She arrived at the pilot station and slipped through the doors, braced for what she found there. The Purge's flight crew had not abandoned their posts, even in death. The corpses of the pilot and copilot, a couple of rough-hewn Imperial lifers she'd never really gotten to know, slouched backward in their seats, mouths gaping, algae-gray flesh already beginning to sag from their bones. As Zahara approached them, the barge's instrumentation suite recognized her immediately, panels blinking, and a computerized voice cut in from some hidden speaker.
"Identification, please." The voice had been synthesized to sound female, business-like but pleasant, and Zahara tried to remember what the pilots called her and then remembered-Tisa. Word was that on the longer flights, various guards had been caught up here after hours, chatting her up.
"This is Chief Medical Officer Zahara Cody."
"Thank you," Tisa said. "Confirming retinal match." There was a pause, perhaps five seconds, and a single satisfied beep. "Identification confirmed, Dr. Cody. Awaiting orders."
"Run a bioscan of the barge," she said.
"Acknowledge. Running bioscan." Lights pulsed. "Bioscan complete. Imperial Prison Barge Purge, previous inmate and administrative census five hundred twenty-two according to the…"
"Just tell me who's left."
"Currently active life-form census is six."
"Six?"
"Correct."
"That's impossible."
"Would you like me to recalibrate the bioscan variables?"
Zahara stopped and considered the options. "What are the variables?"
"Positive life-form reading is based on algorithmic interpretation of brainwaves, body temperature, motion, and heart rate."
"What about alien species whose normal body temp or pulse don't fit within those parameters?" Zahara asked. "They wouldn't show up on the scan, would they?"
"Negative. Scan parameters are continuously recalibrated to incorporate the physiological traits of every member of the inmate population. In fact, current calibration standards reflect accurate life-form census with a point-zero-zero-one percent margin of…"
"Where are they?" Zahara asked. "The six?"
Tisa's holoscreen brightened to extend a transparent, three-dimensional diagram of the barge. It looked much cleaner in miniature, etched out with fine, straight lines, a drafter's dream of perfect geometry. The pilot station occupied the uppermost level. On one end of it, rising like a periscope, stood the retractable docking shaft that still connected them to the Destroyer. On the other end of the pilot station, a wide descending gangway lead downward to the conjoining administration level, flanked on port and starboard sides by the barge's escape pods. The mess hall, infirmary, and guards' quarters occupied the far end of that same level, and below that, the six individual strata that constituted Gen Pop. Any farther down, Zahara knew, and you'd find yourself amid a series of beveled hatches giving way to numberless sublevels, including the bottommost holding cells.
In all she counted the six tiny blips of red light distributed throughout it.
"Current life-form census," Tisa was saying, "indicates one active reading in the pilot station, one on the administration level, two in General Population, Detention Level One, and two in solitary confinement."
Solitary. She hadn't even thought about that until now. Reserved for the worst and most dangerous inmates on the barge, a haven for maniacs and extreme flight risks, it was the one place where the sickness might not have had an opportunity to spread. The question was whether she should risk going down there alone. Of course there were plenty of weapons lying around, but she didn't relish the idea of letting two of Warden Kloth's worst inmates free only to blast them into oblivion when they attacked her.
Still, what choice did she have?
"Can you patch me through to the infirmary?"
"Acknowledged," Tisa said and the monitor above the hologram brightened to show the medbay. At one corner of the screen Zahara saw Waste walking from bed to bed, removing monitors from the last of the dead, gathering up old IV lines and ventilator tubing. He was talking to himself in a voice too low to hear, perhaps only reviewing the diagnostic data, but seeing him like this made her feel suddenly, inexplicably sad.
"Waste."
The 2-1B stopped and looked up from the screen. "Oh, hello, Dr. Cody. Was the bioscan a success?"
She wasn't sure how to answer that one. "I'm going down to solitary. Can you meet me down there?"
"Yes, of course." He paused. "Dr. Cody?"
"Yes?"
"How many remaining life-forms are there?"
"Six."
"Six," the droid repeated tonelessly. "Oh. I see."
For a moment he glanced back at the infirmary full of bodies, all the patients who had died on their watch, despite all their efforts, and then up to the screen again. "Well. I suppose I'll meet you down there then."
"See you there," she said, and signed off.
Chapter 18
Solitary
Zahara left the pilot station and took the turbolift straight down to the barge's lowest inhabited level. She almost never descended this deep into the barge, had maybe been down twice since she'd started here, to treat inmates who were too sick or dangerous to come up to the infirmary. The only thing that lay beneath it was the mechanical and maintenance sublevel, the cramped domain of eyeless maintenance droids that never saw the light of day.
The lift doors opened to release her into a bare hallway with exposed wires dangling from the overhead girders. Zahara squinted, trying to make out the details. Apparently the main power circuitry didn't work so well down here. Somewhere above her a steam vent hissed out a steady current of moist, rancid-smelling air like the stale breath of a terminal patient. She didn't see any sign of the 2-1B anywhere and wondered whether she should go any farther without it. It didn't really matter, if there were no other survivors except-
"Oh!" she said aloud, startled out of her thoughts, falling forward and catching herself on the damp corridor wall, where her palm slipped, almost landing her flat on her face.
She'd tripped on the bodies of the guards in front of her. She counted five of them, sprawled out in a harrowing tableau. They were all wearing isolation suits and masks except for one, a younger guard whom Zahara recognized from a month or so earlier, when he'd come to the infirmary complaining of some minor skin irritation. She'd liked him well enough, and had fallen easily into conversation. She remembered him talking about his wife and children back on his homeworld of Chandrila.
Looking down at his body, Zahara saw a sheet of flimsiplast curled in his hand. She knelt down to pick it up and started reading.
Kai:
I know I told you and the kids I would be home after this run. But that is not going to happen. I am sorry to say that something has gone wrong on the barge. Everybody is getting sick and nobody knows why. Almost everybody has died so far. At first I thought I was going to be okay but now it looks like I have it, too.
I am sorry, Kai. I know this is going to be hard on the boys. Will you please tell them their daddy loves them? I am so sorry this is how things turned out, but tell them I served to the best of my abilities and I was not a coward and never scared.
And I love you with all my heart.
At the bottom the guard had attempted to write his name but the letters had come out so crooked and helpless, probably from his trembling hand, that the signature was little more than a scribble.
Zahara folded the note and slipped it into the breast pocket of her uniform next to the vial of anti-virus. She slipped the keycard from the guard's uniform and turned toward the sign marked solitary. Then she stopped. Where was Waste? She'd given the 2-1B ample time to get down here, and usually he was so prompt-