Destroyer Sartoris led the others up the stairs from the admin level to the barge's pilot station, walking across it up to the docking shaft. It was a cylinder that made his throat feel tight, particularly now that he was surrounded with nine men-Austin, Vesek, Armitage, along with four mechanical engineers and a pair of stormtroopers who'd swaggered in at the last second like they owned the place.

Kloth had sent the troopers along as an afterthought, ordering them to join the boarding party just before they'd started up. Sartoris wondered what had changed the warden's mind. If there was something aboard the Destroyer that they needed to worry about, two stormtroopers weren't going to help the situation much.

But there is nothing to worry about up there, Sartoris told himself, dropping the thought like a pebble into the deep well of his subconscious and waiting to hear some sort of telltale plink of response. The silence that came back wasn't particularly rea.s.suring.

The tube lift carried them steadily upward, and Sartoris watched the faint green lights strafe the faces of the other men, seeking any echo of his own apprehensions. But their expressions were pictures of bland neutrality, obedience as a rarefied psychological state. Sartoris supposed he ought to be thankful for guards that just followed orders as opposed to questioning them. He'd worked with both types in the past and had unfailingly preferred the company of the former-at least, strangely, until now, when some part of him could have appreciated a little back-and-forth about the nature of their destination.

It was Austin, predictably, who ultimately broke the silence. "What do you think happened up there, Cap, that there's only ten life-forms still on board?"

"Warden says zero contamination," Vesek said. "So it's gotta be a malfunction on our end."

"So how come they never acknowledged?"

"Maybe our communications suite got scrambled along with our bioscanners."

"Negative." One of the engineers, Greeley, shook his head. "Communications are five-by. Ditto the scanners. It all checks out." He flicked his eyes upward. "It's just a ghost ship, that's all."

Austin gave him a look. "What?"

"A derelict, you know-ships get scuttled, abandoned by the fleet, left behind. Empire doesn't like to talk about 'em, but they're out there."

"So where's the crew?"

"Evacuated," Greeley said. "Or . . ." He moistened his lips and tried to shrug it off. "Who knows?"

"Great." Vesek sighed. "A Destroyer that can't fly on its own and we're going aboard to scavenge parts. This one's got Kloth's name written all over it." He rolled his eyes at Sartoris. "Is there a greater plan at work here, Captain, or we just winging this one?"

"When we get up there," Sartoris said, "I want two groups of five. Vesek, that means you, me, and Austin will go with Greeley..." He pointed at one of the engineers, and the second man standing next to him. " -and Blandings. The rest of you, Armitage, Quaterma.s.s, Phibes, stay with the troopers. We'll reconnoiter back at the docking shaft in an hour."

"You want one of us to go with you?" one of the stormtroopers asked .

"Why would I want that?"

The trooper brandished his blaster rifle. "Just in case."

Sartoris was aware of Vesck and Austin looking at him, awaiting his reply. "I think we'll be fine," he said. "Stay with Armitage's group and let me know what you find."

"What exactly are we looking for?" Austin asked.

"I've uploaded a list of the parts onto each of your datalinks along with a detailed layout of the Destroyer's concourse and maintenance level. I don't have to tell you this is a big ship. Maintain strict comlink contact at all times. I don't want to be sending out search parties to look for my search parties. You follow?"

The platform stopped moving long enough for the hatch above them to unseal with a faint hydraulic hiss. Then it lifted the rest of the way up, into the landing bay.

At first n.o.body said a word.

Sartoris thought he'd been prepared for how big it would be, but after two solid months aboard the Purge, he was simply overwhelmed by what awaited him here. He'd never actually set foot on a Destroyer before, although he'd seen smaller Imperial warships and had a.s.sumed this would be like those, only bigger. But it wasn't. It was more like its own planet.

The docking shaft had delivered them into the durasteel cathedral of the Destroyer's cavernous main hangar, its vaulted ceilings and paneled walls soaring upward and outward in an ecstasy of forced perspective. As Sartoris stared down those long planes into some barely visible vanishing point, he reminded himself that he was looking at less than a tenth of the Destroyer's actual sixteen hundred meters. He needed to keep that figure in mind if he didn't want to spend his entire rime aboard wrestling with the enormity of it.

He took in a deep breath-the cold air tasted like metal shavings and the sterile, out-of-the-box smell of long-chain polymers-and let it out. For a man with a horror of right s.p.a.ces, standing here should have been a tonic. But instead of relief he only felt some arcane new species of panic fluttering in the pit of his stomach, this time in reaction to the seemingly limitless rebate of pure s.p.a.ce. He grunted at the absurdity of it. Apparently he'd gone from claustrophobia to ballroom syndrome in one quick leap, without any time to appreciate the difference.

"Ah, Cap?"

Sartoris didn't bother looking over. "What is it, Austin?"

"All due respect, sir, I think we're going to need more than an hour to look through all this."

"Stick to the plan," he said. "We'll start with an hour and check back then. Report anything out of the ordinary."

"Whole b.l.o.o.d.y place is out of the ordinary," Austin muttered, and one of the engineers, Greeley, he thought, let out a gruff chuckle.

"Come on," Sartoris said, "let's go. We're wasting rime."

"Hold up a second, Cap." Vesek pointed off in the opposite direction. "What's all that? Over there?"

Sartoris looked behind him and saw several of what looked like smaller attack and landing craft scattered across the hangar floor. "s.p.a.cecraft," he said. "TIE fighters, from the look of them."

"Yeah, but those don't all look like TIEs, chief."

Sartoris took a closer look and saw that Vesek was right. There were TIE ships there, but there were also four or five other craft mixed in- long-range freighters and transport shuttles, along with something that could've been a type of modified Corellian corvette.

"Captured enemy s.p.a.cecraft," Sartoris said, masking his uncertainty with impatience. "Who knows?" He snapped a glance at Greeley. "Any of them have the parts we need?"

"Probably not."

"Then..." He stopped.

They all saw it at the same time. Something across the bay was moving behind the TIE fighters, its shadow bulking forward, slanting across the deck toward them. Behind him he was aware of the troopers already going for their blasters.

"What's that?" Austin whispered.

"No life-forms registering in the loading bay," Greeley said, voice trembling slightly. "I don't..."

"Hold it." Sartoris raised one hand without glancing back at them. "Wait here."

He took a step forward, wading deeper into the near silence, tilting his head to get a better look across the poorly lit hangar. His heart was beating too hard-he could feel it in his neck and wrists-and when he tried to swallow, his throat refused to cooperate. It was like trying to swallow a mouthful of sand. Only through sheer willpower was he able to avoid coughing.

Standing motionless, Sartoris narrowed his eyes at the things lurking in the shadows behind the TIE fighters. There were several of them, he realized now, stooping forward with gangling, flat-handed limbs, the familiar whine of servos accompanying their steady up-and-down gestures.

"Captain," one of the guards murmured behind him, "are they . . ."

Sartoris exhaled, and drew in a fresh breath. "Binary loadlifters," he said. "Still going about their routines."

Even as he said it, one of the CLL units stepped fully into view, facing them dully for a moment before pivoting and stomping back to the stack of crates rising up behind it. Moving the same stack from one side of the hangar to the other, Sartoris thought, back and forth endlessly.

He heard someone in the boarding party let out a sigh and a nervous chuckle. Sartoris didn't bother acknowledging it. It would have been too much like acknowledging his own sense of relief.

"We've wasted enough time," he said. "Let's move out."

They found the hovercraft on the far side of the hangar. It was the standard utility model, a balky thing with grappling servo-mech arms fore and aft, built for transporting fuel cells, but when they all climbed in, the thing sank to the floor. A pair of startled MSE droids skittered out from underneath, squealing anxiously, and disappeared into the gloom.

"Overloaded," Vesek said with just-our-luck exasperation. "Looks like we're hoofing it."

At first it wasn't bad. To get to the lower maintenance levels, they had to walk down a series of wide and silent corridors through the Destroyer's midsection, until they found their way to the cavernous storage bays beneath the primary power generator.

"Karking strange place," Austin muttered, his voice sounding alone down the long tunnel. "What do you think happened?"

"Who knows," Vesek said. "Whatever it is, the faster we're shut of it, the happier I'll be."

"Heard that."

"I'll tell you one thing, I'd hate to be anywhere near Lord Vader when he finds out they abandoned ship. How much you think it costs to replace a Destroyer?"

Austin snorted. "More credits than you and I'll ever see."

"I ever tell you I saw him in person once?"

"Who, Vader?"

Vesek nodded. "My transport was due for a routine inspection. All of a sudden my CO's having a major sphincter moment, scrambling us up to the flight deck, all spit and polish, making sure everything's extra shiny. Next thing I know, we're lined up in the hangar and his transport's landing and there he is."

"What's he like in person?"

Vesek considered. "Tall."

"Yeah?"

"And you feel something when you look at him. Like, I don't know . . . Cold inside." Vesek shuddered. "Kind of the way it feels in here, actually."

"All right," Sartoris said, "let's can the banter."

Ultimately the request for quiet turned out to be unnecessary. By the time they were amidships, the conversation had dried up completely and the men had lapsed into a glum and pensive silence.

Sartoris was deep in one of the lower maintenance levels when he realized that he simply wasn't going to get used to being here.

He and Vesek were loitering in one of the secondary corridors while the engineers dug through a power substation on the other side of the open hatchway. He could hear them in there, picking through parts and tossing them back. The other guard, Austin, had gone wandering through an adjacent series of interconnected chambers, rhapsodizing about how they seemed to go on forever, and Sartoris was forced to agree with him.

The vacancy of the Destroyer was both disorienting and nerve racking-they had already walked almost a kilometer of wide-open uninhabited gangways to get here, rounding each corner half expecting to find the last survivor staggering toward them, cackling. So far all they'd encountered was a menagerie of mouse droids and janitorial units, cleaning and installer droids, all going about their business as if nothing had changed. One of them-a protocol droid, a 3PO unit- had almost gotten blasted when it wandered out in front of the troopers with its hands in the air, babbling senselessly.

Sartoris kept thinking about what the engineer, Greeley, had said about ghost ships. Although the power was on, lights and instrument panels fully activated, there was no trace of any crew or the missing ten thousand troopers that should have been here. There was only silence, stillness, and emptiness, creaking softly around them in the void of s.p.a.ce.

"You find everything we need in there?" Sartoris called, hearing his voice roll down the hallway afterward. The engineers didn't answer. He glanced at Vesek. "You check in with the other group?"

"Not lately."

"See if you can get them to acknowledge. I want to be out of here soon."

Nodding, the other guard thumbed his comlink. "Armitage, this is Vesek, do you copy?"

There was no response, just a crackle of static.

"Armitage, this is ICO Vesek-can you hear me? Where are you guys?"

They both waited, far too long, it seemed to Sartoris, and this time Armitage's voice did respond, but it was faint, fading in and out. ". . . med lab . . . quadrant sevente . . . "

"I didn't copy, Armitage. Say again."

". . . in . . . vat. . ." The rest was gone in a foaming tide of white noise. Vesek shook his head and looked at Sartoris.

"We're picking up a lot of interference from somewhere on the Destroyer."

The captain nodded and walked over to pound on the bulkhead next to the hatchway. "Greeley, how much longer?" He stuck his head in, stopped, and looked more closely.

The engineers were gone.

Except for a seemingly random pile of integrated components and upended packaging cartons scattered across the floor, the chamber was completely empty-or at least it appeared to be. Sartoris felt a single pinhead of sweat rising to the surface beneath his left armpit and trickling down. The room felt too warm, air molecules compressed too closely together. "Greeley? Blandings?"

There was no answer. A pellet-sized bubble of something, maybe fear, worked its way down his throat until it came to rest under his sternum. They're dead in there, a voice inside him gibbered. Whatever wiped out the crew, it got them, too. It's already too late.

Idiocy, of course, there was no sign of violence here or attack, but- "Right here," Greeley said, rising up from behind one of the cartons, where he was followed in short order by Blandings. "Got the last of it." He held up a slender stalk of electronic equipment not much longer than his finger and put it in the box he'd found. "Let's roll."

"That's it?" Sartoris hoped his voice sounded steadier than he felt.

"Affirmative. Primary tuning shim for a Series Four thruster, Thrive cla.s.s. Tests positive. We're a go."

"You're sure?"

Greeley gave him a long-suffering look reserved for those who questioned his judgment of such minutiae. "Yeah, Captain. I'm pretty sure."

"Okay, all right." Sartoris turned. "Austin?"

"Sir?" The guard's voice came back from far up the corridor, more distant than Sartoris had imagined. How far away had the man wandered? Sartoris felt his anger returning, plowing over him in a red wave.

"Get back here now, we're moving out."

"Yeah, but sir . . ." Austin still hadn't come back into the hallway. "You gotta see this, it's unbelievable, I . . ." The words broke off with a series of short, sharp coughs, and Austin finally emerged, shaking his head and covering his mouth. Eventually he got his breath and stopped coughing, but by then they were already on their way back to the main hangar, and Jareth Sartoris never found out what ICO Austin had seen back there.