Star Wars: Death Troopers

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.