Warlock

necessary.
        
        The Oragonians were pressing their hands to their ears, but to no avail. The vibra-rifle did not merely affect the eardrum, but cut through every cell of the body, interfering with neural control. That soon became obvious as the enemy floundered about on the floor, jerking spasmodically, legs twitching, flailing at their own bodies, jiggling like puppets on snarled strings.
        
        Crowler kept the weapon bearing on them.
        
        “Gods, why don't they die!” Gregor asked, vocalizing the disgust the others felt at the nature of the weapon and what it had done to healthy men in so short a space of time.
        
        As if in response to this plea, the four soldiers stopped fighting the sound and lay still. Blood ran from their ears. Their bodies were contorted in impossible positions. Dead…
        
        A bubble of digestive gases escaped one corpse's stomach, rippled upward through the dead flesh making the ghastly form stir slightly, and erupted in the corridor with a harsh bark, like the croak of some very large frog, a cold and unpleasant sound indeed.
        
        Crowler rose to his feet, all the blood drained from his face at the sight of his victims, his nostrils flared and his eyes widened just a bit. “Please,” he said, turning to the others, his tone almost desperate. “If it's at all possible, I pray that you will use your weapons first-so that I don't have to employ this hideous device again.”
        
        There were nods of agreement
        
        Crowler wiped beads of sweat from his chalky forehead.
        
        The hall was quiet again. No one else had come out to investigate the crash of the ventilation grill, and no one had been attracted by the sounds of dying, for that death had been a quiet one.
        
        “Let's move,” Mace said, taking charge of the unit in the face of Sergeant Crowler's momentary indecision.
        
        Almost in the instant, however, the burly officer snapped out of his mood of despondency and was himself again, capable and ready. “Yes,” he said. There are but four men here, leaving eleven others which we must find. According to our last data from the monitoring system, there should be five men working in a large chamber to the far end of this stretch of corridor. We'll take them next.”
        
        They moved off, stepped over the corpses and boarded the pedways, the long rubbery belts embedded in the floor which served as a major form of transportation on this as on all other levels.
        
        They were whisked away from the dead men on a pedway that rolled toward their next encounter at approximately ten miles an hour.
        
        The Shaker felt uncomfortable with the burden of the rifle in his arms-like a whore in a cathedral, or like a priest in a brothel. Deadly things were not his metier. Perhaps, though, he could steel his mind to perform things which seemed impossible, just as he had forced his frail body into great endurance on the trek from Perdune.
        
        They stepped from the pedway onto the right-hand walking ledge and crept forward to the front of the shop where the Oragonians worked. A sign above the entrance read WEAPONS FOR PRIVATE DEFENSE: BY GODELMEISSER. Inside, the soldiers were collecting handguns to equip their brothers against the armies of the Darklands.
        
        Mace stepped through the door, with Crowler behind in the event his own horrid weapon was required. The giant fired from the hip with the sleek, almost featureless weapon he carried. The three Oragonians there had only time enough to turn, startled, before they were knocked backward, against the racks of displayed weapons. They burst open like ripe fruits, staining the walls and the floor with their fluids, crashed onto the floor, nothing more than sacks of bones. The effect of this rifle had been even worse than that of Crowler's armament The three dead men were all but unidentifiable as human beings.
        
        Three…
        
        Abruptly, the Shaker was struck with the realization that two of the men who should have been in the room -according to their last data report from Karstanul-were gone. Then, to the left, a pair of Oragonian soldiers stepped from the entrance to another shop, talking intensely, almost unaware of the presence of the Darklanders.
        
        Mace and Sergeant Crowler were within the gun shop