Star Wars_ Tales of the Bounty Hunters - Kevin J. Anderson [14]
He halted three meters from the scabbed surface of the armor-plated doorway and launched his first concussion grenade. He calculated that even from here the shockwave wouldn’t damage him.
The detonation struck the center of the door and reverberated like an immense gong up and down the canyon. Rocks fell in a small avalanche from the cliff walls. The sentries in the turrets ineffectively blasted down with their laser cannons, leaving only scorched trails, but missing the droid.
Using various spectral filters, IG-88 scanned the damaged door. The center blazed in infrared as the heat dissipated. He analyzed the vibrational signature and noted where the structure of the metal now showed fine crystalline cracks.
Satisfied, he prepared a second concussion grenade.
IG-88 had twelve in his store, and he expected this door would require only three.
Actually, it took four grenades to completely destroy the door. As the smoldering molten wreckage of the doorway crashed to either side, IG-88 clomped into the fortress, determined to recalibrate his sensors and his predictive models when he had the time.
He strode down the dark corridor, knowing that even now the target would be rallying his defenses, setting up ambushes along the way. But IG-88 knew the path he must take. Blueprints of the stronghold as well as locations of weapons emplacements and complements of mercenary guards had been on Grlubb’s datadisk.
From a fortified cul-de-sac, five guards began firing at him with blaster rifles. Their bolts spanged off IG-88’s duraplated armor. No simple energy weapon could damage him unless the beam struck exactly the right spot—only a few of IG-88’s original designers knew such vulnerabilities, and most of those designers had been slaughtered at the Holowan Laboratories’ massacre.
IG-88 used laser cannons in each arm as he methodically struck down one target after another, blasting through armor shielding when necessary. Finally unhindered, he powered down his laser cannons and continued his relentless march to the inner levels of the stronghold.
Another group of guards attacked him by spraying instant-hardening epoxy in a novel defense that clogged his gears and servomotors. IG-88 pondered for a moment then raised his body temperature until the epoxy bubbled and smoldered, finally snapping when he bent his powerful limbs. When the guards continued to fire on him, he launched one of his concussion grenades into their midst.
He shifted through various optical filters for a better view through the growing smoke in the corridors. Up ahead he saw sealed doorways marked with danger symbols indicating biological contamination. Behind thick transparisteel windows, people in bulky environment suits and heavy masks ran about, trying to shut down experiments in progress while others attempted to escape the lab.
IG-88 went to the contamination-sealed door, decided it would be too difficult to rip free, so he targeted the observation window instead. Both durasteel hands struck five times with planet-cracking force until the thick transparisteel shattered, collapsing inward with a popping sound as the lower air pressure equalized. The masked lab workers ran about frantically.
IG-88 crashed through the rest of the wall, then scanned for three seconds, analyzing the containment systems and cataloging the inventory of deadly toxins. Finished, he calculated the best way to release them all.
IG-88 walked about in a carefully chosen path that must have appeared a bestial frenzy to the fleeing observers. He ripped out power packs from containment fields so that puffs of deadly gas sprayed out; he smashed canisters, and clouds of lethal microorganisms wafted into the air. An emergency field came