by Джо Шрайбер
Descent
"I don't get it, cap," Vesek said. "Where'd they go?"
Sartoris's party had just crossed the gleaming steel prairie of the main hangar and arrived back at the docking shaft, but Armitage and his team were nowhere to be seen.
Behind him, the captain heard Austin coughing again-the snotty, bronchial hacking noise was really starting to get on his nerves-and decided enough was enough. He cocked one thumb at the shaft.
"Must have gone back down without us," Sartoris said. "Let's go."
Vesek and Austin climbed back inside, onto the waiting lift, and Sartoris went in after them, followed by Greeley and Blandings with the box of scavenged components. The shaft sealed behind them and the platform began its slow descent. Austin kept coughing. Sartoris tried to ignore him. He was going to have to report back to the warden about the Star Destroyer and wasn't looking forward to it. No doubt Kloth would have all kinds of irrelevant questions about the ship and what they saw up there, every minute of it an endurance test for Sartoris's patience. Asking unnecessary questions was one of the war-den's nervous tics when he felt pressed to make a decision, and-
"Oh no," Greeley said.
Sartoris glanced up. "What's wrong?"
The engineer started to say something, then dropped the box of parts, clutched his stomach, and bent over with a hoarse croak. Sartoris realized the man was throwing up, shoulders clenching in great involuntary spasms. Blandings and the other guards all backed away from him, muttering with surprise and disgust, but there wasn't much room in the shaft and within seconds the smell had filled it entirely.
"I'm sorry," Greeley said, wiping his mouth. "Lousy mess hall food, you can't.»
"Just stay there." Sartoris held up his hands. "You can get cleaned up when we get back to the barge."
"I feel fine, I just…" The engineer swallowed and took in a deep breath. His eyes and nose were streaming tears, and Sartoris could hear a faint chest-rattle as he sucked in a shallow breath. Over his shoulder he heard Austin starting to cough again.
"Captain." Blandings's voice was small as he glanced back up in the direction they'd come. "You don't think there was something up
"Contamination diagnostics checked out negative," Sartoris shot back-too quickly, he realized. "That's what you said, isn't it, Greeley?"
Greeley gave a weak nod, tried to answer, and thought better of it. His skin had taken on a decidedly green shade, and it shone with a thin, oily layer of sweat. A moment later he sank down to his knees next to the box of electronics and lowered his head until it was almost touching the floor.
By the time they arrived back on the barge, Vesek and Blandings had started coughing as well.
Chapter 10.
Triage
"Hang on, i'm coming." Zahara followed the 2-1B through the medbay to the bed where a guard named Austin crouched with his head between his knees. He'd come in along with another guard and a pair of maintenance engineers. Waste had triaged his new patients expertly, assigned them beds, and started working up Austin, who appeared to be the worst off.
"Thanks,'" Zahara told the 2-1B. "Go check on the others." Sitting down on the bed next to Austin's, she didn't wait for the guard to acknowledge her. "How are you feeling?"
He looked up at her stonily. "I want to talk to the droid."
"My surgical droid is otherwise engaged with your co-workers," Zahara said. "What happened to you up there?"
"What do you care?"
"It's my job. How many people were up there with you?"
Austin didn't respond. Twin rivulets of thick yellow snot were leaking out of his nose, down either side of his upper lip, and he smeared them away with his sleeve and started coughing again into his fist, a loose, rib-racking hack.
"Look," Zahara said, "I've got other sick inmates to look after. So how about dropping the attitude so we can focus on getting you bet-"You're a piece of work," Austin said, "you know that?"
"I've been called worse."
"You and your sick inmates. I bet you. " He broke off into another coughing fit, Zahara leaning back as the guard sprayed the air around him with microscopic droplets, then pivoted his head to glare at her again."… I bet.
you probably. " More coughing, thicker now. "You're nothing but a.»
"Tell you what," she said, "you'll have plenty of time to call me names later. How about lying back and letting me have a look at you."
Austin shook his head. "Send the droid. I don't want you touching me."
"Don't be an idiot. You're…"
"Send the droid."
Enough was enough; Zahara stood up. "Suit yourself."
"Captain Sartoris was right about you, you know," he said as she walked away.
"Excuse me?"
"You're sweet on cons. I'll bet that if I were some low-life Rebel scum you'd treat me like your only patient. Every sob story that comes along, you're ready with a sympathetic ear."
"Wow." She almost felt obliged to respond with some representational show of anger. "Your captain really knows me well, doesn't he?"
"He's a good man."
"Sure," she said easily. "Killing inmates is a real feather in his cap."
Austin gave a quick series of explosive coughs, then cleared his throat and whooped out a ragged breath. "That wasn't your call to make."
Zahara turned around to face him again. "Let me tell you some-thing about your heroic captain. He was in trouble long before what happened with Von Longo-even the warden knew it. Regardless of what he might have once been, he's now a burned-out wreck of a human being, a claustrophobic sociopath with…" She broke off when she realized Austin was grinning at her, a narrow, vulpine grin- she was only confirming everything he'd suspected about her. "What Captain Sartoris did to Longo here in my medbay was just the end product of a long and messy downward slide."
"And that's when you really started to like him, right?" Austin asked, that hard smile still wrapped across his otherwise sickly face. "You like 'em hurt and needy. That really flicks your switch, doesn't it?"
She felt her neck beginning to turn red and was suddenly sure that Austin could see it, too. "If you say so."
"I'm not the only one."
"Dr. Cody?" a synthesized voice called out. "Are you available?"
She turned and saw the 2-1B gesturing to her from the other side of the infirmary. On the bed beside it, one of the new patients-she thought it was the other guard, Vesek-appeared to be having a seizure. The two engineers and the trooper who had accompanied him were all sitting up watching with a mixture of dismay and revulsion.
"On my way."
By the time she arrived at his bedside, Vesek had started to slide off his mattress despite the surgical droid's efforts to restrain him. The guard's face had gone a nearly translucent shade of pale and his eyes were rolled back in his head while the rest of his body flopped and twitched erratically as if responding to some high-voltage electrical current. Then without any warning he fell on his back, his mouth bursting open to emit an uncertain urk sound, followed by an almost solid spray of bright arterial blood that shot straight up into the air like a geyser.
"Watch out." Zahara raised her hands to shield herself and the engineers sitting next to her. On the other side of the bed, the 2-1B continued to hold Vesek in place. When it looked up, she saw that its cowling and visual sensors were covered with blood. Vesek collapsed backward on the stained sheets, as if the act of vomiting had drained all the fight from him.
"Get him in the bubble," Zahara said. "All of them, the guards, engineers, whoever came off that Destroyer, get them sealed off from the other patients-now."
The 2-1B's sensors had already cleared themselves and reflected back at her attentively. "Yes, Dr. Cody."
"Run labs on them, a full tox screen, find out what they were exposed to up there."
"Anything else?"
She forced herself to stop and think, taking inventory in her mind. "We better let the warden know what's going on. He'll want updates."
"Right away."
"Wait," Zahara said, "I'll take care of that myself." She didn't wait around as the surgical droid started giving instructions to the engineers. Their faces were freckled with Vesek's blood, and they looked frightened now, more scared than sick.
"You," she said, looking at the name on his badge, "Greeley, how many men went aboard the Star Destroyer?"
"Two teams of five," Greeley said, "but…"
"Where are the other five men?"
"They came back before us."
On the bed, Vesek made a throaty groaning sound and shifted his weight, rolling onto his side so that his back was to them. The other two men stared at him with matching expressions of encroaching panic as the droid led them away.
"Hey, Doc, what's the good word?"
She turned and saw that Gat, the Devish, had left his bed and made his way over to see her. He was gazing at the guard on the blood-stained bunk, fingering his broken horn with the unconscious compulsions of someone prodding a loose tooth with his tongue.
"Nothing you need to worry about."
"I heard you say something about the bubble."
"I'm just playing it safe," Zahara said, "until we get a better handle on things."
The Devish cocked his head and then nodded. "If there's anything I can do, let me know, okay?"
"Thanks, Gat. I'll keep that in mind." Without thinking, she put one hand on his shoulder and felt another pair of eyes on her from across the room.
Austin was glaring at her.
And smiling.
* * *
She walked back to her workstation, thumbed the console, and watched as Kloth's face materialized on the screen in front of her. Some kind of contrast malfunction had rendered the image too bright, making it appear bleached and monochromatic. He was sitting at his desk, the viewport behind him partly eclipsed by the massive bulk of the Star Destroyer's underside directly above. It blocked out more stars than she had expected and gave the odd appearance of having arrived at their destination.
"Dr. Cody? What is it?"
"I'm down here with five of the men from the boarding party," she said.
"How are they?"
"Not good. I'm placing them in the quarantine bubble. Where's Captain Sartoris?"
"In his quarters, I assume. But Dr. Cody…"
"I'll need him up here, too," she said. "What about the other five?"
"That's just it." Kloth shook his head and she realized for the first time that the pallor on his face had nothing to do with the contrast of the monitor screen. "The second team never came back."
Chapter 11.
Red Map
Sartoris was dreaming when the knock on the door awakened him.
In the dream he was still wandering around the Destroyer, alone. The rest of his party-Austin, Vesek, Armitage, the engineers and troopers-was dead and gone. Something aboard the Destroyer had picked them off, one by one. Each man's departure had been marked by a scream, followed by a sickening crack that Sartoris seemed to feel as much as hear.
Sartoris kept moving, trying to ignore a nagging itch that had spread across the skin of his stomach like a rash. He knew it was only a matter of time before the beast, whatever it was, came after him. It wouldn't be long before he glimpsed its true face, if it had one. Maybe it didn't; perhaps it was simply sickness personified, a brainless and ravenous void that sucked in life.
A maze of hallways stood ahead of him, and Sartoris's pace faltered. He was lost and he knew it. He wasn't even sure if he was heading toward the thing or away from it. The skin around his abdomen itched worse and he stopped to scratch it and felt something impressed on the flesh itself, like a tattoo or a mesh of wrinkles. His dream-self tugged up his shirttail from his pants and he looked down at the skin of his side and saw that there was in fact something printed on his side, some kind of map-a map of the Star Destroyer. The diagrams disappeared into his flesh, and he realized he'd have to open himself up to read it. Steeling himself, he hooked the first two fingers of his right hand and raked them as hard as he could into the muscle above his hip, ignoring the dry-ice spike of pain and thrusting in deeper to peel back the outer tissue layer. The fat came loose from his flank with a sickening ease. Blood gushed out of his side, hot and steaming, running down his legs and filling up his boots.
When he woke up, a scream at his lips, the knocking had turned into pounding.
He sat up, shivered with a kind of all-over wetness, and for a queasy instant thought he was still bleeding. But the hot sticky moisture clinging to his skin was only perspiration-it pasted his hair to his brow and stuck his uniform to his back. The only part of his body that wasn't wet was the inside of his mouth; it was bone-dry.
Opening the door of his quarters he saw two guards in orange bio-hazard suits and masks standing there, looking like refugees from his interrupted dream.
"Captain Sartoris?"
He blinked. "What's this?"
"Sir, we've been instructed to bring you down to the infirmary."
"Why?"
A pause, then: "Orders, sir."
"Whose?" Sartoris asked, and made it easy for them. "The warden's or Dr. Cody's?"
The guards exchanged a glance. The glare off their face-shields made it hard to say which one responded. "I'm not sure, sir. But…"
"Who gave the order to gear up?" Sartoris asked, but he was already thinking about Austin's cough and Greeley's vomiting, and the others, all of them. Too late he wished he'd conferred with Warden Kloth about the other party before going back, to his quarters. It had been a small act of defiance that had blown up in his face, another poor decision in a long and self-destructive chain of questionable choices. He ought to have reported back first: swallowed his agitation and just done it.
"Better come with us, sir."
Sartoris took a step forward to try to identify the men inside the mask. "I feel fine," he said, and although this was the truth, it felt like a lie, maybe because of the guards' reaction-when he came forward, they both took one big step back.
"How are Austin and the engineer, Greeley?"
"Austin's dead, sir. He died about an hour ago."
"What?" Sartoris gaped at them, feeling gut-punched. "That's impossible. I was just talking to him." How long had he been up here sleeping? A new thought occurred to him then-a desperate realization of an eventuality that he might have to face, sooner rather than later. "What about Vesek?"
"I really couldn't say, sir. They're all in quarantine. I think. " The guard, whom he'd finally identified as a short-timer named Saltern, was taking another step backward. "Maybe you better just come up and talk to her yourself."
"Dr. Cody, you mean."
"Yes, sir."
Sartoris didn't ask any more questions. He came out, and felt the guards falling in a step behind him.
"I can find my way up to the infirmary, Saltern."
"We were ordered to go with you, sir."
In case I bolt, Sartoris thought, and then: Maybe I should.
But he had told them the truth-he did feel fine. Whatever had happened to the others up on the Destroyer hadn't touched him. It was a localized phenomenon, and he wasn't going to let it get to him.
You won't have a choice.
"Take me upstairs," he said. "I need to talk to Vesek."
Chapter 12.
Big Midnight
The rodians were sick.
Trig looked at them in the cell across from his, sprawled on their bunks, shifting positions only sporadically. As unnerving as it had been when they'd stood there staring at him, Trig found this new development even more disturbing. Their respiration sounded terrible, a clogged rattle. The coughing was worse. Every so often one of them would groan or make a low, desperate whine.
"See anything?" Kale asked.
"Uh-uh."
A guard hustled by in an orange biohazard suit, followed by two more. "Hey!" Trig pounded on the bars. "What's happening out there?"
The guards just kept moving.
Trig turned and looked back at his brother. "What is all this, anyway?"
Kale shrugged. "Who knows?" He rolled over on his bunk and closed his eyes, and a moment later was fast asleep. Trig listened to him snore.
"Hey there," a voice whispered.
Trig leaned forward. It was coming from the cell next to theirs. "Hey," he said back, craning his neck, but he couldn't see around the corner. "What's happening?"
"Your name's Trig Longo, isn't it?" the voice from the next cell said.
"Yeah."
"And your brother. he's Kale, right?"
"That's right," Trig said. "What do they call you?"
The voice ignored his question. "Big price on your head," it whispered. "Ten thousand credits."
Trig didn't answer. Stepping back from the bars, he'd already begun to experience a cold slithery feeling moving into the pit of his stomach. The voice just kept talking.
"Ten thousand credits, that's big money. Thing is, nobody's going to collect."
"Why not?" Trig asked.
"Because I'm the one that offered it," the voice said, "and I'm going to kill you both myself."
Trig's entire body went numb. He suddenly realized that he knew that slushy pronunciation, made all the more inarticulate by the way the mouth had been injured when Kale yanked the piercings out.
"I requested a transfer just so I could be close to you," Aur Myss's voice said. "Greased the right wheels, you might say. The second they open these doors, I'm going to rip you and your brother apart with my bare hands. And that's just for starters."
"Why don't you shut up," Kale said from his bunk, startling Trig. He hadn't known that his brother was listening, or even awake.
Myss giggled. Trig realized the gang leader was probably the one he'd heard giggling earlier, when Wembly had come through, bellowing for quiet. "How do you want it?" he asked. "Quick and dirty, I'm guessing. We can do it somewhere private. The guards will find your bodies later, but it might be a while. Not that anybody's gonna care- not any more than they cared about your old man when Sartoris…"
