• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

He didn’t. He felt fire again and suddenly the world was spinning, slamming into his head—

Dark.

Netbers saw the dark-skinned woman charge and for a moment was so surprised by this tactical insanity that he couldn’t react. Then he shouted, “Fire!” and drew his own blaster pistol.

The woman’s gaze was fixed on him. He knew he was her target. He knew why, too. And he couldn’t get his blaster in line before she had hers aimed, before she pulled her trigger—

And the charred blaster in her hand failed to go off. He almost laughed. He aimed.

The stormtrooper in front of him was thrown back into him, jarring his aim. He shoved the man, probably already dead, aside.

A stray blaster beam slammed into his right arm. It spun him back and pain flashed through him.

That was all right. He knew pain. Pain was his friend.

When he looked up again, the dark woman was upon him, lashing out with a side kick meant to shatter his knee, to bring him to the floor. He twisted, took it as a graze against the side of his knee.

She was hurt. Burn marks all along her right side. Netbers swung at her flank, a left-handed slap that hit bare, burned flesh. The blow knocked her to the floor and she lay there, curled up, helpless.

Conditioning is a big part of it, Qatya, he thought. He reached down and took a blaster pistol from the dead stormtrooper beside him. You might beat me once, but never twice—Something loomed up before him and struck him across the face.

He crashed to the floor atop the body of a stormtrooper. The blow was incredible. He saw stars and his hearing failed. His body wouldn’t respond.

His attacker bent over him. It was a nonhuman, a big hairy thing burned all over its upper body, with wide, staring eyes and lips drawn back over square teeth. It grabbed him by the collar and hauled him, all 130 kilograms of him, up into the air as though he weighed nothing.

Netbers lashed out at the alien, striking at one of its burned patches, but the creature grabbed his wrist with its free hand.

Then, as casually as though it were swinging a bag of grain, it slammed him into the wall. He felt his shoulder blade break under the impact, felt something grate in his neck as his head battered into the metal of the wall.

Where are my stormtroopers? But now there were black-clad, burned commandos charging past him, running toward the stairwell by which he and his men had descended. The commandos were firing blasters, shouting—Netbers could hear no noise.

The first wave of them passed and the burned alien swung him toward the opposite wall. Netbers felt himself hit, felt his right shoulder give way, felt something in his neck explode.

Then he felt no more.

“Call it off!” Face shouted. He was at the base of the stairs. Kell and Piggy were above, ahead of him, struggling across the bodies of fallen stormtroopers. Living stormtroopers were ahead of them, running for their lives. “Let’s get out of here!”

“The woman.” That was Piggy’s mechanical voice, inflectionless in spite of the pain he must be feeling. “She is one of my creators. We need her.” He fired up the stairs and continued his awkward run over the bodies of slain enemies. A moment later, he and Kell were out of sight, around a turn in the stairs, and all Face could hear was more blaster fire. He grimaced and moved up the stairs as fast as his tired legs and burned body would let him.

One landing up, the two Wraiths awaited him. Piggy had the human civilian in his grip. Kell waited, his blaster aimed up the stairs, for a counterattack.

In spite of her situation, the woman seemed calm. Face said, “Eight, when the next wave of stormtroopers comes, use her as a human shield. I’m curious to see how long it’ll take blasters to burn through her.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’m too valuable for that,” she said.

“I doubt it,” Face said. “But we’ll see. If you want to live, you’ll tell us a way out of here that doesn’t involve more ambushes by your stormtroopers. If they do come at us, you’ll be our first bit of cover. Well?”

“Access tunnels,” she said. Her voice was cool.

“Show me.”

She pointed