The things were down there, too.
Hundreds of them, or perhaps thousands, swarmed the different damaged ships, teeming so thickly that Zahara couldn't begin to estimate their numbers. More were pouring in constantly through various hatchways and doors, a nonstop flood of bodies crawling over one another toward the different vessels. Every few seconds they screamed together, that same sonic waveform, and that only seemed to accelerate the arrival of others.
How was she going to get down there? And if she did, how could she possibly hope to get inside one of those captured spacecraft without-
First things first.
The screen in front of her blinked obediently on, awaiting the pass-word. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, and then she typed in the word she'd read scrawled across the floor of the biolab:
blackwing
There was a long pause, and the screen went completely blank. Then, abruptly, across the top:
Password accepted.
Enter command?
Zahara let herself exhale a sigh that seemed to loosen every muscle in her chest, shoulders, and back. She typed in:
Access master control to Star Destroyer tractor beam.
After a split second the response came back:
Master control to tractor beam is accessed.
She typed:
Disable tractor beam.
For a moment, nothing happened. Then the computer responded:
Unable to complete command.
Zahara scowled.
Explain inability to complete command.
Immediately:
Tractor beam has already been disabled.
She sat back and looked at the screen with a slight frown remaining on her forehead. Had Han and Chewie actually managed to switch the thing off from the command deck? If so, then they should be on their way back now, assuming the plan was still to get out of here on one of the scuttled ships.
She looked back down at the heaving mass of bodies that filled the hangar floor. Hopefully Han and the Wookiee had found some more firepower along the way.
Leaning forward, she typed:
What is blackwing?
The system replied:
Blackwing:
Imperial bioweapons project I71A. Galactic virus dissemination and distribution algorithm.
CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET.
Project status: In progress.
"Distribution algorithm?" She looked back out at the bodies in the hangar, now packed so densely that in many places she couldn't even see the floor. Every few seconds, they released another version of that ringing, rhythmic scream, and when she listened she could hear the other scream reverberating back from somewhere in the Destroyer. It only made them move more urgently.
But they weren't just milling around anymore.
The corpses were climbing into the different spacecraft, the X-wings, the landing shuttles and transports, the freighter in the far corner of the hangar. Still others were streaming back into the half-blasted docking shaft leading back down to the prison barge. Zahara saw that they were lagging something on their backs.
She looked more closely.
Black metal tanks.
She glanced back at all the different vessels in the hangar, thinking again about the distribution algorithm, a coordinated means by which the Empire could spread the virus everywhere it wanted across the entire galaxy. Distractedly, she watched a group of the things lined up alongside an X-wing, working together to turn it around, pointing it up toward where she was standing.
Her mind went back to what Waste had told her about quorum sensing, the way the disease worked.
They don't do anything until they can all do it together — when it's too late for the host organism to fight it-but why?
Then it hit her, and she spoke aloud without realizing it.
"They're leaving."
Down below, the X-wing was aimed straight up at her. What had that other 2-1B said about being exposed up here?
A blinding column of flame tore across the hangar, hurtling straight for her.
Chapter 42
River
The kid stood no chance.
Even from here, Han could sec how it was going to play out, and if he and Chewie went out on the catwalk to try to help him, it would just mean all three of them would die together. It was a miserable thing to realize, yet there it was-a rock-solid certainty.
Chewie gave a long, mournful howl.
"Yeah, I know," Han shot back, hating himself all the more for having to say it out loud. "You got any better suggestions?"
Out on the catwalk, the kid was slipping off, the thing dangling stubbornly from his ankle, dragging him down. He might be able to hang on for another five seconds, certainly no more. In an act of pure desperation, Han leveled his blaster, knowing he had no shot-he could just as easily hit Trig from this distance, or miss altogether. But what else was he supposed to do?
Are you really going to sit this one out? Cash it in, go down without a fight?
Chewbacca was looking at him, awaiting the decision. At last Han nodded and lowered the blaster.
"Okay," he muttered, "on my signal, we go out, just try to grab him…"
Chewie gave another howl, this one more startled, and Han saw what he was looking at.
It was too late.
The kid had let go.
The kid was falling.
From the moment his fingers finally slipped off, some part of Trig felt nothing but pure weightless relief: after everything that had happened, just to give up and surrender himself to gravity and the void. As he fell, Myss still clinging to his legs, he looked down into the screaming faces coming closer and felt the full intensity of their wrath swallowing him up. He remembered hoping that he'd be dead by the time he hit, and guessed that probably wouldn't happen either, unless-
Something swooped underneath him, and he smashed into it, connecting with his right hip and shoulder and rolling backward, arms and legs flopping with the leftover momentum. A heartbeat later and his forehead ricocheted off the smoothness of cold prefabricated resin. He propped himself up, felt the speed accumulating around his face, pushing forward. He wasn't falling anymore-
But he was moving.
He realized that he'd landed inside some kind of hovercraft, a utility lifter, shooting across the empty space above the main engine turbine, still twenty meters above the deathscape of screaming faces.
Trig turned his head and glanced forward. There was a figure perched up at the steering console. He couldn't see who it was-
Except that the man seemed to be wearing an Imperial prison guard uniform.
The lifter tilted, arcing sideways over the abyss, and when the driver shot a glance back around, Trig got a look at his face. Not that it made any sense, but after two and a half months aboard the prison barge, he would have recognized Jareth Sartoris anywhere.
Sartoris banked hard and swung the lifter around toward the far side of the catwalk where Han and Chewie stood staring at it with a look of disbelief that matched Trig's own. The guard's voice was a hoarse croak above the screams and blasterfire.
"You coming?"
Han and Chewie dived in without a word. The lifter sank under the new weight, and Sartoris rammed the stick forward and up. Watching him wrestle with it, Trig noticed the deep bite on his forearm, the way the underlying tissue had already started to bulge and pucker from some gray squirming necrosis deep inside.
Sartoris was fighting more than just the throttle, he realized.
The lifter rocked sideways, straining to hold them above the mob below, faces lit up by steady, strafing blasterfire. Han and Chewie had already taken their positions over either side, shooting back.