The dead things were swarming in even more thickly now, crawling all over one another in an attempt to move forward. Some of them had already started trying to grapple their way up into the booth after him. Tulkh reached for the simulator controls, found one labeled SWING-ARM 17-155, and hit the switch.
The simulator responded instantly. Two massive pillars swung down from either side of the ceiling, slamming straight into the swarm of bodies, smashing them aside and sending them flying. Tulkh grunted, not entirely satisfied with the result. This wasn’t his favorite way to hunt, but the numbers were against him and he needed every advantage he could marshal in his defense. He activated another sequence, choosing one at random. Slots opened up along the ceiling, spitting loops of razor wire from both sides of the room, stretching out as the things staggered and stumbled and caught themselves, screaming.
Tulkh glanced back down at the controls. The monitor screen to his right was glowing bright green, outlining the entire suite of possibilities for him in a clean, ray-traced diagram, the cursor awaiting its next command. Tulkh chose one called PONJI STICK and tapped the EXECUTE key.
The right half of the floor whipped open and a spring-loaded row of gleaming hydraulic rods burst up from below, where—by all rights—they should have rammed the Sith student-things straight backward, or possibly impaled them through the feet.
But something else happened instead.
The things jumped back, en masse, just a split second before the rods had burst up. It was like watching a single prescient organism reacting to a perceived threat. They moved with unbelievable speed and agility, as if they’d known exactly what Tulkh was going to do, even before he’d known he was going to do it.
Tulkh gaped down in disbelief.
Are they using the Force? Or their version of it?
The question didn’t have time to percolate long in his mind. Now the things were swinging up the pendulum arms that Tulkh had released, dodging the obstacles from both directions—they knew he was up here, and were intent on finishing him. Even the ones that he’d knocked aside had already recovered, and they seemed to have done so with unprecedented speed. Tulkh’s frown deepened. For the first time in memory, he actually felt his confidence waver.
He took a step back, evaluating his options, and felt something strike his shoulder from behind. Pivoting, already prepared to rip apart whatever had snuck up behind him, he saw the bright metallic eyes fixating on him from the chromium casing of their processors. It recoiled with an electronic burble of surprise, and Tulkh realized that he was looking at Scabrous’s HK protocol droid.
“What are you doing up here?”
“Response: Excuse me, sir, I certainly didn’t mean to disturb you, I merely—”
“Shut up.”
“Acknowledgment.” The droid’s yellow photoreceptors swiveled with recognition. “Tulkh the Whiphid?” The droid’s vocabulator expressed a mixture of surprise and confusion. “It was my impression that Lord Scabrous already dismissed you quite some time ago. Did you have difficulty finding the exit?”
“You could say that, yeah.”
“Clarification: It’s just across the—”
The Whiphid let out a low growl, grabbed the droid’s arms, and pulled it to the viewport overlooking the simulator below. “Look,” he said, pointing: “You see what’s down there?”
The droid’s head pivoted toward the open space below, seething now with hordes of undead Sith students. They were all attempting to scale the support struts, swinging their arms up. The closest ones were near enough now that Tulkh could smell them.
“Response: Indeed sir,” the droid said dutifully, “but I hardly see what—”
“Your boss is the reason why all this went haywire in the first place.”
“Query: I fail to see why—”
“Here’s why.” Tulkh wasn’t bothering to look at the HK’s photoreceptors anymore. His attention was completely devoted to the components on its breastplate. “You’re an HK model.”
“Confirm: A Czerka Corp HK series, yes, sir, but—”
“You know what HK stands for?”
“Response: It’s an industry term, sir, but—”
“Hunter-killer.”
The droid made a scandalized chirp. “Correction: Respectfully, you’re mistaken, sir. I am a protocol droid. Proficient in millions of galactic languages and—”
“Czerka built you special to get around local laws banning assassin droids.” Tulkh was gritting his teeth now. “Those flip shields over your eyes—that’s a combat modification. When Scabrous brought you here, he put a restraining bolt on you, but if I do this—”
He yanked the bolt off. There was a brief, hissing sizzle as the HK’s processor muzzle shorted out. Tulkh felt his skin tighten, his fur standing on end. He cast a grim look at the droid. “Remember now?”
The HK didn’t bother to answer. Weapons slots opened on its forearms to reveal an augmented laser array bristling from both limbs. A second later the control booth came alive with blasterfire. The Sith-things recoiled, spun backward, pitched, and pivoted off their feet by what appeared to be a nonstop fusillade of hot plasma. Somewhere to the left, Tulkh ducked as the HK completed a full circle, laying down a line of fire so fast and dense that it seemed to create a single ballistic wave. He jerked his head back as a laser bolt ricocheted off the wall, then bounced past him in the opposite direction.
“Stand aside,” the droid said, having apparently abandoned its customary method of speech along with its former programming.
“What—”
Its left leg rotated outward to reveal a wider-barreled object extruded from the port. A massive jet of blue flame roared straight across the room, igniting several of the Sith-things, and they staggered, blazing, screaming as the flamethrower erupted a second time.
Through the sea of burning corpses, Tulkh could see a clear corridor to the exit at the back of the simulator. One of the Sith-things was slashing its way toward him, jaw sagging hideously, its face on fire. Tulkh yanked his spear from where it was still strapped against his back and rammed it as hard as he could into its wide-open mouth.
Jerking the spear back, the Whiphid glanced in the opposite direction.
“Where are you going?” the droid asked.
“Back to my ship.” Tulkh was already halfway across the floor. He turned and looked back at the droid. “You staying here?”
“Here? With them?” The HK didn’t hesitate. It followed the Whiphid down through the simulation chamber, out of the pain pipe, and into the snow.
35/The Anatomy Lesson
“IT’S COLD,” MAGGS SAID, SHIVERING AND LOOKING AROUND AS IF FOR VERIFICATION from the others. “Feels good though, doesn’t it? After all that?”
Kindra didn’t say anything. They had just stepped out of the tunnel, she and Maggs and Hartwig with Master Hracken silently bringing up the rear. Hartwig had taken Ra’at’s lightsaber, scrubbing the handle with the first handful of snow he could scoop up, but no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get the stain to go away.
“Are we gonna talk about what happened back there?” Maggs asked.
“What,” Kindra said. “You have something you need to say?”
They all turned around to look at Hartwig, standing several meters behind them, still inside the tunnel so that half his face remained in darkness.
“With Ra’at,” Maggs said. “He—”
“Ra’at got turned,” Hartwig said, emerging into the vague gray glow of the twilight air, breath pluming from his lips. It was the first time he’d spoken since they’d chopped their way through the barrier, and his voice sounded different, thick and strange. “He changed into one of them, and Master Hracken boxed him. And I got his lightsaber. End of story.”
“What about us?” Maggs asked.
“None of us was bitten, as far as I can tell.” Hartwig looked around as if waiting to see if the others would contradict him. “You okay?” Maggs nodded. “Kindra? You
have something you need to come clean about?”
She didn’t look around.
“Kindra?”
Silence.
“Hey.” Hartwig walked over, pushing past Maggs, and grabbed her shoulder, swinging her hard toward him. “I’m talking to y—”
Kindra snapped around on him, her eyes brittle pellets.
“I’m clean.”
“You sure?” Hartwig hadn’t lowered his hands. “What’s that on your neck?”
“Very funny.”
“You think I’m joking?” He waited while Kindra reached up and touched her throat, perhaps a centimeter lateral to the jugular. She winced at the open wound, drew back her hand, and looked at the scarlet stain on her index finger.
Standing apart from them, a little distance away, Master Hracken watched without saying anything.
“Just a cut,” she said. “A piece of the electrical fixture—”
“You don’t know that,” Hartwig said.
“You don’t think I’d remember being bitten?”
“I think”—he held her gaze—“that there was a lot of infected blood flying around. And if some of it splashed in there—”
“Then I’d already be screaming and ripping your guts out,” Kindra snapped, “which I’m not … no matter how much I’d like to. So if you’re done casting baseless aspersions—”
“You were ready to kill me back there over a lightsaber,” Hartwig said. “Seems to me that it’s in the group’s best interest if we took you out of the equation now.” He glanced at the Sith Master. “Right, Master Hracken?”
Hracken didn’t have a chance to reply before Kindra cut in again.
“Is this really what you want?” she asked Hartwig, blade ready. “We’ve sparred enough times in the training arena. You know how it’s going to go down.”
Hartwig didn’t answer, just stared at her, shoulders rising and falling with every breath, his face betraying no trace of emotion. The wind flung another thin gust of snow between them, and Kindra felt the cut beginning to ache on her throat.
“Make a move,” she said.
“You first.”
“Wait,” Maggs said. “Nobody knows what the incubation period for this thing is, right?”
Hartwig didn’t take his eyes off Kindra. “Seemed pretty fast with Ra’at.”
“Yeah, but Ra’at got tagged firsthand. Maybe accidental exposure takes longer.” Kindra could hear Maggs’s voice growing more confident as he spoke, warming to his own argument. “Point is, we don’t know. So before somebody does something stupid, how about we all take a step back, strip down, and make sure nobody’s got any open cuts that could have gotten contaminated blood in them.” He looked back at Combat Master Hracken, who still had not spoken. “What do you think?”
Hracken nodded. “Yes,” he said.
“Strip down?” Kindra’s expression had already gone from bellicose to incredulous. “You’re asking me to take my clothes off?”
“It’s the only way to be sure.” He glanced at Hartwig. “You agree to that?”
“Why not?” Hartwig shrugged. “I’ve got nothing to hide.” He yanked off his tunic and the uniform shirt beneath it, then shoved his pants down to his ankles. In front of him, Kindra had already slipped out of her coat, keeping her bare arms crossed over her chest, gazing back defiantly at the others.
“That’s as far as I’m going.”
Hartwig rolled his eyes and turned back to Maggs, who stood shivering in his shorts and boots, clutching a wad of balled-up clothes against him like a small child that had gone to sleep. Behind him, bare-chested, stood Master Hracken. The Combat Master had also stripped to the waist, without being asked, revealing a broad, well-muscled physique hardened by scar tissue, strange tattoos, and decades of intense physical conditioning. His head was bowed, as if he was inspecting something in the snow.
“Looks like we’re all clean,” Hartwig said. “So I guess that means we—”
Master Hracken raised his head. The crooked slash of his grin on his face seemed to cut almost diagonally across the entire width of his head. Blood had already started streaming down on either side of his mouth where he’d gnawed his own lips open.
There was nothing human in his eyes.
With a shapeless noise that was half shout, half gasp, Hartwig fumbled for his lightsaber and dropped it in the snow. He bent down, scrambling to pick it up, but succeeded only in pushing it deeper.
In less than a second Hracken was on him. He grabbed Hartwig’s head and buried his teeth in the student’s throat, ripping out a mouthful of tissue and cartilage. Kindra watched wild, looping parabolas of blood spurting high in the air around him like a miniature fountain that had been turned on directly beneath Hartwig’s chin.
Hartwig staggered backward, hands up, blinking at the Sith Master as he whipped around to face him. His nerves were gone. Hracken’s hands flew up, preparing to fire off a burst of Force lightning, when its head toppled sideways off its shoulders and rolled, still spurting, into the dark snowdrifts.
Hracken’s decapitated body collapsed, seizing and twitching, and Maggs saw Kindra standing behind it. She gripped the lightsaber in both hands with absolute steadiness.
“Thanks,” Maggs breathed.
“Forget it.” She walked over to Hracken’s still-snarling head and chopped it straight down the middle. “That one’s all yours.”
Maggs looked back around at Hartwig’s corpse, its ripped-open throat spilled out sloppily across the snow like a losing hand of pazaak. The thing was already starting to come back. It was squirming in place, shifting its arms and legs, preparing to sit up again. Listless bubbling and gurgling sounds issued from the hole in its neck.
“You going to take care of that?” Kindra asked.
Maggs took a breath and swung his own lightsaber down on Hartwig’s corpse, carving its torso open from throat to groin. Gazing down at him, Kindra realized she could see the black, still-pulsing gristle of the thing’s dead heart laboring stupidly onward, grasping for one more beat. What she felt more than anything at that moment was revulsion at the human machine’s mindless commitment to endure and endure and endure.
“Is it down?” she asked.
Maggs didn’t answer.
“Is it down?”
Maggs went to work with the lightsaber again, and this time it took the Hartwig-thing’s head off at the shoulders. The head dangled for a moment on one remaining ribbon of flesh, then dropped away. A few listless dribbles of boiled blood leaked like tears from the sheared-off arteries, black as used oil, before they cauterized completely.
“Now it’s down,” he said.
Kindra nodded but kept her own lightsaber drawn.
“What now?” Maggs asked.
“I’m leaving,” she said. “You’re staying here.”
Maggs blinked. “What?”
Kindra’s lightsaber slashed out from the back, catching him across the hamstrings, shearing through tendons just above the ankle. Maggs shrieked and slipped, arms pinwheeling, all balance gone. He was screaming at her, asking her why she did it, what did she think she was doing, but by that time Kindra had already turned and started running—not walking, but running—as fast as she could in the opposite direction.
“Wait!” Maggs sat up and tried to stand, but his lower legs refused the job, the severed Achilles tendons dumping him forward again into the snow.
When he lifted his head up, he heard the noises coming up from behind him.
No, Maggs thought, no, this was all a mistake, just a big mistake—
He looked back, and they fell on him.
36/Drear
AFTER TWENTY MINUTES OF WANDERING THROUGH THE LIBRARY, ZO HAD TO ADMIT that she was utterly lost.
At first, the voice of the orchid had drawn her onward as she’d entered the high doorway and followed the main concourse through room after room, some with ceilings so high that she couldn’t see them, others so cramped that she had to bend down just to pass
through. Irregularity was the only design here, symmetry fractured by age and weather. With every step, the subterranean air had grown steadily colder, and Zo was acutely aware of traveling not just forward but downward, as though the library’s depths sank without boundary into the very core of the planet. She could feel the air in her lungs, and taste the oxydized flavor of metal shavings. The only remaining light came from the torches and lamps mounted high overhead; the only sound was the crunch of her footsteps. Even at these depths, snow had found its way inevitably through the cracks and broken places, stirring wraith-like and restless in the low whine of the wind. When she looked back, she saw her footprints leading down the hallway, one lonely set of tracks gleaming in the torchlight.
Who lit these torches, she wondered, and who kept them burning?
Tulkh had refused to follow her here, leaving her to go alone. When she’d confronted him about it and said, Let me get this straight, you’ll walk into a Sith Lord’s tower, but you won’t go into a library, he’d merely nodded and planted his feet, telling her that he knew a trap when he saw one. Zo had protested—she knew the sound of the orchid’s voice calling to her—but now she was beginning to wonder if he was right to stay away.
The orchid would never deliberately put you in danger. You know that.
Yes, she did. And yet…
Up ahead, a vast cathedral-ceilinged room spread open, flickering in the light of a few sparsely placed torches. Faintly, she thought she smelled smoke, and burning flimsiplast. She looked right and left, allowing her attention to be drawn upward and upward farther, straining to encompass the shelves and their apparently endless holdings. Another gust of wind whipped through the open space, stirring the old, dry snow that lay here and there in random accumulations along the tiled floor.
Zo paused. She hadn’t heard the voice of the orchid in several minutes. Not for the first time, she wondered if she could find her way back if she had to. She supposed that she might be able to follow her own tracks back out, if the draft from the cracks in the walls hadn’t already smoothed them away. There were plenty of hiding places here if she ran into trouble—but what if the trouble was waiting for her in one of them?
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