Deathstalker 03 - Deathstalker War

his trouser belt. The girl made a break for it. Morgan caught her easily, pulling her back.
    She went for his eyes, hands like claws, and he spun her round and pinned her arms to her sides. She still kicked and struggled, so he bear-hugged her hard, driving the breath out of her, and dropped her at Kast's feet. He crouched before her, smiling easily, and she spit in his face. He backhanded her almost casually, and the strength of the blow threw her backwards. She fetched up against the far wall, breathing hard, her eyes darting from Kast to Morgan and back again. Blood and snot dribbled from her nose. Kast grinned at her.
    "Struggle all you like, my dear. I enjoy a good struggle. If you're good, really good, you'll get a special prize at the end. We'll let you live."
    And then both marines froze as a voice called their names outside in the street.
    They waited, hoping it would go away, but the voice came again, even louder. The girl tensed to scream, and Morgan hit her in the mouth.
    "Damn," said Kast. "All the people they could have sent looking for us, and it had to be Sergeant Franke. He won't let you get away with anything. Thinks he's officer material, the fool."
    Morgan shrugged, stepped forward, and cut the girl's throat with an economical sweep of his sword. She slumped back against the wall, clawing at her opened throat with her fingers. Blood gushed over her hands, and she fell back, her hands dropping to her sides as the breath went out of her. Kast swore feelingly, and did up his trouser belt again.
    "Never mind," said Morgan. "There'll be other chances. Franke can't be everywhere."

    The two marines grinned at each other and went back into the street whistling jauntily. All in all, the invasion was going well.
    In Tech Quarter, the starport had been thoroughly trashed. For a time its massed disrupter cannon, harvested from the crashed starcruiser Darkwind, had been enough to keep the gravity barges at bay. Up close, the cannon didn't need its crashed computers for targeting. But the barges soon learned the limits of the cannon's range, and stayed well back while they contacted their ship for reinforcements. The Defiant sent down six heavily shielded pinnaces to do the job. They came roaring down out of the night, too fast to track, and blew the cannon apart in an explosion that could be heard all across Mistport. With the starport defenseless, the pinnaces swept back and forth in strafing runs, taking out the ships on the landing pads like so many sitting ducks. And while they were doing that, the barges closed in on the control tower.
    The rebel ships on the pads exploded one after the other in sudden bursts of smoke and fire. Strange lights radiated briefly and were gone as stardrives collapsed and released their energies. The landing pads would be wildly radioactive now until the Empire could bring in heavy-duty scrubbers. Only the Deathstalker's ship, Sunstrider II, survived, protected by superior Hadenman shields. The pinnaces marked it down for later attention, and moved on. They had more than enough other targets to keep them busy.
    The control tower lasted the longest, with its reinforced structure and steelglass windows, but even that fell in the end, riddled by disrupter fire from the hovering gravity barges. The steelglass blew inward, transformed into deadly shrapnel that cut down everyone left inside the tower. Some still survived, so the barges set the tower on fire, and left it to burn. Their job
    done, the pinnaces and the barges moved unhurriedly away in search of other targets. People lay dead everywhere across the pads. Ground crews preparing ships for desperate takeoffs, and crowds of people who'd been convinced they'd be safest at the well-defended starport, or who had paid massive bribes to be smuggled offplanet. When the Empire ships came they were caught out in the open with nowhere to hide and nowhere to run, and they died screaming for help that never came. Wrecked ships burned on the cracked pads, and what was left of the control tower burned like a giant candle, its shattered walls running like wax in the great heat. The starport had fallen.
    Young Jack Random led Owen and Hazel and Silver and his adoring followers back into the city, in search of people to help. The troops forced back from the southwest boundary had departed in search of easier ways into the city. No one doubted they'd find them. Random soon found a street barricade in danger of falling to an Empire attack,