Star Wars: Death Troopers

Chapter 19 Pod

By the time they found the escape pod, Trig was sure they were being followed.

He could hear breathing noises behind them, the occasional thumping footstep of something tracking them gracelessly through the central hallway of the admin wing, no longer bothering with stealth. Sometimes it made little scratching noises. Other times he could only hear it breathing.

He didn't even need to say anything about it to Kale. Kale knew it, too. Rather than bringing him comfort, the unspoken awareness between them had the paradoxical effect of accelerating the near panic building up in Trig's nervous system; it was as if he were dealing not only with his own apprehension, but Kale's as well.

Finally they saw the escape pod', just up ahead on the outer wall.

"There it is." Kale didn't bother hiding the relief in his voice as he lifted the hatch of the pod. "Go ahead, get in there."

Trig climbed in. "Not much room."

"Enough for us." Kale got in behind him and looked at the array of controls. "Now we just have to figure out how to get out of here."

"Can you work it?"

"Sure."

"You don't know what you're doing, do you?"

"Will you give me a second to think?" Kale made a fist and bit his knuckle, gazing at the instrumentation array. "I thought these things were automated, but…"

A voice behind them said: "What have we here?"

It was Sartoris.

He was standing there with blasters in both hands, looking just as unhappy to see them as Trig felt staring back at him. Intuitively, just from his posture, Trig understood that there was something between them and the man, something Sartoris knew about them or their father, although Trig didn't know what it was. But he felt it nonetheless, some deeply personal schism of unease, emerging across the guard's face and then vanishing again almost as quickly, like an exhaled breath across a pane of glass.

"Get out," Sartoris said flatly.

Kale frowned, shook his head. "What?"

"You heard me. Get moving." Sartoris twitched the barrel of one blaster rifle at Trig. "You, too."

"There's plenty of room for all three of us."

"Sure." Sartoris grinned without a trace of humor; it did nothing to improve the surliness of his expression. "And I'm sure we'd be very cozy together. But that's not the plan. Now get out of here." He was still aiming the blasters at them. "What are you waiting for?"

"You're just going to let us die here?" Kale asked.

"Boy, you can go running naked through the mess hall for all I care. The only reason I haven't already shot you is I'd have to drag your carcasses out of the escape pod. So why don't you save me the trouble?"

"You don't understand," Trig said. "There's something aboard the barge and it's still alive. It's been following us. If you leave us here…"

"Sonny, I am sick unto death of hearing you talk." Sartoris pointed the blaster at Trig's face, the hole in its barrel looming huge, black, and endless, and Trig felt his whole body just disappear. Faintly, from what felt like light-years away, he could feel his big brother's hand on his shoulder, tugging him back.

"Come on," Kale's voice said.

Still weightless, Trig allowed himself to be pulled backward, the rest of the way out of the pod. As he stumbled he saw Sartoris taking a flat black object from his pocket and slotting it into the pod's navigation system, the two of them already forgotten, a problem that no longer concerned him.

The hatch sealed shut with a barely audible whoosh. It was almost anticlimactic. There was a muffled thunk as the bolts blew and the pod was gone, ejected, leaving Trig and Kale standing there looking at the empty place where it used to be.

Kale cleared his throat. After a long pause, he seemed to remember that Trig was standing next to him.

"Hey," he said. "It's going to be okay."

Trig looked up at him. He felt not only weightless now but transparent, barely there. It was as if somebody had hooked a vacuum to his soul and sucked all the hope out of it.

"Come on," Kale said. "I've got an idea."