Scourge

by Jeff Grubb

  Cheems expected them to blast their way as far as possible from the Imperial Navy base and the city that surrounded it. But they flew only a few hundred meters along the marina boundary. Then they abandoned their speeder in a dark, grassy field just outside the marina gates and hurried on foot along old-fashioned wooden docks. Soon afterward, they boarded a long, elegant water yacht in gleaming Imperial-style white.

  Within a few minutes, they had backed the yacht out of its berth, maneuvered it into the broad waters of the bay, and set a course for the open sea beyond.

  Eight in all, they assembled on the stern deck, which was decorated with comfortable, weather-resistant furnishings, a bar, and a grill. Cheems sat on a puffy chair and watched, bewildered, as his rescuers continued their high-energy preparations.

  The Devaronian, whom the others called Elassar, broke top-grade bantha steaks out of a cold locker and began arraying them on the grill. Piggy the Gamorrean located and donned a white robe, then began mixing drinks. Kell shed his armor, dumping it and his Imperial weapons over the side. Hachat disappeared below decks for two minutes and reemerged, his hair now short and brown, his clothes innocuous. Runt shed his traveler’s robe and set up a small but expensive-looking portable computer array on an end table. A yellow-skinned human man who had not been on the speeder joined Kell and stripped off his own Imperial armor, throwing it overboard. Shalla merely stretched out on a lounge chair and smiled as she watched the men work.

  Cheems finally worked up the courage to speak. “Um … excuse me … not that I’m complaining … but could I get some sort of summary on what just happened?”

  Hachat grinned and settled onto a couch beside Cheems’s chair. “My name isn’t Hachat. It’s Garik Loran. Captain Loran, New Republic Intelligence. Runt, do you have the tracker signal yet?”

  “Working on it.”

  “Put it up on the main monitor, superimpose the local map.”

  No less confused, Cheems interrupted. “Garik Loran? Face Loran, the boy actor?”

  Face did not quite suppress a wince. “That was a long time ago. But yes.”

  “I love The Life Day Murders. I have a copy on my datapad.”

  “Yeah … Anyway, what do you think this was all about?”

  “Getting me out of the Admiral’s hands, I suppose.” Cheems frowned, reconstructing the sequence of events in his mind. “Two days ago, as I was being led from my laboratory to my prison quarters, I felt a nasty sting in my back. I assume you shot me with some sort of communications device. Little buzzy voices vibrating in my shoulder blade.”

  Face nodded. He gestured toward the man with yellow skin. “That’s Bettin. He’s our sniper and exotic-weapons expert. He tagged you from a distance of nearly a kilometer, which was as close as we could get to you.”

  Bettin waved, cheerful. “Damned hard shot, too. Cross-wind, low-mass package. Piggy was my spotter. I had to rely pretty heavily on his skills at calculation.”

  “Yes, yes.” Face sounded impatient. “So, anyway, that was step one. Getting in contact with you.”

  Cheems considered. “And step two was telling me that I was going to be called on to authenticate an artifact, and that I absolutely had to do that, regardless of what I was looking at.”

  Face nodded.

  “What was I looking at? The material had a crystalline structure, definitely, but it wasn’t diamond or any other precious stone. In fact, it looked a bit like crystallized anthracite.”

  Kell, standing at the bar, grinned at Cheems. No longer concealed by his helmet, his features were fair, very handsome. His blond hair was worn in a buzz cut, retreating from a widow’s peak. “Very good. It’s a modified form of anthracite in a crystallized form.”

  “So I was within centimeters of ten kilos of high explosive?” Cheems thought he could feel the blood draining from his head.

  “Nearer fifteen. Plus a transceiver, power unit, and some control chips in the base.” Kell shrugged, accepted a drink from Piggy.

  Cheems shook his head. “And I was passing it off as a work of art!”

  Kell stared at him, clearly miffed. “It was a work of art.”

  Face caught Cheems’s attention again. “Teradoc’s habits and methods are well known to Intelligence. We had to have bait that required a gem expert to authenticate; we had to have a sneaky profit motive so Teradoc would bring you off-base to do the authentication; and we had to have the bait be very valuable so when trouble erupted he’d grab it and run.”

  “Back to his base.” Cheems felt a chill grip him. “Back to his most secure area, where his treasures are stored. His personal vault.”

  Face gave him a now-you-get-it smile. “Which is where, exactly?”

  “Directly beneath his secure research-and-development laboratories.”

  “Where, if Intelligence is right, his people are experimenting with plague viruses, self-replicating nonbiological toxins, and the project for which Teradoc kidnapped you, Doctor Cheems.”

  “A sonic device. The idea was that sound waves pitched and cycling correctly could resonate with lightsaber crystals, shattering them.”

  For once, Face looked concerned. “Could it actually work?”

  Cheems shook his head. “Not in a practical way. Against exposed crystals, yes. But lightsaber hilts insulate the crystals too effectively. I couldn’t tell the admiral that, though. To tell him ‘This can’t work’ would basically be to say, ‘Kill me now, please, I’m of no more use to you.’ ” Belatedly Cheems realized that he’d said too much. If this miracle rescue was itself a scam, if he was currently surrounded by Imperial Intelligence operatives, he’d just signed his own execution order. He gulped.

  Runt turned to Face. “I have it.” He repositioned the main monitor at his table so others could see.

  The monitor showed an overhead map view of the planet’s capital city, its Imperial Navy base, the huge bay that bordered both to the east. A blinking yellow light was stationary deep within the base. Then, as they watched, the light faded to nothingness.

  Cheems glanced at Face. “Did your device just fail?”

  Face shook his head. “No. It was taken into a secure area where comm signals can’t penetrate. Its internal circuitry, some of which is a planetary positioning system, knows where it is—the research-and-development labs. Atmospheric pressure meters are telling it how deep in the ground it is. At the depth of Teradoc’s personal vault, well …”

  There was a distant rumble from the west, not even a boom. Everyone looked in that direction. There was nothing to see other than the city lights for a moment, then spotlights sprang to life all across the naval base, sweeping across the nighttime sky.

  Faraway alarms began to howl.

  Face settled back into the couch, comfortable. “Right now, the lower portions of the labs have been vaporized. Pathogen vaults and viral reactors have been breached. Sensors are detecting dangerous pathogens escaping into the air. Vents are slamming shut and sealing, automated decontamination measures are activating. Before the decontamination safety measures are done, everything in that site will be burned to ash and chemically sterilized. Sadly, I suspect Teradoc isn’t experiencing any of that, as he was doubtless admiring his new prize when it went off. But we owe him a debt of gratitude. He saved us months’ worth of work by smuggling our bomb past his own base security all by himself.”

  Cheems looked at Piggy. “I could use something very tall and very potent to drink.”

  Piggy flashed his tusks in a Gamorrean smile. “Coming up.”

  Face turned to Piggy. “I’ll have a salty gaffer. In Teradoc’s honor. Candy bug, please.” He returned his attention to Cheems. “We’d like you to do one more thing before we get you off-world and into New Republic space. I’d appreciate it if you’d go below and appraise any gemstone items you find. We’ll be turning this yacht and everything on it over to a resistance cell; I’d like to be able to point them at the more valuable items.”

  Cheems frowned. “This isn’t
your yacht?”

  “Oh, no. It’s Teradoc’s. We stole it.”

  STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

  You saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

  Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

  Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

  Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

  All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

  Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

  1/Purge

  THE NIGHTS WERE THE WORST.

  Even before his father’s death, Trig Longo had come to dread the long hours after lockdown, the shadows and sounds and the chronically unstable gulf of silence that drew out in between them. Night after night he lay still on his bunk and stared up at the dripping durasteel ceiling of the cell in search of sleep or some acceptable substitute. Sometimes he would actually start to drift off, floating away in that comforting sensation of weightlessness, only to be rattled awake—heart pounding, throat tight, stomach muscles sprung and fluttering—by some shout or a cry, an inmate having a nightmare.

  There was no shortage of nightmares aboard the Imperial Prison Barge Purge.

  Trig didn’t know exactly how many prisoners the Purge was currently carrying. He guessed maybe five hundred, human and otherwise, scraped from every corner of the galaxy, just as he and his family had been picked up eight standard weeks before. Sometimes the incoming shuttles returned almost empty; on other occasions they came packed with squabbling alien life-forms and alleged Rebel sympathizers of every stripe and species. There were assassins for hire and sociopaths the likes of which Trig had never seen, thin-lipped things that cackled and sneered in seditious languages that, to Trig’s ears, were little more than clicks and hisses.

  Every one of them seemed to harbor its own obscure appetites and personal grudges, personal histories blighted with shameful secrets and obscure vendettas. Being cautious became harder; soon you needed eyes in the back of your head—which some of them actually possessed. Two weeks earlier in the mess hall, Trig had noticed a tall, silent inmate sitting with its back to him but watching him nonetheless with a single raw-red eye in the back of its skull. Every day the red-eyed thing seemed to be sitting a little nearer. Then one day, without explanation, it was gone.

  Except from his dreams.

  Sighing, Trig levered himself up on his elbows and looked through the bars onto the corridor. Gen Pop had cycled down to minimum power for the night, edging the long gangway in permanent gray twilight. The Rodians in the cell across from his had gone to sleep or were feigning it. He forced himself to sit there, regulating his breathing, listening to the faint echoes of the convicts’ uneasy groans and murmurs. Every so often a mouse droid or low-level maintenance unit, one of hundreds occupying the barge, would scramble by on some preprogrammed errand or another. And of course, below it all—low and not quite beneath the scope of hearing—was the omnipresent thrum of the barge’s turbines gnashing endlessly through space.

  For as long as they’d been aboard, Trig still hadn’t gotten used to that last sound, the way it shook the Purge to its framework, rising up through his legs and rattling his bones and nerves. There was no escaping it, the way it undermined every moment of life, as familiar as his own pulse.

  Trig thought back to sitting in the infirmary just two weeks earlier, watching his father draw one last shaky breath, and the silence afterward as the medical droids disconnected the biomonitors from the old man’s ruined body and prepared to haul it away. As the last of the monitors fell silent, he’d heard that low steady thunder of the engines, one more unnecessary reminder of where he was and where he was going. He remembered how that noise had made him feel lost and small and inescapably sad—some special form of artificial gravity that seemed to work directly against his heart.

  He had known then, as he knew now, that it really only meant one thing, the ruthlessly grinding effort of the Empire consolidating its power.

  Forget politics, his father had always said. Just give ’em something they need, or they’ll eat you alive.

  And now they’d been eaten alive anyway, despite the fact that they’d never been sympathizers, no more than low-level grifters scooped up on a routine Imperial sweep. The engines of tyranny ground on, bearing them forward across the galaxy toward some remote penal moon. Trig sensed that noise would continue, would carry on indefinitely, echoing right up until—

  “Trig?”

  It was Kale’s voice behind him, unexpected, and Trig flinched a little at the sound of it. He looked back and saw his older brother gazing back at him, Kale’s handsomely rumpled, sleep-slackened face just a ghostly three-quarter profile suspended in the cell’s gloom. Kale looked like he was still only partly awake and unsure whether or not he was dreaming any of this.

  “What’s wrong?” Kale asked, a drowsy murmur that came out: Wussrong?

  Trig cleared his throat. His voice had started changing recently, and he was acutely aware of how it broke high and low when he wasn’t paying strict attention. “Nothing.”

  “You worried about tomorrow?”

  “Me?” Trig snorted. “Come on.”

  “ ’S okay if you are.” Kale seemed to consider this and then uttered a bemused grunt. “You’d be crazy not to be.”

  “You’re not scared,” Trig said. “Dad would never have—”

  “I’ll go alone.”

  “No.” The word snapped from his throat with almost painful angularity. “We need to stick together, that’s what Dad said.”

  “You’re only thirteen,” Kale said. “Maybe you’re not, you know …”

  “Fourteen next month.” Trig felt another flare of emotion at the mention of his age. “Old enough.”

  “You sure?”

  “Positive.”

  “Well, sleep on it, see if you feel different in the morning …” Kale’s enunciation was already beginning to go muddled as he slumped back down on his bunk, leaving Trig sitting up with his eyes still riveted to the long dark concourse outside the cell, Gen Pop, that had become their no-longer-new home.

  Sleep on it, he thought, and in that exact moment, miraculously, as if by power of suggestion, sleep actually began to seem like a possibility. Trig lay back and let the heaviness of his own fatigue cover him like a blanket, superseding anxiety and fear. He tried to focus on the sound of Kale’s breathing, deep and reassuring, in and out, in and out.

  Then somewhere in the depths of the levels, an inhuman voice wailed. Trig sat up, caught his breath, and felt a chill tighten the skin of his shoulders, arms, and back, crawling over his flesh millimeter by millimeter, bristling the small hairs on the back of his neck. Over in his bunk the already sleeping Kale rolled over and grumbled something incoherent.

  There was another scream, weaker this time. Trig told himself it was just
one of the other convicts, just another nightmare rolling off the all-night assembly line of the nightmare factory.

  But it hadn’t sounded like a nightmare.

  It sounded like a convict, whatever life-form it was, was under attack.

  Or going crazy.

  He sat perfectly still, squeezed his eyes tight, and waited for the pounding of his heart to slow down, just please slow down. But it didn’t. He thought of the thing in the cafeteria, the disappeared inmate whose name he’d never know, watching him with its red staring eye. How many other eyes were on him that he never saw?

  Sleep on it.

  But he already knew there would be no more sleeping here tonight.

  2/Meat Nest

  IN TRIG’S OLD LIFE, BACK ON CIMAROSA, BREAKFAST had been the best meal of the day. Besides being an expert trafficker in contraband, a veteran fringe dweller who cut countless deals with thieves, spies, and counterfeiters, Von Longo had also been one of the galaxy’s greatest unrecognized breakfast chefs. Eat a good meal early, Longo always told his boys. You never know if it’s going to be your last.

  Here on the Purge, however, breakfast was rarely edible and sometimes actually seemed to shiver in the steady vibrations as though still alive on the plate. This morning Trig found himself gazing down at a pasty mass of colorless goo spooned into shaved gristle, the whole thing plastered together in sticky wads like some kind of meat nest assembled by carnivorous flying insects. He was still nudging the stuff listlessly around his tray when Kale finally raised his eyebrows and peered at him.

  “You sleep at all last night?” Kale asked.

  “A little.”

  “You’re not eating.”

  “What, you mean this?” Trig poked at the contents of the tray again and shuddered. “I’m not hungry,” he said, and watched Kale shovel the last bite of his own breakfast into his mouth with disturbing gusto. “You think the food will be any better when we get to the detention moon?”