Star Wars: Death Troopers (звездные войны) Read online

  Chapter 5.

  Word

  Jareth Sartoris made his way down the narrow gangway outside the guards' quarters, massaging his temples as he walked. He had a headache, nothing new there, but this one was something special, a vise grip across his temporal lobes that made him feel like he'd been gassed with some kind of low-grade neurotoxin in his sleep. The greasy smear of breakfast down the back of his throat hadn't helped.

  He'd been awake even before the warden's summons came through. After working third shift last night, he'd toppled into his bunk early this morning and lapsed into restless unconsciousness, but two hours later the abrupt silence had awakened him, the feeling of his tightly coiled world spinning off its axis. They were seven standard days out. So why had the engines fallen silent? Sartoris had gotten dressed, grabbed some lukewarm caf and a reheated bantha patty from the mess, and headed down the hall toward the warden's office, hoping to build up enough mindless momentum to keep him going as far as he needed.

  To his right the turbolift doors opened. Three other guards- Vesek, Austin, and some pompadoured newbie-came out, falling into step behind him. They had to walk single-file to fit comfortably down the hall. Sartoris didn't break stride or even glance back at them.

  "Me and the guys, Cap," Austin's voice piped up, after a respectful pause, "we were, you know, wondering if you could shed a little light on what's going on."

  Sartoris shook his head, still not looking back. "What's that?"

  "I heard we blew out both thrusters completely," Vesek put in. "Word is we're just sitting here somewhere outside the Unknown Regions, waiting for a tow."

  Austin sniggered. "Barge full of stranded convicts, I'm sure we're top priority for the Empire."

  "Stang," Vesek said. "Maybe they'll just decide to leave us drifting out here, right?"

  "Ask the rook." Austin poked the pompadoured guard walking in front of him. "Hey, Armitage, you think they'll rescue us?" He sniggered, not waiting for the kid to respond. "He'd probably like it. Suits his artistic temperament, right, Armitage?"

  The newbie just ignored him and kept walking.

  "How long did you spend on your hair this morning, rook? You hoping Dr. Cody's taken an interest?"

  "All right." Sartoris snapped a glance up at them. "Belay that noise, understand?"

  Nobody spoke the rest of the way to the warden's office.

  * * *

  Kloth's office had been tricked out to look larger than it actually was- light colors, holomurals, and a colossal rectilinear viewscreen facing out the star-strewn expanse-but Sartoris had always found the effect paradoxically oppressive. Some time ago, he'd noticed a blown voxel in the corner of the desert landscape above Kloth's desk, a missed stitch in the digital fabric. Ever since then, something about the secondhand technology seemed to be pushing in on him, and now his eyes always felt as if they were being tricked, lulled into a false sense of openness.

  "First the bad news," Kloth said. He was standing in his usual position, hands clasped behind his back, looking out the viewscreen. "Our thrusters are seriously damaged-probably beyond repair. And as I'm sure you know, we're still seven standard days out from our destination."

  One of the other guards, the rookie probably, let out a nearly inaudible groan. Sartoris only heard it because he was standing next to him.

  "However," the warden continued. "There is a positive side."

  Kloth turned slowly to face them. Upon first glance, his face was the usual blunt bureaucratic hatchet, slightly curved and angular upper lip, gray-rimmed eyes, and bluish silver bags of freshly shaven cheeks. Only after spending a certain amount of time with the man did you come to know the soft thing residing within that calculated outer shell, a spineless, gelatinous creature that exuded nothing so much as the tremulous anxiety of being drawn out and exposed.

  "It seems the navicomputer has identified an Imperial vessel," Kloth said, "a Star Destroyer actually, within this same system. While our attempts to make contact have met with no reply, we do have enough power to make our approach."

  He paused here, apparently in anticipation of applause or at least a round of relieved sighs, but Sartoris and the others just looked at him.

  "A Destroyer?" Austin asked. "And they're not responding to our call?"

  Kloth didn't answer for a moment. He touched his chin, fingering it thoughtfully, a pompous and disaffected gesture Sartoris had seen a thousand times and had come to loathe in his own special way. "There's more to it than that," he said. "According to our bioscans, there's only a handful of life-forms on board."

  "How many's a handful?" Vesek wanted to know.

  "Ten, perhaps twelve."

  "Ten or twelve?" Vesek shook his head. "Sounds like a scanner issue. Destroyers can carry a crew often thousand or more."

  "Thank you," Kloth said drily. "I'm well aware of the standard Imperial specs."

  "Sorry, sir. It's just, either our equipment is undergoing some serious malfunction, or.»

  "Or there's something else going on up there." It was the first time Sartoris had spoken in the office, and he was surprised at the hoarseness in his voice. "Something that we don't want any part of."

  The others all turned to look at him. For what felt like a long time after that, no one spoke. Then the warden cleared his throat. "What are you saying, Captain?"

  "There's no reason the Empire would just abandon an entire Star Destroyer out here in the middle of nowhere without a good reason."

  "He's right," Austin said. "Maybe…"

  "Internal atmosphere diagnostics show no sign of any known toxin or contamination," Kloth said. "Of course it's always possible that our instruments are misreading how many life-forms are on board. We screen for numerous variables, electrical brain activity, pulse, motion, any number of those things could skew the reading. In any case. " He smiled-a wholly unconvincing dramatization that ought to have involved invisible wires and hooks on either side of his mouth. "The most critical factor is that we may be able to salvage equipment for our thrusters and get back on course before we're completely behind schedule. To that end, I'll be sending a scouting party up-Captain Sartoris, along with ICOs Austin, Vesek, and Armitage and the mechanical engineers, to see what they can salvage. We anticipate docking within the hour. Questions?"

  There were none, and Kloth dismissed them in the usual fashion, by turning his back and letting them find their own way out. Sartoris was about to follow them when the warden's voice stopped him.

  "Captain?"

  Stopping in the doorway, Sartoris drew a breath and felt the ache in his head become a deeper, more impacted pounding, like a gargantuan infected tooth somewhere in his frontal sinus. The door closed behind him, and it was just the two of them in what felt like an increasingly shrunken space.

  "Am I making a mistake, sending you up with these men?"

  "Excuse me, sir?"

  "Sir." Kloth's smile rematerialized, a wisp of its former self. "Now, that's a word I haven't heard from you in a long time, Captain."

  "We haven't seen each other much lately."

  "I'm aware that this voyage has been particularly. challenging for you personally," Kloth said, and Sartoris found himself hoping fervently that the warden wouldn't start stroking his chin again. If he did, Sartoris wasn't sure he could rein in the urge to punch him straight in his pompous and disaffected face. "After what happened two weeks ago, in many ways I expected your resignation right alongside Dr. Cody's"

  "Why?"

  "She saw you kill an inmate in cold blood."

  "It was her word against mine."

  "Your antiquated interrogation techniques aren't appropriate any-more, Captain. You're costing the Empire more information than you're retrieving."

  "All due respect, sir, Longo was a nobody, a grifter…"

  "We'll never know now, will we?"

  Sartoris felt his fists clenching at his sides until his nails burrowed into his palms, delivering stinging pain deep into the skin. "You want me off
your boat, Warden? You just say the word."

  ''On the contrary. You may consider this mission an opportunity to redeem yourself. If not in my eyes, then certainly in the eyes of the Empire to which we both owe so very much. Is that understood?" "Yes, sir."

  Kloth turned and scrutinized him as if for any sign of sarcasm or mockery. In his decades of service, Jareth Sartoris had been to the very edges of the galaxy, living under conditions he wouldn't wish on his worst enemy. He'd had to sleep in places and commit unspeakable deeds that he would've given entire body organs to forget. That simple yes, sir didn't taste any worse than any of the rest of it.

  "So we're clear, then?" Kloth asked.

  "Crystal," Sartoris replied, and when Kloth turned to show him his back, it wasn't a moment too soon. The warden's office was bigger than any other on the barge but it was still too small for Sartoris, and as the cooler air of the outer corridor hit him he realized he'd sweated through the armpits of his uniform completely.

  Chapter 6.

  Dead Boys

  "You keep looking out there," Kale said, "sooner or later you're going to see something you won't like."

  "I already have." Trig was stationed in his usual spot in the detention cell, gazing through the bars. Across the hall, directly opposite them, the two Rodian inmates who'd been there ever since he and Kale and their rather had been brought aboard stood glowering back at him. Sometimes they muttered to each other in a language Trig didn't recognize, gesturing at the brothers and making noises that sounded like laughter.

  Now, though, they just stared at him.

  At least two hours had passed since the Purge had gone into total lockdown. Trig wasn't sure when all this had happened. It was one of the first things the Empire took from you when they took your freedom: the sense of passing time. It was information you didn't deserve. As a result, Trig relied on his body to tell him when it was time to eat, sleep, and exercise.

  Now it was telling him to be afraid.

  The noise from the rest of the hall was louder than he expected. Standing here next to the bars, Trig could make out individual voices, prisoners bellowing in Basic and a thousand other languages, demanding to know why the barge had stopped and how much longer it was going to be until they got going again. The deviation from routine had left them restless and giddy. Someone was screaming for a drink of water, someone else wanted food-another voice shouted and spluttered with hysterical, gibbering laughter. There was a sonorous, deep-chested growl, probably a Wookiee, Trig thought, though for the most part the ones he'd seen on board kept to themselves unless threatened. Someone else kept hammering something metallic against the wall of their cell, a steady, methodical wham-wham-wham. You could go crazy listening to something like that, Trig thought; you could go right out of your mind.

  "All right, that's enough!" a guard's voice broke in. "The next maggot that makes so much as a peep goes straight down to the hole!"

  Silence for a moment, yawning. and then an anxious titter. It brought another, followed by a wild yodeling shriek, and the entire detention level erupted in an avalanche of chatter, louder than ever. Trig put his hands to his cars and turned back to the corridor. Then he jerked backward in surprise.

  "Wembly," he said. "You startled me."

  "Two dead boys," ICO Wembly said, with real regret. "And I liked you guys, too. Decent fellas. Not that it counts for much aboard this rotten bucket of garbage, but. " The guard sighed. He was a fat man in his late fifties, with a loosely knit face, veins on his nose, and lines cut deeply beneath his watery eyes-eyes made for crying, a mouth made for laughter, shoulders made for shrugging, Wembly was a walking miracle of compulsive self-expression. "I sure am gonna miss you, tell you true."

  "What are you talking about?" Kale asked.

  There was a click, and a synthesized voice buzzed from somewhere behind Wembly's head. "You haven't heard? Aur Myss just put a ten-thousand-credit bounty on your heads."

  Trig glanced at the BLX unit standing behind Wembly's shoulder. For some reason, the labor droid had adopted the guard, following him everywhere, and for reasons equally nebulous Wembly allowed it. As one of the senior corrections officers aboard the Purge, he was technically permitted a droid assistant, though Trig knew of no other guard, including Captain Sartoris himself, who actually tolerated one.

  "Ten thousand?" Kale muttered from his bunk. "He's got that much?"

  "Don't tell me you're shocked." Wembly looked pained and laced his hands over his formidable belly, almost dyspeptic with incredulity. "Please, don't tell me that. You yanked out half his face, what did you expect?"

  "The ugly half." Kale flopped down on his bunk with a muffled groan. "I probably improved his looks."

  "I very much doubt that to be true," the BLX interjected. "In my experience…"

  Wembly cut the droid off without hesitation. "Improved his looks, huh? Make sure you explain that to him while his flunkies slit your throats." He glanced across the hall at the Rodian inmates staring through their bars, the intensity of their regard suddenly making more sense to Trig. He guessed that they were probably already spending that ten thousand credits.

  "Hey, Wembly, you're a guard," he said. "Doesn't that mean you're supposed to guard us?"

  "That's a good one, kid, make sure to write it down. In case you didn't notice, preventing you scofflaws from offing each other isn't exactly in our job description. The warden sees it as saving the Empire the trouble." He swung out one baggy hand at the rest of the detention level outside the cell. "As far as your colleagues out there are concerned, when we come out of lockdown, that's the dinner bell ringing on your sorry necks."

  "And there's nothing you can do about it?" Trig asked.

  "Hey, I'm warning you, aren't I?"

  "Yes, that's right," the BLX echoed. "And at no small risk to our own well-being, either. If Captain Sartoris knew…"

  "Listen," Wembly said, his tone shifting a little, lowering his voice to the very brink of an apology, "right now I've got bigger worries. We're getting ready to send a boarding party to this Star Destroyer. The warden's not saying anything, but…"

  "Wait a second," Kale said. "Star Destroyer?"

  "Navicomputer found one drifting out here, a derelict. We just docked. Kloth's sending a boarding party to scavenge parts. If they can't find anything to get the main thrusters running again, who knows how long we'll be sitting here?"

  "That reminds me, sir," the BLX said, "if I'm not mistaken, I'm due for an oil bath this afternoon, if you can spare my assistance for an hour or two. If not, I can always…"

  "Take your time," Wembly said drily, then turned back to Kale and Trig. "Listen, I've got to blow. Do me a favor and lay low awhile, huh? I'll do everything I can to keep you alive until we get where we're going."

  Kale nodded. "Thanks," he said, but this time the gratitude sounded sincere. "I know you're walking a line just coming out here to see us. And we appreciate it, right, Trig?"

  "Huh?" Trig looked up. "Oh, yeah. Right."

  The guard shook his head and glanced back at Kale. "Keep an eye on this one, will you?"

  "All the time."

  Wembly pursed his lips. "I'll drop by again next time I feel like getting abused. If you live that long, which I doubt." He turned and waddled away humming under his breath, a wide-hipped man whose girth enjoyed its own unique relationship with the galaxy's greater gyroscopic nature. The BLX followed along obediently afterward. When guard and droid rounded the corner and disappeared, Trig turned to look straight out of the cell again.

  Across the hall, the Rodians were still staring at him.

  Chapter 7.

  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 seco
nd 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 reassuring.

  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?"