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Xat-Hey felt his senses whirl as he surveyed his surroundings and tried to
remember which way to go.
How many strings of kog gum had he consumed, anyway? Five? Six? It made no
difference. The answer was too many.
The Zin had gathered his energies and was about to jump when he sensed
movement to either side of him.
At least two dozen white-robed humans emerged from the shadows. Many were
armed with clubs.
Fear, along with the chemicals it helped generate, acted to cut through the
kog gum-induced haze and prepare the Zin for action. The muscles in his
hindquarters bunched, released, and propelled him into the air.
Starlight, who had just emerged from his hiding place, was in an excellent
position to witness what happened next.
Two acolytes, stationed on the Square Hole s flat roof, threw the fishing net
in concert. The yellow nylon web settled over the Zin s shoulders, arrested
the jump, and brought him crashing to the ground.
The Zin bellowed a war cry and reached for the t-gun holstered at his side.
Someone yelled, Pull the net tight! and Starlight was there, pulling with
all the rest, when a solid beam of light lanced down from above. The
observation tower! They had been seen!
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There was a momentary pause as the Zin struggled against the ever-tightening
net, and the Kan, amazed by the sight below, waited for orders.
A watch commander, summoned from his meal, emerged onto the catwalk that
circled the tower, took a look, and waved a tightly rolled pancake at his
subordinates. What are you waiting for? The slaves have a Zin! Shoot them!
Starlight first became aware that he and his fellow acolytes had come under
fire when the woman across from him acquired a third eye, threw her hands into
the air, and toppled over backward. The crack of the long gun came like an
auditory exclamation point.
Sunburst, one of Sister Andromeda s favorites, bellowed, Hold! and the
acolytes held.
Xat-Hey had managed to pull his t-gun. Someone yanked on it, and the weapon
went off. A male acolyte fell but another took his place.
An acolyte had a club. It cracked the surface of the Zin s chitin, and the
alien grunted in pain.
Starlight released the net as the man to his right jerked under the impact of
a high-velocity slug and fell to the ground. He had already turned, and was
about to flee, when Sunburst grabbed his arm. Oh, no, you don t. Grab a
stick! Kill the Zin.Then you can run.
Suddenly ashamed, and determined to redeem himself, Starlight took hold of a
fallen club and joined the circle of death.
The scene had taken on a surreal quality by then. The bloodstained sticks
rose and fell as if wielded by machines. Xat-Hey bleated like a wounded sheep
as the Kan fired bullet after bullet into the mob below. People fell in slow
motion, or so it seemed to Starlight, who felt warm liquid splatter his face
as the club next to him slammed into the Zin s now defenseless body, slumped
to the ground.
It s over! Sunburst shouted. God s work is done! Run!
Starlight ran with all the rest.
Xat-Hey heard the call of distant voices, knew his name had been forever
silenced, and marveled at the wonder of it. Slaves with sticks? Who would have
thought? Then he was gone.
A few minutes later, when a hastily dispatched contingent of Kan arrived on
the scene, the Zin s body looked like a flower of black ringed by petals of
white.
Perhaps the noncom in charge would have felt more sympathy had it not been
for the encounter the day before in which Xat-Hey and his toughs had accosted
the Kan, pushed him around, and demanded information.
That being the case the noncom toed the body and murmured the only eulogy
Xat-Hey was likely to receive. So long, you nameless piece of excrement long
may you and your ancestors rot in hell.
The cubes formed a mosaic of light and dark squares lit from below where
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torches, can fires, and battery-operated lamps went together to produce a warm
glow.
There were silhouettes, though, some stationary, and some that moved. One, a
solitary Kan, shuffled from one end of the roof to the other. As with most
military organizations, the Kan used various methods to punish relatively
minor offenses, one of which was to pull sentry duty on the so-called
presidential complex, an assignment that one wag equated to standing guard
over a pile of excrement.
A sentiment that the Kan named Duu-Bak couldn t help but agree with, since
the very concept of protecting a slave was clearly stupid.
But what else was new? It sometimes seemed as if the Zin had nothing better
to do than come up with absurd tasks, such as laying waste to worthless
planets, constructing temples that nobody would ever use, and protecting
slaves.
It was nighttime, which meant nothing really, except that work continued in a
landscape of what looked like amplified moonlight.
Some of the Kan professed to like the sort of enchanted glow, but Duu-Bak
wasn t one of them. There were too many shadows for his liking, too many
places where assailants could hide, and too many humans about. Humans who, if
the rumors could be believed,hated the slave named Franklin and might seek to
kill him.
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