Джо Шрайбер - Star Wars - Death Troopers

"Ten thousand?" Kale muttered from his bunk. "He's got that much?"

"Don't tell me you're shocked." Wembly looked pained and laced his hands over his formidable belly, almost dyspeptic with incredulity. "Please, don't tell me that. You yanked out half his face, what did you expect?"

"The ugly half." Kale flopped down on his bunk with a muffled groan. "I probably improved his looks."

"I very much doubt that to be true," the BLX interjected. "In my experience…"

Wembly cut the droid off without hesitation. "Improved his looks, huh? Make sure you explain that to him while his flunkies slit your throats." He glanced across the hall at the Rodian inmates staring through their bars, the intensity of their regard suddenly making more sense to Trig. He guessed that they were probably already spending that ten thousand credits.

"Hey, Wembly, you're a guard," he said. "Doesn't that mean you're supposed to guard us?"

"That's a good one, kid, make sure to write it down. In case you didn't notice, preventing you scofflaws from offing each other isn't exactly in our job description. The warden sees it as saving the Empire the trouble." He swung out one baggy hand at the rest of the detention level outside the cell. "As far as your colleagues out there are concerned, when we come out of lockdown, that's the dinner bell ringing on your sorry necks."

"And there's nothing you can do about it?" Trig asked.

"Hey, I'm warning you, aren't I?"

"Yes, that's right," the BLX echoed. "And at no small risk to our own well-being, either. If Captain Sartoris knew…"

"Listen," Wembly said, his tone shifting a little, lowering his voice to the very brink of an apology, "right now I've got bigger worries. We're getting ready to send a boarding party to this Star Destroyer. The warden's not saying anything, but…"

"Wait a second," Kale said. "Star Destroyer?"

"Navicomputer found one drifting out here, a derelict. We just docked. Kloth's sending a boarding party to scavenge parts. If they can't find anything to get the main thrusters running again, who knows how long we'll be sitting here?"

"That reminds me, sir," the BLX said, "if I'm not mistaken, I'm due for an oil bath this afternoon, if you can spare my assistance for an hour or two. If not, I can always…"

"Take your time," Wembly said drily, then turned back to Kale and Trig. "Listen, I've got to blow. Do me a favor and lay low awhile, huh? I'll do everything I can to keep you alive until we get where we're going."

Kale nodded. "Thanks," he said, but this time the gratitude sounded sincere. "I know you're walking a line just coming out here to see us. And we appreciate it, right, Trig?"

"Huh?" Trig looked up. "Oh, yeah. Right."

The guard shook his head and glanced back at Kale. "Keep an eye on this one, will you?"

"All the time."

Wembly pursed his lips. "I'll drop by again next time I feel like getting abused. If you live that long, which I doubt." He turned and waddled away humming under his breath, a wide-hipped man whose girth enjoyed its own unique relationship with the galaxy's greater gyroscopic nature. The BLX followed along obediently afterward. When guard and droid rounded the corner and disappeared, Trig turned to look straight out of the cell again.

Across the hall, the Rodians were still staring at him.

Sartoris led the others up the stairs from the admin level to the barge's pilot station, walking across it up to the docking shaft. It was a cylinder that made his throat feel tight, particularly now that he was surrounded with nine men-Austin, Vesek, Armitage, along with four mechanical engineers and a pair of stormtroopers who'd swaggered in at the last second like they owned the place.

Kloth had sent the troopers along as an afterthought, ordering them to join the boarding party just before they'd started up. Sartoris wondered what had changed the warden's mind. If there was something aboard the Destroyer that they needed to worry about, two stormtroopers weren't going to help the situation much.

But there is nothing to worry about up there, Sartoris told himself, dropping the thought like a pebble into the deep well of his subconscious and waiting to hear some sort of telltale plink of response. The silence that came back wasn't particularly reassuring.

The tube lift carried them steadily upward, and Sartoris watched the faint green lights strafe the faces of the other men, seeking any echo of his own apprehensions. But their expressions were pictures of bland neutrality, obedience as a rarefied psychological state. Sartoris supposed he ought to be thankful for guards that just followed orders as opposed to questioning them. He'd worked with both types in the past and had unfailingly preferred the company of the former-at least, strangely, until now, when some part of him could have appreciated a little back-and-forth about the nature of their destination.

It was Austin, predictably, who ultimately broke the silence. "What do you think happened up there, Cap, that there's only ten life-forms still on board?"

"Warden says zero contamination," Vesek said. "So it's gotta be a malfunction on our end."

"So how come they never acknowledged?"

"Maybe our communications suite got scrambled along with our bioscanners."

"Negative." One of the engineers, Greeley, shook his head. "Communications are five-by. Ditto the scanners. It all checks out." He flicked his eyes upward. "It's just a ghost ship, that's all."

Austin gave him a look. "What?"

"A derelict, you know-ships get scuttled, abandoned by the fleet, left behind. Empire doesn't like to talk about 'em, but they're out there."

"So where's the crew?"

"Evacuated," Greeley said. «Or.» He moistened his lips and tried to shrug it off. "Who knows?"

"Great." Vesek sighed. "A Destroyer that can't fly on its own and we're going aboard to scavenge parts. This one's got Kloth's name written all over it." He rolled his eyes at Sartoris. "Is there a greater plan at work here, Captain, or we just winging this one?"

"When we get up there," Sartoris said, "I want two groups of five. Vesek, that means you, me, and Austin will go with Greeley…" He pointed at one of the engineers, and the second man standing next to him. " — and Blandings. The rest of you, Armitage, Quatermass, Phibes, stay with the troopers. We'll reconnoiter back at the docking shaft in an hour."

"You want one of us to go with you?" one of the stormtroopers asked.

"Why would I want that?"

The trooper brandished his blaster rifle. "Just in case."

Sartoris was aware of Vesck and Austin looking at him, awaiting his reply. "I think we'll be fine," he said. "Stay with Armitage's group and let me know what you find."

"What exactly are we looking for?" Austin asked.

"I've uploaded a list of the parts onto each of your datalinks along with a detailed layout of the Destroyer's concourse and maintenance level. I don't have to tell you this is a big ship. Maintain strict comlink contact at all times. I don't want to be sending out search parties to look for my search parties. You follow?"

The platform stopped moving long enough for the hatch above them to unseal with a faint hydraulic hiss. Then it lifted the rest of the way up, into the landing bay.

At first nobody said a word.

Sartoris thought he'd been prepared for how big it would be, but after two solid months aboard the Purge, he was simply overwhelmed by what awaited him here. He'd never actually set foot on a Destroyer before, although he'd seen smaller Imperial warships and had assumed this would be like those, only bigger. But it wasn't. It was more like its own planet.

The docking shaft had delivered them into the durasteel cathedral of the Destroyer's cavernous main hangar, its vaulted ceilings and paneled walls soaring upward and outward in an ecstasy of forced perspective. As Sartoris stared down those long planes into some barely visible vanishing point, he reminded himself that he was looking at less than a tenth of the Destroyer's actual sixteen hundred meters. He needed to keep that figure in mind if he didn't want to spend his entire rime aboard wrestling with the enormity of it.