by James Luceno
Even the inmates—her regulars, the ones she saw on a daily basis—had noticed a change in the way she’d started spending extra time training Waste—preparing the 2-1B not as her assistant anymore, but as her replacement. And although there hadn’t been any official response from the warden, she could only assume that he’d received her resignation.
After all, she’d walked into his office and slammed it down on his desk.
There was no way she could keep working here.
Not after what happened with Von Longo.
Take a girl from a wealthy family of Corellian financiers and tell her she’ll never have a care in the world. Ship her off to the best schools, tell her there’s a spot waiting for her in the InterGalactic Banking Clan, all she has to do is not mess up. Keep her nose clean, uphold the highest standards of politics, culture, and good manners, and ignore the fact that compared with what she’s used to, 99 percent of the galaxy is still hungry, sick, and uneducated. Embrace the Empire with its quaint lack of diplomatic subtlety and strive to overlook the increasingly uncomfortable squeeze of Lord Vader’s ever-tightening fist.
Flash to fifteen years later. The girl, now a woman, decides to go to Rhinnal to study, of all things, medicine—that dirtiest of sciences, better left to droids, full of blood and pus and contagion, hardly what her parents had hoped for. But the decision is made to indulge her, based on the hope that this is just an idealistic whim and soon enough little Zahara will be back to take her rightful position at the family table. After all, she’s young, she has plenty of time.
Except it doesn’t play out that way. Two years into Rhinnal, Zahara meets a surgeon twice her age, a craggy veteran of hundreds of humanitarian missions beyond the Core Worlds, who opens her eyes to the true need of the galaxy around her. The mismatched love affair runs its course predictably enough but even after that part of it winds down, Zahara can’t forget the picture he’s painted for her, a mural of staggering need, beings whose desperation is utterly beyond her ken. He reminds her that the poor are out there in their countless millions, human and nonhuman alike, young ones dying of malnutrition and sickness, while the galaxy’s upper echelons bask in self-induced oblivion. You can either live with something like that, the surgeon tells her, on what turns out to be one of their last nights together, or you can’t.
And it turns out she can’t. After being universally rejected by various aid groups because of her lack of experience, Zahara makes the decision to go to work for the Empire, which her family reluctantly accepts—at least it’s a known entity—but in a capacity that leaves her parents speechless, stupefied, and outraged. No daughter of theirs is going to work on an Imperial prison barge. The indignity of it is beyond all scale.
Yet here I am, Zahara thought now, queen of her own miniature kingdom, after all, duchess of the empty bunks, and our lady of the perpetual stomachache. Involuntary lust-object of a hundred emotionally frustrated prison guards and deprived stormtroopers. Dispenser of medicine, charged with keeping the inmates of the Imperial Prison Barge Purge alive long enough to be permanently detained on some remote prison moon.
The irony, of course, was that in a standard week’s time, or whenever they finally arrived at their destination, she would be going back to her father and mother—if not exactly hat-in-hand, then close enough. Her mother would sniff and scowl, her brother would jeer, but her father would throw his arms around his little girl and after the acceptable amount of time had passed, her penance would be complete, and she would be welcomed back into the fold. And her time aboard the barge would become what they’d thought it would be all along, an adventure in her youth, a charming dinner anecdote for diplomats. You’ll never believe how our little girl decided to spend her youth …
Looking through the medbay again, Zahara felt a thin tremor of uncertainty steal over her and willed it away. But like most aspects of her personality, it didn’t go without a fight.
Instead, unbidden, the image of Von Longo floated back up into her memory, the man’s bloody face trying to talk to her through the ventilator, clutching her hand in both of his, asking to see his boys one last time. Begging her to bring them to him so that he could speak to them in private. Moments later, the cloud of heavy menace emerged behind her back and she turned to see Jareth Sartoris, close enough that she could actually smell his skin, speaking through thin lips that hardly seemed to move.
Paying your respects, Doctor?
Longo had died later that day, and Zahara Cody decided that she had flown her last voyage with the Purge and the Empire. The next step would be contacting her parents and letting them know she was coming home. Luxurious clothing and fine crystal had never been her first choice, but at least she’d be able to sleep at night. And in the evenings she would sit down to dinner with the wealthy and proud and forget about what had happened with Von Longo and Jareth Sartoris.
Is this really what you want?
Zahara shook it off. In any case, she’d always assumed she’d have lots of time to think about it before the barge got where it was going.
Plenty of time to make up her mind.
Except now the engines had stopped—had been stopped for over an hour.
From across the infirmary, another voice, one of the other inmates, cried out, “Hey, Doc—are we there yet?”
This time, Zahara didn’t answer.
5/Word
Jareth Sartoris made his way down the narrow gangway outside the guards’ quarters, massaging his temples as he walked. He had a headache, nothing new there, but this one was something special, a vise grip across his temporal lobes that made him feel like he’d been gassed with some kind of low-grade neurotoxin in his sleep. The greasy smear of breakfast down the back of his throat hadn’t helped.
He’d been awake even before the warden’s summons came through. After working third shift last night, he’d toppled into his bunk early this morning and lapsed into restless unconsciousness, but two hours later the abrupt silence had awakened him, the feeling of his tightly coiled world spinning off its axis. They were seven standard days out. So why had the engines fallen silent? Sartoris had gotten dressed, grabbed some lukewarm caf and a reheated bantha patty from the mess, and headed down the hall toward the warden’s office, hoping to build up enough mindless momentum to keep him going as far as he needed.
To his right the turbolift doors opened. Three other guards—Vesek, Austin, and some pompadoured newbie—came out, falling into step behind him. They had to walk single-file to fit comfortably down the hall. Sartoris didn’t break stride or even glance back at them.
“Me and the guys, Cap,” Austin’s voice piped up, after a respectful pause, “we were, you know, wondering if you could shed a little light on what’s going on.”
Sartoris shook his head, still not looking back. “What’s that?”
“I heard we blew out both thrusters completely,” Vesek put in. “Word is we’re just sitting here somewhere outside the Unknown Regions, waiting for a tow.”
Austin sniggered. “Barge full of stranded convicts, I’m sure we’re top priority for the Empire.”
“Stang,” Vesek said. “Maybe they’ll just decide to leave us drifting out here, right?”
“Ask the rook.” Austin poked the pompadoured guard walking in front of him. “Hey, Armitage, you think they’ll rescue us?” He sniggered, not waiting for the kid to respond. “He’d probably like it. Suits his artistic temperament, right, Armitage?”
The newbie just ignored him and kept walking.
“How long did you spend on your hair this morning, rook? You hoping Dr. Cody’s taken an interest?”
“All right.” Sartoris snapped a glance up at them. “Belay that noise, understand?”
Nobody spoke the rest of the way to the warden’s office.
Kloth’s office had been tricked out to look larger than it actually was—light colors, holomurals, and a colossal rectilinear viewscreen facing out the star-strewn expanse—but Sartoris had always found the ef
fect paradoxically oppressive. Some time ago, he’d noticed a blown voxel in the corner of the desert landscape above Kloth’s desk, a missed stitch in the digital fabric. Ever since then, something about the secondhand technology seemed to be pushing in on him, and now his eyes always felt as if they were being tricked, lulled into a false sense of openness.
“First the bad news,” Kloth said. He was standing in his usual position, hands clasped behind his back, looking out the viewscreen. “Our thrusters are seriously damaged—probably beyond repair. And as I’m sure you know, we’re still seven standard days out from our destination.”
One of the other guards, the rookie probably, let out a nearly inaudible groan. Sartoris only heard it because he was standing next to him.
“However,” the warden continued. “There is a positive side.”
Kloth turned slowly to face them. Upon first glance, his face was the usual blunt bureaucratic hatchet, slightly curved and angular upper lip, gray-rimmed eyes, and bluish silver bags of freshly shaven cheeks. Only after spending a certain amount of time with the man did you come to know the soft thing residing within that calculated outer shell, a spineless, gelatinous creature that exuded nothing so much as the tremulous anxiety of being drawn out and exposed.
“It seems the navicomputer has identified an Imperial vessel,” Kloth said, “a Star Destroyer actually, within this same system. While our attempts to make contact have met with no reply, we do have enough power to make our approach.”
He paused here, apparently in anticipation of applause or at least a round of relieved sighs, but Sartoris and the others just looked at him.
“A Destroyer?” Austin asked. “And they’re not responding to our call?”
Kloth didn’t answer for a moment. He touched his chin, fingering it thoughtfully, a pompous and disaffected gesture Sartoris had seen a thousand times and had come to loathe in his own special way. “There’s more to it than that,” he said. “According to our bioscans, there’s only a handful of life-forms on board.”
“How many’s a handful?” Vesek wanted to know.
“Ten, perhaps twelve.”
“Ten or twelve?” Vesek shook his head. “Sounds like a scanner issue. Destroyers can carry a crew of ten thousand or more.”
“Thank you,” Kloth said drily. “I’m well aware of the standard Imperial specs.”
“Sorry, sir. It’s just, either our equipment is undergoing some serious malfunction, or …”
“Or there’s something else going on up there.” It was the first time Sartoris had spoken in the office, and he was surprised at the hoarseness in his voice. “Something that we don’t want any part of.”
The others all turned to look at him. For what felt like a long time after that, no one spoke. Then the warden cleared his throat. “What are you saying, Captain?”
“There’s no reason the Empire would just abandon an entire Star Destroyer out here in the middle of nowhere without a good reason.”
“He’s right,” Austin said. “Maybe—”
“Internal atmosphere diagnostics show no sign of any known toxin or contamination,” Kloth said. “Of course it’s always possible that our instruments are misreading how many life-forms are on board. We screen for numerous variables, electrical brain activity, pulse, motion, any number of those things could skew the reading. In any case …” He smiled—a wholly unconvincing dramatization that ought to have involved invisible wires and hooks on either side of his mouth. “The most critical factor is that we may be able to salvage equipment for our thrusters and get back on course before we’re completely behind schedule. To that end, I’ll be sending a scouting party up—Captain Sartoris, along with ICOs Austin, Vesek, and Armitage and the mechanical engineers, to see what they can salvage. We anticipate docking within the hour. Questions?”
There were none, and Kloth dismissed them in the usual fashion, by turning his back and letting them find their own way out. Sartoris was about to follow them when the warden’s voice stopped him.
“Captain?”
Stopping in the doorway, Sartoris drew a breath and felt the ache in his head become a deeper, more impacted pounding, like a gargantuan infected tooth somewhere in his frontal sinus. The door closed behind him, and it was just the two of them in what felt like an increasingly shrunken space.
“Am I making a mistake, sending you up with these men?”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Sir.” Kloth’s smile rematerialized, a wisp of its former self. “Now, that’s a word I haven’t heard from you in a long time, Captain.”
“We haven’t seen each other much lately.”
“I’m aware that this voyage has been particularly … challenging for you personally,” Kloth said, and Sartoris found himself hoping fervently that the warden wouldn’t start stroking his chin again. If he did, Sartoris wasn’t sure he could rein in the urge to punch him straight in his pompous and disaffected face. “After what happened two weeks ago, in many ways I expected your resignation right alongside Dr. Cody’s.”
“Why?”
“She saw you kill an inmate in cold blood.”
“It was her word against mine.”
“Your antiquated interrogation techniques aren’t appropriate anymore, Captain. You’re costing the Empire more information than you’re retrieving.”
“All due respect, sir, Longo was a nobody, a grifter—”
“We’ll never know now, will we?”
Sartoris felt his fists clenching at his sides until his nails burrowed into his palms, delivering stinging pain deep into the skin. “You want me off your boat, Warden? You just say the word.”
“On the contrary. You may consider this mission an opportunity to redeem yourself. If not in my eyes, then certainly in the eyes of the Empire to which we both owe so very much. Is that understood?”
“Yes, sir.”
Kloth turned and scrutinized him as if for any sign of sarcasm or mockery. In his decades of service, Jareth Sartoris had been to the very edges of the galaxy, living under conditions he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy. He’d had to sleep in places and commit unspeakable deeds that he would’ve given entire body organs to forget. That simple yes, sir didn’t taste any worse than any of the rest of it.
“So we’re clear, then?” Kloth asked.
“Crystal,” Sartoris replied, and when Kloth turned to show him his back, it wasn’t a moment too soon. The warden’s office was bigger than any other on the barge but it was still too small for Sartoris, and as the cooler air of the outer corridor hit him he realized he’d sweated through the armpits of his uniform completely.
6/Dead Boys
“You keep looking out there,” Kale said, “sooner or later you’re going to see something you won’t like.”
“I already have.” Trig was stationed in his usual spot in the detention cell, gazing through the bars. Across the hall, directly opposite them, the two Rodian inmates who’d been there ever since he and Kale and their father had been brought aboard stood glowering back at him. Sometimes they muttered to each other in a language Trig didn’t recognize, gesturing at the brothers and making noises that sounded like laughter.
Now, though, they just stared at him.
At least two hours had passed since the Purge had gone into total lockdown. Trig wasn’t sure when all this had happened. It was one of the first things the Empire took from you when they took your freedom: the sense of passing time. It was information you didn’t deserve. As a result, Trig relied on his body to tell him when it was time to eat, sleep, and exercise.
Now it was telling him to be afraid.
The noise from the rest of the hall was louder than he expected. Standing here next to the bars, Trig could make out individual voices, prisoners bellowing in Basic and a thousand other languages, demanding to know why the barge had stopped and how much longer it was going to be until they got going again. The deviation from routine had left them restless and giddy. Someone was screaming for a d
rink of water, someone else wanted food—another voice shouted and spluttered with hysterical, gibbering laughter. There was a sonorous, deep-chested growl, probably a Wookiee, Trig thought, though for the most part the ones he’d seen on board kept to themselves unless threatened. Someone else kept hammering something metallic against the wall of their cell, a steady, methodical wham-wham-wham. You could go crazy listening to something like that, Trig thought; you could go right out of your mind.
“All right, that’s enough!” a guard’s voice broke in. “The next maggot that makes so much as a peep goes straight down to the hole!”
Silence for a moment, yawning … and then an anxious titter. It brought another, followed by a wild yodeling shriek, and the entire detention level erupted in an avalanche of chatter, louder than ever. Trig put his hands to his ears and turned back to the corridor. Then he jerked backward in surprise.
“Wembly,” he said. “You startled me.”
“Two dead boys,” ICO Wembly said, with real regret. “And I liked you guys, too. Decent fellas. Not that it counts for much aboard this rotten bucket of garbage, but …” The guard sighed. He was a fat man in his late fifties, with a loosely knit face, veins on his nose, and lines cut deeply beneath his watery eyes—eyes made for crying, a mouth made for laughter, shoulders made for shrugging, Wembly was a walking miracle of compulsive self-expression. “I sure am gonna miss you, tell you true.”
“What are you talking about?” Kale asked.
There was a click, and a synthesized voice buzzed from somewhere behind Wembly’s head. “You haven’t heard? Aur Myss just put a ten-thousand-credit bounty on your heads.”
