Another blast struck the windshield. Oolth screeched in fear and leapt out of the skyhopper. "What are you doing? We have to get out of here!"

"That's exactly what we're doing," Darsha said as she felt the vibration down the length of the cable, which meant the hook had found purchase. "Hang on to me!" She grabbed the Fondorian around his waist and thumbed the winding mechanism.

The liquid cable reservoir was good for a maximum of two hundred meters, and the tensile strength of the monofilament line would easily support them both. Darsha knew that if they could make it up to the first traffic skylane-around level twenty-they could find an air taxi and get back to the Temple, or at least find a working comm station from which to call for help.

Another bolt caromed off the wall directly beneath them as they rose quickly up past the first level, then the second, then the third. Darsha's arm felt like it was being pulled from its socket. She looked up and estimated that the fog was hovering at around level ten. Once they were enveloped, they would be safe enough from the sniper.

A massive shadow flitted past her, followed by several more. In the dimming light she wasn't sure what they were at first. Then she saw one clearly, and recognition sent a chill of fear through her.

Hawk-bats.

She had never seen one this close before. Their eggs were considered a delicacy; she'd eaten them more than once for the morning meal in the Temple. Ordinarily hawk-bats weren't considered dangerous, but she had heard stories of people occasionally being attacked by flocks of the creatures. Evidently they were very territorial, and danger fell to anyone who ventured too close to one of their rookeries.

Which, apparently, was just what she had done.

Suddenly they were enveloped in a shrieking, flapping nightmare of wings, beaks, and talons. Distracted,

Darsha buried her head in her shoulder as best she could to protect her eyes. She tried to summon the Force, to use it as a shield against the creatures, but the fierce buffeting of their wings made holding on to the ascension gun the best she could manage.

She kept her thumb pressed on the winding control-their best hope now was to get past the hawk-bats' territory.

Oolth tightened his grip around her chest until she felt in danger of suffocating. He shouted with pain and fear as the winged furies strafed the two of them. The claws on the edges of their leathery wings tore at Darsha's clothes; her vision was full of beaks and angry ruby eyes.

Oolth screamed again, louder this time. She glanced down and saw that one of the hawk-bats had landed on his shoulder and was savagely pecking at his face. The beak scored his cheek, drawing a line of dark blood across his skin.

Darsha felt his grip lessen. She saw another hawk-bat clinging to Oolth's arm, stabbing at his hand with its beak.

"Hang on!" she shouted. "We're almost through this!"

Oolth cried out again, louder than all his previous cries. Darsha looked down at him, saw that one of the hawk-bats had hooked its cruel beak into his right eye. Mad with pain, the Fondorian let go of her, raising both hands to push away his winged tormentor.

"No!" Darsha shouted, trying to hang on to him with her free hand. But his weight was too much; his shirt tore, leaving a swatch of it in her grip as he dropped with a trailing cry down into the darkness.

Darsha knew there was no point in trying to go after him, even if there was any way it could be accomplished; she was seven or eight levels up now, and the fall had undoubtedly been fatal. A moment later she entered the fog level, but the hawk-bats showed no sign of lessening their attack. Already her skin was cut and torn in a score of wounds. At this rate she wouldn't survive to reach the upper levels.

Only one course of action promised even a faint hope of survival. Each level that slipped by her had a line of dark windows. Darsha released the winding control and drew her lightsaber. As her ascent slowed and then stopped, she swung the energy blade, melting a large hole through the transparisteel of the window next to her. She got a foot on the ledge beneath it and tumbled through, releasing the ascension gun as she fell forward into darkness.

She turned the fall into a shoulder roll, holding the lightsaber away from her as she had been taught to avoid self-inflicted injury. She came to her feet, the weapon held ready to defend herself against the hawk-bats.

But apparently there was no need; none of them pursued her into the building. Slowly Darsha abandoned her fighting stance. She looked around, trying to take stock of her surroundings.

It was fully dark outside now; the broken window was merely a patch of lesser darkness. The lightsaber's coherent light beam didn't vouchsafe much in the way of illumination. Darsha listened, both with her ears and with the Force. No sound, and no sense of danger. For the moment she seemed to be safe.

Of course, that depended on one's definition of safe. She was trapped in the abandoned lower levels of a building in the infamous Crimson Corridor. She had no comlink and no transportation. Worse still, she had failed in her mission. The man she had been sent to save now lay dead in the street far below.

If this was "safe," Darsha thought grimly, maybe she ought to consider another line of work.

Assuming she made it back alive.

Chapter 8

Lorn awoke feeling like a herd of banthas had stampeded over him.

He risked opening one eye. The light in the cubicle was very dim, but even so it felt like a blaster beam had fired straight into his eye and up the optic nerve to his brain. He groaned, hastily shut the eye, and wrapped both arms around his head for good measure.

Somewhere in the darkness he heard I-Five say, "Ah, the beast awakes."

"Stop shouting," he mumbled.

"My vocabulator is modulated at a median level of sixty decibels, which is standard for normal human conversation. Of course, your hearing might be a trifle oversensitive, given the amount of alcohol still in your bloodstream."

Lorn groaned and tried, unsuccessfully, to burrow into the sleeping pad.

"If you're going to continue such behavior," I-Five went on remorselessly, " I suggest having a few healthy liver cells removed-if indeed you have any left- and cryogenically stored, since you may need that particular organ cloned in the near future. I can recommend a very good MD-5 medical droid of my acquaintance-"

"All right, all right!" Lorn sat up, cradling his aching head in his hands, and glared at the droid. "You've had your fun. Now make it go away."