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 ships 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 ship 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 ship, the blasterfire continued, smashing 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 ships 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."

The commander paused, and Sartoris realized that the deputation of skeletons sitting on either side of him had leaned forward, listening intently, as if they'd never heard this story before, despite having ostensibly lived through it.

"What can it matter now?" Gorrister said. "We left Meglumine hauling top-secret freight. Experimental military-grade ordnance for the Empire, all the usual caveats, on Lord Vader's own directive. Our destination was a testing base on Khonji Seven, outside the Brunet system . . . but we never got through the Mid Rim." He took a breath and let it out with great effort. "At first the breach seemed minor, and it appeared that our engineers were able to confine it. Some of our scientists were even able to study the effects it had on human physiology, the lungs and larynx in particular. We a.s.sumed that they had it contained." He paused and cleared his throat. "But that turned out not to be the case for long. The infection spread quickly through the entire Star Destroyer-soon no one was safe."

"Wait a second," Sartoris said. "You're telling me there's ten thousand more of those nightmares staggering around out there?"

"Oh my goodness, no. Some of us did manage to escape, obviously-or tried to, and a few showed signs of natural immunity. Using their blood, our medical officers were able to synthesize an anti-virus, as I'm guessing yours probably did, too .

. . based on the fact that you're still here."

Sartoris just grunted, not inclined to go into his own random immunity to the sickness. Gorrister didn't even seem to notice.

"We sealed off part of the ship," he said, "and injected ourselves with the anti-virus. At first it seemed like there would be enough to go around." Another thin and ghastly attempt at a smile: "It didn't last as long as we'd hoped. There was more in the bio-lab, but of course we couldn't get back to retrieve it. That was when the plan began to change somewhat. Of course many of the crew were eaten before they could change over-torn to pieces and . . . well, consumed, I suppose is the word."

Gorrister swallowed, seeming to find something particularly distasteful in this part of his narrative.

"At first we tried to gather up the remains-we put them in a waste facility, chopped them up, thought it might be a way to keep them from changing, you know, and even that isn't always successful. But in the end we were outnumbered and there really wasn't anything to do but run." He flashed a cold, flat glance up at Sartoris. "Until they found out how to activate the tractor beam."

"They can think?" Sartoris envisioned the screaming things staggering around outside the ship, pounding and firing at it almost randomly with blasters. "That's crazy."

"Oh, it's madness," Gorrister agreed, blinking at him with the mildest of curiosity. "All I know is that they were waiting for us inside the hangar when we came back in. The first man out of the hatch got his head ripped off at the shoulders." He licked his lips. "After that we sealed ourselves back in, sent a distress signal, and settled in to wait."

"How long have you been trapped here?"

"Ten weeks."

Sartoris felt his mouth drop open-he couldn't help it. "You mean you've been canned up here inside this ship for ten weeks?"

"There were thirty of us originally. Now we're down to seven, including myself." The commander sighed, eliminating what sounded like the last of the air from his lungs, and sagged against the bulkhead behind him again. His filthy uniform was so big on his now emaciated body that it bulked up almost comically around the shoulders, like a child playing dress-up. "We keep trying to make comm contact but all frequencies are jammed. I believe that also might be a deliberate countermeasure on their part." When his eyes found Sartoris's again, they were colorless and dispa.s.sionate, the eyes of a man delivering a lecture that he'd prepared years earlier. "You asked earlier how I thought they could activate the tractor beam. They learn, you see. That's part of it."

"Those things out there?" Sartoris asked. "But they're . . . animals."

"In the beginning perhaps. But consider-the ones that changed onboard the Destroyer ten weeks ago don't even bother attacking this shuttle's reinforced durasteel armor with blasters anymore. They've already grasped the fact that it doesn't work. It's the new arrivals, the inmates and prison guards, who are out there shooting at us now . . . and if you listen, you'll see that they've already stopped, too." He snapped his fingers, a brittle pop. "That's how quickly their behavior changes."

Sartoris realized he was right. The blasterfire outside the shuttle had stopped, just as Gorrister had predicted.

"I think it has something to do with the sickness," the commander said, "the way it was initially designed. They form cl.u.s.ters, tribes . . . swarm. And they communicate with one another. I'm sure you've heard it."

Sartoris thought of the screaming that he'd heard, the weird cyclic quality of it, back-and-forth call-and-response in the hangar.

"And that way they are all able to adapt at the same time," Gorrister said, "as one, like a kind of systemwide upgrade, do you see?"

Sartoris shook his head. "What are you talking about, designed? You mean somebody created all this on purpose?"

Gorrister studied him in silence for a moment, with what might have been the tiniest of smirks.

"Nave, aren't you?" he asked. "I told you we were carrying top-secret weapons. How long have you served the Empire?"

Sartoris didn't bother to provide an answer. He'd noticed something else that bothered him even more than that smirk on the man's face. Throughout the course of their conversation, his fellow soldiers had begun edging slowly closer to him, and they were licking their lips compulsively, over and over.

Sartoris squirmed back a little farther. For the first time his gaze fell on the stack of uniforms folded neatly on the seat in the corner.

"What happened to the rest of your men?" he asked.

"You must understand." Gorrister's voice was soft now, no longer mocking; in fact it was nearly sympathetic. "We had ample water here inside the shuttle but precious little food, and it's been ten weeks. It was nothing more than a simple matter of survival. We were starving, you see."

Sartoris frowned. The men were getting to their feet now. It suddenly occurred to him that they might have been sitting here saving their strength until this moment.

"Hold it." He stood up, backing away, and felt his shoulders. .h.i.t the wall behind him. "We're not like them."

"Of course not," Gorrister murmured, dismissing the idea. "We drew lots. To keep things fair. We gave each man a quick, humane death. At first we threw the remains out there ..." He nodded above, at the emergency hatch. "... to those things, as if that might somehow satisfy them. But it only made them come back. So we ate the remains, too. In the end we sucked the marrow from the bones. But none of my men felt any pain, I promise." One emaciated hand slipped into his uniform jacket and produced a small transdermal patch. "And neither will you."

"What is that?"

"Norbutal," Gorrister whispered. "A paralytic. You'll just go to sleep. And when we're rescued, the Emperor will recognize your sacrifice with the highest of honors."

Sartoris started to say something else.

He realized that the commander had told him there were six other men and he only saw four of them.

Then he felt a pair of hands grabbing him from behind, pinning his arms behind his back.

Chapter 36.

Lab Rat Zahara wasn't sure how long she'd been running. Lactic acid cramped her thighs and calves, oxygen debt reaching the point where it cried out, no longer able to be ignored, and she'd lost track of where she was-the end of another protracted corridor somewhere deep in the Star Destroyer's main hangar level, but farther back. With no sense of direction and no destination, she guessed it was just a matter of time until something caught up with her.

She stopped and leaned against the wall, temples throbbing, and whooped in a series of deep breaths. Her throat and lungs ached, and the root of her tongue had that sprained, dizzy feeling it got when she'd overtaxed herself. Counting her heartbeats, she made herself calm down, calm down, just calm down.

She held her breath and listened for screams. Heard none.

The corridor was absolutely silent.

Up ahead, blocking the way, were what appeared to be stacks of crates. She started walking toward them, feeling marginally steadier now that she'd taken a rest, and stopped at the hatchway on her left, looking at the sign posted over it.

BIO-LAB 242.

AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.

Zahara glanced down at the security pad that someone had pried from the wall, dangling on stalks of variegated wires. With the strong sense that what she was about to do was not at all wise, she put her elbow to the hatch itself and forced it open.

At first the lab was almost rea.s.suringly familiar, a research area, a clinical s.p.a.ce designed for the usual flights of emotionally detached observation and interpretation. It was a great gleaming dome, white-walled and blazing with overhead fluorescent lights, the walls honeycombed into dozens of empty, gla.s.s-enclosed cells.