“I can't,” he breathed, his eyes as wide as saucers. “I can't give a slave a weapon, don't you see? It's against regulations! The trouble I'd be in, just for even considering it!”
“You don't have a choice! Once the raiders fight their way into this chamber, we'll both die!”
Suddenly, something huge and heavy slammed its bulk against the thick door of the command center. Again. And again. And again. The metal began to buckle under the weight.
“Is there another way out of here?” I asked Gohak urgently. “Some kind of secret passage, an escape hatch, a ventilation duct, anything?”
“Y-Yes, of course.” Gohak's voice was high and quavering. It sounded like he was going to faint at any moment. “B-B-But I can't tell you. It's against regulations, don't you understand? What if you tell the other slaves? What if they use that knowledge to escape? No, we must obey regulations, no matter what happens, the regulations must be obeyed...”
“I'm not like the other slaves, you stupid, stubborn little fool!” I screamed. “You know that! Now give me a weapon and tell me where the escape hatch is, so we can get the hell out of here while we still can!”
“Yes.” His voice was barely above a whisper. “Yes, all right. You may have my blaster. I just have to use it once more, and then it's all yours, to do with as you wish.” He raised the muzzle of the weapon to his temple.
“No!” I yelled desperately.
“I'm sorry.” He gave me a pained smile that was almost a grimace, his eyes wide and bulging and insane. “Can't surrender the camp to raiders. Not while I'm alive. Not allowed, you see. Regulations. You understand.”
He pulled the trigger, and the side of his skull erupted in a shower of turquoise brains, splattering against the wall. He slumped forward, dead before he hit the ground.
I didn't have time to be shocked or disgusted. The door had been torn almost completely from its moorings, and behind it, I heard a series of overlapping roars which sounded like cruel laughter. I bent down, grabbed the blaster, and aimed it with a trembling hand.
The door finally gave way, and I caught a brief glimpse of dragons, too large to fit through. The first one had reddish-orange scales which looked as though they were creased and crisscrossed with numerous battle scars. As I watched, his musculature rippled and contracted, his mass reducing to a humanoid shape and size. The sight was so strange and hypnotic, I almost forgot to fire.
Almost.
The blast hit him high on his right arm, near the shoulder, and left a smoking black spot on his armored hide. I checked the setting of the weapon – it was as high as it would go, enough to practically vaporize most other humanoids.
The attacker looked at me with an odd mixture of surprise, amusement, and contempt. “Why, you arrogant little—!”
He started toward me, but the one behind him – who had also transformed into a humanoid (and a rather attractive one at that, I had to admit) – stopped him. “Wait. Don't hurt her.”
“'Don't hurt her?'” the first one balked. “Did you see what she did to my arm? I'm going to rip her head off!”
“Don't be such a hatchling, Ranel. Stal can patch you up good as new when we get back to the ship. But look at her collar –it's pure durabilium. Worth a lot. She's not like the other slaves. It appears as though she might be in a position of some authority here.”
“I can rip her head off from that position! Watch me!”
The other one sighed impatiently. “What if she has valuable information about the other mining outposts? We need to take her alive.”
So they hadn't overrun the other mining camps on the planet yet – just this one. That information seemed like it might be useful to me, and I filed it away in my mind accordingly.
The dragon-man called Ranel rolled his eyes, extending a claw to me. “Very well. Hand over your weapon, and you won't be harmed. Continue to resist, and so help me, I'll snatch that gun away from you, crumple it up, and make you eat it.”
I considered my options, then relented, giving him the weapon. Anything to stay alive...and buy more time.
4
Dashel
“Ow!” Ranel snarled as Stal, the ship's healer, ran the scale-printer over his injured arm to repair the damage the blaster had done. “Where the hell did you get your medical license, anyway, huh? A Delevnian whorehouse?”
“If I had, I'm sure you'd have seen me there,” the old physician croaked dryly. “Unless, of course, you were passed out in the corner with a bottle of Fraxian ale in your claw and a sagging teat between your lips. Now stop squirming, or I'll have to start all over again.”
I tried not to laugh as Ranel grumbled, doing his best to hold still. He'd always hated doctors. More than that, he hated being forced to endure their ministrations; he saw it as a sign of weakness, and often seemed to long for the days when warriors would either survive or succumb to their wounds without medical meddling.
“There. It's done.” Stal deactivated the glowing tool, putting it back on the shelf where it belonged. “But next time, I promise you, I'll be sorely tempted to save myself the trouble and simply amputate. Regardless of the nature of the injury.”
“Thank you for seeing to him, Stal,” I said. “He appreciates it tremendously. Don't you, Ranel?”
Ranel bared his teeth at me. “I'm going to go see if I can reach the officers commanding the drop-shuttles. Maybe they can give me a preliminary report of how the raids on the other camps are going.” He walked
