by James Luceno
“Where are they?” Zahara asked. “The six?”
Tisa’s holoscreen brightened to extend a transparent, three-dimensional diagram of the barge. It looked much cleaner in miniature, etched out with fine, straight lines, a drafter’s dream of perfect geometry. The pilot station occupied the uppermost level. On one end of it, rising like a periscope, stood the retractable docking shaft that still connected them to the Destroyer. On the other end of the pilot station, a wide descending gangway led downward to the conjoining administration level, flanked on port and starboard sides by the barge’s escape pods. The mess hall, infirmary, and guards’ quarters occupied the far end of that same level, and below that, the six individual strata that constituted Gen Pop. Any farther down, Zahara knew, and you’d find yourself amid a series of beveled hatches giving way to numberless sublevels, including the bottommost holding cells.
In all she counted the six tiny blips of red light distributed throughout it.
“Current life-form census,” Tisa was saying, “indicates one active reading in the pilot station, one on the administration level, two in General Population, Detention Level One, and two in solitary confinement.”
Solitary. She hadn’t even thought about that until now. Reserved for the worst and most dangerous inmates on the barge, a haven for maniacs and extreme flight risks, it was the one place where the sickness might not have had an opportunity to spread. The question was whether she should risk going down there alone. Of course there were plenty of weapons lying around, but she didn’t relish the idea of letting two of Warden Kloth’s worst inmates free only to blast them into oblivion when they attacked her.
Still, what choice did she have?
“Can you patch me through to the infirmary?”
“Acknowledged,” Tisa said, and the monitor above the hologram brightened to show the medbay. At one corner of the screen Zahara saw Waste walking from bed to bed, removing monitors from the last of the dead, gathering up old IV lines and ventilator tubing. He was talking to himself in a voice too low to hear, perhaps only reviewing the diagnostic data, but seeing him like this made her feel suddenly, inexplicably sad.
“Waste.”
The 2-1B stopped and looked up from the screen. “Oh, hello, Dr. Cody. Was the bioscan a success?”
She wasn’t sure how to answer that one. “I’m going down to solitary. Can you meet me down there?”
“Yes, of course.” He paused. “Dr. Cody?”
“Yes?”
“How many remaining life-forms are there?”
“Six.”
“Six,” the droid repeated tonelessly. “Oh. I see.”
For a moment he glanced back at the infirmary full of bodies, all the patients who had died on their watch, despite all their efforts, and then up to the screen again. “Well. I suppose I’ll meet you down there, then.”
“See you there,” she said, and signed off.
18/Solitary
Zahara left the pilot station and took the turbolift straight down to the barge’s lowest inhabited level. She almost never descended this deep into the barge, had maybe been down twice since she’d started here, to treat inmates who were too sick or dangerous to come up to the infirmary. The only thing that lay beneath it was the mechanical and maintenance sublevel, the cramped domain of eyeless maintenance droids that never saw the light of day.
The lift doors opened to release her into a bare hallway with exposed wires dangling from the overhead girders. Zahara squinted, trying to make out the details. Apparently the main power circuitry didn’t work so well down here. Somewhere above her a steam vent hissed out a steady current of moist, rancid-smelling air like the stale breath of a terminal patient. She didn’t see any sign of the 2-1B anywhere and wondered whether she should go any farther without it. It didn’t really matter, if there were no other survivors except—
“Oh!” she said aloud, startled out of her thoughts, falling forward and catching herself on the damp corridor wall, where her palm slipped, almost landing her flat on her face.
She’d tripped on the bodies of the guards in front of her. She counted five of them, sprawled out in a harrowing tableau. They were all wearing isolation suits and masks except for one, a younger guard whom Zahara recognized from a month or so earlier, when he’d come to the infirmary complaining of some minor skin irritation. She’d liked him well enough, and had fallen easily into conversation. She remembered him talking about his wife and children back on his homeworld of Chandrila.
Looking down at his body, Zahara saw a sheet of flimsiplast curled in his hand. She knelt down to pick it up and started reading.
Kai:
I know I told you and the kids I would be home after this run. But that is not going to happen. I am sorry to say that something has gone wrong on the barge. Everybody is getting sick and nobody knows why. Almost everybody has died so far. At first I thought I was going to be okay but now it looks like I have it, too.
I am sorry, Kai. I know this is going to be hard on the boys. Will you please tell them their daddy loves them? I am so sorry this is how things turned out, but tell them I served to the best of my abilities and I was not a coward and never scared.
And I love you with all my heart.
At the bottom the guard had attempted to write his name but the letters had come out so crooked and helpless, probably from his trembling hand, that the signature was little more than a scribble.
Zahara folded the note and slipped it into the breast pocket of her uniform next to the vial of anti-virus. She slipped the keycard from the guard’s uniform and turned toward the sign marked SOLITARY. Then she stopped. Where was Waste? She’d given the 2-1B ample time to get down here, and usually he was so prompt—
Something happened to him.
It was that voice again, the one inside her head, the one that was never wrong. She wondered if she should go, if she even should have come down here to begin with.
You came this far.
With real reluctance she bent down and picked up one of the blasters from a dead guard’s hands. It was cold and felt heavier than she remembered. Zahara had received the requisite weapons training before signing on and was able to locate the safety mechanism and switch the blaster over to stun.
There were three separate cells.
Each had a solid metal door, dull gray and coffin-sized, with a control pad and a slot for the keycard mounted up and to the right.
Zahara stepped up to the first door. She realized she’d stopped breathing. Her body felt weightless, as if her legs had simply vanished beneath her. Faintly she could smell the hot coppery scent of her own fear coming off her body, an unpleasant, unnecessary reminder of how little she really wanted to be doing any of this.
You don’t have to.
Yes, I do, she thought, and brought the keycard to the slot. Her hand was shaking, and it took a moment to line it up properly and push it in.
The door began to slide open.
She jerked the blaster up, pointing it into the semidarkness. Light from the outside cast her silhouette into the cell like an outline cut crisply from black fabric with very sharp scissors. Squinting in, she could make out an empty bench, a table—but the silent two-by-two cube was otherwise absolutely empty.
There was no one here.
She stepped back and turned to the second cell, slotted the card, and—
The noise from inside the cell sounded like a snarl of surprise and rage. Zahara lurched backward, the blaster suddenly loose and clumsy in her hand, somehow unable to find the trigger as the cell’s occupant charged toward her. The thing was huge, big enough that it had to duck and twist its shoulders to fit through the cell doorway, with sharp white teeth and eyes that shot back splintered gleams of intelligence.
Stumbling backward, Zahara tried to say Hold it, but the words got clogged up in her throat. It was like trying to cry out in a dream, struggling to push words through strengthless, suffocated lungs.
The thing stopped directly in
front of her and lifted its shaggy head, perhaps seeing the blaster. It was a Wookiee, she realized, and at the same time she was aware of a pounding noise from the last remaining cell, a muffled shouting on the other side of the wall.
“Hold it,” she said again, more clearly this time. She aimed the blaster upward. “Don’t move.”
The Wookiee moaned. Zahara raised the keycard and wondered how she was supposed to hold both convicts at bay with one blaster. But it was too late now.
The last cell door rattled open to reveal the figure standing immediately inside. Zahara flicked her eyes back at the Wookiee, but he hadn’t moved from his spot. Glancing back at the other convict, she realized she was looking at a dark-haired man probably in his late twenties, dressed in an ill-fitting prison uniform. He was staring at her with dark and questioning eyes.
“What’s going on down here?”
“I’m Dr. Cody,” she said, “chief medical officer. There’s been—”
“So you didn’t bring us dinner?”
“What? No.” She’d expected hostility, confusion, or disdain, but the inmate’s cavalier attitude already had her flustered. “I’m afraid there’s been an incident.” She raised the blaster, and the Wookiee threw back its head and let out a restless, deep-chested bray that seemed to shake the air around her.
“Okay, okay,” the man said, “put the blaster down, huh? You’re making Chewie nervous.”
“Chewie?”
“Chewbacca, my co-pilot,” the dark-haired man said, coming forward so she could see his face more clearly, the half smile quirked across his face. “I’m Han Solo.”
19/Pod
By the time they found the escape pod, Trig was sure they were being followed.
He could hear breathing noises behind them, the occasional thumping footstep of something tracking them gracelessly through the central hallway of the admin wing, no longer bothering with stealth. Sometimes it made little scratching noises. Other times he could only hear it breathing.
He didn’t even need to say anything about it to Kale. Kale knew it, too. Rather than bringing him comfort, the unspoken awareness between them had the paradoxical effect of accelerating the near panic building up in Trig’s nervous system; it was as if he were dealing not only with his own apprehension, but Kale’s as well.
Finally they saw the escape pod, just up ahead on the outer wall.
“There it is.” Kale didn’t bother hiding the relief in his voice as he lifted the hatch of the pod. “Go ahead, get in there.”
Trig climbed in. “Not much room.”
“Enough for us.” Kale got in behind him and looked at the array of controls. “Now we just have to figure out how to get out of here.”
“Can you work it?”
“Sure.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing, do you?”
“Will you give me a second to think?” Kale made a fist and bit his knuckle, gazing at the instrumentation array. “I thought these things were automated, but—”
A voice behind them said: “What have we here?”
It was Sartoris.
He was standing there with blasters in both hands, looking just as unhappy to see them as Trig felt staring back at him. Intuitively, just from his posture, Trig understood that there was something between them and the man, something Sartoris knew about them or their father, although Trig didn’t know what it was. But he felt it nonetheless, some deeply personal schism of unease, emerging across the guard’s face and then vanishing again almost as quickly, like an exhaled breath across a pane of glass.
“Get out,” Sartoris said flatly.
Kale frowned, shook his head. “What?”
“You heard me. Get moving.” Sartoris twitched the barrel of one blaster rifle at Trig. “You, too.”
“There’s plenty of room for all three of us.”
“Sure.” Sartoris grinned without a trace of humor; it did nothing to improve the surliness of his expression. “And I’m sure we’d be very cozy together. But that’s not the plan. Now get out of here.” He was still aiming the blasters at them. “What are you waiting for?”
“You’re just going to let us die here?” Kale asked.
“Boy, you can go running naked through the mess hall for all I care. The only reason I haven’t already shot you is I’d have to drag your carcasses out of the escape pod. So why don’t you save me the trouble?”
“You don’t understand,” Trig said. “There’s something aboard the barge and it’s still alive. It’s been following us. If you leave us here—”
“Sonny, I am sick unto death of hearing you talk.” Sartoris pointed the blaster at Trig’s face, the hole in its barrel looming huge, black, and endless, and Trig felt his whole body just disappear. Faintly, from what felt like light-years away, he could feel his big brother’s hand on his shoulder, tugging him back.
“Come on,” Kale’s voice said.
Still weightless, Trig allowed himself to be pulled backward, the rest of the way out of the pod. As he stumbled he saw Sartoris taking a flat black object from his pocket and slotting it into the pod’s navigation system, the two of them already forgotten, a problem that no longer concerned him.
The hatch sealed shut with a barely audible whoosh. It was almost anticlimactic. There was a muffled thunk as the bolts blew and the pod was gone, ejected, leaving Trig and Kale standing there looking at the empty place where it used to be.
Kale cleared his throat. After a long pause, he seemed to remember that Trig was standing next to him.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”
Trig looked up at him. He felt not only weightless now but transparent, barely there. It was as if somebody had hooked a vacuum to his soul and sucked all the hope out of it.
“Come on,” Kale said. “I’ve got an idea.”
20/Lifeday
It took Zahara less than a minute to realize that Han Solo, whoever he was, was one of the most unusual inmates she’d ever encountered. The realization struck her most forcefully when she tried to explain to him what had happened aboard the barge, and how critically he and the Wookiee needed her assistance if they were going to stay alive.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Han said, waving an impatient hand in her face. “You’re saying everybody on this flying trash can is dead except for us?” He looked at the Wookiee standing next to him as if to confirm what his ears were telling him. “Are you buying any of this?”
The Wookiee gave a plaintive, honking growl. Zahara didn’t know much Shyriiwook, but most of what she’d picked up had to do with vocal inflection, and Chewbacca’s was incredulity, pure and simple.
“Yeah,” Han said, “me, either.” He looked back at Zahara. “That the best you can do, Doc? Or you got another tale you want to try out?”
“You’ll see for yourself soon enough. The infection—it’s some kind of virus—has an estimated mortality rate of ninety-nine-point-seven percent.”
“Sounds like somebody’s been getting their statistics from a droid.” Han took a step back, taking his first real look at her and breaking into an appreciative smile. “Although I must say, Doctor, all things considered, you seem to be in pretty good shape.”
Zahara felt her cheeks redden. “I’m … immune.”
“Well, I guess we must be, too, huh?”
“It’s possible, but I doubt it.”
“So how come we’re still alive?”
“You’ve been sealed away in solitary. Now that you’re out here and exposed, though, I need to inject you with the anti-virus.” She took the syringe from her pocket along with the basic medical kit that she carried with her everywhere. “This will only take a second. I just need to see your arm, and—”
At the appearance of the needle, the Wookiee snarled at her, a noise that went right through Zahara’s thoracic cavity, and for the second time she saw the glint of his teeth, the bright white incisors, and caught a whiff of something feral, from either his fur or his breath. She to
ok a step back.
“You need this,” she said, and turned to Han. “Both of you do.”
Han shook his head. “Wookiees aren’t too big on needles. Neither am I.”
“I’m a physician.”
“Yeah, well, you might want to work on that bedside manner.” He glanced at the weapon still in her hand. “Or has blasterpoint medicine become standard operating procedure for the Empire?”
“This was just a precaution. We can’t afford to stand around and discuss this. Too many people have already died.”
“Listen, Doc, I …,” Han said, and stopped. Glancing back, following his line of sight, Zahara saw that he was staring at the outstretched leg protruding from around the corner, one of the guards whose bodies she’d stepped over to get here. Han craned his neck farther, and she knew that he could see some of the other corpses as well.
When he looked back at her, the defiance in his expression had faded, replaced with something else—not fear necessarily, but a kind of acute awareness of his surroundings. He looked over at Chewbacca, and the Wookiee sniffed the air and let out a low, restless thragghh sound from somewhere deep inside his throat.
“Yeah,” Han muttered. “Me, too.” And then, begrudgingly, to Zahara, “I’m not crazy about my options here, Doc.”
“Please,” she said, holding his gaze. “You need this.”
He reached down and pushed up his sleeve. Zahara realized that she wasn’t going to be able to hold on to the blaster rifle and treat him at the same time. She set the blaster aside, kicking it out of the cell behind her, into the hallway, then took Han’s arm, swabbed it, then slipped the needle in. Han winced as she pushed down the plunger.
“You tested this, right?”
“You’re actually the first.”
Han’s eyes went huge. “What?”
“Relax,” Zahara said. “How’s your breathing?”
