The Essential Novels

by James Luceno

  “You know where you’re going?” Han shouted.

  Trig glanced down at the layout on the lifter’s navigational screen, the blip showing where they were among the labyrinth of midlevel passageways. He felt sweat dripping under his armpits and over his ribs.

  You can do this.

  The lifter jerked. Something was climbing up from the underside. He could feel the lifter tipping. Han leaned over, trying to see what it was, and shook his head.

  “I can’t get a shot!”

  Trig looked forward again. He brought the throttle down as low as he dared, until he saw the exhaust manifold rising up from the corrugated floor. Holding his breath, he nudged the stick forward, dropping them another fraction of a millimeter. It was pure seat-of-your-pants speculation—the sort of thing his father and his brother would have excelled at, but he was the only one left to do it.

  “Trig, what—”

  Wham!

  The corpse underneath the lifter slammed into the manifold, scraped off, and went pinwheeling sideways, headless now, down into the masses that had spawned it. Han threw him an appreciative glance.

  “That’s more like it.”

  Careering around a corner, Trig steered them down the slightly wider throughway, dull yellow lights whickering past like his own wildly careering thoughts. He kept going back to what Sartoris had said just before jumping off the lifter.

  He was a good man. I’m not.

  It had been a generality, spoken by a man who knew he was going to his death. Why had it sounded like he’d been confessing to killing Von Longo?

  A burst of static broke from the lifter’s comlink, a voice rising from its speaker.

  “Hello, is anyone there?”

  Han’s arm shot past his face to grab the link, flicking it on. “Who’s this?”

  “—Cody—” the voice cut in. “—hangar control—”

  “We’re on our way now,” Han said.

  “—no—stay away—”

  “Say again.”

  “Under attack—”

  The comlink sputtered, Zahara’s voice reduced to a warble. Trig thought he heard blasters in the background, the twang and crash of catastrophic wreckage. He watched as Han changed frequencies, trying to home in on the signal.

  “I’m losing you, Doc,” Han said. “Just hang on, okay?”

  “… too many of them …” Zahara’s voice was drifting, lost between clouds of heavier static. Trig thought he heard the words “laser cannon,” and then the link broke off entirely. Han dropped the comlink and checked the lifter’s digitized schematic.

  “It’s okay, we’re almost there, right?” he said. “That’s the entryway straight ahead.”

  Trig eased the stick back and then let it go forward, getting a feel for it at last, now that the trip was all but over. The lifter blurred through the end of the corridor, toward the hatchway where Han was pointing. Despite the fact that they were almost there, Trig felt an odd tug of apprehension, a sense of having made the wrong decision about something so long ago that there was no way to correct it now.

  Chewie growled, and Han’s nostrils flared. He looked worried.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I smell it, too.”

  Trig glanced over. “What?”

  “Smoke.”

  The hangar wall was on fire.

  Through the smoke Trig could see the army of the dead pouring through, headed to the far end of the hangar. The X-wing that had evidently attacked the wall was still pointed at it, its laser cannons tilted upward with random blocks of salvaged equipment. Trig glanced back up where flames had overtaken the west end of the hangar, obscuring everything in a wall of thick, oily smoke that smelled like burning copper wires and charred durasteel.

  “Where did Dr. Cody say she was?” he shouted.

  “Main hangar control,” Han said.

  “Which is …?”

  Han pointed directly into the flames. Trig pulled back on the stick, angling the lifter up into the choking black wall. Instantly his eyes, nose, and throat started stinging, tears streaming down his face. He could hear Han shouting at him, and Chewbacca let out a loud, angry roar that broke off in a burst of deep coughs.

  “What are you doing?” Han said. “You want to get us killed?”

  “I’m not leaving her.”

  “If she’s up here she’s already dead!”

  Trig brought the lifter upward until he was staring through the flames into what was left of the main hangar command. Melted computers and consoles lay bubbling across the warped durasteel floorboards like a surrealist nightmare of Imperial technology.

  She’s not in there, he thought. She made it out. Maybe—

  The thought snapped off cleanly in his mind.

  It was a small shape, dwarfed by the oblong slab of charred components that had toppled over to crush it. Trig looked at the slender hand protruding outward from underneath the pile, remembered how it had looked resting on his father’s shoulder in the infirmary. He felt the last of his breath evaporate from his lungs, leaving him absolutely still.

  “Kid.” Han’s voice was far-off, and from the sound of it, Trig knew he’d seen her, too. “We have to go.”

  Trig opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He turned the lifter away, and down.

  43/Death and All His Friends

  In the final moments before leaving the Star Destroyer, Trig Longo saw things he knew he’d never forget, no matter how much he wanted to. Later, when he tried to put the pieces together and make sense of it, the words weren’t there, and he found himself sifting through jumbled images, raw memories and feelings that still frightened him as badly as they had when he’d first experienced them.

  He was still reeling with shock over what he’d seen up above. After losing Kale, he’d figured his capacity for grief and pain had been exceeded—but the knowledge that Dr. Cody was gone, too, was almost more than he could stand. It left him grief-stricken and miserably nauseated, as though he might vomit up some small bitter piece of his own heart.

  Down below, on the hangar floor, the things inside the hangar had stopped screaming and were focused only on packing every remaining spacecraft. Watching them, Trig saw that there was no longer any question of priorities. They wanted off the Destroyer as badly as Trig, Han, and Chewie did.

  He hated them.

  Hated them worse than he’d ever hated Sartoris or Aur Myss or anything in his life. Hated them with an intensity he’d never imagined himself capable of. It was as if all the molten fear he’d suffered up till now had hardened into glassy black peaks of pure rage.

  His eyes flicked forward. The landing shuttle that Sartoris told him about was already airborne. Hardly thinking, Trig swung the lifter alongside it. He saw the emergency hatch pop open and Han looked around at him hesitantly.

  “You sure about this? That’s an Imperial shuttle.”

  Trig pointed. “Look.”

  A skeletal arm waved from the hatch, gesturing them inside, and Trig didn’t wait around to argue. He brought the lifter up, flipped it into auto-hover, and climbed over the transom.

  It was darker inside the shuttle’s cabin but easier to breathe without the smoke. The Imperial soldier standing in front of them had a pale, starved expression that immediately made Trig ill at ease; when the soldier smiled it was like watching a skull stretching through a thinly knit web of yellow flesh.

  “You’re White?” Trig asked.

  “Tanner.” The skeleton shook its head. “White didn’t make it. It’s just me and Pauling, up in the cockpit.”

  “Yeah, well,” Han said, and cleared his throat. “We planning on leaving now, or are we taking up permanent residence?”

  “As soon as—”

  The whole world started shaking.

  “What’s going on?” Trig asked.

  Han shot a glance up to the shuttle’s cockpit, where another cadaverous Imperial soldier—Pauling, he assumed—was fumbling with the controls, hands dangling from his emaciated
, stick-like wrists, all of which seemed to be under the control of some ridiculously inept puppeteer.

  “What is that?” Pauling croaked, head jerking from side to side. “What’s happening down there?”

  “Hangar bay’s opening,” Han said. “I figured you boys were doing it.”

  “Negative.” Pauling jerked one crooked thumb out the canopy. “I think they are.”

  Down below, Han could see the bottom of the Star Destroyer sliding open to reveal the void of space. Off to the right he thought he glimpsed the bow of the Prison Barge Purge, appearing very small at the end of its docking shaft, a tiny footnote dangling from the bulk of the saga of Imperial dominance.

  As the bay came wide open, the captured ships began flying out—a pair of TIE fighters, the freighter, an Imperial shuttle, and the X-wings—spewing outward in all directions, scattering into space like flies off a corpse. As one of the smaller craft flew past them on its way out, Han glimpsed the sallow faces of the dead peering out at him from the cockpits, crammed in so tightly that their rotted flesh was pressed against the glass. Were some of them actually licking it?

  “Let’s go,” Han said. “What are we waiting for?”

  Pauling punched in a series of commands and the shuttle started vibrating, then jolted hard to port and stopped moving.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know,” Pauling stammered, “the thrusters …”

  “Get up,” Han said, practically jerking the Imperial soldier from his seat and shoving him back toward the cabin. “Chewie, we’re gonna have to do this ourselves.” He looked around. “Chewie?”

  No answer came back, and Han didn’t have time to go looking for him. He reset the navigational systems to manual and brought the throttle straight up, nosing the shuttle around and angling down until he saw the open bay below him. The galaxy was out there, wide open, just where he’d left it.

  He punched it.

  The shuttle shot downward from the Star Destroyer’s hangar, rocketing past the prison barge and into space, and for that moment, Han Solo felt the surge of adrenaline he always got when whatever ship he was piloting began living up to her potential.

  He didn’t want to think about the lady doctor, what it must have been like for her in the end when those things had opened up on her with the X-wing’s laser cannon.

  But he knew he would eventually.

  Couldn’t be helped.

  Concentrate on what you’re doing. Don’t get stupid now. We’re not out of this yet.

  He was starting to recalibrate the hyperspace navigation system when he first heard the screams.

  “What’s happening back there?”

  There was a thump, and Pauling came staggering back into the cockpit. Deep red arterial spray was jetting from the stump where his arm had once been. His face had gone an even paler shade of gray, his mouth gawping open in amazement.

  “Those things …”

  Then his voice stopped. The screams back in the cabin were only getting louder, and Han stared as Pauling did a weird, wandering pirouette back around and flung his remaining arm in that direction, as if to tell Han about what was going on.

  Then something grabbed him and jerked him away.

  Han flicked the guidance systems on remote and groped instinctively for his blaster. What had he done with it? Laid it aside when he’d taken the throttle, but where had it gone?

  Standing up slowly, he peered around the corner.

  One of the things from the Destroyer’s hangar was standing in the cabin. It had removed its broken stormtrooper helmet to eat. How it had managed to get inside the shuttle before takeoff, Han didn’t know, and it didn’t matter—its mouth was buried in Pauling’s throat and it was busily slurping his blood, ripping off huge gobbets of his flesh. Han looked down and saw its white-booted foot planted on the chest of the other Imperial soldier, Tanner, or what was left of him—not much more than a heap of bloody refuse, a black uniform packed with seeping meat, one eye rolled completely backward.

  Han’s gaze swept the cabin. On the other side he saw Chewbacca and Trig crouched at the end of the row of seats, staring back at him. Han mimed the word blaster, and both of them shook their heads.

  What am I supposed to do here? he wondered. I’m not the hero. How many more miracles do these people expect from me anyw—

  He stopped.

  The trooper-thing was looking up at him.

  And grinning.

  Strands of Pauling’s flesh were dangling from its teeth. It lurched for him, arms outstretched, howling loud enough that, inside the confines of the cabin, it made Han’s ears ring.

  He tried to dodge backward into the cabin, but his foot caught on something—Pauling’s severed arm. As his legs went out from under him and he fell, the last thing he saw was the thing in the stormtrooper uniform dropping on him with his full weight.

  And then only darkness.

  44/Freebird

  Trig heard the blaster go off before he saw it. Hunched next to Chewie, he’d been looking around the cabin for anything he could use as a weapon when the air suddenly came alive with a now familiar jolt. When he swung his head up, the thing in the stormtrooper uniform was already flailing sideways, away from Han.

  Chewbacca was on his feet, running toward the thing, picking it up—smoke still pouring from the hole blasted in its back—and smashing it down into the cabin floor.

  Trig looked back in the direction where the shooting had come from. What he saw was enough of a shock to render him momentarily speechless.

  “Dr. Cody?”

  Zahara leaned in the rear of the cabin with Han’s blaster in both hands, upraised and ready. Her voice was low, not much more than a whisper. “Careful, Chewbacca. I think I’d better hit him again. Just to be sure.”

  Han—still on his hands and knees—scrambled backward, searching himself frantically for signs of bites or infection. When he saw Zahara standing there he gaped at her. “Where did you come from?”

  She didn’t respond, just kept her attention fixed on the thing in the trooper armor. It was seizing now, arms and legs flailing, head flung backward as sluggish grayish fluid pulsed up from its lips to pool behind its head. As they stared at it, more of the fluid started leaking from its nose and ears and finally from the corners of its eyes like sticky infected tears running down either side of its face.

  “They never did that before,” Han said.

  “They’ve never been this far from the source before.”

  Han looked at her, bewildered.

  “There’s probably a heavy contamination residual spread throughout the Destroyer from all those tanks. Maybe it’s what helped sustain them—slows down the decay process and keeps the muscle receptors firing.”

  “How do you know all this?”

  Zahara gave him a sidelong glance. “I get my information from a droid, remember?”

  “Hey, I didn’t mean—”

  “It’s all right,” she said. “Look.” She pointed out the glass at the other ships that had left the Destroyer ahead of them. At first Han couldn’t see what she was trying to show him, but after a moment he realized what was happening. The escaped ships had stopped moving—they were drifting aimlessly into the depths of space. As he watched, one of the TIE fighters listed drunkenly sideways, swiveling directly into the path of another TIE, and they slammed into each other, exploding on impact.

  “That was Blackwing’s flaw,” Zahara said. “It’s going to keep them from spreading it any farther than this.”

  “Blackwing?”

  “That gray liquid in those tanks was a highly refined version of the virus. The whole operation was set up to create an unlimited supply of it, probably so that the Empire could manipulate its behavior wherever they wanted.”

  “So all those zombies down there,” Han said, “they were just the middlemen? Like a means to an end?”

  Zahara nodded. “I think so. Their resurrected bodies were probably intended to be the supplier
s and distributors. But without constant and direct exposure to the virus, they can’t function.”

  Han scratched his chin. “I still don’t get how you’re here. We saw your body up in the main hangar control.”

  “That was White,” Zahara said. “He picked up my distress call. He came out looking for me—got me out of there. But he wasn’t fast enough to get out himself.”

  “Some random stranger sacrificed himself to save you?” Han asked. “No offense, that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”

  Zahara’s smile was a pale, wan line.

  “He said a stranger did the same thing for him.”

  They traveled for a long time without talking. Chewie helped Han fly for a while and then went back into the cabin to nap, leaving Han alone. Sometimes he thought the galaxy was better observed that way, in silence, when you could sit and look at it and wait for things to make sense—not that they always did.

  After a while the kid came into the cockpit and sat down where Chewie had been. Han didn’t say anything, giving him time until he was ready to talk.

  “Where are we headed?” Trig asked finally.

  Han shrugged. “A better place.”

  “So there’s no plan?”

  “There’s always a plan. Sometimes it just takes a while to see what it is.”

  Trig looked at him.

  “What?” Han asked.

  “Nothing. That sounds like something my dad used to say, that’s all.”

  “Your old man, huh?”

  “You would’ve liked him.” Trig sat back, gazing far out into the depths of space at all those stars. “Were you ever scared back there?”

  “Me? Pfft.” Han cocked an eyebrow. “Not that I’m looking for an excuse to go back, mind you.”

  “How do you like the shuttle?”

  “This thing? It’s okay. I mean, if you want to see fast, you should see mine—or should’ve, before the Imperials impounded it, that is. Not much to look at, but …” He was aware of the kid staring at the instrumentation panel and navicomputer feeding itself coordinates in a steady chain of silent dialogue. “You want to give it a try?”