Star Wars: Death Troopers

Chapter 26 Army of Last Things

Kale jumped inside the docking tower with Trig still in his arms, followed by Dr. Cody. He looked back and saw Han Solo and Chewbacca still halfway across the pilot station, the Wookiee firing back at whatever was coming their way. Kale couldn't see what that was, nor did he particularly want to. He could hear it, though, and hearing it was enough.

"Hurry!" Dr. Cody shouted back at Han and Chewie. "I have to close off the shaft!"

From where Kale was crouched with his little brother in his arms, all he could see was the medical officer reaching up to seal off the lift doors, and then Solo and the Wookiee diving inside, Chewbacca still shooting, the volley of blasterfire ringing in his ears.

Suddenly Trig sat up, eyes wide. "Dad?"

Kale stared at him. "Trig, what…"

"It's him." The younger boy had already pulled free from his arms, twisting sideways past Han and Chewbacca, crawling back out of the docking shaft turbolift to the pilot station. "Dad's out there!" he shouted. "I saw him! He's…"

Kale sprang out after him. He flung out one arm as far as it would go and grabbed Trig's pant leg, hooking his fingers around the cuff. He felt a low, dull thud as Trig fell to the floor, then got his other hand up around Trig's waist and began dragging him back into the docking shaft.

Then he looked up.

And saw his father.

Von Longo was staggering toward them in a shambling half run like something that been wrenched three different ways at once- wrenched and broken at the hips and shoulders. He was surrounded by a group of prisoners and guards.

Except, Kale saw with dawning horror, they weren't prisoners and guards anymore, not exactly, and neither was the old man. His dead yellow skin was mottled with two weeks' morgue rot, his skull grotesquely swollen and partially collapsed on one side so that Kale could see, very clearly, the grinning hinge of the old man's jaw clicking in its socket.

Kale couldn't move. For what felt like an eternity he watched his father stagger-swaying toward him with that horrible, clutching gait, his face lit up with a kind of drooling familiar eagerness.

At last Kale broke out of his paralysis and screamed. Scrambling to his feet, propelling himself back in the direction of the shaft, he saw Solo and the Wookiee pulling Trig inside, but they were looking over and beyond him, into the corridor from which the noise was coming. As if in a dream he saw that Dr. Cody's face had gone completely white with fright. Kale saw the doctor reach up and cover Trig's eyes with her hands.

Then he felt something grab his leg.

He didn't even hear himself scream.