• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“Drop your weapon,” the commando-team leader said to the Keeper. All of the blaster rifles were directed toward him. It amused Chewbacca to see the cruel man glance at the New Republic force with an expression of relief.

The Wookiees continued to snarl. They looked worse now than they had appeared only months earlier. No doubt without the protection of Admiral Daala’s fleet, the Keeper had forced the slaves to work even harder to arrange other defenses for Maw Installation.

“Drop your weapon, I said!” the strike-team commander insisted.

The Keeper flicked his force whip once more, driving the Wookiee mob back. Chewbacca saw the three largest males in front, their fur streaked and patchy, burned from lashes of the whip and shiny with waxlike welts from old scars. The oldest gray-furred Wookiee, whom Chewbacca remembered as Nawruun, crouched by the edge of the shuttle, hiding under the sharp panels of the ship’s upfolded wings. The old Wookiee’s bones seemed twisted and crushed from years of labor, but the anger in his eyes was brighter than a star.

The Keeper raised his force whip, stared at the Wookiees, then at Page’s Commandos. The human team leader fired a warning shot, which spanged off the chamber walls. The Keeper raised his other hand in surrender, then let the handle of his force whip fall to the ground. It clinked on the smooth deck plates.

“All right, now, back away,” the team leader said.

Chewbacca offered his own words in the Wookiee language. The astonished prisoners stood tense for a moment. The Keeper looked ready to collapse in terror, when suddenly old Nawruun dived to the floor, lunging with a hairy paw to snatch the handle of the whip. He fumbled the activation switches.

The Keeper shrieked and backed against the wall, looking for someplace to hide. Chewbacca yowled for the Wookiees to stop, but they didn’t hear him as they all surged forward, claws extended, ready to shred the Keeper into bloody pieces.

Nawruun sprang upon the man’s barrellike form. Though he was misshapen and old, the hunched Wookiee gripped the force whip like a club and tackled the Keeper to the floor. The burly man screamed and flailed.

The other Wookiees fell upon him. Nawruun jammed the handle of the force whip into the Keeper’s face and switched on the weapon at full power.

The lance of lashing energy drilled into the Keeper’s head, skirling fireworks inside his brainpan. Sparks came out of his eye sockets, until the Keeper’s skull shattered, showering the hysterical Wookiee prisoners with gore.

Silence thundered down upon the chamber.

Chewbacca walked carefully forward as the surviving Wookiees withered. Without any stamina or fury, they backed away from the corpse of their tormentor. Old Nawruun stood again and stared blankly down at the force whip in his hand. He let it drop.

It struck the floor with a hollow sound, and Nawruun crumpled beside it. His body shuddered, and he made hollow sounds as he wept.

Tol Sivron tried to find a comfortable place to sit back and relax in the pilot compartment of the Death Star, but the prototype had not been designed for niceties.

Racks of equipment stood surrounded by bare wires and clumsy welds. Girders and reinforced framework blocked his view of most of the embattled Installation, but he could see that the Rebel forces had overrun the facility.

At the outer perimeter of the clustered planetoids, the tangled cooling towers and radiation vanes of the power reactor suddenly glowed bright and began to collapse.

Wermyn’s gruff voice came over the radio. “Director Sivron, our explosives have destroyed the coolant systems. The power reactor will soon go supercritical. I don’t think the attackers can stop it. Maw Installation is doomed.”

“Very well, Werrnyn,” Sivron said, dismayed at the loss of capital equipment—but what could he do, after all? His Imperial guardians had deserted him. He and his division leaders had done quite a creditable job of putting up a fight. Without any military help they couldn’t be expected to succeed against a well-armed