Defender of the Empire: Cadet #1 Read Online Free PDF Page B

NO! The other voice became panicked, distracting me. The masked man continued unaware of the other voice. “…if your Spectral could escape.”
    “What?!” The woman gasped, her fa ce paled in the faint light. I could see the man’s hand reaching into his vest. I knew that could only mean a weapon. I need a distraction… distraction, distraction . I thought over and over again looking around.
    The voice that only I seemed to be aware of inhaled sharply in shock. THE LIGHT! He said just as I saw it.  A single faint purple orb light was suspended from the ceiling. It was the main source of light in the room. I glanced down at the crowbar in my hands and decided that wouldn’t be a good thing to throw. What if I missed? The only good thing could be hitting the man in the head. But then, I could just as easily hit the woman. Suddenly my muscles holding Bertha went slack for one terrible second. I caught hold of Bertha before she slipped entirely out of my hands. But an end clattered on the ground just as the man pulled out a black blade of some creepy make. I dodged behind some crates just inside the door. Hopefully before he saw me. I heard him curse and knew that one of two things would happen. He would kill the woman before looking for me. Or he would come find me, try to kill me, then kill the woman. My fingers tightened reflexively on Bertha.
    Ah hell, I thought upon realizing that I didn’t have time to find something else.
    In that split second I stepped back from behind the crates and hurled the crowbar toward the light. That is when time decided to slow down. Bertha the Crowbar summersaulted end over end. The man had the blade back. He started to look in my direction. Bertha shattered the orb, throwing everything into darkness and time back to normal. But at the same moment I heard the horrible sound of flesh parting before a blade and the woman’s scream. The barest of moments later, blinding pain brought me to my knees. GET UP! The male only I could hear demanded. GET UP AND RUN LIKE HELL! YOU NEED TO GET THE TWO OF YOU OUT OF HERE!
    RUN, LITTLE BIG ONE! A new, small sounding voice said. And I felt the pain vanish before a flood of energy. I regained my feet and ran like mad through the corridor back to the main hall. I could hear steps behind me and knew that I didn’t have time to fetch my boots. All I could do was run. And so, for the second time in a week, I was running… but this time for my life.
    I couldn’t understand what I had seen or what I had heard. I just knew that it had been very bad. Not only because the woman had died but because of something more sinister. Something I couldn’t really understand. It just felt wrong. Like that weapon the man had. I had only a glimpse of it, but it looked like a single piece of black granite carved into a dagger with decorative protrusions coming off its hilt. It had ‘bad news’ written all over it in big bold font. I kept racing down the corridor.
                  I didn’t know why the corridor was dark, but I became glad of it. That and the fact it seemed to have been simply abandoned with all the stalls and random things about it that I wove around. It made it so that I wasn’t the only thing visible in this huge hallway. What would make me happier would be finding the more populated sections of the station. That way I could blend into the masses. Oh… and not be wearing white.
                  Hopefully that would be enough.
                  I listened to everything coming from behind me. The heavy footsteps were much farther back. I smiled grimly. The man was tiring and here I still had my first wind. I heard a crash that I assumed to be the stack of crates I had passed forty seconds ago. Curses became fainter as I kept running. I ran through an open security gate and stumbled to a halt.
                  It was, literally, like stepping from night into day. And just as blinding. After a moment I