
Well, down the corridor there was a public communicator.
He climbed back up the ladder.
Vuffi Raa, back now from the hull, met him at the top of the ladder. In the dimly lit corridor, his eye glowed like the coal of a cigar.
“Master, what is going on? I heard shouting, and—”
“I’ve just killed a man, old thing. Be a good sort and com Lob Doluff. We may have a bit of pull in this system; I suspect we’re going to need it.” He sat down suddenly on the decking, leaned against the wall, and collapsed, sliding over sideways.
It wasn’t bad, as jails go.
The life of a gambler was somewhat checkered. Often people took offense when they lost money. Sometimes they were in a position to do something about it outside the rules of whatever game they’d lost money at.
The suite was semitastefully decorated in cheery plastic colors that did not quite make up for the colorless music drifting blandly from a speaker in the ceiling. A separate bathroom offered modest privacy—as long as one overlooked the large mirror over the sink that was undoubtedly a window from another point of view. There was a genuine skylight, heavily barred and shielded, that served to reduce claustrophobia and gave a fine, undistorted picture of the stars overhead. There had even been a band of plastic around one of the ceramic facilities stating that it had been sanitized for Lando’s protection.
Somehow, he couldn’t quite summon up the appropriate gratitude.
His injuries had been properly attended to. They weren’t many: a couple of cracked (or at least severely bent) ribs, some abrasions. The tape was supposed to fall off of its own accord sometime in the next fifty hours.
They’d confiscated his clothing and personal papers, his cummerbund with the forty-seven thousand credits, and, of course, his stingbeam, leaving him a set of shapeless drab pajamas with a number on the back and front in six languages and a pair of step-in slippers that threatened to deposit him on his head every time he took more than three paces.
There was only the one bed, and it wouldn’t turn itself down when Lando told it to. Technically, he was in solitary confinement. That was all right with him, the acquaintances one makes in jail are seldom broadening, nor was he enamored of any sort of company at the moment. There was nothing to read, nothing to watch, nothing to do—but think. Lando was good at that.
Lob Doluff had answered the call himself.
The Administrator Senior expressed gratification that Lando’s ship hadn’t actually been on fire. He couldn’t understand the false alarm, however. Such criminal offenses were prosecuted harshly in the Oseon.
“There is one small complication,” Lando added, “however.”
“However? And what is it, Captain?”
In the background, Lando could make out the figure of Bassi Vobah, drink in hand. They were still in the starlit garden dome. He wondered whether the other