Relieved to be as far away from the shooting as possible, they began to climb the ramp. As one of the guards turned to follow the slaves in, he noticed a slave without a restraint collar. He growled to his partner as he seized the Trunsk by the arm.

"Hey! They forgot to put a pain collar on this one."

Sully Tigereye turned around. Sharpened fighting claws seized the startled guard by his chin. In his other hand, he aimed a heavy blaster pistol at the second guard and shot the sun prod right out of his hands. The guard spun and ran.

"There will be no more pain collars. Not as long as I live." He clenched the first guard by the jowls of his neck and swung his face close. "Now that I have your undivided attention-where's your boss?"

Working quickly, Kempo and Brixie stacked the cart with the fuel cylinders they had found as well as the explosives and grenades they were carrying. The cannon fire around them was getting closer and closer.

"Come to think of it, there's one small problem with this plan," Kempo muttered half-aloud.

"We don't have time for problems!" Brixie replied, wincing slightly as a piece of the nearby landing pad was blasted apart by a bunker weapon.

"One of us is going to have to pilot this thing up to their doorstep."

They both looked at each other, eyes frozen. A tight little grin began to form across Kempo's face. He took Brixie's hand and kissed the back of it.

"Don't worry kid, I just volunteered." The pathfinder climbed aboard and took up a position by the cart's steering controls, trying to hunker down low. He handed her the stormtrooper rifle.

"Keep them occupied long enough for me to get up close." He activated the cart's repulsorlift controls. The cart surged slowly forward as he smirked back at her.

"Just don't let people forget about me, right?"

She shook her head. There was something about his expression that she had never seen before. There was so much she wanted to learn about him and no time left.

As the grav-cart emerged, Brixie took up a position to the side of the landing pad. She fired the rifle's grenade launcher, spitting concussion explosives at the hardened outer shell of the command bunker-for what little good it would do.

The grav-cart zigzagged across the clearing. For what felt like an eternity, the bunker's blaster weapons clumsily tried to follow him, just barely missing. Just as the grav-cart reached the bunker, Brixie could see the pathfinder time his leap-only to stumble on the cart's side railing.

His foot caught, he was dragged relentlessly along until...

The next second, she was looking up at the failing light of the evening sky. The shock wave had knocked Brixie flat on her back. She staggered to her feet.

Where there had been a command bunker, there was now only the jagged remains of a permacrete foundation.

Even the sides of the cargo transport had been scorched by the blast.

Slavers were running wildly in all directions. She moved to the edge of the heart of the fire, shielding her face as she looked for a familiar form to stagger out.

Kempo had to come out. That's the way the holos always ended.

The hero always walked out.

Nobody did.

Hugo grabbed her by the arm and began pulling her over to the ship.

"No!" she screamed at him. "We won't leave a teammate behind!

We can't!"

He had to drag her away from the inferno.

The explosion was so huge it shook the cargo transport violently on its landing legs.

The transport bridge's accessway popped open. Tiger-eye shoved the guard into a few of the crewers standing there. Several reached for weapons, but they were not fast enough. Energy beams ricocheted across the bridge.

When it was over, Tigereye waved the blaster pistol at the survivors.

"Everybody in the escape pod! Now!"

They filed into the bridge's lifeboat pod. Tigereye sealed the hatchway behind them, locking them inside.

After securing the bridge, he then tapped his comlink.

There was no need. Brixie and Hugo Cutter appeared at the bridge's accessway. The demolitions expert's shoulders were sagging.

Brixie was crestfallen, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Tigereye understood immediately. Kempo. The explosion.

His hands balled into fists, Tigereye wanted to scream.

He wanted to tear the bridge apart..He grabbed the guard he had taken prisoner and slammed him against one of the control consoles so hard the impact dented the panels. He shoved the datapad before the guard's eyes, pictures of the ambassador's children flashing on the tiny screen.

"They're not among the slaves held down below. So where are they?"

The guard gestured at another doorway on the bridge.

"They're in the master's quarters! In there!"

Tigereye tossed the heavy blaster pistol to Cutter as he unsheathed his vibro-ax.

"Set weapons to stun. We need those children alive."

"I'm coming too," Brixie stepped forward, shaking, still clenching Lex Kempo's stormtrooper rifle with whitened knuckles. Tigereye gestured at the guard.

"No. You have to watch him."

Brixie pivoted and shot the guard using the blaster rifle's stun setting at point-blank range. The guard slumped over into unconsciousness.

"He's going nowhere," she replied tersely as she inserted two stun grenades into the rifle launcher.

Tigereye and Cutter regarded each other, surprised.

Muffled blaster fire erupted from somewhere behind the door, followed by a painful scream. Tigereye gestured to Cutter at the door controls.

"Open it. Now!"

The well-appointed domain of the slave master was almost completely dark. The slave master himself was dead, slumped over in his lounger.

Brixie immediately took a step toward the young girl and her brother still chained to the wall, but Tigereye held her back.

From the way they were cowering in silence, he could tell something was not right.

"Someone else is in here," Tigereye whispered.

"That is correct," a voice from the dark declared.

Crouching low, the mercenaries separated as they made their way into the cabin. As she moved past the lounger, Brixie's foot grazed something soft. She inhaled sharply as she saw the torn throat of a dead slave girl lying on the floor, a hold-out blaster still clutched in her tiny hands. The slave master's guards lay dead close by.

"She saw an opportunity to escape," the voice explained matter-of-factly. "I had to convince her otherwise.

Take a good look, mercenaries. Your fate will be the same as hers."

A shape lunged at Cutter, sending him sprawling across the floor.

In just moments, the shape appeared again, claws burying deep inside Brixie's protective vest. The thing shoved her into the wall, knocking her senseless.

The stormtrooper rifle clattered to the floor.

Holding her injured head and side, she heard more fighting.

Trying to focus, she saw their attacker stand against the dim light of the cabin's viewports for only a moment. She immediately recognized the shaggy, black-furred creature from her medical training at the university. No wonder the lights were out!

"It's a Defel! A wraith!"

Tigereye found the cabin's lighting controls and flipped them to their maximum setting. Glowspheres filled the room with brightness.

The terrifying creature screamed in agony, trying to shield its eyes from the powerful lights.

Surrounded and blinded, the Defel spun around wildly.

Brixie had picked up the stormtrooper blaster rifle. Hugo Cutter was back up on his feet, blaster pistol in hand, his face badly bruised.

Sully Tigereye's gaze narrowed to a chilled yellow as he took a step forward, vibro-ax in hand.

"The only fate you should be worrying about... is your own."

The cargo ship, almost fully laden with freed slaves, climbed slowly into the sky above Gabredor III. Below on the night-eclipsed surface of the planet, the destroyed slaver camp burned with a vengeance.

Tigereye had made it a point that they should leave plenty of Red Moon marks for all to find there. Knowing they had been targeted, the Karazak Slavers Guild would have to look long and hard for another place to conduct its business.

And with the children of the Gola ambassador safely aboard the ship, the Pentastar Alignment had lost as well.

In Brixie's heart, it was a hollow victory. They had tried to search the wreckage of the command bunker, but the fire was simply too hot.

She sat in a chair on the transport's bridge keeping to herself as Tigereye and Cutter familiarized themselves with the ship's astrogation controls. She finally thought about taking the helmet off her head.

With a tired sigh, she undid the straps and let the helmet fall to the deck beside her feet.

Tigereye looked over at the sound. During her training, it had been difficult for her to judge the Trunsk-to separate reputation from reality. The same clawed hands which had so eagerly torn the Defel to pieces were the same hands which gladly unlocked the pain collars of dozens of slaves.

She finally realized why he had chosen her for this mission.

There were some things that cannot come with training or preparation, they must be experienced and felt. Brixie had experienced the camaraderie and the fear, seen the violence and death that was all part of the life of the blaster-forhire. For a brief moment, Tigereye's expression softened. He and Hugo would mourn the loss of their lifetime friend in their own ways.

Her gaze fell upon the bridge's visual screens.

Gabredor III was falling slowly away. She found herself wishing Lex was here, wondering what his reaction would have been to her realization. He probably would have just winked at her.

Then she saw the remains of the slaver camp on the screens. A chill ran down her spine-there was something familiar about the shape of fires down there. Kempo's voice echoed in her mind. In his own words, the path finder had indeed gone out in a blaze of glory.

From hundreds of kilometers above, the explosion that had flattened the command bunker appeared like a fiercely glowing crescent...

A red moon.

Slaying Dragons

by Angela Phillips

Improper Passcode - Access Denied... Improper Passcode - Access Denied...

Improper Passcode - Access Denied...

A plume of smoke from the end of the canyon heralded the approach of the dragon. Veni drew closer to his elder sister as Vici activated her light-saber."

"Veni trembled at the sound of 20 powerful reptilian legs plunging toward him in deadly synchronization.

But Vici was not afraid. Though only 16 years old, she held the mighty power of the Force tightly in her hands. The dragon drew closer."

Vweep! Access Granted...

Shannon Voorson set her story platform aside and turned back to the monitor. Finally, she muttered.

This code had taken longer to slice than usual. Still, she reflected, any code one computer can generate, another can imitate.

First Law of Slicing. Now, she thought, let's see if we've found anything interesting...

"Oh, yuck," she sighed when she saw the contents of the file she'd entered: a register of six new Star Destroyers nearing completion at the nearby Kuat Drive Yards. What stupid names they have, she thought-the Impervious, the Penetrator, the Inflexible, the Indomitable, the Inexorable, and the Exterminator. If I were naming Star Destroyers, she thought, I'd give them names like the Iron Hand, the Raptor, or the Titania. Still, what do you expect from people with so little imagination they let computers come up with their access codes?