Inside the vat, the screaming noises shrilled on, up and down. The gray liquid was pumping faster now, siphoned off to the black tanks. Armitage realized that each one of the voice boxes had been wired with some kind of amplifier, making it even louder, and he wondered who was studying the scream-capacity of these lungs and why. Behind him a set of monitors showed the waveform of the scream, mapping it out as a series of mathematical functions.
He turned to the door.
And realized he wasn't alone.
Chapter 9
Descent
"I don't get it, cap," Vesek said. "Where'd they go?"
Sartoris's party had just crossed the gleaming steel prairie of the main hangar and arrived back at the docking shaft, but Armitage and his team were nowhere to be seen.
Behind him, the captain heard Austin coughing again-the snotty, bronchial hacking noise was really starting to get on his nerves-and decided enough was enough. He cocked one thumb at the shaft.
"Must have gone back down without us," Sartoris said. "Let's go."
Vesek and Austin climbed back inside, onto the waiting lift, and Sartoris went in after them, followed by Greeley and Blandings with the box of scavenged components. The shaft sealed behind them and the platform began its slow descent. Austin kept coughing. Sartoris tried to ignore him. He was going to have to report back to the warden about the Star Destroyer and wasn't looking forward to it. No doubt Kloth would have all kinds of irrelevant questions about the ship and what they saw up there, every minute of it an endurance test for Sartoris's patience. Asking unnecessary questions was one of the war-den's nervous tics when he felt pressed to make a decision, and-
"Oh no," Greeley said.
Sartoris glanced up. "What's wrong?"
The engineer started to say something, then dropped the box of parts, clutched his stomach, and bent over with a hoarse croak. Sartoris realized the man was throwing up, shoulders clenching in great involuntary spasms. Blandings and the other guards all backed away from him, muttering with surprise and disgust, but there wasn't much room in the shaft and within seconds the smell had filled it entirely.
"I'm sorry," Greeley said, wiping his mouth. "Lousy mess hall food, you can't.»
"Just stay there." Sartoris held up his hands. "You can get cleaned up when we get back to the barge."
"I feel fine, I just…" The engineer swallowed and took in a deep breath. His eyes and nose were streaming tears, and Sartoris could hear a faint chest-rattle as he sucked in a shallow breath. Over his shoulder he heard Austin starting to cough again.
"Captain." Blandings's voice was small as he glanced back up in the direction they'd come. "You don't think there was something up
"Contamination diagnostics checked out negative," Sartoris shot back-too quickly, he realized. "That's what you said, isn't it, Greeley?"
Greeley gave a weak nod, tried to answer, and thought better of it. His skin had taken on a decidedly green shade, and it shone with a thin, oily layer of sweat. A moment later he sank down to his knees next to the box of electronics and lowered his head until it was almost touching the floor.
By the time they arrived back on the barge, Vesek and Blandings had started coughing as well.
Chapter 10
Triage
"Hang on, i'm coming." Zahara followed the 2-1B through the medbay to the bed where a guard named Austin crouched with his head between his knees. He'd come in along with another guard and a pair of maintenance engineers. Waste had triaged his new patients expertly, assigned them beds, and started working up Austin, who appeared to be the worst off.
"Thanks,'" Zahara told the 2-1B. "Go check on the others." Sitting down on the bed next to Austin's, she didn't wait for the guard to acknowledge her. "How are you feeling?"
He looked up at her stonily. "I want to talk to the droid."
"My surgical droid is otherwise engaged with your co-workers," Zahara said. "What happened to you up there?"
"What do you care?"
"It's my job. How many people were up there with you?"
Austin didn't respond. Twin rivulets of thick yellow snot were leaking out of his nose, down either side of his upper lip, and he smeared them away with his sleeve and started coughing again into his fist, a loose, rib-racking hack.
"Look," Zahara said, "I've got other sick inmates to look after. So how about dropping the attitude so we can focus on getting you bet-"You're a piece of work," Austin said, "you know that?"
"I've been called worse."
"You and your sick inmates. I bet you. " He broke off into another coughing fit, Zahara leaning back as the guard sprayed the air around him with microscopic droplets, then pivoted his head to glare at her again."… I bet.
you probably. " More coughing, thicker now. "You're nothing but a.»
"Tell you what," she said, "you'll have plenty of time to call me names later. How about lying back and letting me have a look at you."
Austin shook his head. "Send the droid. I don't want you touching me."
"Don't be an idiot. You're…"
"Send the droid."
Enough was enough; Zahara stood up. "Suit yourself."
"Captain Sartoris was right about you, you know," he said as she walked away.
"Excuse me?"
"You're sweet on cons. I'll bet that if I were some low-life Rebel scum you'd treat me like your only patient. Every sob story that comes along, you're ready with a sympathetic ear."
"Wow." She almost felt obliged to respond with some representational show of anger. "Your captain really knows me well, doesn't he?"
"He's a good man."
"Sure," she said easily. "Killing inmates is a real feather in his cap."
Austin gave a quick series of explosive coughs, then cleared his throat and whooped out a ragged breath. "That wasn't your call to make."
Zahara turned around to face him again. "Let me tell you some-thing about your heroic captain. He was in trouble long before what happened with Von Longo-even the warden knew it. Regardless of what he might have once been, he's now a burned-out wreck of a human being, a claustrophobic sociopath with…" She broke off when she realized Austin was grinning at her, a narrow, vulpine grin- she was only confirming everything he'd suspected about her. "What Captain Sartoris did to Longo here in my medbay was just the end product of a long and messy downward slide."
"And that's when you really started to like him, right?" Austin asked, that hard smile still wrapped across his otherwise sickly face. "You like 'em hurt and needy. That really flicks your switch, doesn't it?"
She felt her neck beginning to turn red and was suddenly sure that Austin could see it, too. "If you say so."
"I'm not the only one."
"Dr. Cody?" a synthesized voice called out. "Are you available?"
She turned and saw the 2-1B gesturing to her from the other side of the infirmary. On the bed beside it, one of the new patients-she thought it was the other guard, Vesek-appeared to be having a seizure. The two engineers and the trooper who had accompanied him were all sitting up watching with a mixture of dismay and revulsion.
"On my way."
By the time she arrived at his bedside, Vesek had started to slide off his mattress despite the surgical droid's efforts to restrain him. The guard's face had gone a nearly translucent shade of pale and his eyes were rolled back in his head while the rest of his body flopped and twitched erratically as if responding to some high-voltage electrical current. Then without any warning he fell on his back, his mouth bursting open to emit an uncertain urk sound, followed by an almost solid spray of bright arterial blood that shot straight up into the air like a geyser.