Star Wars_ Death Troopers Part 5

She walked back to her workstation, thumbed the console, and watched as Kloth's face materialized on the screen in front of her. Some kind of contrast malfunction had rendered the image too bright, making it appear bleached and monochromatic. He was sitting at his desk, the viewport behind him partly eclipsed by the ma.s.sive bulk of the Star Destroyer's underside directly above. It blocked out more stars than she had expected and gave the odd appearance of having arrived at their destination.

"Dr. Cody? What is it?"

"I'm down here with five of the men from the boarding party," she said.

"How are they?"

"Not good. I'm placing them in the quarantine bubble. Where's Captain Sartoris?"

"In his quarters, I a.s.sume. But Dr. Cody..."

"I'll need him up here, too," she said. "What about the other five?"

"That's just it." Kloth shook his head and she realized for the first time that the pallor on his face had nothing to do with the contrast of the monitor screen. "The second team never came back."

Chapter 11.

Red Map Sartoris was dreaming when the knock on the door awakened him.

In the dream he was still wandering around the Destroyer, alone. The rest of his party-Austin, Vesek, Armitage, the engineers and troopers-was dead and gone. Something aboard the Destroyer had picked them off, one by one. Each man's departure had been marked by a scream, followed by a sickening crack that Sartoris seemed to feel as much as hear.

Sartoris kept moving, trying to ignore a nagging itch that had spread across the skin of his stomach like a rash. He knew it was only a matter of time before the beast, whatever it was, came after him. It wouldn't be long before he glimpsed its true face, if it had one. Maybe it didn't; perhaps it was simply sickness personified, a brainless and ravenous void that sucked in life.

A maze of hallways stood ahead of him, and Sartoris's pace faltered. He was lost and he knew it. He wasn't even sure if he was heading toward the thing or away from it. The skin around his abdomen itched worse and he stopped to scratch it and felt something impressed on the flesh itself, like a tattoo or a mesh of wrinkles. His dream-self tugged up his s.h.i.+rttail from his pants and he looked down at the skin of his side and saw that there was in fact something printed on his side, some kind of map-a map of the Star Destroyer. The diagrams disappeared into his flesh, and he realized he'd have to open himself up to read it. Steeling himself, he hooked the first two fingers of his right hand and raked them as hard as he could into the muscle above his hip, ignoring the dry-ice spike of pain and thrusting in deeper to peel back the outer tissue layer. The fat came loose from his flank with a sickening ease. Blood gushed out of his side, hot and steaming, running down his legs and filling up his boots.

When he woke up, a scream at his lips, the knocking had turned into pounding.

He sat up, s.h.i.+vered with a kind of all-over wetness, and for a queasy instant thought he was still bleeding. But the hot sticky moisture clinging to his skin was only perspiration-it pasted his hair to his brow and stuck his uniform to his back. The only part of his body that wasn't wet was the inside of his mouth; it was bone-dry.

Opening the door of his quarters he saw two guards in orange bio-hazard suits and masks standing there, looking like refugees from his interrupted dream.

"Captain Sartoris?"

He blinked. "What's this?"

"Sir, we've been instructed to bring you down to the infirmary."

"Why?"

A pause, then: "Orders, sir."

"Whose?" Sartoris asked, and made it easy for them. "The warden's or Dr. Cody's?"

The guards exchanged a glance. The glare off their face-s.h.i.+elds made it hard to say which one responded. "I'm not sure, sir. But..."

"Who gave the order to gear up?" Sartoris asked, but he was already thinking about Austin's cough and Greeley's vomiting, and the others, all of them. Too late he wished he'd conferred with Warden Kloth about the other party before going back, to his quarters. It had been a small act of defiance that had blown up in his face, another poor decision in a long and self-destructive chain of questionable choices. He ought to have reported back first: swallowed his agitation and just done it.

"Better come with us, sir."

Sartoris took a step forward to try to identify the men inside the mask. "I feel fine," he said, and although this was the truth, it felt like a lie , maybe because of the guards' reaction-when he came forward, they both took one big step back.

"How are Austin and the engineer, Greeley?"

"Austin's dead, sir. He died about an hour ago."

"What?" Sartoris gaped at them, feeling gut-punched. "That's impossible. I was just talking to him." How long had he been up here sleeping? A new thought occurred to him then-a desperate realization of an eventuality that he might have to face, sooner rather than later. "What about Vesek?"

"I really couldn't say, sir. They're all in quarantine. I think . . ." The guard, whom he'd finally identified as a short-timer named Saltern, was taking another step backward. "Maybe you better just come up and talk to her yourself."

"Dr. Cody, you mean."

"Yes, sir."

Sartoris didn't ask any more questions. He came out, and felt the guards falling in a step behind him.

"I can find my way up to the infirmary, Saltern."

"We were ordered to go with you, sir."

In case I bolt, Sartoris thought, and then: Maybe I should.

But he had told them the truth-he did feel fine. Whatever had happened to the others up on the Destroyer hadn't touched him. It was a localized phenomenon, and he wasn't going to let it get to him.

You won't have a choice.

"Take me upstairs," he said. "I need to talk to Vesek."

Chapter 12.

Big Midnight The rodians were sick.

Trig looked at them in the cell across from his, sprawled on their bunks, s.h.i.+fting positions only sporadically. As unnerving as it had been when they'd stood there staring at him, Trig found this new development even more disturbing. Their respiration sounded terrible, a clogged rattle. The coughing was worse. Every so often one of them would groan or make a low, desperate whine.

"See anything?" Kale asked.

"Uh-uh."

A guard hustled by in an orange biohazard suit, followed by two more. "Hey!" Trig pounded on the bars. "What's happening out there?"

The guards just kept moving. Trig turned and looked back at his brother. "What is all this, anyway?"

Kale shrugged. "Who knows?" He rolled over on his bunk and closed his eyes, and a moment later was fast asleep. Trig listened to him snore.

"Hey there," a voice whispered.

Trig leaned forward. It was coming from the cell next to theirs. "Hey," he said back, craning his neck, but he couldn't see around the corner. "What's happening?"

"Your name's Trig Longo, isn't it?" the voice from the next cell said.

"Yeah."

"And your brother . . . he's Kale, right?"

"That's right," Trig said. "What do they call you?"

The voice ignored his question. "Big price on your head," it whispered. "Ten thousand credits."

Trig didn't answer. Stepping back from the bars, he'd already begun to experience a cold slithery feeling moving into the pit of his stomach. The voice just kept talking.

"Ten thousand credits, that's big money. Thing is, n.o.body's going to collect."

"Why not?" Trig asked.

"Because I'm the one that offered it," the voice said, "and I'm going to kill you both myself."

Trig's entire body went numb. He suddenly realized that he knew that slushy p.r.o.nunciation, made all the more inarticulate by the way the mouth had been injured when Kale yanked the piercings out.

"I requested a transfer just so I could be close to you," Aur Myss's voice said. "Greased the right wheels, you might say. The second they open these doors, I'm going to rip you and your brother apart with my bare hands. And that's just for starters."

"Why don't you shut up," Kale said from his bunk, startling Trig. He hadn't known that his brother was listening, or even awake.

Myss giggled. Trig realized the gang leader was probably the one he'd heard giggling earlier, when Wembly had come through, bellowing for quiet. "How do you want it?" he asked. "Quick and dirty, I'm guessing. We can do it somewhere private. The guards will find your bodies later, but it might be a while. Not that anybody's gonna care- not any more than they cared about your old man when Sartoris..."

"Shut up," Kale hissed, springing off his bunk now and joining Trig at the bars, shoving one hand out and groping blindly in the direction of the voice as if there were some way he could swing out and hit Myss.

"Kale, don't," Trig asked, and by the time Kale seemed to realize what he was doing and tried to jerk his arm back, it was too late. Myss latched on to him now from the adjacent cell, yanking his face up against the bars. Trig could hear him giggling and grunting at the same time, holding on to Kale. In the cell opposite them, one of the torpid Rodians had actually sat up to watch with a vague expression of dazed interest.

"Just can't wait for it?" the voice asked. "You want it now? Is that it? You want me to..."

There was a sharp whack and the voice broke off with a surprised grunt.

"Get your meat hooks back inside," Wembly said outside the cell. He was wearing an orange suit and mask, the BLX standing behind him, and when he turned to the brothers' cell, Trig could see his own expression reflected back at him in Wembly's face-s.h.i.+eld. "You still got all five?"

"Yeah," Kale said, holding his fingers and flexing them. "I think so. He was just messing with me."

"What's with the suit?" Trig asked.

For the first time, the guard appeared uncomfortable. The BLX droid standing behind him said, "There's been a..."

"Just a precaution," Wembly cut in. "Nothing to worry about."

"Is it bad?"

"n.o.body knows anything. Dr. Cody's trying to figure it out." Wembly glanced at the Rodians, who were now back on their bunks again, coughing and making the quiet whining noise that Trig had heard before. "Looks like your neighbors aren't faring too well, either. Two less that you'll have to worry about, I guess."

"Wembly..."

Up the hall, somebody shrieked. Wembly spun around with remarkable agility for a man of his size and saw something he didn't like. Without another word, he burst into a shambling run in the opposite direction from whatever he'd seen.

Trig didn't have to wait long to learn what it was. The other guard charging down the hall wore a torn orange suit and no mask. He was still screaming when he slammed face-first into the bars of their cell, spraying a glut of blood through. It hit Trig's face, shockingly warm and wet on his cheeks and nose.

The sick guard stopped screaming and stood there, eyes wide and totally disoriented. His hands gripped the bars as if forcibly keeping himself upright. Fever blazed from his skin in palpable waves. His breathing was hoa.r.s.e and raspy and when Trig saw the man's chest and shoulders rising to force out a cough, he had the presence of mind to stand back. Only after the guard coughed for what seemed like forever, making no effort to cover his mouth, did he finally seem to realize where he'd landed.

"You can't stop it," the guard said, in a queer, flat voice-the voice of a man talking in his sleep. "You just can't."

"What?" Trig asked.

"There's no way." The guard shook his head, his lower lip trembling a bit. Then he turned and started walking crookedly up the hallway in the direction where Wembly had gone.

Trig felt his throat go tight. He was suddenly miserably sure he was going to cry. He was scared, that was part of it, but he was also thinking about his father. Somehow the fact that he didn't know what time it was-it could be midnight down here for all he knew-made it all the worse. A few months earlier they had been safe at home, the three of them eating breakfast together. How had things gotten so horrible so fast?

"Hey," Kale said, placing one hand on Trig's shoulder. "Come here." He lifted the hem of his s.h.i.+rt and wiped his brother's face off, the first tears mixing with the guard's blood. "It's all right."

"This is bad," Trig said.

"We've been through worse."

Trig couldn't answer. He put his face against his brother's chest, and hugged him fiercely. Kale hugged him back. "Shh," he said. " 'S okay."

In the next cell, Myss was making noises of his own. He was imitating Trig's sobs and giggling. In the Rodians' cell, one of them had started coughing a steady, listless cough that didn't stop; it just paused long enough for the thing to suck in a breath and keep going.

"Kale?" Trig asked.

"Yeah?"

"Do you feel sick?"

"Me? No, I feel fine." His brother shook his head right away. "You?"

"No." Trig drew back and looked Kale in the eye. "If you do, though, you have to tell me, right away, all right?"

"Sure."

"I mean it."