• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

Gurdun’s breathing came in short, shallow gasps, but that was primarily a function of the tightly cinched girdle at his waist, which he used to hold in his distended gut. The padded shoulders of his supervisor’s uniform protruded far beyond their actual dimensions, making Gurdun an imposing figure—or so he hoped.

His eyes were widely set, and blinked often. With his large nose and vanishingly small chin, Gurdun’s face had an outward similarity to a battleship, especially in silhouette. He used perfumed oils to grease his black hair into a neatly sculpted helmet that prevented anyone even from thinking about mussing it up.

“Arriving at the Holowan Laboratories, Supervisor Gurdun,” the pilot said over the cabin intercom.

His stormtrooper escort sat rigidly and looked about in nervous doubt through their white helmets. These were not the crack battle-trained stormtroopers Gurdun had requested; instead, he had been given unseasoned trainees whose aptitude skills had scored them higher in clerking than in hand-to-hand combat. But Gurdun wouldn’t need much of a military escort—especially once he had the shiny, new IG assassin droids in his keeping. He couldn’t conceive of a more powerful set of companions.

The specially commissioned droids had been built with money Gurdun had expertly skimmed from the gray budgets of other military programs—a process that had become more and more difficult as the Empire engaged in massively expensive debacles. But Gurdun had recently managed to liberate a few meager crumbs, enough to fund Holowan Laboratories to produce a much smaller but more precise, more deadly fighting force. The IG assassin droids would march in and annihilate targets, whichever targets Gurdun chose.

Closing his eyes, he pictured one of the IG assassin droids, a lone mechanical man, waltzing through the defenses surrounding a fortified Rebel base, blasting its way through armored doors and slaughtering single-handed all the traitors to the Empire.

Oh, it would be grand! He hoped against hope that Chief Technician Loruss had managed to incorporate a mission-recording holocam into the design so Gurdun could watch the entire devastating battle in the comfort of his own office.

The assassin droids would take a heavy toll on the Rebels, and Gurdun would be sure to make a delicious accounting, reporting it to Imperial higher-ups, even to Lord Vader himself. If the assassin droids performed as expected—and Gurdun had no reason to think otherwise—even Vader was bound to notice. Then Gurdun was sure to get the promotion he so richly deserved … which would in turn allow him finally to get the delicate surgery he so desperately needed.

“Excuse me, Supervisor Gurdun,” the pilot said, interrupting his daydreams.

“What is it?”

“There seems to be a problem, sir. We are coming in for a landing, but the Holowan Laboratories’ receiving grid does not respond. There appears to be some damage to the complex.” The pilot paused a moment. “Er, it appears to be significant damage, sir.”

The stormtroopers beside him in the passenger compartment fidgeted nervously.

Gurdun sighed. “Can’t everything just go right for once? Why do I always have to deal with such problems?”

But when the shuttle landed amidst the wreckage of the ultra-secure Holowan Laboratories—the Friendly Technology People—even Gurdun was not prepared for the devastation. His initial thought was that the Rebels had attacked. A fire had raged through the buildings. Ships were smashed on the landing grid. Some had exploded, others scored with precision blaster bolts.

As they disembarked from the shuttle, Gurdun trudged forward, looking right and left. He was dismayed to see that his stormtrooper bodyguards hung behind him. They looked around, apparently ready to bolt the moment they heard a loud noise.

Suddenly, two grimy and pale-faced security guards climbed from hiding places in the wreckage. They carried blaster rifles, but their expressions were transfixed with shock. “Help us!” the security guards wailed, rushing toward the Imperial shuttle. “Take