
Let's see - just the most recent example. He'd won the Falcon and Vuffi Raa,then proceeded to con a
handsome fee (work he'd been coerced into doing) that, by all rights, ought to have set him up for life.
Orchard crystals from the Rafa System had never been cheap to begin with. Humanoids who wore
them found their life spans extended, their intelligence somewhat enhanced. They were both valuable and
rare. They grew in only one place in the universe.
Lando had known, when he and the ‘bothad quit the Rafa, that there would be no morelifecrystals , at
least for a while. The colonial government there had been overthrown by insurgent natives. Thus, he'd
held out for the highest possible prices. Yet, somehow, the money - several millions - had seemed to
disappear before his very eyes, eaten up in spacecraft maintenance, docking charges, taxes, surtaxes,
sursurtaxes , and bribes. Every time he closed a deal, no matter what margin he'd built in at the beginning,
he wound up losing. It didn't seem sensible: the more money he earned, the poorer he became. If he got
any richer, he'd be broke.
Perhaps he simply hadn't been playing in the right league.
One of the rules of this new game (new to Lando, anyway) was that they didn't tell you the rules until it
was too late. His figurative hat was off to anyone who could survive in the world of business, let alone
prosper.
A small noise in the next room alerted him. He peeked in: Vuffi Raa was laying out tomorrow's
wardrobe for him. He'd told the little fellow a hundred times that it wasn't necessary. He needed no valet,
and long ago had begun thinking of the robot as a friend more than anything else. But exactly like a good
friend (or consummate servant), the droid understood the gambler's need for some time alone without
conversation, while he unwound from the evening's tense preoccupations. Lando suspected that Vuffi
Raa actually wanted to discuss the bomb he'd discovered - the second since their last planetfall.
Well, morning was time enough for that. He closed the connecting door softly and returned to his
private thoughts. A second irony struck him as he watched the bed turn itself down.
He shucked out of his dressy bantha-hide knee boots and reclined, one foot dangling over the edge of
the bed to the floor. The very individuals who had prospered most, either at legitimate businesses like
freight hauling, or shadier ones such as smuggling (the avocation, in fact, for which the Falcon had
originally been constructed), those who had made their way to the top, lived here in the Oseon, where
one Lando Calrissian, a dismal failure by their standards, experienced little difficulty at all separating them
from their hard-won money.
It wastheir own fault. They'd invited him...
Fire streaked from the starboard weapons turret of the Millennium Falcon. In desperate haste, Lando
swung the quad-guns down and to the left as the drone squadron whooshed by, their own energy-guns
coloring the misted space around the freighter.
“Missed!Vuffi Raa, hold her a little steadier!”
The ship ducked and swooped, narrowly avoiding being skewered in a cross fire as the drone fighters
split up, attacking from both sides.