"You're that pilot, right?" Sartoris shouted, not looking over. "Can you fly this?"
Han blinked at him. "You're gonna let me…"
"See this?" Sartoris held up his bitten arm, the exposed tissue squirming visibly now as though it had a series of small, electrically charged serpents writhing just below the flesh, trying to find a way out. "I don't have much time."
"Yeah, well…" Han leaned over and squeezed off another round of fire into the masses. "Chewie and I are a little busy right now."
Sartoris looked over his opposite shoulder. "What about you?"
"Me?" Trig squeaked.
"We're overloaded." Sartoris gestured over at the pitch and yaw alarms that had already started flashing faster on the main console, and Trig realized with horror that they were still going down, descending slowly but steadily into the shrieking morass below. Within seconds they'd be feeling the clutching hands thumping the underside of the lifter, yanking themselves onboard. "The hover won't take the weight."
"I don't think I can…"
"Time to learn." Sartoris took hold of the boy's arm and steered him forward past Han, planting him in front of the console. "Got it?"
"Where are we going?"
"There's an Imperial shuttle down in the hangar with some soldiers aboard. Look for a kid named White." Trig realized the captain of the guards was holding on to his shoulder, looking at him; the man's eyes burned through clear and bright. "You understand what I'm telling you?"
"But…"
Sartoris squinted, the vertical lines deepening on either side of his mouth, furrows that you could fall through if you weren't careful. "There's something you should know about your father."
"You knew him?"
"He was a good man," Sartoris said. "Unlike me."
Trig stared at him.
"He would've been proud of you. You ought to know that."
"How…" Trig started. He was still talking when Sartoris swung his legs over the lifter's side rail and jumped.
"Kid!" Han cried out. "Are you flying this thing or what?"
Trig leaned forward, grappling clammy-palmed with the throttle, barely keeping them from colliding with the wall. The turbine and its abyss were behind them now, shearing off at some unlikely angle. Everything in front of him was coming at him too fast, a smear of reckless velocity.
Twenty meters below, in the concourse leading forward, the original inhabitants of the Destroyer were still shooting, and climbing the walls trying to get them. They were packed together, thousands of them, a solid river of recking and deteriorated flesh. As one, they threw back their heads and let out another group scream. It was answered by another scream from far away.
"You know where you're going?" Han shouted.
Trig glanced down at the layout on the lifter's navigational screen, the blip showing where they were among the labyrinth of midlevel passageways. He felt sweat dripping under his armpits and over his ribs.
You can do this.
The lifter jerked. Something was climbing up from the underside. He could feel the lifter tipping. Han leaned over, trying to see what it was, and shook his head.
"I can't get a shot!"
Trig looked forward again. He brought the throttle down as low as he dared, until he saw the exhaust manifold rising up from the corrugated floor. Holding his breath, he nudged the stick forward, dropping them another fraction of a millimeter. It was pure seat-of-your-pants speculation-the sort of thing his father and his brother would have excelled at, but he was the only one left to do it.
"Trig, what…"
Wham!
The corpse underneath the lifter slammed into the manifold, scraped off, and went pinwheeling sideways, headless now, down into the masses that had spawned it. Han threw him an appreciative glance.
"That's more like it."
Careering around a corner, Trig steered them down the slightly wider throughway, dull yellow lights whickering past like his own wildly careering thoughts. He kept going back to what Sartoris had said just before jumping off the lifter.
He was a good man. I'm not.
It had been a generality, spoken by a man who knew he was going to his death. Why had it sounded like he'd been confessing to killing Von Longo?
A burst of static broke from the lifter's comlink, a voice rising from its speaker.
"Hello, is anyone there?"
Han's arm shot past his face to grab the link, flicking it on. "Who's this?"
"…Cody…" the voice cut in."…hangar control…"
"We're on our way now," Han said.
"…no-stay away…"
"Say again."
"Under attack…"
The comlink sputtered, Zahara's voice reduced to a warble. Trig thought he heard blasters in the background, the twang and crash of catastrophic wreckage. He watched as Han changed frequencies, trying to home in on the signal.
"I'm losing you, Doc," Han said. "Just hang on, okay?"
". too many of them. " Zahara's voice was drifting, lost between clouds of heavier static. Trig thought he heard the words "laser cannon," and then the link broke off entirely. Han dropped the comlink and checked the lifter's digitized schematic.
"It's okay, we're almost there, right?" he said. "That's the entryway straight ahead."
Trig eased the stick back and then let it go forward, getting a feel for it at last, now that the trip was all but over. The lifter blurred through the end of the corridor, toward the hatchway where Han was pointing. Despite the fact that they were almost there, Trig felt an odd tug of apprehension, a sense of having made the wrong decision about something so long ago that there was no way to correct it now.
Chewie growled, and Han's nostrils flared. He looked worried.
"Yeah," he said. "I smell it, too."
Trig glanced over. "What?"
"Smoke."
The hangar wall was on fire.
Through the smoke Trig could see the army of the dead pouring through, headed to the far end of the hangar. The X-wing that had evidently attacked the wall was still pointed at it, its laser cannons tilted upward with random blocks of salvaged equipment. Trig glanced back up where flames had overtaken the west end of the hangar, obscuring everything in a wall of thick, oily smoke that smelled like burning copper wires and charred durasteel.
"Where did Dr. Cody say she was?" he shouted.
"Main hangar control," Han said.
"Which is.?"
Han pointed directly into the flames. Trig pulled back on the stick, angling the lifter up into the choking black wall. Instantly his eyes, nose, and throat started stinging, tears streaming down his face. He could hear Han shouting at him, and Chewbacca let out a loud, angry-roar that broke off in a burst of deep coughs.
"What are you doing?" Han said. "You want to get us killed?"
"I'm not leaving her."
"If she's up here she's already dead!"
Trig brought the lifter upward until he was staring through the flames into what was left of the main hangar command. Melted computers and consoles lay bubbling across the warped durasteel floorboards like a surrealist nightmare of Imperial technology.
She's not in there, he thought. She made it out. Maybe-
The thought snapped off cleanly in his mind.
It was a small shape, dwarfed by the oblong slab of charred components that had toppled over to crush it. Trig looked at the slender hand protruding outward from underneath the pile, remembered how it had looked resting on his father's shoulder in the infirmary. He felt the last of his breath evaporate from his lungs, leaving him absolutely still.
"Kid." Han's voice was far-off, and from the sound of it, Trig knew he'd seen her, too. "We have to go."
Trig opened his mouth to speak but nothing came out. He turned the lifter away, and down.
Chapter 43
Death and All His Friends