The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  “You ready for this?” he asked, barely moving his lips.

  “Sure,” Trig said, nodding. “You?”

  “Full on.” Nothing about Kale’s face seemed to indicate that he was speaking at all. “Remember when we get down there, it’s gonna be close quarters. Whatever you do, always maintain eye contact. Don’t look away for a second.”

  “Got it.”

  “And if anything starts to feel wrong about it, and I mean anything whatsoever, we just walk away.” Now Kale did glance at his brother’s face, perhaps catching a whiff of his apprehension. “I don’t think Sixtus would try anything, but I can’t vouch for Myss. Dad never trusted him.”

  “Maybe …” Trig started, and stopped himself. He realized that he was about to suggest calling off the whole deal, not because he was nervous—although he certainly was—but because Kale seemed to be having second thoughts, too.

  “We can do this,” Kale went on. “Dad taught us everything we need to know. The whole thing should take no more than a minute or two, and we’ll be back out of there and back in full view. Any longer than that and it gets dangerous.” He jerked his head around and looked hard at Trig. “And I go first. Clear?”

  Trig nodded and felt a hand drop on his shoulder, stopping him in his tracks.

  3/Where the Bad Air Goes

  Trig turned and looked up at the figure standing in front of him.

  “You.” It was a piggy-eyed guard whose name he didn’t remember, peering back at him through a pair of tinted, decidedly nonregulation optic shields. “What are you doing all the way back here?”

  Trig tried to answer but found his reply lodged somewhere just beneath his gullet. Kale stepped in, offering up an easy, disarming smile. “Just walking, sir.”

  “Was I talking to you, convict?” the guard said, and without waiting for an answer, pivoted his attention back to Trig. “Well?”

  “He’s right, sir,” Trig said. “We were just walking.”

  “What, you’re too good to move along with the rest of the scum?”

  “We try to avoid scum whenever possible,” Trig said, and then added, “Sir.”

  The guard’s eyes slitted behind the lenses. “You yanking me, convict?”

  “No, sir.”

  “ ’Cause the last maggot that yanked me’s doing a month in the hole.”

  “Understood, sir.”

  The guard glowered at him, twitching his head slightly to one side as if searching out some angle at which Trig’s unblemished teenage face might somehow become threatening, or even make sense, amid this larger mass of incarcerated criminals. Watching his expression, Trig punished himself by imagining a glimmer of recognition in those squinty eyes, and for an instant he thought how bizarre it might be if the guard had said, You’re Von Longo’s boys, aren’t you? I heard what happened to your father. He was a good man.

  But of course no guard on this barge thought Longo had been a good man, or even bothered to learn his name, and now he was dead and already so completely forgotten that he might as well have never lived, and the guard just shook his head.

  “Move along,” the guard muttered, and walked away.

  The moment they were out of earshot, Kale elbowed Trig in the shoulder.

  “We try to avoid scum whenever possible?” A tiny grin dimpled the corners of Kale’s mouth. “What, did you just make that up on the spot?”

  Trig was unable to restrain a smile of his own. It felt liberating, probably because he couldn’t remember the last time he’d allowed himself anything less than a troubled grimace. “You think he bought it?”

  “I think you almost bought it.” Kale reached up without looking over and tousled his fingers through Trig’s hair. “Keep smarting off like that, convict, and you will be down in solitary with the real dangerous types.”

  “I hear there’s a couple of hard guys down there now locked up tight,” Trig said. “Could be our future customers.”

  Kale favored him with a glance of approval. “You’ve got a lot more of Dad in you than I thought,” he said and, with one last look at the prisoners in front of them, nodded ever so slightly to the left. “Come on, follow me. And don’t get crazy, okay?”

  “Sure.” Trig sensed Kale slowing his pace, dropping back several strides, scarcely enough to be noticed, and adjusted his step to match his brother’s. Up ahead the main concourse broke off into three prongs, branching off into a series of lesser throughways that crisscrossed the detention levels at every imaginable vector and angle.

  During his time aboard, Trig had made it his business to learn as much about the Purge’s layout as possible. Eavesdropping on conversations between guards and maintenance droids, he’d learned early on that there were six main detention levels, each one housing about twenty to thirty individual holding cells. Above that was the mess hall, followed by the admin offices, prison staff quarters, and the infirmary. Nobody talked much about solitary, down at the bottom of the barge—nor was there much speculation about the literally hundreds of meters of narrow access routes, sublevels, and dimly lit concourses that honeycombed every level.

  Falling into single file, Kale and Trig slipped through an open gateway, striding along the damp prefab walls, down a flight of steps, deeper in the jaundiced subcutaneous bowels of Gen Pop. The air down here immediately became thicker, darker, and dramatically less breathable, on its way to an array of refurbished air scrubbers before circulating back through the barge.

  “Well, well,” a voice said. “The Longo brothers ride again.”

  Trig caught a quick breath, hoping it didn’t sound like a gasp. In front of him, Kale froze, instinctively extending a hand behind him, and both of them peered into the open space that made up their immediate future. It took no extra time for Trig’s vision to adjust. He could already make out the forms of several inmates, all members of the Delphanian Face Gang, and in front of them, Aur Myss.

  Whether Myss’s nearly vertical sneer was a genetic accident or the result of one of his legendary knife fights was a matter of perpetual speculation among the other inmates. Below the flattened suede accordion of his nose, a row of mismatched tribal piercings dangled from the drooping lower lip, collected like trophies from all the other crew leaders while Myss and his boss, Sixtus Cleft, had slowly consolidated the Face Gang’s position as the Purge’s preeminent prison crew.

  “You’re right on time,” Myss said, piercings jingling as he spoke.

  Kale nodded. “We’re always prompt.”

  “An admirable trait for a prison rat.”

  “That’s why you chose to do business with us.”

  “One of many reasons,” Myss said, “I’m sure.”

  Kale smiled. “Did you bring the payment?”

  “Oh yes.” Myss produced a sibilant gurgle that might have been laughter, and extended one spade-claw hand, pointing down at the empty floor in front of him. “It’s right there in front of you. Don’t you see it?”

  Trig sensed, or perhaps only imagined, his older brother stiffening, preparing for trouble, and willed Kale to stay calm. It appeared to work. For the time being at least, Kale kept his posture erect and didn’t look away, careful to keep his own voice steady and calm. “Is this some kind of a joke?”

  “Perhaps.” Myss looked at the Delphanian foot soldiers standing on either side of him, grinning and sniggering. “Maybe you just don’t share our sense of humor.”

  “Our deal with Sixtus—”

  “Sixtus is dead.”

  Kale stared at him. “What?”

  “A terrible tragedy.” Myss was almost whispering and the mushy sibilance in between words, Trig realized, was definitely laughter this time, accompanied by the faint metallic jingle of his piercings. “ICO Wembly found him in his cell this morning with his throat slashed. I’m the new skipper now.” He stopped, and then his voice abruptly frosted over. “And alas, the terms of our deal have changed.”

  “You can’t do that,” Trig cut in, unable to hold back any longer.
“Sixtus and our dad—”

  “No, it’s all right,” Kale said, still not taking his eyes off Myss, and when he spoke again he sounded absolutely calm. “I’m just sorry things worked out this way.”

  Myss appeared genuinely curious. “Oh?”

  “None of this is necessary.” Kale’s voice was so casual it was almost like listening to their father talk, that same mellifluous we-can-work-this-out inflection that had gotten them out of so many dicey exchanges in the past. “We’ve built a mutually beneficial relationship here, and it’s crazy to jeopardize it with rash decisions.”

  “Rash decisions?”

  Kale waved a hand in the air. “Of course we’ll be happy to tell you where the blasters and power packs are hidden, free of charge. Take them with my compliments. Consider it my gift to you as the new leader of the Face Gang. And everyone walks out of here to do business another day.”

  “A generous proposal.” Myss seemed to consider the idea for a long moment. “There’s only one problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  Myss glanced at the Delphanian inmates slathering next to him on either side. “I already promised my men that they could kill you.”

  “I see.” Kale hove up a dramatic sigh. “In that case, I guess we don’t have a deal, huh?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose there’s only one thing left to do.”

  Aur Myss tilted his chin upward slightly. “And that would be?”

  At first none of them moved, and Trig had no idea what was going to happen. Then, before he realized it, Kale’s hand blurred forward, moving faster than Trig could even see, his fingers hooking down to rip the piercings out of Myss’s face.

  The Delphanian shrieked in surprise and pain and one of his hands flew up to cover his wounded, spurting lips and nose. Simultaneously the two inmates who had been flanking him burst forward in a rush, and Kale grabbed his brother’s shoulder, spun him hard around, and thrust him back in the direction they’d come.

  “Run,” Kale shouted, and they did, Trig first, Kale behind him, both of them flying back up the corridor they’d just come down. Behind them the Delphanians’ boots clanged off the metal floor, and Trig could hear them shouting, coming closer. There was no way he and his brother could possibly outrun them. And even if by some quirk of fate they did escape, Aur Myss would be waiting for them tomorrow and the next day and—

  Rounding the bend, Trig almost collided with a guard standing directly in front of him. The ICO put up both hands in a reflexive warding-off gesture, and the sudden stop that kept Trig from slamming into him was followed an instant later by Kale hitting him from behind.

  “What’s going on here?” the guard asked.

  “Nothing, sir, we just …” Trig started, and it occurred to him that there was no reason why the guards should be this far down the walkways to begin with.

  And then, between the pounding rhythm of his own heart, he realized something else.

  The Purge had fallen absolutely silent.

  The vibrations that had unsettled him, broadcasting their emanations up through the bones of his feet, ankles, and knees, had gone completely still.

  For the first time since he’d come aboard, the engines had stopped.

  4/Medbay

  “Hey, Waste,” Zahara Cody said. “Are we there yet?”

  The 2-1B surgical droid looked up at her with a blank stare. It had been in the process of injecting a syringe of kolto into the left arm of the Dug inmate lying in the oversized medcenter bunk between them. Within seconds of receiving the injection, the Dug writhed and rolled up onto its back, twitching its lower legs beneath the sheet, then stiffened and lapsed into a very convincing state of rigor mortis.

  “Congratulations,” Zahara said, “you killed him. Looks like you saved the Empire another four hundred credits.” Reaching over, she tapped the surgical droid on the shoulder. “Job well done. Way to be a team player.”

  The 2-1B looked at her in something like alarm. “But I didn’t—”

  “Let me do a quick test, just to confirm time of death.” Zahara reached down and rolled the Dug sideways, pushing it over until it fell out of bed with a thud. Seconds later, the inmate sat up with a squeal of displeasure, scuttling back up to its bunk, where it glared at her balefully and muttered some black condemnatory oath under its breath.

  “Looks like another miracle recovery,” Zahara said, and smiled. “Another one of your many skills, apparently.”

  “A most irregular approach,” Waste intoned, and something deep inside its torso cowling clicked and whirred. “Don’t you think that given the patient’s ongoing complaints we should run some additional tests?”

  “Unless I’m mistaken, this particular patient’s main complaint is with the food.” Zahara glanced at the Dug. “And maybe one of the several different prison gangs that want his scalp for overdue loan payments. That’s about right, isn’t it, Tugnut?”

  The Dug snarled and jerked one hand up in a gesture that transcended language barriers, then went back to faking its own death.

  “Scramble up an orderly droid,” Zahara said, “have him taken back to his cell.” She looked back at the 2-1B. “You’re aware, Waste, that you still haven’t answered my initial question?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Are we there yet?”

  “Dr. Cody, if you’re referring to our ETA at Detention Moon Gradient Seven—”

  “The Purge is a prison barge, Waste. Where else would we be headed? Wild Space?” She waited patiently to see if the 2-1B was going to favor her with another of its flat, implacable glances. Throughout the last three months of working alongside the droid, Zahara Cody had come to think of herself as a connoisseur of such reactions, the way that some people collected rare pseudo-genetic polymorph species or trinkets from older, pre-Imperial cultures. “We’ve already dropped out of hyperspace. Our engines have been stopped for almost an hour now and we’re just sitting here stockstill, so that can only mean one thing, right? We must be there.”

  “Actually, Doctor, my uplink to the navicomputer indicates that—”

  “Hey, Doc,” A blunt finger reached out from behind Zahara and prodded her somewhere in the vicinity of her lower spine. “We there yet?”

  Zahara looked over at the Devaronian inmate sprawled languorously on his side on the bed behind her, then turned back at her surgical droid. “See, Waste? It’s the question on everyone’s lips.”

  “No, I’m serious, Doc,” the Devaronian groaned, peering up at her from the depths of melancholy. His right horn had been snapped off midtrunk, giving his face a peculiarly lopsided look, and he poked himself in the abdomen and groaned. “One of my livers is going bad, I can feel it. Thinking maybe I caught something in the shower.”

  “May I offer a more likely diagnosis?” The 2-1B scurried eagerly around Zahara, already exchanging tools in its servogrips as the internal components of its diagnostic computer flickered beneath its torso sheath. “Liver damage in your species is not uncommon. In many cases your silver-based blood results in depleted oxygen due to the low-level addiction to the recreational use of—”

  “Hey, interface.” The Devaronian sat up, suddenly the robust picture of perfect health, and grabbed the 2-1B’s pincer. “What are you saying about my species?”

  “Easy, Gat, he doesn’t mean anything by it.” Zahara placed a hand on the inmate’s wrist until he released the droid. Then, turning to the 2-1B: “Waste, why don’t you go check out what’s happening with the Trandoshan in B-seventeen, huh? His temp’s up again and I don’t like the last white counts I saw this morning. I doubt he’ll make it through today.”

  “Oh, I concur.” The droid brightened. “According to my programming at Rhinnal State Medical Academy—”

  “Right. So I’ll meet you later for afternoon rounds, all right?”

  The 2-1B hesitated, seeming briefly to entertain the idea of objecting, then walked away clucking softly to itself in dismay. Zahara watched it go,
its gangling legs and oversized feet passing between the rows of bunks that lined the infirmary on either side. Only half of those beds were full, but that was still more than she would have preferred. As chief medical officer on the Purge, she knew that at any given time a large percentage of her patients were dogging it, either prolonging their stay in medbay or faking it entirely to stay out of Gen Pop. But it had been a long trip and supplies were low. Even with the 2-1B, the prospect of a legitimate medical emergency—

  “You okay, Doc?”

  Looking down, she realized that the Devaronian was watching her from his bed, fidgeting nonchalantly with his broken horn.

  “Sorry?”

  “I said, you all right? You look a little, I dunno—”

  “I’m fine, Gat, thanks.”

  “Hey.” The inmate glanced off in the direction that the surgical droid had gone. “That bucket of bolts won’t hold it against me, you think?”

  “Who, Waste?” She smiled. “Believe me, he’s a paragon of scientific objectivity. Just throw some obscure symptoms at him and he’ll be your best friend.”

  “You really think we’re almost there?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. You know how it is. Nobody tells me anything.”

  “Right,” the Devish said, and shook his head with a chuckle. Aboard the barge, there were a few phrases that circulated among Gen Pop endlessly: Are we there yet? and They expect us to eat this stuff? were chief among them, but Nobody tells me anything was also a big favorite. Over months of service, Zahara had adopted these phrases as well, much to the chagrin of the warden and many of the ICOs, most of whom held themselves up as an example of superior species.

  Zahara knew what they said about her. Among the guards, no real effort was made to keep it subtle. Too much time spent down in the medbay with the scum and droids and the little rich girl had started to go native, preferring the company of inmates and synthetics to her own kind: corrections officers and stormtroopers. Most of the guards had stopped talking to her completely after the situation two weeks ago. She didn’t suppose she blamed them. They were a notoriously tight-knit group and seemed to function with a group-think that she found downright nauseating.