Part 14 (1/2)

Spinning around, he had gone blundering down the corridor and plunged through the maintenance shaft, clinging to the inner wall while the thing went plummeting down past him with a frantic yodelling scream. And then, holding on inside the shaft, his fingers slowly going numb, Trig had listened to it hit the bottom of the shaft with a crunch, its shallow breathing broken, still hungry, still trying to drag itself back up to get him.

He thought about that inmate, as horrible as it was, over and over, and told himself it was better than thinking about the other thing.

The thing weaving its way across the pilot station toward the docking shaft.

The thing with his father's face.

That face, also bloated and sagging, had hung off the thing's skull like a poorly fitted mask, stretching at the eyes. Trig's mind refused to leave it alone. He kept thinking about the way it had grinned at him, as if it recognized him. And all the rest of them, the guards and prisoners.

Not Dad, he told himself. Kale said it wasn't and you could see it, too. Dad's dead, you said good-bye to him, whatever that thing up there was, it wasn't Dad.

And he could almost believe it.

Almost.

Except around the eyes.

His father's eyes had always been his strongest feature, those faded blue irises streaked with flecks of gold, the dark inquisitive pupils, their quickness and clarity, how they sought you out, making you feel like you were the only person in the room. Trig had always liked talking to his father, and his dad could always make him laugh just by looking at him.

The thing upstairs had had his father's eyes.

Behind him now, Trig thought he heard something scuffling across the Destroyer's main hangar and jerked around fast to look back. He could feel the blood tingling in his fingertips. There was nothing there, nothing but the long flat durasteel floor they'd been walking across, and far away, on the other side, almost out of sight, the tiny huddled shapes of his brother and Dr. Cody.

I'm going crazy, he thought, and the idea brought no sense of dread-in fact, it was almost a relief. He'd been losing his grip on things over the last several days, and what he'd just seen only solidified it. Crazy, of course, and why not? What else were you supposed to do when the dead came back to life and tried to rip out the soft part of your neck?

And if the dead man was your father?

But Kale said - ”Kale's wrong,” he muttered, ”he's just wrong” and he nodded along with his own words because being crazy meant you could tell the truth. You didn't have to pretend it was okay anymore, and that was good.

He heard that furtive scuttling noise behind him again and spun back around, but there was still nothing there. He couldn't even see his brother and Dr. Cody across the hangar, their outlines absorbed by distance and the lack of light. Or maybe the thing that was following them had already eaten them, and they were dead, too, which meant Trig would be seeing them again soon, wouldn't he?

n the end, the sickness would bring them back. In the end maybe the sickness brought everyone back.

Trig began to feel as if he were sinking into a warm deep bath. His hearing was becoming m.u.f.fled, his vision softening around the edges, blurring into deeper shadows across the bay. No wonder the Empire had abandoned this Star Destroyer out here in some remote corner of the galaxy-the sickness here was worse than anything he'd ever heard of; it made Darth Vader and his endless armies seem almost innocent by comparison. Thinking about it now made him want to puke and laugh at the same time because that was what you did, that was just what crazy people did, when their fathers came back from the dead and tried to attack them.

Kid?

Hey kid, are . . , ?

He realized he'd stopped walking. Han Solo was standing in front of him, staring at him through what felt like a thick and motionless cus.h.i.+on of air. Trig could see his mouth moving, saw him frowning, asking a question- . . . you gonna . . .

But for the life of him he couldn't figure out what Han was saying. It was like he was speaking a different language. Now the man was shaking him by the shoulders, and the soft wax that had plugged Trig's ears was starting to melt away, opening up his hearing.

”... all right?” Han asked.

At the sound of his voice, Trig felt the still air around him stirring, become less stifling, as if he'd just snapped out of some invisible chrysalis and drawn his first clean breath. It stung his nose and made his throat ache like he'd tried to swallow too big of a bite of something, and he realized he was going to cry again. Even if he didn't have any more tears.

Han stood there looking at him awkwardly.

”My dad . . .” Trig managed, and that was all.

Han opened his mouth to say something but didn't. To his left, Chewbacca leaned forward and put his arms around Trig. It was like being wrapped up in a warm, slightly musty-smelling blanket. Trig could feel the Wookiee's heartbeat, and a soft, comforting growl from deep inside that cavernous chest. Slowly he made himself release and draw away.

”Okay,” Han said, and cleared his throat. ”You all right?”

Trig nodded. It was a lie, he wasn't all right, not at all, but he was better-a little.

He looked around and saw that they were standing among several smaller s.h.i.+ps, the ones he'd first seen from the other side of the bay, old rusted vessels, jettisoned escape pods, captured Rebel s.h.i.+ps and shuttles, a small Corellian freighter. They lay in piles around them, a modest a.s.sortment of ruined aeronautics.

The Wookiee barked out a question.

”Nah,” Han said, ”I seriously doubt it.” He pointed. ”We can get up to the main concourse, follow it up.”

”Yeah,” Trig said, because he knew some kind of answer was expected of him.

”It's going to take us a while to get to the command bridge. These things are a kilometer long. But if it's got an engine, we can fly it.”

Trig nodded. They kept walking.

Behind him, far off in the distance he heard a new sound.

Screaming.

Chapter 29.

Sine Zahara jerked sideways and stared back at the docking shaft. The screaming coming from inside of the shaft was inhuman. It was shrill and sharp and hateful, comprising maybe hundreds of voices pitched up together-EEEEEEEEEE. It oscillated in a waveform that the mathematical part of her mind insisted on graphing, rising up to squeeze her eardrums, sloping toward silence, then coming up again to the same frequency of precision dynamics.

Kale groaned. He was muttering something. She leaned down to listen.

”. . .ut it off. . .”

She looked at him, startled by what she understood him to be saying. And in case she didn't understand, he was fully awake now, staring at her, pointing at his bandaged leg.

”Doc, please. You have to.”

Another scream Dopplered by, eeeEEEEeeee, and she waited until it ended.

”What?”

eeeEEEEeee - ”Cut it off.”

eeeEEEEeee - ”That's not necessary,” she said. ”Not right now.”

eeeEEEEeee - ”I can feel it coming up through me. You have to.” His eyes were bright and scared and absolutely lucid. ”Please, I don't care how much it hurts, just do it, cut it off.”