by Star Wars
Maul just stared at him, expressionless.
“Forgive me,” Zero said. “It’s not your fault. I can see that you’ve been misinformed about the scope of my abilities here. If you were looking to have a certain type of food smuggled in, or a more comfortable uniform, or even a particular pet, then yes, perhaps I could be of assistance, but …”
“I want Radique,” Maul said. “I know he’s here. And if anyone can find him, it’s you.”
The Twi’lek had settled himself completely now and stopped laughing. He lowered his weight down on his bunk, gazing up at Maul with his meal unopened on his lap.
“Let me tell you a story,” he said. “If you’ll indulge me.” Without waiting for Maul’s reply, Zero peeled back the synthetic wrap that covered some kind of glazed-looking reddish-pink fruit dish, waved it momentarily beneath his nose, and took a small nibble.
“About two years ago, another inmate arrived here—he, too, claimed to have come searching for Iram Radique. This misinformed soul, in fact, claimed not only that he’d met Radique before but that he’d actually saved Radique’s life years ago, on the other side of the galaxy—and that Radique had somehow summoned him here to Cog Hive Seven to offer him a kind of protection as a way of thanking him.” Zero took another bite of the fruit loaf, chewed, and swallowed. “Never mind the practical inconsistencies of this story. This new inmate insisted that Radique was locked up and hiding in here somewhere. No matter how many times he came to me for answers, insisting that I help him, he refused to accept the fact of the matter.”
“Which is?” Maul asked.
Zero paused long enough to finish his bite and blotted his lips before looking back up at Maul with an expression of deeply earnest sincerity.
“Iram Radique does not exist. He’s a cautionary tale, a myth—a bedtime story that small-time galactic gunrunners tell their kids at night. ‘Don’t get too big for your britches or Iram Radique will come and get you,’ that sort of thing.” Zero finished his snack, tossed the carton aside, and stood up in front of Maul, tilting his head so that he could meet Maul’s gaze, even as he maintained a careful distance from him. “Hear me well, Jagannath. The so-called man that you seek is not here.”
“What happened to the inmate?”
“I’m sorry?”
“The one who came here claiming to have saved Radique’s life,” Maul asked. “What happened to him?”
“Oh,” Zero said vaguely, “he’s still around somewhere. Eventually he gave up looking. Disabused of his delusions, I suppose. This place has a tendency to do that. You’ll discover that for yourself … if you survive that long.”
Maul said nothing.
“Now,” the Twi’lek said, “since you’ve taken the trouble to come searching for me, I feel compelled to ask, is there anything else that you’re looking for? Anything real?”
“Yes,” Maul said.
“And what might that be?”
“I need a transmitter device. An undetectable means of long-range communication—any basic subspace image transmitter would suffice. I know you’ve got the necessary parts here in your cell.”
“You …” For the first time, Zero looked nonplused. “You’ve discovered that, have you?”
“I need it as soon as possible,” Maul told him.
“What you’re asking for won’t come cheaply,” Zero said. “You must realize that the components that you saw all had to be smuggled in at great personal—”
“What do you want?” Maul interrupted.
“Well.” The Twi’lek drew in a breath, letting it out slowly. “Since you asked, I do seem to be having some recent difficulty with the gangs. The Bone Kings and the Gravity Massive, they—”
“What else?”
“What else?” Zero blinked up at him, bemused. “I assure you, that’s quite enough.”
“Get the transmitter ready for me,” Maul told him. “You’ll have no more trouble with gangs.”
14
JAR OF FLIES
Strabo hated the laundry facility.
When he’d first been shipped to Cog Hive Seven eighteen standard months earlier, laundry had been his work detail. He’d sweated for hours among the giant washers and dryers, toiling alongside malfunctioning droids and inmates through mountains of gore-soaked uniforms and sheets. Assigned to him seemingly at random, the sweat, the stink, and the backbreaking monotony of it had been worse than death.
But it hadn’t lasted long. Soon enough he’d risen through the ranks of the Gravity Massive—strangling the former leader and moving effortlessly into his place—and as a result, he hadn’t had to come back down here in almost a year.
Even so, from the moment he’d led the rest of the Gravity Massive inside, the stinging astringency of the cramped chamber was all too familiar to his nose, like a horrible kind of homecoming. The machines were quiet now, shut down for the night, but the faintly howling silence was somehow even more haunting.
“Don’t see the point,” he growled. “Coming down here in the middle of the night like this.” He looked over his shoulder at the Gravity Massive member standing behind him. “You sure this was the message?”
“That’s what it said.” The inmate known as Izhsmash was a Nelvaanian, long-snouted and sharp-toothed, and Strabo’s second in command. “Word came straight from Halcon.”
“Captain of the guards call us all the way down here, for what? Something they can’t tell us topside?” Strabo shook his head. “The whole thing stinks.”
His lieutenant didn’t answer. The Nelvaanian was a data pirate, shipped here to Cog Hive Seven on charges of information sabotage. He was not a fighter or a killer by nature, but his combination of loyalty and freaky tech skills had made him indispensable to Strabo and the Gravity Massive—or at least as indispensable as one could be in an environment where any two inmates might be called on, at any moment, to slaughter each other.
Now, Strabo knew, was not the time to raise that point. An hour earlier, Izhsmash had informed him that he’d received, via custodial droid, a covert message from CO Halcon, the captain of the guards here in Cog Hive Seven, telling them to bring the entire GM crew, thirteen in all, down into the laundry facility for some sort of clandestine summit between gang and guard. Strabo had been running the crew long enough to know that he ignored such a summons at his peril. Halcon probably wouldn’t detonate the charges in his heart over such a minor act of disobedience, but the guard could make his life miserable in a thousand other ways, everything from cutting his rations to putting him in full lockdown until he was climbing the walls.
So here they were, the Gravity Massive en masse, making their way among the chemical vats and tubes pumping liters of industrial detergents, solvents, along with the liquid cryogens necessary to cool the superconductor power load running to the massive washers and dryers.
“How long we supposed to wait here anyway?” Strabo grumbled, casting his gaze alongside the washers and dryers, their gaping, seventy-centimeter bores standing open and motionless in the gloom. “Did Halcon even say what he wanted with us?”
“No.”
“Not even a clue?”
“He told me to come down.” Izhsmash shrugged. “That’s all.”
“Son of a vogger knows he can’t touch us, right?” Strabo said. “On account of—”
Suddenly he stopped talking. He’d just detected the none too stealthy tap-tap-tap of steel-toed boots approaching in the half darkness from the far side of the alcove. There was only one point of entrance to the facility, which meant—
They’re already here waiting for us.
“Halcon,” Strabo bellowed out, his strident voice only slightly dampened by the claustrophobic confines of the room. “We’re here. You want to tell us what’s so important this time of night?”
There was a solid whump as the hatchway sealed shut behind them, and by the time he realized what was happening, Strabo had already seen who was in front of them.
Not guards.
&nb
sp; Bone Kings.
And in front of them, Vas Nailhead himself, his angry bald scalp bulging toward the Gravity Massive like a pustulant sore.
Under the circumstances, Nailhead appeared as surprised as Strabo felt. “What the …?” he was saying, striding forward, already close enough that Strabo could count all sixteen Kings clustered up behind him. “You?”
“Nailhead.” Strabo glared back at him, the name twisting from his lips like a curse. In his peripheral vision he was aware of Izhsmash and the rest of the Massive troops grimly preparing themselves for battle, pulling out short-handled wire scourges, rope darts, and flying claws from inside their uniforms. These chain weapons, fashioned from scavenged materials, sharpened and honed in secret, were the preferred pain-inflicting tools of the Massive and were always kept close at hand. “What are you doing here? Looking for a rematch?”
“If that’s what you want,” Nailhead said, and his eyes flicked over Strabo’s shoulder to Izhsmash.
“Got a message to bring the Kings down here,” the Nelvaanian said. “Halcon sent it to me through a utility droid.”
“Us too,” Nailhead said.
“What?” Strabo squinted at him. “That can’t—”
The rest of the sentence was lost behind a sibilant whoosh from the tall containment vats along the wall. Both gangs spun around to stare at the source of the sound, and when he recognized what it was, Strabo felt his blood run cold. Thick clouds of freezing cold vapor were pouring out of the tanks, rising around them, sucking the oxygen out of the air.
Cryogens, he thought, his mind flashing back to the warnings he’d received about the liquid nitrogen and helium detergents stored inside the tanks, how any sort of leak or breach would literally suck the oxygen from the lungs of anyone unlucky enough to be trapped inside.
Exhaust fans in the ceiling. The toggle switch overhead—
It was already too late. Strabo felt his trachea clamp down to a pinhole, choking on what should have been air but instead tore into the delicate inner lining of his throat like a swarm of wasps. His lungs crumpled like empty leather sacks inside his chest, the strength draining from his body all at once as the floor swung up to hit him in the face like a huge blunt fist. His eyes and nose were on fire, his lungs trembling on the verge of revolt. He could no more climb up to activate the exhaust fans than he could draw in another unobstructed breath.
From somewhere in front of him, there came a loose and thready shriek. Strabo hoisted his head up and looked out through tear-soaked eyes. Nailhead and the Bone Kings were crumpling, clutching their chests, hacking and wheezing, falling to the floor in piles among members of the Gravity Massive. In less than thirty seconds, the cryo leak had accomplished what no measure of diplomacy ever could, uniting both gangs in a desperate fraternity of oxygen debt. Strabo saw his own people collapsing next to the Kings, side by side, brought low in their final moments, as indistinguishable as flies in a killing jar.
By the moons of Rennokk, we’re all going to die here, he thought wildly. A thumping, primordial self-defense mechanism kicked in, more powerful than anything on the conscious level, superseding all other instincts.
Get out. Get out. Get out now—
Stumbling backward, elbowing his way violently through the ranks of his own people, Strabo groped his way in the direction of the exit, only to find it sealed. Something rammed his arm, and he realized there was someone next to him, a large, frantic shape.
It was Nailhead. The bearded man had fought his way over, too, and was jerking even more desperately on the manual release lever, pounding on it, trying to get out. His once-imposing face was a hairy, sweat-slick moon of terror.
From just above the hatchway, Strabo felt something take hold of his arm.
He looked up.
The Zabrak, the one called Jagannath, was glaring down at both of them, his nose and mouth protected by some kind of jury-rigged respirator. Strabo just stared at him, uncertain if what he saw was real or a side effect of the cryogens. He didn’t have more than a moment to ponder the possibilities before the Zabrak tossed him aside, striding among the center of the alcove to where the open cryogen vats were spraying out great gunmetal-colored clouds more intensely than ever.
Switch them off! Strabo wanted to shout, though at this point his voice was a pale memory. You’ve got to—
But Jagannath was already in motion. Using the rungs imbedded directly in the wall, he drew himself up and climbed effortlessly to the top of the tank, reached across, and closed two sets of valves. He toggled another switch, and Strabo watched in wonder as the blades of the overhead fans began swinging to life, sucking the cryogens out, venting fresh oxygen into the sealed room.
After a moment, the air began to clear. The fans spun on. Strabo watched them swirling round and round as slowly—terribly slowly—the burning knots inside his own lungs began to loosen and disappear.
The Zabrak switched off the fans again.
Silence fell.
“Hear me.”
Strabo wiped his eyes, coughed and spat, and finally looked up. Around him, on either side, Kings and Massive members alike were gaping up at the Zabrak with identical expressions of desperate, half-conscious wonder.
“What the kark do you want?” Nailhead managed, but his voice was just a raspy, hollowed-out ghost of its former self.
Jagannath ignored him. “What happened here, this cryo leak, was no accident. The captain of the guards, Halcon, did this. I overheard him planning it. That’s why he called you all down here.”
Nobody said anything. It might have been the suddenness of what had just transpired, but neither gang raised the first murmur of dissent.
“He wants to wipe out the gangs,” the Zabrak said. “All of you. You’ve become more trouble than you’re worth. Warden Blirr wouldn’t have let him get away with it all at once—some of you still have upcoming matches to fulfill—so Halcon was going to make it look like an accident.”
Silence.
“I didn’t have to save you,” Jagannath told them. “I could just as easily have let you die down here. And every one of you—” His yellow eyes moved across both gangs, taking in their blotchy, pale faces. “You all saw how your so-called leaders behaved just now—turning their backs on you to save themselves. Clawing like dogs at the door to get out. They couldn’t have cared less.”
A collective snarl came out of the crowd. Strabo flung up his hands in an instinctive posture of self-defense. Members of the Gravity Massive and Bone Kings turned to glare at him and Nailhead, the pain and panic in their eyes already changing from accusatory suspicion to outrage rage.
“He’s right!” someone shouted. “I saw it too!”
“They led us here!”
“It was them!”
“Hold it!” Strabo took a step back and bumped into Nailhead, who already had his back to the wall. The other inmates jammed in toward them, even closer. Izhsmash’s lips had drawn back in a snarl to reveal sharpened canines and incisors. Strabo felt a half dozen hands coming from a half dozen different directions, groping to take hold of him, ready to rip him apart.
“The time of gangs is coming to an end here,” Jagannath’s voice said from up above. “Halcon won’t rest until he’s destroyed you all.”
“He can’t do that!” Strabo swung at the gang members, Kings and Gravity Massive alike. “We’re protected! Because of what we do, the way we serve Radique—”
His voice broke off. All the inmates who’d been about to attack him just a split second earlier took a step back, creating an open space around him, as if they’d just found out Strabo was infected with some horrifically contagious disease. Even Nailhead moved away from him.
Jagannath stared down at him.
“What about Radique?”
Strabo lowered his head.
“How do the gangs work for him? What do they do?”
Strabo looked at Izhsmash, but the Nelvaanian refused to meet his gaze. None of them would. It was over for him. S
trabo realized that he’d gone from their leader to a complete outcast in the time it took to mention that single name.
“Tell me,” Jagannath said, casting one more glance across the two gangs before directing his gaze back at Strabo. The unspoken message was clear enough: Your reign here is over. Only I can protect you now.
Strabo opened his mouth and snapped it shut again. When he finally managed to summon his voice, the words came out involuntarily, as if jerked from his lips by an invisible hook.
“The parts,” he said. “The weapons components.”
“What about them?”
“They—they come smuggled in on the supply ships. We each get one piece, small enough to tuck into our uniform and hide in our cell. Nobody knows what anybody else gets. Nobody knows how they fit together. Nobody knows where they go and how they get there.”
“How does Radique get them from you?”
“No one knows. They just disappear.”
Jagannath glared at him. “Disappear?”
“It’s all I know,” Strabo said. “And he pays us the same way. With the khipus.” He pulled up his pantleg to reveal the string of knots tied around his ankle. “They’re coded to a hidden account, a form of payment that the guards can’t access.”
The Zabrak turned to survey the rest of the room. “I know that you all work for Radique in some capacity. Which means that you already serve a common purpose. Now you’ll all serve one leader.” He straightened up. “Me.”
“Never!” Off to his left, Strabo saw Nailhead lunge forward with his fists clenched, eyes blazing, and realized that he himself had also stepped up to confront this indignity head-on, as some animal part of him refused to bow before the newly appointed leader.
The Zabrak reacted faster than either he or Nailhead could. Seizing Nailhead from behind, the one called Jagannath hooked his fingers into the flesh-eater’s nostrils and yanked his head straight back to expose his throat before driving his fist into the cartilage of Nailhead’s windpipe, dropping him to the floor in a wheezing, debilitated heap. Strabo saw the Zabrak pivot, shooting his foot straight up so that it hit Strabo in the solar plexus, leaving him doubled over and sucking air.