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Informationen zum Autor Kevin J. Anderson has written many bestsellers and has been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Bram Stoker Award, and the SFX Reader’s Choice Award. He also holds the Guinness World Record for largest single-author signing. Klappentext In a wild and battle-scarred galaxy, assassins, pirates, smugglers, and cutthroats of every description roam at will, fearing only the professional bounty hunters-amoral adventurers who track down the scum of the universe...for a fee. When Darth Vader seeks to strike at the heart of the Rebellion by targeting Han Solo and the Millennium Falcon, he calls upon six of the most successful-and feared-hunters, including the merciless Boba Fett. They all have two things in common: lust for profit and contempt for life... Featuring original stories by Kevin J. Anderson, M. Shayne Bell, Daniel Keys Moran, Kathy Tyers and Dave Wolverton. Therefore I Am: The Tale of IG-88 Internal chronometer activated. BEGIN. Electricity flooded through circuits, a power surge racing through a billion neural pathways. Sensors awakened, producing a flood of data--and with it came questions. Who am I? His internal programming finished the tedious two-second-long initialization procedures and poured out an answer. He was IG-88, a droid, a sophisticated droid--an assassin droid. Where am I? A microsecond later, images from his exterior sensors snapped into focus. IG-88 had no sense of smell, and no eyes and ears as humans understood them, but his optical and auditory sensors were far more efficient, able to absorb data in a broader range than any living being. He froze a static image of his surroundings and studied it, collating more answers. He had awakened in some sort of large laboratory complex, white and metal, sterile, and--according to his temperature sensors--colder than humans generally preferred. IG-88 noted mechanical component strewn on silvery tables: gears and pulleys, durasteel struts, servomotors, an array of delicate microchips frozen into a slab of transparent protective gelatin. Struck motionless in a pinpoint of time as his extremely fast neural processors digested the details, IG-88 counted fifteen scientists/engineers/technicians working in the laboratory. With Infrared scan he observed their body heat as bright silhouettes in the coldness of his birthplace. Interesting , he thought. Then IG-88 detected something that focused his entire attention. Four other assassin droids, apparently identical to his own bodily configuration--a bulky structural skeleton, armored arms and legs, a torso plated with blaster-proof armor shielding, a cylindrical head that was rounded on top and studded with sensor nubs providing him with 360 degrees' worth of precise observation. I am not alone . IG-88 recognized each droid's full complement of weapons: blaster cannons built into the structure of each arm, concussion grenades and a launcher attached to his hip, as well as other weapons not easily recognizable integrated into the body structure--poisonous gas canisters, throwing flechettes, stun pulser, paralysis cord...and a computer input port. IG-88 was pleased with his list of capabilities. IG-88's first round of questions had been answered. He had only to study his memory banks and his external sensors. He was designed to be self-sufficient. He was an assassin droid, resourceful. He had to accomplish his mission...though, checking his newly initialized programming, he saw that he had not yet been given a mission. He would have to acquire one. Three seconds had already passed, and another important question surfaced in his burning-awake brain. Why am I here? He traced sensations through his computer core and out the jack, which he now realized had already been connected to the lab's central computer--a treasure trove of information. <...
