Star Wars: Death Troopers (звездные войны)

by Джо Шрайбер

  "Sounds pretty effective to me," Sartoris said.

  The commander shook his head. "Our hull is specially reinforced. We're essentially impervious to handheld weapons. Until they're able to decipher the heavier artillery, we're relatively safe. Of course, that's only a matter of time, isn't it?" His upper lip disappeared in his mouth with a soft sucking sound. "They haven't pulled in many ships yet, but I suppose that's to be expected, hovering out here at the edge of the Unknown Regions. There's not much traffic this far out."

  He made a weak effort to point up to the cockpit, where the shuttle's instrument panel shone faintly, a myopic eye afflicted with cataracts of energy-lack.

  "We saw how it dragged your prison barge in," Gorrister said, and then, uttering a terrible, humorless chuckle that was more like a gasp: "Too bad they can't eat their own."

  "Who?" Sartoris asked.

  The man favored him with a wan expression that was less incredulity than outright disbelief. "What, did you actually think your inmate friends out there were the only ones aboard?"

  "Who else is there?"

  "Who. else?" This time the commander actually mustered a laugh. It sounded like a layer of dust being blown from a very old book, perhaps one that had been bound in human skin. "Oh, dear. You really don't have any idea what's going on, do you?"

  Sartoris felt a stirring of irritation he didn't bother to suppress from his voice. "Suppose you bring me up to speed."

  "It started ten weeks ago, when the first tanks began leaking."

  "What tanks?"

  Gorrister ignored him. "There were those conspiracy theorists among us who still insisted it wasn't an accident, that we were all part of some larger experiment, which I suppose is possible."

  "Hold on," Sartoris said, sitting up to face the man straight on, "start at the beginning."

  The commander paused, and Sartoris realized that the deputation of skeletons sitting on either side of him had leaned forward, listening intently, as if they'd never heard this story before, despite having ostensibly lived through it.

  "What can it matter now?" Gorrister said. "We left Meglumine hauling top-secret freight. Experimental military-grade ordnance for the Empire, all the usual caveats, on Lord Vader's own directive. Our destination was a testing base on Khonji Seven, outside the Brunet system. but we never got through the Mid Rim." He took a breath and let it out with great effort. "At first the breach seemed minor, and it appeared that our engineers were able to confine it. Some of our scientists were even able to study the effects it had on human physiology, the lungs and larynx in particular. We assumed that they had it contained." He paused and cleared his throat. "But that turned out not to be the case for long. The infection spread quickly through the entire Star Destroyer-soon no one was safe."

  "Wait a second," Sartoris said. "You're telling me there's ten thousand more of those nightmares staggering around out there?"

  "Oh my goodness, no. Some of us did manage to escape, obviously-or tried to, and a few showed signs of natural immunity. Using their blood, our medical officers were able to synthesize an anti-virus, as I'm guessing yours probably did, too.

  based on the fact that you're still here."

  Sartoris just grunted, not inclined to go into his own random immunity to the sickness. Gorrister didn't even seem to notice.

  "We sealed off part of the ship," he said, "and injected ourselves with the anti-virus. At first it seemed like there would be enough to go around." Another thin and ghastly attempt at a smile: "It didn't last as long as we'd hoped. There was more in the bio-lab, but of course we couldn't get back to retrieve it. That was when the plan began to change somewhat. Of course many of the crew were eaten before they could change over-torn to pieces and. well, consumed, I suppose is the word."

  Gorrister swallowed, seeming to find something particularly distasteful in this part of his narrative.

  "At first we tried to gather up the remains-we put them in a waste facility, chopped them up, thought it might be a way to keep them from changing, you know, and even that isn't always successful. But in the end we were outnumbered and there really wasn't anything to do but run." He flashed a cold, flat glance up at Sartoris. "Until they found out how to activate the tractor beam."

  "They can think?" Sartoris envisioned the screaming things staggering around outside the ship, pounding and firing at it almost randomly with blasters. "That's crazy."

  "Oh, it's madness," Gorrister agreed, blinking at him with the mildest of curiosity. "All I know is that they were waiting for us inside the hangar when we came back in. The first man out of the hatch got his head ripped off at the shoulders." He licked his lips. "After that we sealed ourselves back in, sent a distress signal, and settled in to wait."

  "How long have you been trapped here?"

  "Ten weeks."

  Sartoris felt his mouth drop open-he couldn't help it. "You mean you've been canned up here inside this ship for ten weeks?"

  "There were thirty of us originally. Now we're down to seven, including myself." The commander sighed, eliminating what sounded like the last of the air from his lungs, and sagged against the bulkhead behind him again. His filthy uniform was so big on his now emaciated body that it bulked up almost comically around the shoulders, like a child playing dress-up. "We keep trying to make comm contact but all frequencies are jammed. I believe that also might be a deliberate countermeasure on their part." When his eyes found Sartoris's again, they were colorless and dispassionate, the eyes of a man delivering a lecture that he'd prepared years earlier. "You asked earlier how I thought they could activate the tractor beam. They learn, you see. That's part of it."

  "Those things out there?" Sartoris asked. "But they're. animals."

  "In the beginning perhaps. But consider-the ones that changed onboard the Destroyer ten weeks ago don't even bother attacking this shuttle's reinforced durasteel armor with blasters anymore. They've already grasped the fact that it doesn't work. It's the new arrivals, the inmates and prison guards, who are out there shooting at us now. and if you listen, you'll see that they've already stopped, too." He snapped his fingers, a brittle pop. "That's how quickly their behavior changes."

  Sartoris realized he was right. The blasterfire outside the shuttle had stopped, just as Gorrister had predicted.

  "I think it has something to do with the sickness," the commander said, "the way it was initially designed. They form clusters, tribes. swarm. And they communicate with one another. I'm sure you've heard it."

  Sartoris thought of the screaming that he'd heard, the weird cyclic quality of it, back-and-forth call-and-response in the hangar.

  "And that way they are all able to adapt at the same time," Gorrister said, "as one, like a kind of systemwide upgrade, do you see?"

  Sartoris shook his head. "What are you talking about, designed? You mean somebody created all this on purpose?"

  Gorrister studied him in silence for a moment, with what might have been the tiniest of smirks.

  "Na¯ve, aren't you?" he asked. "I told you we were carrying top-secret weapons. How long have you served the Empire?"

  Sartoris didn't bother to provide an answer. He'd noticed something else that bothered him even more than that smirk on the man's face. Throughout the course of their conversation, his fellow soldiers had begun edging slowly closer to him, and they were licking their lips compulsively, over and over.

  Sartoris squirmed back a little farther. For the first time his gaze fell on the stack of uniforms folded neatly on the seat in the corner.

  "What happened to the rest of your men?" he asked.

  "You must understand." Gorrister's voice was soft now, no longer mocking; in fact it was nearly sympathetic. "We had ample water here inside the shuttle but precious little food, and it's been ten weeks. It was nothing more than a simple matter of survival. We were starving, you see."

  Sartoris frowned. The men were getting to their feet now. It suddenly occurred to him that they might have been sitting here saving
their strength until this moment.

  "Hold it." He stood up, backing away, and felt his shoulders hit the wall behind him. "We're not like them."

  "Of course not," Gorrister murmured, dismissing the idea. "We drew lots. To keep things fair. We gave each man a quick, humane death. At first we threw the remains out there…" He nodded above, at the emergency hatch."… to those things, as if that might somehow satisfy them. But it only made them come back. So we ate the remains, too. In the end we sucked the marrow from the bones. But none of my men felt any pain, I promise." One emaciated hand slipped into his uniform jacket and produced a small transdermal patch. "And neither will you."

  "What is that?"

  "Norbutal," Gorrister whispered. "A paralytic. You'll just go to sleep. And when we're rescued, the Emperor will recognize your sacrifice with the highest of honors."

  Sartoris started to say something else.

  He realized that the commander had told him there were six other men and he only saw four of them.

  Then he felt a pair of hands grabbing him from behind, pinning his arms behind his back.

  Chapter 36.

  Lab Rat

  Zahara wasn't sure how long she'd been running. Lactic acid cramped her thighs and calves, oxygen debt reaching the point where it cried out, no longer able to be ignored, and she'd lost track of where she was-the end of another protracted corridor somewhere deep in the Star Destroyer's main hangar level, but farther back. With no sense of direction and no destination, she guessed it was just a matter of time until something caught up with her.

  She stopped and leaned against the wall, temples throbbing, and whooped in a series of deep breaths. Her throat and lungs ached, and the root of her tongue had that sprained, dizzy feeling it got when she'd overtaxed herself. Counting her heartbeats, she made herself calm down, calm down, just calm down.

  She held her breath and listened for screams. Heard none.

  The corridor was absolutely silent.

  Up ahead, blocking the way, were what appeared to be stacks of crates. She started walking toward them, feeling marginally steadier now that she'd taken a rest, and stopped at the hatchway on her left, looking at the sign posted over it.

  BIO-LAB 242

  AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY

  Zahara glanced down at the security pad that someone had pried from the wall, dangling on stalks of variegated wires. With the strong sense that what she was about to do was not at all wise, she put her elbow to the hatch itself and forced it open.

  At first the lab was almost reassuringly familiar, a research area, a clinical space designed for the usual flights of emotionally detached observation and interpretation. It was a great gleaming dome, white-walled and blazing with overhead fluorescent lights, the walls honeycombed into dozens of empty, glass-enclosed cells.

  Each cell was equipped with its own research and observation workstation-not that any of them seemed to be actually working. The entire chamber smelled powerfully like antiseptic and chemicals, with an undertone of hot copper wiring. Giant ventilation fans stood in the walls, but they were all motionless, which probably explained the stillness of the stagnant air.

  Walking forward, Zahara noticed the dead computer terminals, broken doors, and abandoned keyboards, the individual keys scattered across the high-impact durasteel floor like loose teeth. She saw a protocol droid standing in the corner, a 3PO unit, apparently broken, one golden eye flickering spastically, fingers twitching. As she got closer, she heard a low, almost inaudible whine escaping from its vocabulator.

  Next to it, an overturned chair lay on top of a demolished rack of syringes and vials, and she noticed a human-sized bloodstain on the wall, arms upraised, like a spirit painted in red. The workstation in front of it appeared to be operational, however, the screen half filled with lines of text and a blinking cursor awaiting reply. It was the first functional indication she'd seen of possible communications.

  Tentatively, she bent forward and tapped a key.

  More data washed up instantly over the monitor, skimming past too fast for her to read. Then it stopped again, cursor ticking, and the wall in front of her clicked and peeled open to reveal a thick pane of glass beneath it.

  On the other side of die glass was another hive-cell.

  But this one wasn't empty.

  Inside it, two yellow human corpses dangled in front of her at face level, webbed to the ceiling by thick networks of wires, feeding tubes, and monitoring equipment, a pair of hideous puppets. They were both badly decayed, facial features rotted beyond any recognition, eye sockets empty, and Zahara wondered if she was looking at volunteers who had been abandoned here after whatever happened aboard the Destroyer. What would it have been like, she thought, being trapped in there while everyone on this side of the glass ran away?

  Something clicked in front of her and began to whir steadily-one of the big ventilation fans in the wall above the glass. Zahara braced herself for the blast of foul air from inside, then realized that she could feel her clothes and hair actually being sucked away from her skin.

  The fan was pumping air into the cell. and that made more sense. They'd have to deliver oxygen to the research subjects while they were still alive. Those chambers were probably airtight, and without the fans running, they'd suffocate in there, which was probably exactly what happened, she guessed, once the research staff had decided to abandon the lab.

  One of the corpses lifted its head.

  Zahara felt the room stretching around her, all sense of perspective seeming to elongate on gluey strings. On the other side of the glass the thing gaped up at her with its sagging, grinning face, moving the rotten stumps of its legs, swaying back and forth.

  The air that went in, she thought, it carried my smell in to them and woke them up-

  The other corpse had already awakened next to it. Its face twitched up and down as if sniffing her through whatever remained of its nose. Zahara started backing away as it lifted one tattered arm to grapple with the lines and wires that held it suspended from the ceiling. Sensing her standing there, both of the bodies started to do a jittering, swaying dance. One bumped into the other, and they both swung forward, arms outstretched. Back and forth, higher and higher. Some of the monitoring wires had already pulled off, but there was one particular tube leading straight from their chests that was still connected. The gray liquid oozing inside the tube reminded her of the substance that she'd tried to dig out of Kale Longo's abdomen. She followed the tube with her eyes and saw that it connected to a set of black tanks.

  They were collecting it, Zahara thought. That's what this is all about, their bodies actually produce that stuff and-

  Behind her, a footstep scraped inside the lab.

  She spun around and stared across the white space, the path between dead research workstations, and saw nothing. Her gaze fell to the broken rack of vials and syringes on the floor, only six or seven meters away, close enough that she could probably reach it before-

  Before whatever came in here has a chance to get its hands on you? Do you really think so, Zahara? At the rate those things move when they're hungry?

  A shape emerged between two of the workstations, a foot crunching something beneath it. Zahara glimpsed it, and then it was gone again. She looked back at the syringes-her only weapon. The muscles in her calves and thighs felt so tight she thought they'd snap, the tension rising upward to grip the bones of her spine.

  Wham!

  With a cry of fright, she whirled around and looked back. One of the research-subject corpses had managed to slam itself into the glass, leaving a red smear, a streaky imprint of its face and hands. She watched as it arced backward in its harness of monitoring equipment while the other corpse swung forward, smacking the glass hard with its face and hands, then shoving off again.

  Get to the syringes and get out of here — now.

  She bolted, crossing the distance in what felt like three big leaps. Grabbed a needle in both hands. Started to stand up.

&
nbsp; And felt something move in behind her.

  A rich smell of decay blew in over her shoulder, like wind from a grave.

  She spun around and it grabbed her.

  Zahara looked into its face.

  The sickness hadn't rotted the researcher away as badly as the corpses in the containment chamber. She could still see some of the features the way they'd looked pre-infection-the silvery gray hair, the aquiline nose, the deep, distinguished creases of the face. A man of science. It wore a blood-grimed lab coat, one sleeve torn away at the wrist. There was a soft click as it opened its mouth and lunged for her.

  She rammed the syringe into its eye, and jammed another into the side of its head, depressing both plungers at once.

  The thing went rigid, mouth wide open, and screamed. Its legs went out from under it, its entire body collapsing.

  As it fell writhing to the floor, Zahara moved for the exit. She was almost there when the screaming dwindled and she heard its voice behind her, a rasping gurgle.

  "Frrrng unn ufff.»

  It was trying to talk.

  Hating herself for it, she looked back. The thing in the lab coat was crawling blindly toward her now, both needles still protruding from its head. Somehow the injections had restored some fragile measure of its former humanity, enough for it to try to make contact.

  Its mouth moved up and down, making more garbled sounds she couldn't translate-pathetic attempts at speech. It raised one hand beseechingly. It was doing something, trying to tell her-

  "What happened here?" she asked. "What did you do?"

  The thing in the lab coat produced the same mucilaginous noises, more urgently. Its face worked strenuously, and it swung its arm toward the console behind her.

  "Thrggh uff usss.»

  "What?" she asked.

  It made the noises again, swung its hands with evangelical fervor, and fell over. It growled and beat its fists on the floor. Its fingers crawled and prodded, and she realized it was miming the act of writing.

  Gradually, with great effort, it reached up and pulled one of the syringes from its eye socket, jammed the spike against the durasteel, and started dragging it back and forth, etching out some crude type of ideograph. It made a high, desperate squealing sound as it did so, grinding the needle's dp harder into the reinforced plating.