Star Wars: Death Troopers

Chapter 32 Hate Trip

The first time she heard the blasters, Zahara jumped back away from the shaft on animal reflex. Then conscious thought took over, and she went back and grabbed Kale under the arms, dragging him away from the shaft. As she pulled him across the hangar floor, the weight of his damaged body sagged sideways in her hands, head lolling, but she saw that his eyes were partially open, a pinpoint of lucidity still buried deep inside there somewhere.

"Shooting.," Kale managed. "Why are they.»

His eyelids lifted a little, awareness dawning over his features, and he frowned. His mouth went up and down, trying to shape more words, a question she couldn't hear over the noise.

She pulled him along faster, running backward so she could keep an eye on the shaft. At that moment the first bolt of blasterfire pierced the docking shaft's outer shell. She simultaneously heard and felt it recoiling through the durasteel floors, a sizzling crack that left a black gash in the wall of the tower like a crooked, idiot grin, admitting a tiny puff of smoke. Then another explosion burst through it, and another, the smell of cooked metal already wafting through, the ozone smell and acrid smoke that she associated with broken machinery. There was another series of blasts, even bigger, some heavier-gauge artillery, followed by a swarm of shrapnel spitting through the air in front of her face.

She kept moving backward, not looking away.

The hole in the shaft was big enough now that she could see them inside the shaft, leering out at her as their hands gripped the hot, twisted durasteel and tried to peel it back. They had packed the shaft with their bodies-prison inmates still in their uniforms, human and nonhuman alike, guards, administrators, no longer segregated but jammed together with a pressing, eager confederacy they'd lacked in life. She could already see their faces. Sagging lips. Wrinkled noses. Dead yellow eyes lit up with a kind of stupid animal cunning. A scaly green arm came out clutching a blaster rifle and fired a shot blindly across the hangar, the red streak fading off in the distance, slamming into something too far off to register. More blasters fired inside the tube, widening the hole they'd created, making it longer and bigger on all sides.

Be careful, you can't see where you're going, if you go too fast -

Even as she thought it, her feet tangled over each other and she went down hard, Kale's body landing on top of her.

Go, go, get up, now!

She jumped back up, groping for Kale, struggling to haul him off the floor, and made the mistake of looking up one more time.

They had started crawling out.

The blaster-twisted hole they'd created in the shaft was jagged and they cut themselves along the way, twisted spikes of durasteel slashing their uniforms and gouging deep into the pouched sacks of rotten innards that were their bodies. One of them-a guard whose face she vaguely recognized from his visits to the infirmary-was instantly impaled and hung there flailing while the others scrambled over him.

In her arms, Kale groaned, tried to straighten his body, writhing around to look at her, and then fell slack again. He was trying to talk to her, she realized; despite his injuries, he'd actually found the strength to shout, but she still couldn't hear him over the blasters.

She pulled him faster, moving blindly, taking shorter, quicker steps. His weight was slowing her down, and now the first few of the things were already making their way toward her. One of them was Gat, his once familiar face contorted into a hideously hungry grin. I am going to eat you, that grin said, and you are going to taste good to me.

There was a brief moment of silence, an incidental lull, and although Zahara's ears were ringing, she realized what Kale was shouting.

"Let me go!"

"No," she said, not concerned with whether he heard her or not. The important thing was that she'd said it to herself-she wasn't leaving him here. In front of her, perhaps six meters away, three dead guards and maybe a dozen inmates paused as if acclimating to their new environment. Then they broke into a loose, shambling, open-mouthed run straight at her, arms swinging, legs clanging, firing all the way. They were already getting better at it. The shots were actually getting close to hitting her now.

"Drop me!" Kale screamed. "Just go! Go! Run!"

Shut up, she thought-her adrenaline hit hard, erupting through her skull base, and her backward run became a backward sprint, her legs not even feeling like part of her now, paddling the floor beneath her with a crazy, blurring speed. The things were receding, trying to run but not as fast as she was, she could outrun them all, even dragging Kale behind her, she-

There was another metallic jolt, and Kale jerked violently in her arms and fell still.

She stopped running, aware of a damp warmness spreading through her lower torso and legs. Everything below her waist was soaked in blood.

She looked down.

The right half of Kale's face was gone, a pulped half-moon. The broken skull protruded from his scalp like shattered terra-cotta, the jawbone dangling crookedly on one hinge. He'd taken the shot that would have torn straight through her abdomen. His good eye rolled up, fogging over. Already she smelled the terrible sweet odor of cauterized hair and skin.

As his head swung down, Zahara saw that the left side of his face was almost completely untouched, except for a single freckle of scarlet under his eye.

There was a muffled snarl, and she looked up again.

In front of her, the things were moving faster now, motivated by fresh bloodshed.

Zahara dropped him and fled.