The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  So why weren’t he and Kale dead … or even sick? Trig wondered if they were destined to survive through some rare quirk of genetic immunity, only to die of starvation or dehydration like neglected animals, here in the cage. He thought of something his father had always said: The universe has a sense of humor, just not a nice one.

  “What happens next?” he asked.

  Kale went to the bars, cupped both hands around his mouth. “Hey!” he shouted. “Is there anybody out there?” His voice was surprisingly loud, ringing through the emptiness. “Hello! We’re alive in here! Hey!” He took in a deep breath. “We’re alive in here! We’re—”

  There was a loud clank, and the cell doors up and down the corridor all began to rattle open at once. Kale turned and glanced back at his brother.

  “Somebody heard us.”

  “Who?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Kale said. “Right now we have to—” He stopped.

  Trig watched him. “What is it?”

  Kale held up one hand, inclining his head to listen. Whether or not Trig actually heard a noise from the cell next to theirs, he couldn’t be sure—his imagination, always active, was now working overtime to pluck something of substance from the void. “Stay there,” Kale whispered, leaning out of the cell and looking around. Then he gestured Trig forward.

  They went out together, Trig just half a pace behind Kale, and then he remembered—

  “Wait!”

  It was too late. The figure in the next cell burst out at him, scrambling forward with a snarling howl of rage. Trig saw Aur Myss fall on top of his older brother and drive him into the opposite wall, limbs flailing, hands slashing, already going for Kale’s eyes.

  Kale collapsed, caught completely off-guard, and for an instant Myss’s body covered his entirely, his entire torso struggling spastically for air. The Delphanian seemed to be laboring equally hard to rip Kale’s face apart and draw in another breath.

  He’s sick. The thought flashed through Trig’s mind almost faster than he could recognize it. Now’s your chance. Maybe your only one.

  Hardly thinking, he swung down and grabbed Myss’s throat from the back, laced his fingers over the doughy wads of flesh surrounding his neck, and squeezed. Please, please, let me do this.

  But the attack brought a surge of strength through the Delphanian’s body. Twisting around, Myss slashed free, the ragged up-and-down fissure of his mouth constricting into a grin. “Boy, you’ve overstepped your boundaries for the last time.”

  He grabbed Trig’s face, clamping it between scaly hands, the pressure excruciating. Trig could feel blackness swarming in, eclipsing all reason. He wanted to scream but he couldn’t open his mouth.

  Suddenly the hands fell slack.

  Trig’s vision cleared, and he saw Myss still staring at him. But shock had taken the place of rage. Through the thing’s open mouth, a glint of steel shone like a sharp metallic tongue. Then Myss toppled forward, and Trig saw the handle of the blade that his brother had shoved through the back of the Delphanian’s skull.

  “He came at me with it,” Kale said shakily.

  Trig found he couldn’t speak.

  “Come on, let’s go.”

  They walked quickly down the long hallway toward the main exit, passing cell after cell of dead bodies. Kale said nothing. As much as Trig wanted to talk about what his brother had done—to thank him, to say something about it, to at least acknowledge the fact that it had happened—he didn’t know where to start. So he, too, remained silent.

  Up at the end of the corridor, Trig saw another figure hunched in the control booth, this one wearing an orange isolation suit.

  “Wembly,” Kale said.

  The guard was hunched forward next to the release switch for the cells, the control he’d engaged to open up the wing. Kale reached into the booth and touched his shoulder.

  “Hey, Wembly, thanks for …”

  Wembly’s corpse slouched forward and sideways out of the booth, his forehead striking the floor with a hollow thud. His sagging lips hung open, encrusted with dried blood and mucus, and his upturned eyes were vacant. Staring at him, Trig thought he saw a tremor, one last spasm passing through the shoulders and gut, but that, too, was probably just his imagination.

  “He let us out. Probably the last thing he did.”

  “It was,” a voice said.

  They looked around to see Wembly’s BLX unit standing in the corner of the booth. The droid stood awkwardly with its arms at its sides, looking utterly lost without its master.

  “Come on,” Trig said. “You can come with us.”

  The BLX seemed to consider the offer, but only for a moment. “No, thank you. I belong here. When we’re rescued …” He allowed the thought to trail off, perhaps unable to convince itself of that eventuality.

  “You’re sure?”

  “Forget it,” Kale said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Trig cleared his throat. “Where are we going?”

  “There’s got to be an escape pod somewhere up above—maybe on the administrative level.”

  “You don’t think somebody already took it? The warden, or the guards?”

  Kale faced him, gripped Trig’s shoulders in his hands, and held on firmly, even a little painfully. “We need a plan, and right now that’s as good as any. So unless you’ve got a better idea, you can help me find a way up there.”

  Trig bit his lip. Nodded. Made himself say, “Okay.”

  It took a long time to find the turbolifts up from Main Detention. Most of the bodies they ran across were like the inmates on his level, corpses in bunks, corpses on floors, corpses curled up in corners, arms already stiffening around their folded knees as if somehow balling themselves up could stave off the eventuality of death. There were suicides—one inmate had hung himself from the bars, another had wrapped a bag around his head. Dead guards and stormtroopers lay on the floor, while puzzled-looking maintenance droids hovered over them, trying to make sense of the mass carnage, picking them up and putting them down again. Kale collected blasters from two of the bodies, but Trig could tell just by the way he carried them that he wasn’t entirely comfortable with the weapons, although he tried to act casual about it.

  They saw other things as well.

  Outside one cell, a dead guard lay with his back against the bars. Trig saw that he’d been tied by the wrists and around the neck by the two dead inmates inside the cell. The inmates had since died of the disease, but that hadn’t been what killed the guard. The cons had somehow lured him close enough to bind him there and then tortured him to death, stabbing, slashing, and mutilating him with the crude, sharpened instruments that were still clutched in their dead hands.

  They saw an inmate, an alien species that Trig didn’t recognize, comprising two conjoined bodies, one twice the size of the other. The smaller body had already died and fallen limp, while the larger one cradled it weakly like its own child, weeping and trying to breathe. It didn’t even look up at them as they walked by.

  They saw a maintenance droid carrying on a cheerful, one-sided conversation with a dead stormtrooper.

  They saw two Imperial guards slumped dead over a dejarik holo-chess table while the figures on the table lumbered aimlessly around the board awaiting instruction.

  Finally they found a turbolift and waited for the hatchway to slide open. There was a pair of dead guards inside, both of them armed, slouched in opposite corners, their torsos torn apart and scorched by blaster bolts, as if, in the final throes of delirium, they’d turned against each other. Kale hoisted them by their biohazard suits and dragged them out of the lift, and Trig was glad his brother didn’t ask him to help. Looking at the bodies was one thing but touching them, lifting them up … hoisting their deadweight … that wasn’t something he felt prepared for.

  What if one of their cold dead hands was to reach up and grab hold of him?

  Would he even be able to scream?

  There was a clicking sound behind them, and Trig
glanced back over his shoulder. He thought about Myss in the cell next to theirs, the cell that had been empty when he’d looked. Myss must have run out immediately after Wembly had sprung open the doors for them. Did that mean Myss was immune, too? Trig wondered if he was following them. Just because he didn’t see anything didn’t mean it wasn’t there.

  On the uppermost level of detention they heard a faint mewling sound like something crying. It was plaintive and child-like, with a despondency all the more resonant to Trig because he recognized it in his own heart. He stopped and looked in the direction of the noise.

  “You hear that?”

  Kale shook his head. “It’s not our business.”

  “What if they need help?”

  Kale flashed him a tired look but didn’t argue. They filed up the hallway, passing more cells of dead inmates, reminding Trig once more of neglected domesticated species that had been forgotten and left to rot by their masters. Kale kept the blasters half raised at his sides. The mewling noise grew louder until Trig stopped and stared into the final cell in the line.

  A young Wookiee was crouched inside the cell. He was much smaller than Trig, probably not much more than a toddler. He was crouched down over the bodies of what had to be his family, two adults and an older sibling, clutching their hands to his face and holding their arms around himself as if to simulate a hug.

  “Look at this,” Kale murmured.

  Trig saw what his brother was pointing at. The sickness had affected the dead Wookiees differently. Their tongues had swollen until they dangled like grotesque, overripe fruit from their mouths, and their throats had ruptured completely, splitting open to expose deep red musculature within. When the young one looked up and saw Trig and Kale standing outside the cell, his blue eyes shone with fear and dread.

  “It’s okay,” Trig said softly. “We’re not going to hurt you.” He glanced at Kale. “He must be immune, like us.”

  “So what are we going to do about it?”

  “Wait here.” Trig ran back down the hallway to the abandoned guard station, the door left wide open by whoever had left their post to creep off and die in private. Stepping inside the booth, he found the switch to open the cells—the one that Wembly had died activating for them down on their own level. The bars rattled open, and he went back to where his brother still stood, looking in at the young Wookiee.

  “Come on out,” Trig told him. “You’re free now.”

  The Wookiee just stared at them. It wasn’t even making the crying sound anymore, but somehow its silence was worse. That was a lesson Trig was already learning—the silence was always worse.

  “You can’t stay here.” Trig extended his hand toward the Wookiee. “Come with us.”

  “Careful,” Kale said, “he’ll take your hand off if—”

  “It’s okay,” Trig said, keeping his hand where it was. “We won’t hurt you.”

  Kale sighed. “Hey, man, look—”

  “He’s all alone.”

  “And he obviously wants to stay that way, all right?”

  For a moment the Wookiee peered at him cautiously, as if—like Wembly’s BLX—it was actually considering the offer. Trig waited to see if anything was going to happen. In the end, though, the youngster just bent forward and picked up the slack arms of its parents and pressed them to either side of its small frame. It wouldn’t look up at Kale and Trig again, not even when they turned and finally walked away.

  They were at the far end of the corridor when they heard it start to scream.

  Trig froze, the fine hairs prickling all down his back. Just the sound made him feel as if his entire body had been coated with a layer of slick, half-melted ice. His breath lodged inside his lungs, caught just below his throat. The Wookiee’s screams kept going—strangled, agonized screams, mixed with a horrifying, slobbering sound of something eating.

  The screams stopped, but the grunting eating sounds continued, greedy and breathless, slurping and crunching. His mind flashed to Aur Myss in the cell next to theirs, the whispering and giggling and the sensation that it had been following them.

  But that’s impossible. Myss is dead. You saw it yourself.

  “What is it?” he whispered.

  “Not our business.” Kale grabbed his hand. “Keep going.”

  17/Tisa

  The last of Zahara’s patients died that night. In the end it happened very quickly. About half of them had been human, the others different alien species, but it didn’t make a difference. In the last moments some of the nonhumans had reverted to their native languages, some had clutched her hand and talked to her passionately—if brokenly, through uncontrollable coughing—as if she were some family member or loved one, and she’d listened and nodded even if she didn’t understand a word of it.

  At Rhinnal they taught her death was something you got used to. Zahara had met plenty of physicians who claimed to have adjusted to it and they always seemed eerie to her somehow, more detached and mechanical than the droids that served alongside them. She tended to avoid such doctors and their cold, clinical eyes.

  Waste brought the news of the final deaths with a neutral tone that she’d never heard before, a lack of affect so peculiar that she wondered if it had been programmed for the worst eventualities. Perhaps it was what passed for sympathy in the droid world.

  Then, in an almost apologetic voice, the 2-1B added: “I’ve finished the analysis of your own blood as well.”

  “And?”

  “You’re obviously immune to the pathogen. What I meant was that I believe I’ve had some success in analyzing the immunity gene within your own chemical makeup and synthesizing it.”

  She stared at him.

  “You found a cure?”

  “Not a cure, necessarily, but a kind of anti-virus, if what we’re dealing with is indeed viral in nature, something that can be administered intravenously.” The droid held up a syringe filled with clear fluid and looked around at the infirmary, the bodies in their beds. “If there are any survivors aboard the barge, they ought to get this as soon as possible.”

  Zahara looked at the needle, belated salvation dripping from its spike. She should have felt some kind of relief. And later, perhaps, she might. But her first reaction to the news—if there are any survivors aboard the barge—was a profound sense of personal failure, manifesting itself as a sandbagged heaviness in the legs and belly. The health of the barge and its inmates and staff had been her responsibility. What had happened here over the last few hours was unthinkable, a collapse of such glaring magnitude that she couldn’t look at it except through the filter of her own personal culpability. Sartoris might have been taunting her, but he was right. She would never live this down.

  There’s no time for self-pity, a voice inside her head said. You need to find out who’s left, sooner rather than later.

  As usual the voice was right. She did herself the favor of recognizing that fact, and pushed down on the black feeling inside her belly. To her mild surprise, it collapsed, or rather burst like a bubble.

  “I’ll be back.”

  “Dr. Cody?” Waste sounded alarmed. “Where are you going?”

  “Up to the pilot station. I need to run a bioscan on the barge and locate any survivors.”

  “I’ll go with you.”

  “No,” she said. “You need to stay here in case anyone else comes for treatment.” And then, sensing the droid’s reluctance, “That’s an order, Waste, get me?”

  “Yes, of course, but given the circumstances I would feel much more comfortable if you would simply allow me—”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “Watch for survivors,” she said, and walked out the door.

  She didn’t have to go far before the notion of survivors struck her as an increasingly unlikely prospect.

  She stepped over and around the bodies, breathing through her mouth when the odor became too much. Almost immediately she wished she’d allowed Waste to come with her. T
he droid’s prattling would’ve made everything else easier to take.

  She arrived at the pilot station and slipped through the doors, braced for what she found there. The Purge’s flight crew had not abandoned their posts, even in death. The corpses of the pilot and co-pilot, a couple of rough-hewn Imperial lifers she’d never really gotten to know, slouched backward in their seats, mouths gaping, algae-gray flesh already beginning to sag from their bones. As Zahara approached them, the barge’s instrumentation suite recognized her immediately, panels blinking, and a computerized voice cut in from some hidden speaker.

  “Identification, please.” The voice had been synthesized to sound female, business-like but pleasant, and Zahara tried to remember what the pilots called her and then remembered—Tisa. Word was that on the longer flights, various guards had been caught up here after hours, chatting her up.

  “This is Chief Medical Officer Zahara Cody.”

  “Thank you,” Tisa said. “Confirming retinal match.” There was a pause, perhaps five seconds, and a single satisfied beep. “Identification confirmed, Dr. Cody. Awaiting orders.”

  “Run a bioscan of the barge,” she said.

  “Acknowledge. Running bioscan.” Lights pulsed. “Bioscan complete. Imperial Prison Barge Purge, previous inmate and administrative census five hundred twenty-two according to the—”

  “Just tell me who’s left.”

  “Currently active life-form census is six.”

  “Six?”

  “Correct.”

  “That’s impossible.”

  “Would you like me to recalibrate the bioscan variables?”

  Zahara stopped and considered the options. “What are the variables?”

  “Positive life-form reading is based on algorithmic interpretation of brainwaves, body temperature, motion, and heart rate.”

  “What about alien species whose normal body temp or pulse don’t fit within those parameters?” Zahara asked. “They wouldn’t show up on the scan, would they?”

  “Negative. Scan parameters are continuously recalibrated to incorporate the physiological traits of every member of the inmate population. In fact, current calibration standards reflect accurate life-form census with a point-zero-zero-one percent margin of—”