Star Wars_ Death Troopers Part 13

"This way," Zahara shouted, and broke left, she and Kale sprinting almost shoulder-to-shoulder across the bridge in the direction of the docking shaft. Up ahead she didn't see anything between the banks of instrumentation panels except for a single open hatchway.

It better be in there, she thought. Please, let it be where Tisa says it is.

Looking back, she saw Han and Chewbacca charging to catch up. Ducking through the hatch, Zahara could see the docking tower doorway in front of them now, the turbolift open and ready.

We're going to make it, she thought.

That was when the sliding door that Han and Chewbacca had just pulled closed exploded wide open.

Chapter 26.

Army of Last Things Kale jumped inside the docking tower with Trig still in his arms, followed by Dr. Cody. He looked back and saw Han Solo and Chewbacca still halfway across the pilot station, the Wookiee firing back at whatever was coming their way. Kale couldn't see what that was, nor did he particularly want to. He could hear it, though, and hearing it was enough.

"Hurry!" Dr. Cody shouted back at Han and Chewie. "I have to close off the shaft!"

From where Kale was crouched with his little brother in his arms, all he could see was the medical officer reaching up to seal off the lift doors, and then Solo and the Wookiee diving inside, Chewbacca still shooting, the volley of blasterfire ringing in his ears.

Suddenly Trig sat up, eyes wide. "Dad?"

Kale stared at him. "Trig, what..."

"It's him." The younger boy had already pulled free from his arms, twisting sideways past Han and Chewbacca, crawling back out of the docking shaft turbolift to the pilot station. "Dad's out there!" he shouted. "I saw him! He's..."

Kale sprang out after him. He flung out one arm as far as it would go and grabbed Trig's pant leg, hooking his fingers around the cuff. He felt a low, dull thud as Trig fell to the floor, then got his other hand up around Trig's waist and began dragging him back into the docking shaft.

Then he looked up.

And saw his father.

Von Longo was staggering toward them in a shambling half run like something that been wrenched three different ways at once- wrenched and broken at the hips and shoulders. He was surrounded by a group of prisoners and guards.

Except, Kale saw with dawning horror, they weren't prisoners and guards anymore, not exactly, and neither was the old man. His dead yellow skin was mottled with two weeks' morgue rot, his skull grotesquely swollen and partially collapsed on one side so that Kale could see, very clearly, the grinning hinge of the old man's jaw clicking in its socket.

Kale couldn't move. For what felt like an eternity he watched his father stagger-swaying toward him with that horrible, clutching gait, his face lit up with a kind of drooling familiar eagerness.

At last Kale broke out of his paralysis and screamed. Scrambling to his feet, propelling himself back in the direction of the shaft, he saw Solo and the Wookiee pulling Trig inside, but they were looking over and beyond him, into the corridor from which the noise was coming. As if in a dream he saw that Dr. Cody's face had gone completely white with fright. Kale saw the doctor reach up and cover Trig's eyes with her hands.

Then he felt something grab his leg.

He didn't even hear himself scream.

Chapter 27.

Say It Three Times When Kale came to, he was sprawled on his back, Dr. Cody kneeling beside him. There seemed to be a great deal going on around him that he couldn't see. Zahara's hands moved with easy efficiency, wrapping a blood-soaked strip of fabric around his lower leg, once, twice, pulling it snug, tying it off. Kale hissed through his teeth, cold strange air that tasted like iron shavings, and felt his guts recoiling.

Where are we?

"It's all right," her voice was saying from across a great distance. "We made it. We're up inside the Destroyer's landing bay."

Kale rolled over and tried to look around. The pain in his calf was incendiary, intense enough that for a moment he didn't trust himself to speak. He sipped in a shallow, tentative breath and held it until he thought he probably wasn't going to be sick, then glanced up at Dr. Cody again, the scope of his vision broadening a little. Behind her, Han and Chewie stood outside the sealed docking hatchway.

"Where's my brother?" Kale asked hoa.r.s.ely.

"He's right over there," Dr. Cody said, "he's fine. Just try not to move."

Kale craned his neck and saw Trig sitting on the floor against the docking shaft's outer wall, curled up with his chin resting on his knees, rocking back and forth, staring at nothing. He didn't look fine. Kale thought of Trig's stunned voice saying: Dad's out there, seeing the eager thing that had come after him, and wondered if his little brother would ever be fine again.

Say it, he told himself, and thought back to an old superst.i.tion he'd heard as a very young child. Say it three times and make it real.

"It bit me," Kale said, "didn't it?"

She tightened the makeshift dressing. "Is that too tight? I have to stop the bleeding."

"It bit me."

"They're crawling up the shaft," Han Solo muttered, taking an uneasy step back, and glanced back at Dr. Cody and Kale. "How soon can we get going?"

Kale could hear it-the sc.r.a.ping. It was coming from inside the docking tower. Hands pounded and scratched on the other side of the shaft. Gnawing sounds. Those things down in the barge had climbed right up after them, he realized, up the tower. Right now they were breaking their brittle fingernails and teeth inside that metal tube, trying to get out. He thought about what he'd seen when he'd looked back into the barge's pilot station. It wasn't possible but it was true. The sound of their hunger and anger, along with the stinging pain in his leg , made the memory real.

The corpses of the prison barge had come back to life and his father was among them.

His father had bitten him.

Kale felt his mouth flood with coppery spit and leaned forward, opening his lips to vomit, but nothing came out. His stomach wouldn't quit trying, though, wouldn't say die, as his dear old dad might have said. Dead old dad, his brain blathered, and his diaphragm kept jerking and heaving spasmodically with the awful insistence of an involuntary muscle twitch.

"Look, kid," he heard Solo's voice saying, its impatience penetrating the thick cloud of horror that had acc.u.mulated around his thoughts. "We gotta go."

"Which way do you suggest?" Dr. Cody asked.

"If we can find our way back to the Destroyer's command bridge, maybe we can actually get this big beast moving."

Chewie gave a dubious growl.

"It's a ship, isn't it?" Han said. "You've flown one, you've flown 'em all. We just gotta get past . . ." He gestured vaguely. "... all this."

Kale wiped his eyes and took his first real look around at where Han was indicating. The main landing bay and hangar that surrounded them was an endless durasteel desert whose perimeters stretched out so far that they seemed to elude the eye. Even now, the notion of crossing it was more than he could fathom. And yet . . .

"Help me up," he said.

Dr. Cody reached down. He took her hands and lifted himself, straightening his back as she guided him. At first he thought it was going to work-he actually might be able to put weight on the other leg as well.

"Take it easy," she said. "We don't have to rush."

The pain hit hard, and Kale fell back to the floor with a silent cry that came out as little more than a groan. He looked down. Blood was spurting recklessly from the wound in his leg, soaking the tourniquet and turning it dark red. He saw Trig staring at him but didn't know if his brother was worried about him, or about what he'd seen down below. Did it matter? It was all one thing now, their situation spelled out around them in spilled blood.

"You can't travel like that," Dr. Cody said.

"Just give me a second."

"You'll bleed out before we make it across the landing bay."

"I'll be fine."

She stared at him, then leaned down, close enough to whisper. "Listen to me. I want you to understand this. If we try to move you now, you're going to die." Without moving her head, she indicated Trig, hunched over. "And he'll have to watch that happen. Is that what you want?"

Kale shook his head.

"I'll stay here with you," she said, loud enough for the others to hear. "Han, you and Chewie can take Trig and head for the command bridge."

At the mention of his name, the younger boy jerked as if shocked and sat up straight, shaking his head. "No." He stared at his brother. "I want to stay with Kale."

"Come here," Kale said.

The younger boy stood up and walked over.

"I told you I wouldn't let anything happen to you," Kale said, "and I won't. But to keep that promise I need you to go with the others, right now."

Trig shook his head again, violently, tears filling his eyes. He spoke in a fierce whisper. "I'm scared," he said. "Dad's face..."

"Listen to me," Kale said. "That wasn't Dad."

Trig stared at him.

"That was something else. We know what Dad was like. We remember him from before, and that wasn't him." He waited. "Right?"

"But . . ."

"Was it?"

Trig shook his head.

"You have to go. I'll catch up later."

"What's going to happen to you?" Trig asked.

"Dr. Cody and I will catch up to you guys as soon as we can."

"You promise?"

"I promise," Kale said, and was glad when Dr. Cody put her hands on Trig's shoulders to turn him toward Solo and the Wookiee. Looking at his brother's heartbroken, terrified expression was becoming close to unbearable now, but Kale made himself do it for one more second. "Trig?"

The boy's eyes shone on him.

"I love you," Kale said.

"Then don't make me go."

"Doc, you want the blaster?" Solo asked.

Zahara looked up at him, surprised. "You'd really give me your last blaster?"

"Well," Han said, looking away, "you know, if those things start coming through the shaft..."

"That's all right."

"You sure?"

She nodded. "We won't be here that long." Glancing at Trig: "We'll see you soon, okay?"

Kale watched his brother's expression, but Trig didn't say anything, didn't even nod, as Han Solo and Chewbacca led him away.

Chapter 28.

Things You Don't Forget They started across the hangar without talking.

Han went first, carrying their sole blaster at his side. He and Chewbacca seemed to know where they were headed, and Trig followed a dragging, somnolent half step behind. Every so often the Wookiee tossed his head, gave a snort or a grunt like he was sampling the air and didn't like the way it smelled, and Han would say, "Yeah, I know," but they just kept moving forward.

The silence was a black cloud that hung over them. The only noise was the tapping, echoing sound of their shoes against the vast steel floor, and outside, the creaking of the Star Destroyer in the black vacuum of s.p.a.ce. Otherwise, there was no sound at all. It only accentuated the size of the ship and the limitlessness of the surrounding void.

Trig hated it.

In such silence his mind wandered-except wandered was far too tame a word. His mind ran wild, capered shrieking up and down his skull like some lunatic who'd murdered his entire family, jerking to a halt here or there to ruminate upon some grisly trophy or another.

Why am I thinking like this?

But he knew exactly why.

He thought back to the thing that had lunged out of the escape pod at him, the thing he hadn't gotten a chance to tell anyone about, even his brother. The pod-thing had once been an inmate, a human- it had worn an inmate's uniform-but circ.u.mstances had turned it into something else entirely. Its puffy dead face and caved-in black eyes had been still vaguely human, but it had jumped out of the pod with a snarl dial was decidedly not human. It had gone for his throat, and Trig's reflexes were the only reason it hadn't succeeded.