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He swore to himself. He didn’t have time for this. And he didn’t need to concern himself with the fate of a grab bag of nonhumans Zsinj decided to perform tests on.

But the images persisted, crowding out the techniques and procedures he needed to use for his current mission, filling him with an unwanted emotion.

Sympathy.

Sympathy for those hairy, smelly, and most unhuman beings crowding those cells he’d seen. They were a concentration of tragedy.

Caught up as he was in these thoughts, Castin still heard the hiss of the turbolift door far behind him. He powered down the terminal, grabbed up his datapad and helmet, and scuttled around the corner to the right before peering back the way he’d come.

A half squadron of stormtroopers, dimly visible in the passageway’s gloom, advanced toward him. Their steps were unhurried. Halfway toward him along the passageway, the leader rapped smartly against the nearest transparisteel. Having apparently gained the attention of someone beyond it, he tapped the side of his head, an obvious signal for someone inside to get to a comlink to receive his transmission.

Damn it. They had to be looking for him. What had he done wrong? He was certain he’d covered his tracks when powering up the corner terminal.

No, wait. When he’d first popped the cover on the control box inside the turbolift shaft and discovered the heavy-duty security there—he hadn’t known about that level of security until he’d opened the box in the first place. If there was a sensor on the box itself, a sensible precaution for a set of controls leading into a very secure area, he would have set it off without ever realizing it.

He drew away from the corner. Behind him was another viewport, this one into an office area, currently unoccupied. Beside it was an armored door with a standard set of controls beside it. He tapped the “open” button and the little screen on the control pad read ENTER AUTHORIZATION CODE.

At the stormtroopers’ rate of approach, they’d be on him before he could break through that security and get into the office.

What was it to be—bluff or fight? There was no way a bluff would work; it would only serve to keep him in one place while the rest of the stormtroopers approached. He readied his blaster rifle.

The lead stormtrooper came around the corner and froze momentarily. “What’s your—”

Castin fired. His shot took the stormtrooper in the gut and threw him back against the far wall.

Castin didn’t wait for the next trooper to appear. He fired again, this time into the viewport, shattering it inward, and leaped, following the broken transparisteel into the office beyond.

He landed and spun, aiming back through the broken viewport. Two more stormtroopers rounded the corner, bringing their long arms to bear on the spot where he’d stood a moment before. He fired again twice, his first shot taking the nearer stormtrooper in the chest. The other trooper dove for the deck, out of sight below the rim of the viewport, and Castin’s second shot missed him.

A shrill Klaxon alarm sounded and the lights in the office began flickering in time to it.

There was another door out of the office, leading in the general direction of the turbolift, and its control panel was responsive. It opened into what appeared to be a scrub room, all sinks and lockers and decontam chambers, with no viewport out into the passageway.

The next door opened just as readily—into the operating theater. The medical technicians there had ceased their ministrations to the Talz and were watching the activity on the other side of the picture viewport—the last of the stormtroopers passed by, heading toward the scene of the action Castin had just left.

A blaster bolt went over Castin’s shoulder and hit one of the technicians in the back of the head. Castin saw the man, his head now a black mass of char, topple forward as slowly as if sinking into heavy oil, saw the other technicians as they turned toward him in similar slow motion.

He