Star Wars: Death Troopers

Chapter 25 Deadlights

"These thrusters are completely scragged," Han said as he crawled up from a dislodged floor panel in the center of the barge's pilot station, wiping the grit and reactor grease from his hands. "Whatever the engineers were trying to do down here, they didn't get very far. We're not going anywhere in this floating scrap pile."

"I got the escape pod open," Zahara said. "Launch codes are…"

"Dr. Cody?" Tisa's voice broke in. "I'm picking up new life-form readings on the bioscan."

"New readings?" Han glanced at Zahara, frowning. "I thought you said everybody was dead."

"They are." She looked at the bank of electronics. "Tisa, display all positive bioscan readings."

"Yes, Doctor." In front of them an array of glowing pencil-thin lines began to shimmer into view, their intersecting geometry deliquescing once again to create the barge in miniature.

Han said, "What the…?"

The three-dimensional multilevel outline of the vessel-previously an empty, almost elegant intersection of clean, digitized spaces and lines-was now crawling with blood-red pinpricks of flashing lights. They were moving together, bunched and swarming up from the lower detention blocks en masse, advancing level by level toward the admin area. In the hologram, at least, they appeared to be seething forward at a disproportionate, insectile speed.

"Wait a second," Han said. "What are those things?"

She shook her head. "Life-forms."

"Thanks, Doc," he said. "Got anything more specific, or are we supposed to just fill in the blanks?"

Zahara stared at the clusters of tiny lights, each one an independent organism. They were moving faster than she could believe, coming up stairwells, ventilation ducts, and utility shafts. "That's impossible. They weren't there before. Tisa, how come you didn't pick up on them earlier?"

"There were no positive life-forms earlier, Dr. Cody."

"Where did they come from?" As she watched, more red lights began to appear in the lower levels, seeming to spontaneously generate out of nowhere. Her thoughts flashed back to what Waste had told her about the molecular behavior of the virus, how it masked its lethality until it had reproduced to a level that the host could no longer successfully fight it-quorum sensing, he'd called it. Abruptly she felt as if two tight iron bands had closed around her, one blocking her throat, the other clamping down over her chest, freezing her breath.

"How many ways are there out of here?" Han asked, and she realized he was shaking her. "Hey, Doc, I'm talking to you."

"Just…" She pointed to the hatchway and the stairwell they'd taken up from admin."…just the way we came in."

"Any other escape pods?"

"Only the one we left behind." Zahara stretched out one hand and pointed one level down, to the west admin wing. It was already totally overrun by colonies of red lights. That was the last place she'd seen Trig and Kale. She didn't want to think about where they were now.

The diagram of the barge showed a wide stairway leading up from the admin level to the bridge. And now the red lights-deadlights, Zahara's mind gibbered frantically-were moving in that direction.

"Great," Han muttered, raising his blaster and turning to face the door. "Looks like we're gonna be shooting our way out. Again."

Chewbacca growled, shook his massive head, and brandished the rifle, looking profoundly unhappy about the odds.

"Wait," Zahara said, pointing to the tower protruding from the top of the hologram, and then turned behind her, across the bridge itself. "About twenty meters behind us, on the opposite end of the flight deck, there's a docking shaft that goes straight up."

Han gaped at her in disbelief. "What, into the Star Destroyer?"

"It's our only chance."

"Yeah, well, where I come from, they've got a saying-out of the nexu's den and into its mouth."

"Whatever those things are, there have to be hundreds of them. How long do you think your power packs will hold out?"

Then she heard them coming.

It was a thunderous, bullying shriek, charged with rage and hunger and condensed down into a solid wall of inhuman noise. It stiffened the blood in her veins. They were rising up from the admin level, pounding up the steps. Zahara looked forward to where she knew the docking shaft stood. As she whirled back to look in the direction of Han and Chewbacca, yelling that they needed to get out of here, now, she saw Kale Longo burst through the half-open hatch leading up from the admin level, hauling his younger brother's body in his arms.

"Run!" Kale shouted, and he himself was running so hard, so frantically, that his feet barely seemed to touch the ground. His head was on some kind of loose pivot, spinning to look everywhere at once, and his eyes were almost perfectly round with dread. Trig flopped and jostled in his arms. Zahara thought she'd never seen someone look so terrified in her life.

"Where's the other blaster, kid?" Han shouted.

"I had to drop it to carry my brother…"

"Well, shut the door behind you!" Han's voice rang out, but Kale was already bolting away from the door, across the bridge. Han braced himself to yank on the sliding hatchway. "Chewie, give me a hand with this, will you?"

The Wookiee fell to work alongside Han, both of them forcing the panel closed again.

"This way," Zahara shouted, and broke left, she and Kale sprinting almost shoulder-to-shoulder across the bridge in the direction of the docking shaft. Up ahead she didn't see anything between the banks of instrumentation panels except for a single open hatchway.

It better be in there, she thought. Please, let it be where Tisa says it is.

Looking back, she saw Han and Chewbacca charging to catch up. Ducking through the hatch, Zahara could see the docking tower doorway in front of them now, the turbolift open and ready.

We're going to make it, she thought.

That was when the sliding door that Han and Chewbacca had just pulled closed exploded wide open.