Lowie barked a comment. “Yes, very odd,” Em Teedee said.
“Probably won’t help us in our search, though,” Jaina said, raising her eyebrows and waiting.
“Please continue, Em Teedee,” Tenel Ka prompted.
“Mmm, odder still,” Em Teedee murmured after a short pause to retrieve more data. “It seems that contact was completely lost with an all-human colony on the planet Gammalin. No one has heard from them since the day after Bornan Thul’s appointment on Kuar was to have taken place.”
“Ah,” Tenel Ka said.
“Anything else?” Jacen asked.
“In all probability, yes, Master Jacen,” Em Teedee said. “Please be patient. I have fifteen thousand three hundred forty-two other files to search.”
Jacen leaned back in his seat and sighed.
The trip to Kuar was going to be a long one.
9
When the Lightning Rod arrived at the small colony of Gammalin, Zekk powered up his comm system to request clearance to land. Despite repeated hails, however, he could raise no one. In fact, his ship’s scanners detected no signs of life at all on the human settlement.
Then again, the sensors hadn’t been checked since Zekk’s run-in with Boba Fett in the rubble fields of Alderaan. He’d have to have them tuned up when he got to a port with a good mechanic bay. Maybe he could even arrange for Jaina to do it. There were times when he longed to see her again….
The colonists had built only one city on Gammalin, a frontier town. According to its coordinates, the settlement currently lay on the night side of the planet, approaching morning. But from orbit, Zekk could spot no city lights when passing over its position, even with his high-powered electrobinoculars.
He found this curious. The three-armed bartender on Borgo Prime had been quite specific: the missing scavenger Fonterrat had come here.
And Zekk’s own brief twinges through the Force told him that Droq’l must be right. But if so, where was everyone?
As he continued to orbit the planet, he wondered if the city had suffered a massive power outage. Or maybe this was standard procedure here; a colony strapped for resources and credits might shut down all power every night as an austerity measure.
Zekk noted the position of the town on the edge of the planet’s night side. The local time would be almost morning. In the absence of any direct communication from the surface, he began a conservative standard descent, confident that all his questions would soon be answered. - - he would see for himself.
Gammalin was dry and rocky. Zekk’s instruments indicated a strong breeze that gusted regularly, moving the dust around.
As the Lightning Rod cruised over the frontier town, dawn began to break. The sun spilled yellow-gold light across the silent settlement.
Instead of a bustling colony, though, Zekk found only death.
Clusters of weathered prefab buildings lined streets laid out on a precise grid.
He spotted no movement, no lights, not even the flicker of candles or torches … though he did see several blocks that must have been gutted by a fire raging out of control. It had burned itself out, but there was no evidence that anyone had even tried to stop the fire.
He powered up his comm system and broadcast repeatedly: “Gammalin Colony, this is the Lightning Rod in—please respond.”
A tingle ran down his back, echoes of the Force warning him to be cautious. This place did not look right. Did not feel right.
Had it been abandoned? Entirely evacuated?
And if so, why had no one left a beacon?
As he came in lower, Zekk saw the first body lying facedown in the street. Fine dust obscured most of the body, but there was no mistaking that the person was dead.
Now, knowing what to look for, he distinguished other human forms sprawled about, arms and legs akimbo, completely covered by the perpetually blowing dust.
Zekk couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
He used his scanners as he flew over the entire city, and still detected no signs of life. “Are they all dead?” he muttered to himself. Had Fonterrat come here and been killed by whatever had wiped out the rest of this human colony? Maybe there was nothing wrong with the sensors after all.
This was beyond anything in Zekk’s previous experience. He set the Lightning Rod down in a clearing and prepared to investigate the disaster, feeling compelled to do so. He’d come here merely to find another scavenger—one who might provide a clue to the location of Bornan Thul—and to fulfill his first assignment as a bounty hunter, but now he had one more mystery to solve.
Could Gammalin have been attacked and wiped out by pirates or marauders, perhaps even some leftover Imperial fleet?
He didn’t think so. He saw no collateral damage no blasted buildings, no explosion craters—only the section of burned homes, which could well have been an accidental fire from some heat source left untended.
He shut down the Lightning Rod’s engines, but kept them primed just in case he had to leave in great haste. He paused at the exit hatch before unsealing it, afraid of the stench of death he was sure awaited his first breath outside—if the entire population had died, then no one was left to dispose of the bodies.
Zekk froze with his finger on the hatch controls. Wait! What if this was a virus or bacteria of some kind? That could explain how everyone had been struck down, why all the buildings seemed abandoned, why no one answered the comm signals. A plague, spreading like wildfire with a hundred percent mortality rate. Zekk shuddered. A disease so horrible it killed everyone … and he had almost opened the Lightning Rod and breathed in the air!
Zekk went to a supply locker and found an intact environment suit.
The Lightning Rod’s decontamination systems were still operating efficiently—or at least he hoped so. Peckhum had never known when he might need to sterilize a cargo for transport from one planet to another.
Zekk suited up, tied back his long dark hair, and double-checked the seals on his gloves, on his boots, and around his helmet lock. He took more care than he would have had he been about to step into hard vacuum. Indeed, the creeping plague might well be an even more unpleasant death than the vacuum of space.
Once he stepped outside the ship he could feel the wind rippling gentle fingers across the fabric of his suit. His breathing echoed in his ears, reflecting back inside the helmet so that it sounded as if he were hyperventilating. When he switched on the suit’s external voice pickup, he heard only a sighing breeze, like the panting of a grieving parent too exhausted to cry any longer. He heard the hissing of sand and dust being blown around, the groaning of empty buildings, settling houses. But he heard no signs of life. Nothing at all.
He walked along the street. The buildings around him were tall, their windows like blind eyes. He found cadavers sprawled on the street, smothered by drifts of dust.
He stood close to one and nudged the sand away with his thick boot, exposing a shriveled, dessicated arm. The skin had turned grayish, peppered with strikingly vivid blotches of blue and green.
He could not bear to uncover the dead man’s face, though. Yes, this must be a plague, all fight. A terrible plague. As bad as the Death Seed sickness that had struck down so many people years before.
He walked down the street, leaving footprints that were gradually erased by the shifting dust. All around him the dead city seemed eerie, oppressive. He switched on his loudspeaker, turned up the volume, and shouted into the numb air: “Hello! Is anyone alive? Can anyone hear me?”
He listened intently, trying to discern any rustle of movement some weak survivor crawling to a doorway, hands outstretched for help.
Instead, Zekk heard only the echoes of his own words bouncing upward off the abandoned buildings until they were swallowed in the dust-laden sky.