[Black Fleet Crisis] - 02(15)

Legorburu peered intently at the display. “I don’t get it, Colonel.

Why the sudden change of priorities?

What’s happening back there? It must be something big if they can’t spare a thirty-year-old gunship and a couple of interdiction pickets.”

“That information was not made available to me,” said Pakkpekatt. His mouth curled in an unhappy threat-snarl.

“Maybe I can get something out-of-channel,” said Legorburu. “Would you like me to try?”

Pakkpekatt nodded. “Please do,” he said. “I would like to have a better idea just who I must wrestle to keep this mission alive.”





CChapter 3


The procession through the passageway of the Teljkon vagabond was led by Lando Calrissian, combat blaster in hand. Following close behind was Artoo, towing the equipment grid protectively behind him. Last in line was Lobot, with Threepio riding on the back of his contact suit like a child perched on the back of his father.

“This is my fault,” Lando said, peering over his shoulder at them. “I should have gone ahead and gotten a thrust belt for Threepio, maybe even a complete thrust harness and powerpack. Consumable refills for the contact suits, too.”

“We have them—had them—on Lady Luck,” said Lobot. “Everything could not fit on one sled.”

“I’d trade most everything on that grid for a couple of refill packs.

I never thought we’d be in zero-G as long as it looks like we will be.”

Forever, maybe, Lando thought grimly.

“It is an interesting design choice,” Lobot said.

“The Qella appear to have done everything they could to make it hard for us to move about in here. There is no artificial gravity, no spin.

The bulkheads are nonmag netic and have no friction tracks, handholds, or zip lines.”

“What’s so interesting about that?”

“The Qella were planet-dwellers,” Lobot said, surprised by the question. “How did they expect to get around in this ship?”

Lando grunted. “Maybe the Qella are giant slugs as wide as this tunnel.”

“Perhaps,” said Lobot. “But even giant slugs are

probably

more comfortable in a gravity field. I can’t help thinking that somewhere in this vessel there must be a switch that would make all of this much easier.”

The passage seemed to have no end. It curved away in front of Lando like an ever-receding horizon, teasing him with a promise it never fulfilled. “How long has it been now?”

“Artoo’s event recorders say we entered the vagabond three hours, eight minutes ago. We left our entry point forty-seven minutes ago,” Lobot answered.

“Seems even longer than that,” said Lando. “Am I the only one who’s noticed? Shouldn’t we have run out of ship by now?”

“Obviously we haven’t.”

“Nothing’s obvious here,” Lando said. “We’re cruising at a meter per second, minus overhead for a couple of stops. Forty-five minutes is twenty-seven hundred seconds. And this ship is only fifteen hundred meters long. We should be a kilometer out in front of the bow by now.”

“The conduits we saw on the surface of the vagabond wind around it in complex patterns,” Lobot said.

“If we are inside one of those, as I believe we are, that could account for the length of this passage.”

“No, it couldn’t, because we’re still heading forward.

Aren’t we? If this passage had turned back, we’d have noticed.”

“Would we?” asked Lobot. “Without landmarks and referents, I find it difficult to be sure.”

“You’re right about that. No matter how I try, I can’t keep a picture of this place in my head,” Lando complained, turning to face the others. “Artoo, let me see your map again.”

Artoo’s holoprojector flickered into life. The map superimposed the data from Artoo’s inertial movement sensors over the scans of the vagabond performed by Pakkpekatt’s technicians, showing their path through it as a bright red line. The line wiggled back and forth like a low-frequency sine wave across the hull of the ship and extended out beyond it.

“See?” Lando said. “We are out in front of the ship.”

“Artoo, are your gyros operating normally?” Lobot asked.

The droid’s affirmation was indignant.

“Then how do you explain this data?”

Artoo chirped a curt reply. “The ship is longer now?” Threepio translated incredulously. “What an absurdity.

Even you can’t be that foolish. You are obviously malfunctioning.”

Lando sighed and surveyed the passage’s face—they had dropped the words “wall” and “bulkhead” as inappropriate some time earlier. “It makes as much sense as anything else,” he said tiredly. “We’ve seen something of the tricks their technology can do. Maybe nothing about this ship is immutable, not even its dimensions. Maybe the Qella don’t play fair.”