There was a shooter half-hidden behind a short fence. Amasr shot back. It was insulting by how much he missed. The shooter ducked anyway.

The back alley was still too far, and on the periphery of his vision, a huge barrel was sticking out of a second-storey window again. The heat made everything slow and Amasr the slowest of all. He didn't even bother aiming up at the heavy gunner.

He still was the first one into the alley, but the droid did not lag far behind. Oil was leaking out of the scorched torso, but the metal bastard persisted. It would've been commendable had it not been so pathetic.

Sumbakiri was following. Amasr tugged him deeper into the back alley, beyond the droid while the droid still stood. In the street, people were shouting something in the local Huttese — too fast and slurred for Amasr to get anything but a word or two. Koochoo, that he got, and bobokee.

Shouts were not blaster fire, though. "Let's move," he said, despite his entire being protesting.

The alley went up into the hills, winding and turning. Lots of dead angles to hide — for them and for their pursuers and for whoever might live up on the crater's side.

Amasr tried to walk in front of the Pyke — more out of habit than any concern — but Teso's blood must be pumping with adrenaline; a high the likes of which he had not seen. He had a blaster pistol in his hand. The part of Amasr that could still wonder wondered if he'd brought it from the mansion or picked it up during the ambush.

Each time shots ceased behind them in the street, Amasr thought they'd not come back, but they always did. Sometimes big, sometimes small, short bursts or long series. As long as they stayed in the street, anything was fine by Amasr.

The droid's creaking was growing softer as they were increasing the distance from him. Amasr hoped he'd at least have the decency to fall and block the way for pursuers.

"They're dead, aren't they?" the Pyke asked. He even stopped to look back at Amasr — or the path back down to the street.

"Shut up, or we'll be too."

He could see movement in the small, dark windows overlooking the back alley. On a colder world, he'd shoot two or four — just to make the rest stay away, no matter who they were, just locals or gang lookouts. Making an embarrassment of himself with this kind of shooting on his likely last day of life was too much.

By the time they reached a fork in the alley, it was obvious from the rising screams above and behind them that they were being pursued. Nobody shot at them from the upper floors yet, but the sound of blasting was avalanching up from down the alley.

"Fuck." Teso sounded exasperated. "Now where?"

The two daughter alleys looked exactly like the first one, only darker and narrower. Amasr looked up, trying to get an approximate layout of the neighborhood. There were buildings, buildings, buildings up to the sky itself. The right path seemed to be hugging the slope of the crater a little more — but with the city planning that Kunjagi I had to offer, there was no telling how either would wind.

It wasn't the worst, though. That was reserved for Amasr's inability to choose.

Once, he'd never bother with calculations on the day of his death. What did it matter in which alley or which gulch he was to die? Death made precautions and tactics meaningless. But he had grown old. A sad, old, scared lizard.

"There," he exhaled as he pointed at the left alley. It was an attempt at redemption, equally as pathetic as the thing he needed redemption for. As if not going up the slope would make the falter any nobler.

A voice came from behind, high-pitched and vibrating. Amasr turned and shot before he could make out the words. A Rodian fell — dove to an unflattering landing with half his overalls and the flesh beneath it burning.

"Shit," Teso said, "I think he was with us."

Amasr didn't answer.

They were not twenty steps into the new alley when two laser bolts hit the wall in front of them. The Pyke stopped in his tracks, covering his head from the brick shrapnel.

"Go," Amasr bellowed at him.

This alley also went up — a little bit. If they got higher, it could be a good coign of vantage… if.

People were looking out of their shacks. Gathering in the tiny courtyards in the shadows of their decrepit abodes and gnarly trees. Not shooting yet, not even brandishing their guns… but Amasr knew they had guns, and if they took them out, they'd turn it on offworlders — ten cases out of ten.

Teso must have felt that too. His gait was getting slower, the movements of his helmeted head more frantic.

At least Amasr could stay calm knowing they were in enough trouble for this not to be a meaningful problem.

Looking back made the scales on his back harden. The body hadn't gotten the message from the brain and still struggled.

The men pursuing them wouldn't have lasted half a day on Kashyyyk, but they knew their home well. Moving from one blind angle to another, there was little chance of hitting them. Not in this heat.

Amasr crouched, turned back. No one shot at him. An obese Nikto rose from a card game on the side of the alley, backed by another two of slightly less mass if combined.

"Lost?" he asked, and — impossibly — the next moment, there was a blaster in his hand, and Amasr hadn't registered the switch from the belt. "I said, you lost, bitches?"

Teso did the worst thing he could — not that it mattered in the current social climate. He pointed his blaster at the Nikto. A hard target to miss, a harder shot to live to tell about.

Amasr took some sad pride in noticing how the rest were drawing. The two flankers, and the one by the door of a drinking hole, and two more on the opposite side of the alley. He fired three times above the fat Nikto's head while pulling Teso to the side. The fat man ducked, and so did his friends. This moment of confusion was enough to drag the Pyke behind a skeletonized airbike by one of the houses.

A heavy gun started rumbling down below. Several bolts hit tiles off the roof on a hovel near which the card game had been happening. Shouting in Huttese ensued again, men and women and children screaming their lungs out from all sides.

Amasr leaned from beyond the airbike. The locals didn't seem to feel the state of events required running back to their homes. He shot at one of the smaller Niktos and missed. He shot again. The Nikto fell.

"Here, here," the Pyke was calling. Amasr looked where he was pointing. To the side of the bike, a fenced-off yard opened into the alley. Five steps across it, a wire mesh door stood not quite closed. The corridor behind it was dark and seemingly empty and as inviting as anything on this planet.

Down the alley, the sounds of running and screaming and shooting were getting closer. It was a no-brainer — his brain had already realized just how over the things were.

He fired four times in the direction the pursuers from the street were coming from. The angle of the alley made it physically impossible that any shot connected. There was hope the pursuers would not understand that immediately.

He followed Teso into the yard. Empty soda cans and beer bottles lay all over the place. Amasr shouldered the door open. It was no better inside: heaps of garbage and spare speeder parts.

But there was no one inside — at least as far as the entrance corridor went. Amasr's body was content with it.

More shots fired in the alley. None hit the door or the yard or the building. Could they have lost them?

"Oh fuck," the Pyke said softly, "oh fuck."

They went down the corridor until it ended in an equally littered kitchen. No one was still in sight. Outside, they were still firing.

"We need to find a comlink," Amasr said.

"Do you… fuck. There was one in the car."

One in a car was the most mobile you could get on Kunjagi I. "After the war, them Hutts cut the world off the Imperial comm standard," Modosh had told him when getting Amasr into this mess. "They also jam all normal comlinks. Have been since the war. I don't know where they get their comlinks from, but they aren't any good. You can hear it, can't you?"

"Want to go back for it?" Amasr asked the Pyke.

The shooting stopped. Had been nice while it lasted.

"Come on," he told Teso.

As they pressed through the kitchen and to another dirty, dark corridor, he asked himself why he was doing this. Hadn't Modosh been right? What good would his reputation be if he was going to die today? The situation didn't have any get-out-of-it clauses. He'd die in the heat of this damn planet and no one would ever tell the story.

He should abandon the Pyke, he knew. It was the logical thing. The only way to salvage some of his reputation. Take down at least a couple dozen of these thugs before following them. Nothing to sing songs about, but not as pathetic as dying to fail to save this schmuck.

Yet he pressed on, through the corridor and on to the narrow stairs going up. There was no air conditioning in this house — and, likely as not, in any house within a ten-kilometer radius. A bad place to be, a bad place to die.

The windows of the first floor were set right against the crater side. They should've taken the other route.

Down below, a door slammed. Voices followed:

"They're here, they've nowhere to run."

"Be fucking careful, lads, they fried Mestana for no reason."

"Just burn the house, let's see how they like that."

"You shut up with that, Carduc. I won't look twice that you're with the Street Lights. I have connections too."

"Screw your connections!"

"No fucking burning, I told you, boys!"

Teso managed to remain silent. Lots of good it would do them in a minute.

Amasr stepped closer to the windows. The slope… maybe climbable. Maybe. Definitely not for a Pyke who's being shot at.

The voices on the ground floor came to some agreement re: burning houses.

"We don't even know if that's the one we want," one said. "Masked punks."

"You wanna take chances, huh, Govali?"

Amasr opened one of the windows — as silently as the old hinges allowed. Pointed outside with the blaster.

The Pyke shook his head. Amasr pointed his blaster at him. Nodded at the window.

The face behind the translucent screen contorted.

"The fall might kill you," Amasr hissed at him. "They will."

He said no more. He didn't even look at the Pyke. Let him make his own foolish choices.

Instead, he got away from the windows and into the part of the room that was above the kitchen.

"Check upstairs," he heard someone's muffled voice.

He shot the floor. He couldn't aim — not in this weather; he was hearing his heartbeat more than anything else — but he didn't need to, either. The first shot melted the cheap floor covering and bared the planks underneath it. He shot again and again and again.

As if answering a mating call, a barrage of laser fire came from below. Something fell off the ceiling and hit Amasr in the head. He shrugged it off.

He kept shooting the widening hole between the floors as he retreated back to the windows. A guy was coming up the stairs. Amasr shot him, too. The guy rolled back down.

"Fuck," he screamed, "fuck, they got me. They got me good."

No one followed him upstairs, but more and more holes appeared in the floor. A shot shattered one of the windows.

"Go up!" someone shouted. "Stop fucking shooting, you morons, we can't see shit as it is!"

Nobody listened to him.

Amasr looked outside. Teso was climbing the slope. He looked uninjured.

Amasr hopped outside. The landing reverberated through his legs and into his ribcage. He tucked his blaster into the holster and followed Teso up the slope.

It was steeper than it looked. He dug his claws into the dry earth covering the rock. There wasn't much of it.

He caught up with Sumbakiri very soon. The Pyke wasn't suited for climbing: not his helmet, not his fingers, not his anything.

"Come on," Amasr growled at him. "Almost there."

They weren't almost there. Why did he lie? He had no answer.

"Damn it, careful!" came a voice from behind.

Amasr turned onto his back and fixed himself on the slope as best he could. Teso took it as an invitation.

"No," Amasr said, "you keep going."

As he took his pistol out, he could see the Pyke still motionless save for the overexerted shaking, but he had no more breath to spare.

"Nice shooting," one of the men inside the house said, his voice way too close for comfort. "You all on boga noga? Made a damn sieve out of the floor."

"Shut up, Uskari. As if you didn't—"

A face showed up in one of the windows. Amasr shot. The window frame burst apart. The face disappeared.

"On the slope!" someone cried. "They're there, boys!"

Another window broke. The laser bolt hit the slope about two meters below Teso's feet, kicking dust up. Amasr placed two shots inside that window, then one more in the one they had climbed out, then one again in the third one.

"Get those sons of bitches!"

"Look at the floor, you fucking fool! You go there and shoot, fucking smartass!"

Amasr tried to crawl up, but it was an either-or. Dying with one's back to the enemy was not always a shame, but this enemy? He'd rather die in a traffic accident.

It got his head cooler, though, it did. Seeing movement in the windows, aiming, pulling the trigger. He'd like to know how many he got, but their screams did not stop for a second nor did they change the tone.

A short burst hit the slope right next to him. Not from any window. His eyes searched while he was putting another bolt into the middle window. There was a Rybet standing at the house corner, wielding a rifle. Amasr pointed the pistol at him and shot. The Rybet caught some brick crumbs and jumped back behind the corner.

Amasr missed the moment he began climbing again. But there he was, the gun still in his hand, finding his way up. There probably was shame in that, but he chose not to think about it.

Every two meters or so he'd half-turn, supporting himself on the slope with one hand, and take a blind shot at the house. It kept the gangbangers checked — for a while. Soon, too soon did their blasts grow bolder and more frequent, but at this point, he couldn't stop climbing. All he could do was hope they'd bury his corpse in some gulch where his brother would not find it.

He was waiting for the first laser to hit him, and when it did, he almost felt relief. It got him in the back, a palm away from the spine. The heat got worse, but not by much. Now he could let this farce end.

The farce had other ideas. The shooting didn't stop — but it did move. As the cloud of nothingness loosened its grip on his head, Amasr looked around as far as his position allowed.

There were shots coming from both sides. It wasn't a shooting gallery anymore, but a shootout. As embarrassing as it was, it was a shootout.

"Come on, man!" Teso called him. Amasr's eyes tracked the voice and found the Pyke. He'd plateaued and was lying on his belly in someone's backyard, both hands on the blaster. A perfect spot: well above the house and the alley leading to it, flat on the ground. Took Teso Sumbakiri to screw it up.

He was screwing it up, as their pursuers were not yet silenced. But — they'd landed no more hits on Amasr. Not exactly worth living, but dying at this point would be beyond pathetic.

So he climbed on. The pain was spreading across his back and lower body. It felt good. It felt like life.