Star Wars - Only Droids Serve the Maker by Kathy Tyers

Author:Kathy Tyers [Tyers, Kathy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 1996-05-22T00:01:50+00:00

“Tell me, hired killers: Have you made peace?”

Tinian whirled her flight chair. Agapos stood framed by the aft bulkhead’s pitted retractable hatch. Chen had dumped him on a bunk. still stunned, and locked the aft cabin; the Wroshyr had two tiny cells hunters called “meat lockers,” but Chen refused to confine Agapos there.

“What do you mean?” she cried. She couldn’t stun him; she’d shelved her blaster. “Flirt, did you let him out?”

“No!” hiccupped Flirt, installed on the main console. “He used sonics!”

Chen’s head popped through the deck hatch. He’d patched a deadly pinpoint breach, but now he had to restart life-support. Onboard oxygen would take them only halfway to Tekra Point. Already the air tasted rusty.

“Make peace with the one who made you.” Agapos folded his fingers over his silvery tunic. “We will shortly die.”

Chen roared. “You’re right,” Tinian translated hastily. “Agapos. if he doesn’t fix the scrubbers we’re all dead.”

“I disapprove of killing,” Agapos assured her. “But I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny. I will not be used for foul Imperial purposes. I would —”

“Shut up!” she cried. “We’re not Imperials! We’re trying to save your wretched life.”

Agapos glanced toward Chen, then back. “You speak truth,” he declared. “I feel it on the Force. But how can this be? At my bunker, you acted savagely.”

“We were scared,” Tinian snapped. Agapos felt the Force, like Daye? Oh, Daye …

Chen corrected her, then ducked back down.

“I was scared,” she admitted. “He was wounded. Chen has an Imperial bounty license, but if the Empire finds out what he does with it, his life will be worth twice yours.”

Agapos tilted his bulbous head. “Why is that?”

Tinian explained rapidly. “I see,” said the Sunesi when she had finished. “Then I am in your debt. But my followers will grieve deeply.”

“They’ll avenge your death against the Empire,” Tinian pointed out.

“I hope not,” said Agapos. “Vengeance belongs to the Maker. Only liberty is worth bloodshed. I am not liberty.”

Tinian frowned. Once, she’d believed in a larger cause. She’d been ready to run I’att Armament for the Empire. It was vengeance she served now. not the Rebellion. “But they’ll be good and mad.” she argued. “They’ll fight on without you.”

Chen roared a suggestion.

“Right,” she said. “They’ll be safer without you. Look, we’re in trouble … if you don’t mind.”

The tall alien dropped onto the deck and peered down the hatch. “What is your need?”

Chen spouted technical jargon. Tinian crouched and tried to late. “You’re going to suffocate,” piped up Flirt. “That’s the long and the short of it. Then what happens to me?”

“We’ve got less than an hour of air left.” Tinian sniffed. Maybe less. “We lost a lot.”

Agapos raised up on long arms. He looked like a long-legged, tailless turquoise newt. “You have oxywater tanks.”

Tinian bristled. How had he known that? Inside the largest compartment, Chen’s small cloning cylinder wasn’t a genuine Spaarti, but the homebrew apparatus gave good, fast-and-dirty results. Chen had squeezed the last drops of Agapos’ blood out of his medjector into its production chamber.

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