Star Wars_ X-Wing 06_ Iron Fist - Aaron Allston [99]
“Easily done,” Tavin said.
“You should have surrendered,” Lara said. She closed her hands into fists.
A brilliant lance of light from the hill took Tavin right in the stomach. The sudden explosion of superheated tissues threw the man down and back; his blaster dropped to the charred ground.
Rossik turned toward the source of the laser fire and took a step forward. Lara drew her blaster. Rossik was in the air, throwing himself to the ground, when Lara’s blast took him in the side. He hit the ground and lay there unmoving.
Lara rose and kept the two men covered as Donos ran down from his sniper position. She didn’t need to; it was clear to her that both men were dead. She tried to simulate rattled nerves and was surprised to discover that she had them for real. Part of her reaction, she knew, was the sudden relief that her secret was once again safe for the time being.
“Are you all right?” Donos asked.
Lara nodded. “They wanted—” Her voice broke and once again it was a genuine reaction. “They wanted me to go back to Iron Fist with them. They weren’t going to leave me an option where I could feed them false information. I was just going to disappear.” She shuddered. “I couldn’t do that.”
Donos prodded Rossik with a foot. The body rolled halfway over, displaying staring, vacant eyes. He reached down to take the man’s blaster away. “Why did your brother draw on you?”
“I said no. I said I wouldn’t go back with this man, Rossik. Apparently my brother wasn’t going to get paid unless I went back with Rossik. If he wasn’t going to be paid, he was going to kill me.”
“Not exactly a loving brother.” Donos looked over Tavin’s body and took his weapon, too. Then he looked back over his shoulder at Lara. “I’m sorry. That was a callous thing to say.”
“That’s all right. The Tavin I loved just stopped existing when I was a little girl; he turned into this. I miss him … but you didn’t kill him.”
“We can’t be sure there’s not more to Rossik’s team. Let’s grab their papers, give the house a quick look, and then head back for the X-wings. I want to get off this world as soon as possible.”
Castin had to keep a certain amount of attention on the hallway behind him as he continued to hammer away at Iron Fist’s computer security from the terminal. So far, none of the scientists or technicians from the rooms beyond the viewports had stepped out into the hall, but he couldn’t count on his luck lasting forever.
And the computer security here was good. Someone nearly as skilled as he had set up the multilayered defense that so far kept him from sliding his program into place in the communications system. And while Castin was certain that he was superior to this unknown code-slicer, that individual had had weeks, months, or years to perfect his code; Castin was trying to bypass it in a matter of minutes. Even with his superior skills and the tools he’d brought, it wasn’t going well.
So he was upset. Barely able to concentrate on what he was doing.
No, that didn’t make sense. Tough systems were a challenge to him, not an aggravation, and sharpened his concentration rather than diminishing it. So why was he upset? He leaned back, away from the screen with its unhelpful rejections of all his most reasonable requests, to think about it.
Even his stomach was upset, and that, finally, pointed him to the source of his emotion. It was what he’d seen moments ago. The creatures in the cages. The Talz on the operating table, a peaceful being maddened by chemicals until it was full of rage.
It was ridiculous. He didn’t care about such things. They weren’t human, they weren’t particularly important, and if the scientists decided to work on them, that was fine.
But the sick feeling persisted.
That Talz’s life was over. Even if it miraculously escaped its captivity, it would be forever changed by what had happened to it. Could it return home to its world, its family, knowing how it had been violated, knowing what it had