Star Wars: The Adventures of Lando Calrissia Read Online Free PDF Page A

Lando’s credit rating. Only the particular mingling of smoke odors varied from system to system, and that not as much as might be expected. He might be out of his depth at the controls of a starship. For that matter, he didn’t know very much about asteroid mining or needlepoint. But here—wherever “here” happened to be—he was at home.
    He took his place at the table.
    There were three other players, and a tiny handful of spectators currently more interested in their drinks and breathing down each other’s necks than the game. He placed a few creds on the firm green surface. Card-chips were dealt around. He received the Ace of Sabres, the Four of Flasks, and Endurance—which counted as a minus-eight.
    That made eleven.
    “One,” said Lando neutrally. He drew a Seven of Staves, which promptly flickered and became the Commander of Coins.
    Twenty-three.
    “
Sabacc
! Dear me, beginner’s luck?” He allowed excitement to tinge his voice as he raked in the small pile of money, accepting the deck and dealing.
    He carefully lost the next three hands.
    It wasn’t easy. He’d had to dump two perfect twenty-threes and might have drawn to a third if he hadn’t stood pat with a fourteen-point hand, praying that the card-chips would keep the faces they’d begun with.
    The local talent thought they had a live one.
    In a manner of speaking, they were right—but not in any manner of speaking they’d find pleasant or profitable. It was one of those evenings when the young gambler felt
made
of luck, filled to the brim with spinning electrons and subnuclearfire. He ran the pot up gradually, so as not to frighten the others, conspicuously losing on the low bets, making steady, quiet gains.
    Drinks flowed freely, compliments of the polka-dotted proprietor. This may have been a spaceman’s bar, but at least two of the players were townies, likely splitting with the boss what they skinned from visiting sailors. The same glass of
retsa
Lando had begun with, diluted now with ice he kept having added, stood sweating on the plastic table-edging near his elbow.
    “
Sabacc
,” breathed Lando, flipping the trio of card-chips face upward. It was a classic: the Idiot’s Array, lead-card worth the zero printed on it, plus a Two of Staves and a Three of Sabres—an automatic twenty-three.
    “That cleans out my tubes,” grunted the player opposite Lando, a dough-faced anonymous little entity with slightly purplish skin. Like the gambler, he wore the uniform of a starship officer. Despite the coolness of the evening, there was a fine sheen of perspiration across his forehead. “Unless I can interest you in a small cargo of life-crystals.”
    Lando shook his head, adjusted an embroidered cuff. First a beat-up freighter, then a robot he hadn’t even had time to inspect, now a holdful of trouble with the local authorities.
    “Sorry, old fellow, but it’s cash on the tabletop or nothing. Business is business—and
sabacc
is
sabacc
.”
    Born of fatigue, this partial transformation from rough-edged (if preternaturally fortunate) amateur into no-nonsense professional startled at least one of Lando’s opponents, a stalky, asymmetrical vegetable sentient from a system whose name the young gambler couldn’t quite recall. It placed three broad leaflike hands on the table—Lando thought the contrasting shades of green looked perfectly terrible together—and garbled through an electronic synthesizer fastened to its knobbly stem.
    “
Awrr, Captainshipness, being a sports
!” It turned a petal-fringed face toward the small technician. “
Negatordly give these person ill considerations. Cargo of value, inarguability
.”
    The third player, a hard-bitten bleached blonde with a thumb-sized oval life-crystal dangling from a chain around her wattled neck, hooted agreement.
    “Sure, Phyll,” Lando replied, ignoring the woman. “Is that how you obtained that marvelous translator you’re wearing—in lieu of credits in a
sabacc
game?”
    The