Wilding groaned. "I've nothing to offer but a fair deal—"
Tichron's trigger finger tightened. A thin beam flicked from the blaster. Sound and light jarred the caverns....
V
Echoes of the blast died away in the distance. For a fragment of time, the curious tableau held, then thought and perception began again. Wilding, his face bleak, was amazed that he still lived.
At such range, a miss was impossible. But where Credus had stood was an untidy heap of smoldering cloth and calcined rags of flesh.
Dazed by concussion, the survivors of Credus' party stared at the grinning Tichron.
"I'm playing along with Wilding," he told them. "The one thing nobody ever thought to offer me is a fair deal. I guess I'm just curious."
Still over aimed guns, the two groups faced each other as the strain mounted between them.
"Go on, shoot," urged Wilding. "The odds are even now. You can kill both of us, but we will take you with us. You have one second to drop your guns or start shooting."