Alliance Read Free Page B

make the catwalk fall apart under you?
I'm not that much of an idiot, though I will admit that I didn't
expect you to have brought along one of those stupid J bots from
Xeeo with you.”
    “ Did you also block off
our communicators?” asks Sir Alart, brandishing his silver-white
sword at the dwarves, though it only drives them back temporarily,
because they then return to their original positions, looking
angrier than ever.
    “ That I did, Sir
Knight,” says Jornan as she stops just outside of our circle of
dwarves. She raises all ten of her rings and flexes her fingers.
“It was a simple task, casting a spell that blocks all
communication between here and the outside, but sometimes the
simplest spells are the best, wouldn't you say?”
    “ Miss Jornan, you are
still under arrest,” I respond, resting my finger on the trigger of
my PRB. “You and every dwarf here are under arrest for the illegal
possession and smuggling of super speed drugs.”
    “ J997, is that really
what we should be focusing on at the moment?” asks Sir Alart. “Not,
you know, figuring out how to survive against these criminals when
we're so badly outnumbered?”
    “ Your Knight friend has
a good point,” says Jornan. “We know that we are all going to jail
if we get caught. That's why I am going to have my men here take
you two apart piece by piece.”
    She gestures at her dwarves and snaps,
“What are you idiots standing around wasting time for? Kill these
two and make it quick. We don't have time to waste killing these
fools, as fun as it would be to drag out their deaths.”
    ***
     

Chapter
2
     
    T he dwarves move in on us, swinging
their weapons with the ferocity of a barbarian horde. I fire my PRB
at one, which knocks him out, while Sir Alart swipes at another
criminal with his sword, knocking that dwarf's battle hammer out of
his hands and causing the criminal to curse in Dwarfish, though I
pay no attention to it because of the other dwarves still moving
toward us.
    I aim my PRB again and fire, but the
dwarves must have seen what happened to their comrade earlier,
because they scatter before my laser can hit them. One of the
dwarves jumps at me from the side, swinging his ax at me, but I
dodge it by stepping aside, allowing the dwarf to smash his ax
against the stone floor.
    But then another dwarf swings his hammer
at me, striking me in the shins. I feel no pain, but the force of
the blow does knock me off-balance, forcing me to swing my arms
through the air in order to regain my balance. This leaves me open
to attack from his allies, who move in with their hammers and axes,
yelling and screaming obscenities at me in Dwarfish, but I choose
not to translate them because that would distract me
unnecessarily.
    I stagger backwards out of their reach,
their weapons missing me by mere inches. I take aim with my PRB
again, but then my sensors pick up another dwarf coming at me from
the right. Before I can turn to stop him, his ax comes flying at my
hands and knocks my PRB out of them, sending it skittering across
the floor out of my reach before another dwarf steps on it with his
foot, smashing it in half and effectively making it useless.
    Two more dwarves come at me, one from
behind and another from the front, but they are under the mistaken
belief that because I am unarmed, I am no longer dangerous. I am
about to prove them wrong.
    I tap my chest, sending a signal through
my body. An electrical barrier erupts from my form about three feet
on every side. The barrier is a defense mechanism all J bots have,
one we rarely use, but when we need it, it's always there and
always useful.
    The dwarves who come at me run into the
barrier and get electrocuted. They scream in pain and fall to the
ground, while the other dwarves stand back to avoid suffering the
same fate as their comrades. They look like they want to run,
because they clearly have no way to deal with my barrier, but they
also don't want to suffer Jornan's wrath (though I do not