Star Wars_ Death Troopers Part 11

The hand was human, and had been ripped free by sheer force, the bones of the forearm cracked and severed by some blunt object. Two of the fingers were missing, plucked from the knuckle. Zahara looked at it with no particular emotion evident on her face.

"It belonged to a guard," Zahara said.

"How do you know?"

She pointed out the signet ring. "ICO academy." She dropped it, and it landed with a soft thud.

Behind her, on the other side of that row, Han heard Chewbacca growl.

"Uh, Doc?" Han said. "I think we found your droid."

Zahara looked, and as soon as she did, she realized that some small, dismal part of her had been expecting exactly this outcome, from the moment she'd arrived in solitary and Waste had not been there.

The 2-1B lay in pieces across the floor behind the last of the beds. Its arms, legs, and head had all been systematically dismantled and crushed, its torso beaten so the instrumentation panel flickered listlessly, erratically, beneath the cowl. It was still trying to talk, making garbled noises through its vocabulator.

"Dr. Cody?" it said.

"Waste, what happened?"

"I'm sorry. That test pattern wrote on the owl wall. It was marvelous. Would you like to taste it again?"

"Waste, listen to me," she said, crouching down next to it. "The patients, the bodies, where did they go?"

"Look, Doc," Han said behind her. "Let's get out of here, huh? This whole place..."

"Shh," Zahara said, not looking back, keeping her attention on the droid. "The corpses, Waste," she prompted. "Did someone take them?"

"I'm sorry. There isn't any left. It doesn't walk without three and the two places. I'm sorry. Every reasonable attempt was made." The 2-1B clicked and something sparked and clanked deep inside its lower processors. "We must uphold the sacred oath of. . ." It stopped, hiccupped, and seemed to regain some sense of what she'd asked it. "An amazing thing. They're miracles, really. Marvelous." And then, with terrible brightness: "They woke up!" There was one last small internal click, although this one sounded more jarring, broken, and when it spoke again its voice sounded thick and sluggish. "They just. . . eat."

"What?"

The components in the droid's torso flickered again, but it didn't say anything else. "Hey," Zahara said, turning around to Han and Chewbacca, "do either one of you know anything about droids?"

But Han and Chewie were gone.

Chapter 22.

Bulkhead The graffiti scrawled on the inner bulkhead was written in Delphanian, but Trig could guess what it meant. Face Gang. Keep out. Blood toll.

"Will you relax?" Kale said. "Myss is dead. They all are."

It didn't make Trig feel any better. At first all the corpses had frightened him, but there was something worse about not seeing them. They hadn't seen any more dead people since Sartoris had chased them away from the escape pod. Now they were traveling crosswise through the admin level, in accordance with Kale's plan. Trig had initially thought that it was because of the hidden route they were using, down these tight pa.s.sageways, alongside conduits within the walls, but now he wondered why they hadn't seen a single body.

"Hold this for me." Kale handed him the blaster rifles he'd been carrying. "Here we go." He removed a loose panel from the wall, reached inside, and slid out a pair of power packs. "Right where Dad left them." Sticking his hand deeper, he groped around for a moment and came up with another blaster, a pistol. "Here, you take this one."

"I don't want it."

"Did I ask if you wanted it?"

Trig realized his brother was right. Whether or not there still was something following them, he was going to need a weapon. He inserted the power pack into the blaster, clicked it home, and tried to find a way to carry it that didn't feel awkward or self-conscious before realizing that there was no way of doing that. His father's voice spoke to him: When you're carrying a blaster, whatever else you're doing comes second.

Kale gestured forward, up the walkway. "Let's go find that other escape pod."

"How do you know there is a second escape pod?"

"It's here because we need it to be here."

Trig just shook his head. Circular logic: their father would be proud. "Seriously, though."

"Seriously?" Kale said. "The Imperials build everything symmetrically. They're not creative enough to do anything else. So where there's one, there's got to be another, same location, opposite side." He shrugged. "I don't know, what do you want me to say?"

Trig just nodded. He'd liked the first explanation better.

Fifteen minutes later, Kale let out a small but energetic whoop. They had reached the opposite side of the barge's admin level. "What did I tell you?"

The pod looked exactly like the one that Sartoris had taken. Trig wondered how they were going to activate it without the launch codes, but he didn't want to puncture Kale's enthusiasm. It was nice to see his brother smiling again. He walked over to the pod's hatch and put his face against the viewport, peering into a darkly luminous chamber of softly glowing lights.

He felt a wave of coldness slip over him and turned around fast.

There was someone coming up the hall.

It wasn't his imagination this time, no chance; Kale heard it, too, Trig saw it in his brother's face, both of them registering the deep-chested growling noise getting louder as whoever it was rounded the corner.

"Stay behind me," Kale murmured, raising both his blasters up to chest level. "If anything happens, shoot first and then run, got it?"

"Wait," Trig said, fumbling with the pistol, "where's the stun switch?"

Kale said something in an even lower voice, but Trig could hardly hear him over the beating of his own heart. He realized he was about to fire a blaster for the first time and his life would depend on how well he used it. If it was another guard they might have to kill him. This was why he hadn't wanted to carry a blaster in the first place, but that didn't seem to make a difference now, because- A man in an orange inmate's uniform came around the corner with a Wookiee next to him.

"Hold it!" Kale shouted.

When the man and the Wookiee saw them they stopped walking, but neither of them appeared particularly surprised. The man raised his hands, but the Wookiee growled louder, shoulders hunching up, looking like it still hadn't ruled out attack as a possible response.

"Easy, kid, put the blasters down."

"No way." Kale shook his head. "What are you doing here?"

Han's eyes flicked over to the escape pod. "Looks like we both came looking for the same thing."

"There's not enough room," Kale said. "So why don't you and your friend turn around and go back where you came from."

"What are you guys, brothers?" Han didn't move, but he shifted his attention to Trig, the corners of his mouth twisting upward in an odd grin, crooked but genuine. "You ever use one of those things before?"

Trig didn't know if he was talking about the blaster or the pod, so he just nodded. "Sure."

"Yeah, I bet. Come on, kid, give up the heat, huh?" Stretching out both hands, that casual, crooked smile on his face, he started sauntering toward them again, as if he'd already decided how all of this would transpire and it was only a matter of going through the motions until everybody else realized it, too.

"You take another step and I'll shoot!" Kale cried out in a voice that broke high at the end, but by then it was too late. Both he and Trig bad been watching the man when they should have been watching his partner.

The Wookiee made it look easy, closing the gap in what felt like no time at all, plowing straight into Kale and knocking him flat, both blaster rifles clattering to the floor, rolling and pinioning one huge furry leg out so that it caught Trig in the side. Trig heard himself make a noise like uff! and felt all the air leave him like it had been sucked out of a vacuum. He went down, too, hand at his side, and realized he'd dropped his blaster. It had somehow already materialized in the man's hand.

The Wookiee kept the blaster rifles pointed at them, and Trig felt the last vestige of hope draining out of him like dirty water from a bathtub. What had ever convinced them that they could hold off a pair of career criminals with nothing to lose?

The man, meanwhile, walked over to the escape pod. "Well, we'd love to take you boys along, but as you pointed out, s.p.a.ce is at a premium, so..."

"You'll never make it," a voice said.

Trig looked around and saw the woman standing there. It took him a moment to realize it was Dr. Cody, the Purge's medical officer. He hadn't seen her since the day their father died, but now her pretty face-normally smiling, usually amused about something or other- looked gray and strangely lifeless, aged twenty years since the last time they'd met. Even her voice had changed. It lacked that easy, pleasant twinge of irony that he'd heard before, that tone of I'm working on an Imperial prison barge, how much worse can it get? Now she only sounded tired and resigned.

"What do you mean?" Han said.

"Go ahead," Dr. Cody said, in that same oddly inert and shrugging voice, "try to get inside."

The man pulled on the escape pod hatch, but it didn't open. "What, it's locked? How do you know?"

Zahara pointed at the steady red light next to the security system activated sign by the pod's hatch. Trig hadn't noticed it until now, either. "It's locked down."

"So how do we get in?"

"There's a manual override up in the pilot station." Dr. Cody turned to the Wookiee. "And enough with the blasters, all right? I hardly think either of you has anything to fear from a couple of teenage grifters."

"Hey, they pulled 'em on us," Han protested, and the Wookiee barked out a contentious whinnying rejoinder, but both lowered their weapons.

"The pilot station's directly above us," Dr. Cody said. "I'll go up and see about unlocking the pod."

"Chewie and I'll go up with you, take a look at the thrusters." Han glanced at Kale and Trig. "You kids tagging along?"

"We'll stay here," Kale said, "you know, stand watch."

Han shrugged. "Suit yourself."

"What. . . ?" Trig glanced at his older brother, uncertain, but felt Kale reaching down to squeeze his arm gently yet firmly.

"Here." Dr. Cody handed Trig a comlink. "I'll call when I get it open so you can check it before we come back. We'll come back as soon as we can."

"Leave us the blasters," Kale said.

Han snorted. "Yeah, right."

"Go ahead," Zahara said, "you can spare one."

Han looked expectantly at Chewie. "What? He's not taking mine," but the Wookiee just continued to stare back at him. "Great," Han muttered, thrusting the weapon back at Kale. "Here you go, boy. Try not to shoot off your own foot."

Kale took it and nodded, and Han, Chewbacca, and Dr. Cody started to walk away.

"Dr. Cody?" Trig asked.

She stopped and looked back.

"Is there anyone else left besides us?"

"I don't think so," she said, and Trig could tell from her expression that she'd been antic.i.p.ating a different question. It wasn't until they were gone that he realized what he should have asked her.

What happened to all the dead bodies?

Chapter 23.

Inside They'd been waiting for five minutes when the first alarm went off.

Kale had been explaining the plan for why he'd volunteered both of them to wait here. "When Dr. Cody gets up to the flight deck and unlocks the pod, we climb in and comm her back to tell her it's asking for launch codes like the ones that Sartoris had. She puts them through and we're out of here."

"She's not stupid," Trig said. "Besides, we can't just leave her here."

"The Imperials will send a rescue ship."

"How do you know?"

"She's high up," Kale said, gesturing vaguely in the air. "You know, connected."

"That still doesn't mean they'll come back for her."

"You're really creased about this, aren't you?"

"She helped out Dad in the end," Trig said. "That means something."

"Look." Kale regarded him with a maddening smile. "I know you're sweet on her, but..."

"What?" Trig felt his face and the tips of his ears growing hot. "Yeah, right."

Kale shrugged, the very picture of fraternal indifference. "Whatever you say. It's pretty obvious, though, just the way you stare at her. Not that I blame you-she's not bad looking." His expression darkened. "Just don't forget who she works for."