Blackcollar: The Judas Solution by Timothy Zahn Page B

opened into a deserted alley. Carefully, he leaned out and looked out.
    And staggered back into the edge of the door as a cluster of paral-darts slammed into his face, most of them ricocheting from his goggles and hood but a few sinking into the exposed skin of his cheek. He dropped his nunchaku as his face went instantly numb, his hand grabbing for the tingler on his wrist. But the drug in his bloodstream was too fast. Even as his fingers dug under the sleeve, both arms went dead. Half a second later his legs folded under him and he sprawled helplessly in the doorway, lying halfway out into the alley.
    He'd landed with his face turned uselessly toward the bar's outside wall, but he could hear the running feet coming toward him. The footsteps came to a halt, and he was pulled the rest of the way through the door and turned onto his back. A half dozen hard faces were looking down at him, and out of the corner of his eye he saw a couple pairs of hands unfastening his coat and throwing it open. Other hands attacked the civilian clothing beneath the coat, unfastening it as well and deftly maneuvering the shirt and slacks off his paralyzed limbs and tossing the clothing to someone outside his field of view. They took his nunchaku and slingshot from their respective sheaths, removed the knives from his forearm and calf sheaths and the shuriken from their thigh and belt pouches, and took his tingler from his wrist. Then, clad only in his flexarmor and the undersuit beneath it, he was lifted and hurried down the alley in the direction from which the ambushers had come. There was the muffled sound of a vehicle door opening, and he was shoved unceremoniously into the back of some kind of van.
    Waiting for him there was Prefect Jamus Galway.
    "Caine," Galway said gravely as the door closed again behind him and the vehicle lurched forward. The prefect's face was strangely somber as he gazed down at his trophy, with no hint of triumph or even satisfaction that Caine could see. "My apologies for all this. If it makes it any easier, let me assure you that we have no intention of killing or even hurting Lathe and the others. They're far too valuable to us as they are."
    Too valuable. To us . With his face still paralyzed, Caine couldn't reply. It was, he reflected, probably just as well.
    * * *
    The first Security man staggered and collapsed, the impact of Lathe's nunchaku penetrating his helmet to stun the skull and brain underneath. The comsquare brushed against the second blinded man as he fell, who responded by spinning that direction and firing another blast of paral-darts. Lathe ducked beneath the shot and swung his nunchaku into the back of other's leg, toppling him on top of his friend. Two more men were charging in behind them. One had already been blinded, and as Lathe swung his nunchaku around in a half circle and cocked it again beneath his arm Spadafora sent a fourth paint pellet past his head to splatter over the other's faceplate. Lathe made a crouching leap over the tangled bodies of the first two attackers and slashed his nunchaku across the third Security man's gun arm, sending his weapon spinning off across the nearby tables, then slammed a kick to his stomach that folded him up and dropped him to the floor.
    The fourth Security man was firing off random rounds, clearly in hopes of hitting something , when Lathe's nunchaku slammed across his yellow-coated faceplate with a force that flipped him halfway over before he hit the floor.
    Two more Security men were charging through the door, this pair already firing before they'd even made it inside. Lathe spun around to put his back to them, letting the salvos scatter off his flexarmor as he snatched out a pair of shuriken . His spin brought him back around to face them, and he hurled the stars hard into their kneepads.
    Their guns wobbled off target as they fought for balance. Ducking beneath the weapons, Lathe took one of them down with his nunchaku and the other with a sweep