n the end, the sickness would bring them back. In the end maybe the sickness brought everyone back.
Trig began to feel as if he were sinking into a warm deep bath. His hearing was becoming muffled, his vision softening around the edges, blurring into deeper shadows across the bay. No wonder the Empire had abandoned this Star Destroyer out here in some remote corner of the galaxy-the sickness here was worse than anything he'd ever heard of; it made Darth Vader and his endless armies seem almost innocent by comparison. Thinking about it now made him want to puke and laugh at the same time because that was what you did, that was just what crazy people did, when their fathers came back from the dead and tried to attack them.
Kid?
Hey kid, are.,?
He realized he'd stopped walking. Han Solo was standing in front of him, staring at him through what felt like a thick and motionless cushion of air. Trig could see his mouth moving, saw him frowning, asking a question-
. you gonna.
But for the life of him he couldn't figure out what Han was saying. It was like he was speaking a different language. Now the man was shaking him by the shoulders, and the soft wax that had plugged Trig's ears was starting to melt away, opening up his hearing.
"… all right?" Han asked.
At the sound of his voice, Trig felt the still air around him stirring, become less stifling, as if he'd just snapped out of some invisible chrysalis and drawn his first clean breath. It stung his nose and made his throat ache like he'd tried to swallow too big of a bite of something, and he realized he was going to cry again. Even if he didn't have any more tears.
Han stood there looking at him awkwardly.
"My dad. " Trig managed, and that was all.
Han opened his mouth to say something but didn't. To his left, Chewbacca leaned forward and put his arms around Trig. It was like being wrapped up in a warm, slightly musty-smelling blanket. Trig could feel the Wookiee's heartbeat, and a soft, comforting growl from deep inside that cavernous chest. Slowly he made himself release and draw away.
"Okay," Han said, and cleared his throat. "You all right?"
Trig nodded. It was a lie, he wasn't all right, not at all, but he was better-a little.
He looked around and saw that they were standing among several smaller ships, the ones he'd first seen from the other side of the bay, old rusted vessels, jettisoned escape pods, captured Rebel ships and shuttles, a small Corellian freighter. They lay in piles around them, a modest assortment of ruined aeronautics.
The Wookiee barked out a question.
"Nah," Han said, "I seriously doubt it." He pointed. "We can get up to the main concourse, follow it up."
"Yeah," Trig said, because he knew some kind of answer was expected of him.
"It's going to take us a while to get to the command bridge. These things are a kilometer long. But if it's got an engine, we can fly it."
Trig nodded. They kept walking.
Behind him, far off in the distance he heard a new sound.
Screaming.
Chapter 29
Sine
Zahara jerked sideways and stared back at the docking shaft. The screaming coming from inside of the shaft was inhuman. It was shrill and sharp and hateful, comprising maybe hundreds of voices pitched up together-EEEEEEEEEE. It oscillated in a waveform that the mathematical part of her mind insisted on graphing, rising up to squeeze her eardrums, sloping toward silence, then coming up again to the same frequency of precision dynamics.
Kale groaned. He was muttering something. She leaned down to listen.
". ut it off.»
She looked at him, startled by what she understood him to be saying. And in case she didn't understand, he was fully awake now, staring at her, pointing at his bandaged leg.
"Doc, please. You have to."
Another scream Dopplered by, eeeEEEEeeee, and she waited until it ended.
"What?"
eeeEEEEeee -
"Cut it off."
eeeEEEEeee -
"That's not necessary," she said. "Not right now."
eeeEEEEeee -
"I can feel it coming up through me. You have to." His eyes were bright and scared and absolutely lucid. "Please, I don't care how much it hurts, just do it, cut it off."
eeeEEEEeee -
"I can't do that."
"Then kill me."
The screaming spiraled up again, louder than before, surging up and edging off in that same pattern. It continued throughout their conversation, and Zahara started shouting so she could be heard over it.
"Your brother went with Han and Chewbacca, they're on the way now to find communications and medical supplies. You're going to get through this, trust me. How bad is your pain?"
"There is no pain."
"What?"
"It's not like that. It doesn't hurt. I can just feel it, where my d- where it bit me." His eyes were very wide now, glittering like broken glass, and she could hear the whistle of air through his nose as he lost the battle to panic. "Unwrap it at least, so I can see it. I'll show you."
"I need to keep pressure on the…"
"It's coming through me!"
"Kale, don't!"
He sat up and grabbed the bloody tourniquets from his calf, ripping them off in layers. Zahara tried to stop him and he shoved her back without so much as a backward glance, intent on peeling away the canvas strips that she'd torn from her own jacket. The last of them fell away in a sodden red heap.
"See?" Kale's face was flushed with horrified triumph. "I told you."
Zahara stared at it. There was a fist-sized chunk of flesh missing from the meaty part of his lower leg, the exposed shinbone gleaming visibly through a web of the torn muscle and viscera. The puckered flesh around the wound had gone a bruised, gangrenous gray. She found herself watching in fascinated horror as that same gray hue began to reach up his leg, past his knee to his thigh, causing it to pulsate visibly with gelatinous vitality. It was like a hand sliding up underneath his skin, reaching eagerly upward toward his torso.
"Get rid of it!" Kale shrieked, his own voice high and reedy, slapping at himself as his voice joined those of the screamers inside the shaft. "Cut it out, get rid of it, get it out of me!"
Zahara felt the wheels of time grinding to a halt. Her mind flashed back to one of her teachers at Rhinnal, something he'd said once in the classroom: The day will come when you'll be faced with a situation you're completely unprepared for, both physically and emotionally. On that day you'll find out what kind of doctor you really are, by how much you give up to fear, and how much you remember your training.
She tore open the pocket of her cargo pants and pulled out her medical kit, breaking it open. Inside were scalpels, gauze, tape-the most rudimentary tools of her trade. Down in front of her, Kale kept screaming. The gray swollen pulsation she'd seen earlier had already crept up past his waistline, rippling inside his abdomen, turning pink skin into dull, mottled pewter. Seeing it made her sick-it was like watching meat rot from the inside.
He's dying. Or worse. So do something.
She took a scalpel from the kit and lowered its sharpened tip into the exposed flesh just below his belly button. For an instant Kale's screams of fear became screeches of pain and he gaped at her in total confusion as she widened the incision, fingers probing through a slick jacket of fat to the constricted abdominal muscle beneath. A cold sweat had broken out over her forehead and upper lip. She put it out of her mind, extinguished every detail except what was right in front of her.