Part 17 (1/2)

Trig looked back and forth through the open duct. Then he picked a direction and began to crawl.

Chapter 35.

The Whole Sick Crew Across the main hangar, Sartoris watched dark figures moving toward him.

He'd first seen them coming right after all the shooting had died down, only a handful at first, then more, now dozens-traveling en ma.s.se, a single organism made up of countless smaller components. They were close enough now that he could make out individual faces, men he'd worked with for years on the prison barge, guards he'd called by their first names, soldiers who had followed his command with the utmost unquestioning loyalty, prisoners who had once shuddered in fear at his pa.s.sage. They traveled together now, their swollen, disease-ravaged bodies pressing against one another, death as the final brotherhood.

They were coming for him.

Behind him, there was a sharp clank of metal on metal. A low, collective groan escaped the shadows, deep and ravenous, and Sartoris spun around and looked through the captured s.h.i.+ps to catch a flicker of movement beneath the X-wing. Somehow they had slunk around behind him, too. He could see them down there, huddled in the shadows, watching him.

Where did they come from?

That was Lesson One from Imperial Corrections playbook, one you never forgot-never turn your back on the cons. Now Sartoris realized it was too late. The certainty of his death filled his belly like a big gulp of contaminated ice water. Droplets of sweat began to trickle down his spine, creeping between his shoulder blades and down into the waistband of his pants.

The figures in front of him had jerked closer, seeming to advance in the interst.i.tial s.p.a.ce between moments, like footage from which the transitions had been removed. Their eyes never left his, and there was a slinking , primitive slyness to their movement; he wondered if they were still sizing him up, or if they just derived some atavistic pleasure watching him squirm. Within seconds it wouldn't matter-they'd be close enough to launch themselves at him and tear him apart. They could even shoot him now if they wanted. They were all carrying blasters.

The things behind him hooted out a scream.

The inmates and guards in front of him screamed back, a call-and-response. Sartoris saw ropy strands of drool swinging from their mouths, human and nonhuman alike. There was a group of Wookiee prisoners with what looked like whole waterfalls of saliva pouring down between their fangs and slopping over their chins, soaking their fur. They looked like they'd eat him alive instead of blasting him- maybe they preferred their meat uncooked.

”Come on, then,” he said grimly. ”What are you waiting for?”

As if awaiting the invitation, they broke ranks and charged, and Sartoris, who up till that moment had had no idea what his next move would be, looked around at the abandoned X-wing and grabbed the fighter's wing, lifting himself up and onto it. He made his way with a jouncing, bandy-legged run up the wing toward the c.o.c.kpit canopy, pivoted, and dropped down into the pilot's seat, reaching up to try to seal it shut, but the canopy was broken and wouldn't close.

Within seconds every flaw in his reckless plan became glaringly apparent. He could already feel both groups of the things moving below the X-wing, their thudding collective strength and hunger surging as they rocked the fighter back and forth underneath him, trying to flip it over, while others climbed up the nose cone in front of him. The three Wookiee prisoners he'd glimpsed earlier had already taken hold of the canopy and were trying to rip it loose, or maybe just haul themselves up high enough to attack him where he sat. He could picture their three woolly bodies hunched over the stump of his exposed torso, ripping and tearing whatever was left inside the kettle of blood that had once been the X-wing's c.o.c.kpit.

For the first time his eyes flashed down at the avionics display. The instrument panel held the milky glow of sleeping electronics, but it was brightening slowly now as if activated by his arrival. Just above the throttle, the green targeting scope blinked steadily, and Sartoris saw switches for weapons activation, laser cannons, and proton torpedoes coming online.

From above, several hands reached down at once and sank their claws into his neck. He could smell them now, the infected Wookiees, the salivating, bronchial snorts of their hunger as their breath drew closer. Wet hot saliva dribbled down over his face and he felt the press of something sharp and hard.

Sartoris squeezed the trigger.

His whole world jolted backward. The laser bolt burst from both sets of cannons at once, a blinding muzzle flash that vaporized the mob of inmates in front of him even as it threw him into reverse. The Wookiees that had been reaching for his throat disappeared, jerked away with a howl of anger and shock, and Sartoris realized the X-wing was still skidding, propelled along the hangar floor by the recoil. It all ended abruptly with a jarring crash, the thrust engines of the s.h.i.+p hammering into something even bigger than itself, probably the hangar wall.

He lunged up and out of the seat and saw he'd collided with an Imperial landing craft, a Sentinel-cla.s.s shuttle that looked like it had been sucked in by the tractor beam and dropped flat on the deck.

There's an emergency hatch here somewhere. Where is it?

He vaulted onto the shuttle's hull, ran up and felt the craft lurch underneath him-they were already down there, waves of them, and that screaming noise was cycling up again. When they hit the underside of the shuttle he lost his balance completely and fell forward, through the hatch.

What came next was blackness.

With a silent groan, Sartoris opened his eyes. He was lying on his back in the shuttle's darkened cabin, the corrugated steel pressing against his neck. Outside the reinforced durasteel hull he could hear them faintly, scratching, slapping, pounding. There was a brief pause. Something much heavier slammed into it, an explosion-blasters again, he thought wearily, and wanted nothing more than to just black out.

”Did you bring them with you?” a voice croaked in the darkness.

Sartoris jumped a little and stared up at several sets of eyes peering down at him. As his vision adapted he realized he was looking at a group of men in ill-fitting Imperial uniforms leaning over him from seats mounted to either side of the shuttle's cabin walls. Reacting without thinking, he jerked backward and tried unsuccessfully to scramble away.

”It's all right,” the voice said. ”We're not infected.”

Sartoris examined them more closely, his heart still wedged up in the right pocket of his throat. Even amid everything else that was happening outside, the appearance of the men remained a shock. Their starvation-ravaged faces were little more than skulls with parchment-yellow skin stretched over them, lips drawn back in permanent sneers, cheekbones bulging grotesquely outward. One of them attempted what Sartoris supposed was a smile.

”I'm Commander Gorrister,” the man said, clearly waiting for Sartoris to introduce himself. When he didn't, Gorrister sank back with a sigh and continued, ”From what's going out there, I can only surmise that you ended up here the same way we did.”

Sartoris grimaced. ”Something like that.”

Gorrister started to say something and a sharp slamming noise cut off his words. Outside the s.h.i.+p, the blasterfire continued, smas.h.i.+ng and pounding against the armored hull. The commander waved it away with scarcely a glance.

”They'll give up after a moment,” he said. ”It's really just a reflex on their part...”

Sartoris raised an eyebrow. ”Reflex?”

”Mm. Certain learned behavior patterns are difficult to unlearn, even when grossly ineffective.”

Another round of explosions slammed into them, the firing intensifying.

”Sounds pretty effective to me,” Sartoris said.

The commander shook his head. ”Our hull is specially reinforced. We're essentially impervious to handheld weapons. Until they're able to decipher the heavier artillery, we're relatively safe. Of course, that's only a matter of time, isn't it?” His upper lip disappeared in his mouth with a soft sucking sound. ”They haven't pulled in many s.h.i.+ps yet, but I suppose that's to be expected, hovering out here at the edge of the Unknown Regions. There's not much traffic this far out.”

He made a weak effort to point up to the c.o.c.kpit, where the shuttle's instrument panel shone faintly, a myopic eye afflicted with cataracts of energy-lack.

”We saw how it dragged your prison barge in,” Gorrister said, and then, uttering a terrible, humorless chuckle that was more like a gasp: ”Too bad they can't eat their own.”

”Who?” Sartoris asked.

The man favored him with a wan expression that was less incredulity than outright disbelief. ”What, did you actually think your inmate friends out there were the only ones aboard?”

”Who else is there?”

”Who . . . else?” This time the commander actually mustered a laugh. It sounded like a layer of dust being blown from a very old book, perhaps one that had been bound in human skin. ”Oh, dear. You really don't have any idea what's going on, do you?”

Sartoris felt a stirring of irritation he didn't bother to suppress from his voice. ”Suppose you bring me up to speed.”

”It started ten weeks ago, when the first tanks began leaking.”

”What tanks?”

Gorrister ignored him. ”There were those conspiracy theorists among us who still insisted it wasn't an accident, that we were all part of some larger experiment, which I suppose is possible.”

”Hold on,” Sartoris said, sitting up to face the man straight on, ”start at the beginning.”