Star Wars: Death Troopers

Chapter 18 Solitary

Zahara left the pilot station and took the turbolift straight down to the barge's lowest inhabited level. She almost never descended this deep into the barge, had maybe been down twice since she'd started here, to treat inmates who were too sick or dangerous to come up to the infirmary. The only thing that lay beneath it was the mechanical and maintenance sublevel, the cramped domain of eyeless maintenance droids that never saw the light of day.

The lift doors opened to release her into a bare hallway with exposed wires dangling from the overhead girders. Zahara squinted, trying to make out the details. Apparently the main power circuitry didn't work so well down here. Somewhere above her a steam vent hissed out a steady current of moist, rancid-smelling air like the stale breath of a terminal patient. She didn't see any sign of the 2-1B anywhere and wondered whether she should go any farther without it. It didn't really matter, if there were no other survivors except-

"Oh!" she said aloud, startled out of her thoughts, falling forward and catching herself on the damp corridor wall, where her palm slipped, almost landing her flat on her face.

She'd tripped on the bodies of the guards in front of her. She counted five of them, sprawled out in a harrowing tableau. They were all wearing isolation suits and masks except for one, a younger guard whom Zahara recognized from a month or so earlier, when he'd come to the infirmary complaining of some minor skin irritation. She'd liked him well enough, and had fallen easily into conversation. She remembered him talking about his wife and children back on his homeworld of Chandrila.

Looking down at his body, Zahara saw a sheet of flimsiplast curled in his hand. She knelt down to pick it up and started reading.

Kai:

I know I told you and the kids I would be home after this run. But that is not going to happen. I am sorry to say that something has gone wrong on the barge. Everybody is getting sick and nobody knows why. Almost everybody has died so far. At first I thought I was going to be okay but now it looks like I have it, too.

I am sorry, Kai. I know this is going to be hard on the boys. Will you please tell them their daddy loves them? I am so sorry this is how things turned out, but tell them I served to the best of my abilities and I was not a coward and never scared.

And I love you with all my heart.

At the bottom the guard had attempted to write his name but the letters had come out so crooked and helpless, probably from his trembling hand, that the signature was little more than a scribble.

Zahara folded the note and slipped it into the breast pocket of her uniform next to the vial of anti-virus. She slipped the keycard from the guard's uniform and turned toward the sign marked solitary. Then she stopped. Where was Waste? She'd given the 2-1B ample time to get down here, and usually he was so prompt-

Something happened to him.

It was that voice again, the one inside her head, the one that was never wrong. She wondered if she should go, if she even should have come down here to begin with.

You came this far.

With real reluctance she bent down and picked up one of the blasters from a dead guard's hands. It was cold and felt heavier than she remembered. Zahara had received the requisite weapons training before signing on and was able to locate the safety mechanism and switch the blaster over to stun.

There were three separate cells.

Each had a solid metal door, dull gray and coffin-sized, with a control pad and a slot for the keycard mounted up and to the right.

Zahara stepped up to the first door. She realized she'd stopped breathing. Her body felt weightless, as if her legs had simply vanished beneath her. Faintly she could smell the hot coppery scent of her own fear coming off her body, an unpleasant, unnecessary reminder of how little she really wanted to be doing any of this.

You don't have to.

Yes, I do, she thought, and brought the keycard to the slot. Her hand was shaking, and it took a moment to line it up properly and push it in.

The door began to slide open.

She jerked the blaster up, pointing it into the semidarkness. Light from the outside cast her silhouette into the cell like an outline cut crisply from black fabric with very sharp scissors. Squinting in, she could make out an empty bench, a table-but the silent two-by-two cube was otherwise absolutely empty.

There was no one here.

She stepped back and turned to the second cell, slotted the card, and-

The noise from inside the cell sounded like a snarl of surprise and rage. Zahara lurched backward, the blaster suddenly loose and clumsy in her hand, somehow unable to find the trigger as the cell's occupant charged toward her. The thing was huge, big enough that it had to duck and twist its shoulders to fit through the cell doorway, with sharp white teeth and eyes that shot back splintered gleams of intelligence.

Stumbling backward, Zahara tried to say Hold it, but the words got clogged up in her throat. It was like trying to cry out in a dream, struggling to push words through strengthless, suffocated lungs.

The thing stopped directly in front of her and lifted its shaggy head, perhaps seeing the blaster. It was a Wookiee, she realized, and at the same time she was aware of a pounding noise from the last remaining cell, a muffled shouting on the other side of the wall.

"Hold it," she said again, more clearly this time. She aimed the blaster upward. "Don't move."

The Wookiee moaned. Zahara raised the keycard and wondered how she was supposed to hold both convicts at bay with one blaster. But it was too late now.

The last cell door rattled open to reveal the figure standing immediately inside. Zahara flicked her eyes back at the Wookiee, but he hadn't moved from his spot. Glancing back at the other convict, she realized she was looking at a dark-haired man probably in his late twenties, dressed in an ill-fitting prison uniform. He was staring at her with dark and questioning eyes.

"What's going on down here?"

"I'm Dr. Cody," she said, "chief medical officer. There's been…"

"So you didn't bring us dinner?"

"What? No." She'd expected hostility, confusion, or disdain, but the inmate's cavalier attitude already had her flustered. "I'm afraid there's been an incident." She raised the blaster, and the Wookiee threw back its head and let out a restless, deep-chested bray that seemed to shake the air around her.

"Okay, okay," the man said, "put the blaster down, huh? You're making Chewie nervous."

"Chewie?"

"Chewbacca, my copilot," the dark-haired man said, coming forward so she could see his face more clearly, the half smile quirked across his face. "I'm Han Solo."