BY CHUCK WENDIG 15 страница

The ground is a long way down. They see more dilapidated structures. More bodies. More rot and more ruin.

And then the ground eases up to meet them. The Falcon finds a proper landing platform—a concrete abutment jutting up out of a tangle of twisting thorn. Jas finds a clear spot of ground and settles the Halo into it. The engines burn and blast away some of that unruly underbrush.

Ahead, by a quarter kilometer, is the prison.

Or, rather, prison ship.

It looks like what Aram told them is true: Ashmead’s Lock is not a prison he built. It’s a prison ship from the Old Republic days. A ship run by some rogue empire—an enemy of the Republic, he said. The Predori, he called them. Whoever they were, they’re gone now.

The ship once held captives of the Old Republic and sat in the center of some massive gravity well—how better to keep prisoners from escaping than by sticking them into a ship capable of resisting the crushing, implosive force of a gravitational hollow? Easy to get in. Impossible to escape. But one day, everything fell apart. Aram said that well must’ve fallen in onto itself, sending the ship plunging to the world below—

And it crashed into the surface of Kashyyyk, where it sat for hundreds, even thousands of years. The Wookiees believed it cursed: a place haunted by bad spirits. They made it forbidden to come here. They stood vigil in case anything ever came out of it.

And then, one day, the Empire came.

The Imperials found no such fear of the artifact, and were instead more than happy to refurbish the old ship into performing its task once more—and who better to turn it into a black-site prison than Golas Aram?

The prison ship sits in the distance illuminated with but a single light atop it: a shimmering blue crystal, bathing everything in an eerie radiance. It matches the creepy fungal glow from above, and serves well to further stir the septic feeling roiling around in Jas’s stomach.

They all exit the Halo. Beneath them, the ground is hard and dry and cracked—the undergrowth is brittle, snapping like little bones as they walk.

They gather together behind the trunks of one of the gargantuan trees.

“This is it, ” Solo says.

“Doesn’t look like anybody’s home, ” Norra says. “You’re sure Chewbacca is in this place? ”

He scowls. “He has to be. All the records pointed me here. ”

“Can we all reach the uncomfortable agreement that this is very likely a trap? ” Sinjir says. “I mean, the records ‘pointed you’ here—some old derelict ghost ship in an obliterated bit of forest—which says to me that we’re about to stick our foot into an ill-concealed snare. Yes? Hello? ”

“It’s not a trap, ” Solo growls. “Can’t be. Chewie’s in there. I can feel it. The Empire doesn’t have it together enough to put a…a trick together like that anymore. And if they wanted us dead or in shackles, they coulda done it before we ever got down here to the surface. We’re doing this. ”

Jas hesitates. “I don’t think we should. ”

“Then stay out here. I don’t care. I’m going in. ”

With that, Solo steps out from behind the tree and begins his march toward the prison. He ducks his head low and darts forward, blaster in hand.

“Norra, ” Jas says. “Something’s up, and he’s blind to it. ”

“I know. But he needs our help. ” Norra sighs. “Tem, you and Bones stay out here—”

“Whoa, c’mon, we want in on the action. ”

“No, you don’t. And the action might come up on our tails while we’re in there, and if it does? You’re our rear guard. ”

He rolls his eyes. “Fine. ”

“The rest of us? We’re with Solo. But stay frosty. I don’t know what we’re expecting to find in here. Aram said the prison was automated—but that it had defense mechanisms. Thankfully, his codes are supposed to get us past those mechanisms. Cross your fingers, toes, and tentacles. ” Norra draws her own blaster. “We’re going in. ”

—

It’s Bones who opens the door. One of the talon-tipped claws on his hand flips back, and a datalink adapter emerges. He hums to himself as he jams it into the port—the interface mechanism spins right, then left, then buzzes all the way around as the modded B1 battle droid uploads the code.

It works. The door slides open.

Norra tells her son: “Stay here. Use the comlink if you need us. ”

Temmin wants to go. He’s good at this sort of thing. Staying out here will be boring. (And, though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, creepy. )

But he decides to play nice. He is learning to trust his mother.

He gives a reluctant nod, and then the rest of them go inside as he and Bones wait by the door.

The droid sways back and forth, rocking to some imperceptible tune. He clicks and clacks his talons against his skeletal legs, creating an erratic beat. Temmin shushes him. “We gotta be quiet, Bones. ”

“ROGER-ROGER, MASTER TEMMIN. ”

“Just…keep an eye out. ”

“OKIE-DOKIE. ”

“And be ready for anything. ”

“READY TO EVISCERATE ANYTHING. ”

“That’s not exactly what I said. ” He shrugs. “But close enough. ”

—

Inside: darkness. Complete and total. Norra can’t see Solo in front of her, can’t see the others behind her. How could a prison like this sit here in the dark for so—

Click. Click. Click.

One by one, the lights come on, cascading down a long hall, fixture by fixture. The brightness washes everything out and Norra winces against it. As her eyes adjust, she can start to make out the layout of the ship. The hall ahead. Two sets of stairs going up on each side. Metal walkways above, each illuminated by lines of red light. Beyond that, above, are porthole windows glowing blue.

Everything is shiny and chrome. Walls like black mirrors.

Han blinks, then cocks an eyebrow. “All right. We’re in. ” He keeps his voice low when he says, “We’re going to split up. Me and the bounty hunter are going to stay on this floor. Norra, you take the Imperial and the new guy—”

“Hey, ” Jom protests. Jas snickers.

“—and head to the upper floors. We’re looking for…I dunno what. The bridge. A control station. Above all else, we’re looking for Chewie and the other prisoners the Empire took that day. Clear? ”

“As a sunny day, ” Norra says.

“Let’s do this. ” Han and Jas skulk off, sticking to the lower level. Norra has Sinjir and Jom form up behind her as they take to the second floor.

Norra keeps her blaster out—not pointed at anything, and her finger on the guard, not on the trigger. Wedge was fond of giving everyone lectures about trigger discipline, which means not putting your finger on that trigger until you’re just ready to pull it.

Wedge.

She misses him.

She understands his choice not to come along. He’s a pilot for the New Republic. He has his loyalties. And yet she’s angry at him, too. Because he’s a part of this. He should do like she did, and follow her heart—

Oh, that’s just absurd, isn’t it? She chastises herself for the thought. Follow her heart where? To a prison ship on a slave planet?

Maybe Wedge had the right idea after all.

The moment they reach the second floor is when the silence of the ship is suddenly broken.

A voice comes over the comm speakers, filling the whole ship with its booming presence, a voice that vacillates between male and female as it runs through a series of babbled languages. Norra recognizes some, like Ithorese, Gand, and Huttese, but not all. It races through them, almost as if calibrating itself—

Then it begins to speak in a language they all understand.

“Life-forms: eighty percent human, twenty percent Zabrak. Attuning language to Basic. Greetings, trespassers! This is Predori Prison Ship, Ashmead’s Lock. I am the ship’s IPU, or Intellectual Processing Unit, designation SOL-GDA: Synthesized Operating Layer, Grid-Based Drive Array. Welcome to my ship. Please speak the passcode aloud to continue. ”

Sinjir almost laughs. “What did it say? ”

“ ‘What did it say’ is not an acceptable passcode. One out of three attempts used. Please speak the passcode aloud to continue. ”

Norra sticks her finger up against her lips to shush Sinjir and Jom before they say anything else. Whatever this passcode is, Aram never gave it to them. That means he set them up. Because of course he did. Damnit! Why did the system trigger so late? Why not when they first stepped inside? A grim thought enters her mind: All the better to trap us here.

She starts to flag them to turn around and head back down the steps. Best to leave now and reformulate the plan.

But then the computer—now settling on a female voice—says:

“ ‘What the hell is this? ’ is not an acceptable passcode. Two out of three attempts used. Please speak the passcode aloud to continue. ”

Who the? What the?

Solo.

Damnit! She mouths the word move three times over, and they start heading back down the steps—

A voice bellows from somewhere below. Solo again.

“Gimme the damn Wookiee, you crazy computer! ”

And of course, SOL-GDA’s response is:

“ ‘Give me the damn Wookiee, you crazy computer’ is not an acceptable passcode. Three out of three attempts used. Passcode failed. System moving to lockdown. Please remain still for incorporation. ”

Lockdown? Incorporation?

That doesn’t sound good at all, does it? Norra waves her arms, urging the others forward—

The ship begins to rumble: a low, mechanized growl accompanied by a high-pitched whine that drills deep into her ear.

Above them and alongside them, the black mirrors begin to slide back with a whir. Out of each newly exposed chamber steps a pair of droids. Their faces are polished mirrors—not black like the walls but rather, a burnished gunmetal. The arms of the droids are configured like skeletal spines: countless joints allowing the hyperflexible limbs to drag behind them like tentacles. They lean forward with the predatory gait of a hungry beast, feet clicking as they begin to lope toward Norra and the others. Already she hears Solo’s blaster and the bounty hunter’s slugthrower—she fires her own. “Run! ” she screams.

But down below, more droids are rushing up to meet them.

—

The way out is locked and blocked. So the bounty hunter and the smuggler go the only direction they can: They hard-charge it deeper into the bowels of the prison ship. Solo’s just ahead, bolting forward, his blaster spitting lasers. Jas fires her slugthrower from the hip as she follows. Ahead, droids lurch and lunge, their whiplike arms lancing the air—

But they go down, one by one. Solo’s lasers take their legs out from under them. Her slugs punch holes through those mirrored masks as they fall—droid heads whipping back and vomiting sparks, the machine-beings clattering hard against the floor and skidding.

One comes out of the wall at the smuggler—

The tip of its segmented arm glistens.

A needle, she thinks. It stabs toward Solo’s neck.

No time to do anything else. She fires. The slug shears off the end of the attacker’s limb, sending up a spray of hot metal chips. Solo cries out, clapping his free hand against his neck as he staggers against the wall.

“Keep moving, ” she hisses in his ear as she comes up behind him, shouldering him forward.

“You shot me! ”

“I shot near you. ”

His hand comes away wet with red.

Ahead, more droids—he sneers and draws the second blaster at his hip and peppers the hallway ahead with searing light. Droids spin and spark.

They pass an adjoining passageway, and she catches his elbow with her hand. “There! ” Down that way: an open space and what looks to be some kind of command center.

Han Solo fires off a few more shots and follows after her.

Jas hopes the others have found somewhere safe, too.

—

They’re everywhere.

Norra’s on the ground—her back against the metal, her blaster up and firing at a droid diving toward her. Her shot tears the thing’s faceless mask off, exposing a sizzling circuit board. It collapses against her, limbs flailing uselessly against the metal—she rolls it off her and fires two more shots into its open skull. It stops moving.

Jom is just ahead, thrashing about as two of them crawl up on him, pinning him to the wall even as he bashes one in the skull with the butt of his rifle and kicks the other away. Two more swiftly replace those that fell—a segmented arm coils around his blaster and twists it from his grip.

He head-butts the thing in return.

It bloodies his nose. His skull cracks the thing’s mask in two.

Norra stands steady and lines up a shot—

She hears the click-clack behind her just as something—a lashlike limb—curls around her neck and tightens. A sound comes out of her—gkkk! —and instantly her head starts to pulse and throb as the blood pools and her airway closes. Everything seems to go oozing and slow; Jom goes down as one of the droids sticks a needle in his neck; she can’t even see Sinjir, but then when her head is wrenched back, she spies the ex-Imperial up, up, up above her as the droid crawls up the walls, carrying him with it toward an open portal glowing blue; then a needle sticks into her neck with a stabbing prick. She tries to cry out, but can’t…

Her body goes weak. It’s as if her limbs aren’t even hers anymore—like they’re just sacks of meat stapled to her torso. She tries to do something, anything, but the blaster clacks against the ground and her vision starts to smear like grease on a window. She begins to fly, lifting up off the ground, and for a moment she feels giddy—I’m escaping, I’m flying—but that’s not it at all. They’re carrying her just like they did Sinjir.

Where are they taking me?

What are they going to do to me?

Help—

Someone—

Anyone—

She chokes.

And darkness sweeps the light aside.

—

Mister Bones sits cross-legged on the ground in front of the door. He has his vibroblade out, and it crackles and spits as he saws through a stick, one cut after the next, until he’s got a little cairn of equally sized stick bits in front of him. Bzzt. Bzzt. Bzzt.

He sweeps the pile away, then grabs another stick to begin anew.

“What are you doing? ” Temmin asks.

“CUTTING THINGS. ”

“Why? ”

“I ENJOY IT. ”

He shrugs. “Fair enough. ” The droid is weird. He knows that. He programmed Bones to be functional, yes, but also…independent, in his own way. Problem is, Temmin isn’t really sophisticated enough to know exactly what he did when creating his bodyguard’s personality matrix.

So what he got was…this.

Whatever. That’s not important now.

What matters is: “They haven’t come out yet. ”

“THIS IS A TRUE STATEMENT, MASTER TEMMIN. ”

“They should’ve come out. ”

The droid suddenly stands. As if eager. “YES. ”

“Which means they might be in danger. ”

“I ENJOY DANGER, MASTER TEMMIN. ” The battle droid’s vulture-like head tilts back and forth on its axis with little whirs and ticks. His jagged teeth gleam in the half-light. There’s an eager tinge to the droid’s discordant voice.

“If they’re not coming out, we may have to go in. ”

“WILL THERE BE VIOLENCE? ”

“If they’re in danger. ”

Bones’s fingers tickle the air. “THEN LET US HOPE THEY ARE IN DANGER SO THAT I MAY PERFORM EGREGIOUS VIOLENCE. ” One finger flips back and the datalink emerges, its fiber-optic tip glowing. “MAY I OPEN THE DOOR NOW? ”

Temmin snaps his fingers, suddenly nervous. “Yeah, Bones. Open her up. ” Please be okay, Mom. Before, he was excited for the promise of action. Now, though, that rush of excitement has been replaced by a river of fear.

—

The door mechanism is cratered from one of Jas’s slugs, and static arcs of electricity jump from it as it sizzles. She and Solo crouch down behind a bank of computers as the droids work to cut through the door.

The room they’re in is hexagonal. It’s out in the open—in a massive central area seen easily through the scalloped windows that surround them. The windows are thankfully impenetrable blast glass; the droids continue to hammer against them with their lashing arms, but so far they’ve only served to scratch the surface. The door, though? They’ll come through that soon.

The computers aren’t like anything Jas has ever seen: no keypad, just a smooth convex bubble sitting in front of a green holoscreen. When Solo’s hands move across the bubble, the monitor flits from screen to screen. None of it in Basic. None of it making any sense to them.

“I…I don’t know what I’m looking at, ” Solo says, exasperated. “I’m a smuggler, not a damn slicer. This is some kinda…machine language, maybe, or something old, real old. ” He roars in frustration—sounding not unlike his Wookiee copilot—and brings his fist down onto the control pad. “Blast it! ”

His neck is still bleeding. But not gushing, though—so, thank the stars for small favors, right?

The door bangs as it rises up a few centimeters off the floor. Segmented droid arms slide in under the gap, whipping across the floor like agitated serpents before finally pausing to lift. The door groans and moves up a few centimeters more. Jas says: “They’re coming in. ”

She leans around the side of the computer bank.

Bang. Bang.

Two shots in quick succession, and the arms break apart into metal vertebrae that spin and slide across the metal floor.

Through the window, she sees dozens of mirrored masks staring in at them, now—implacable and emotionless. Like drones. They’ve stopped bashing at the window. Now they’re just waiting.

Above them comes the voice of SOL-GDA, the ship intelligence—

“SOL-GDA welcomes you to lay down your weapons. You will be intercepted and held in stasis until your purpose here can be determined. ” It repeats that phrase in Zabraki: “SOL-GDA thisska chu hai gannomari. Chu tai captak azza kan chutari geist fata-yith-ga. ”

“Computer! ” Han barks. “You give me my friend, Chewbacca, or I’m gonna tear your IPU right out of its brain hole and throw it into an engine fire! You hear me! ”

“SOL-GDA possesses a wide variety of prisoners, all of them held in eternal stasis. They invite you to join them. ” This, too, she repeats in Zabraki.

Solo stands and fires his blaster at the computer. It peels back like a metal flower, and a small electrical fire burns.

“We could’ve used that, ” Jas says.

“Be my guest. I improved it. ”

The door lifts up another dozen centimeters. Mirrored faces now stare through that gap, gleaming. One struggles to get its head underneath the door. Jas bares her teeth and lines up another shot—

Suddenly the droid in her scopes hitches and shakes. Its mirrored mask vibrates and pops off as an ember-hot vibroblade bisects the machine’s skull. Cinders rain before the droid goes dark.

Jas pulls back on the rifle.

Could it be?

Out there, through the window, the mirrored droids noticed the defeat of their fellow. But they’re too slow.

A pair of glowing vibroblades spins through the air as Mister Bones dances through the droids, pirouetting—mirrored skulls popping free like a child flicking the heads off bugs.

“That who I think it is? ” Solo asks.

“It is. ”

“That thing is terrifying. ”

“Just be glad it’s on our side. ”

The mirrored droids mob Bones—their arms lashing at him. He ducks and leaps, slicing off segments of limb bit by bit with his blades.

“The door, ” Solo says. “Let’s get it open while we have a chance. ”

She nods—

But the door is still opening of its own volition. It cranks up another few centimeters—which is enough for someone to slide through. She takes aim, but Solo palms the barrel of her rifle and pushes it to the ground.

“Whoa, hold up, Emari. Look. ”

It’s Temmin. He smiles sheepishly, his hair stuck to his sweat-slick forehead. “Hey, guys. Need a hand? ”

—

Impossible visions.

Norra drifts along, stitching in and out of consciousness, her breath coming in a keening wheeze. She feels loose, unmoored, utterly disconnected from the world. She floats through a dark room. She hears a song played on a valachord. Brentin is home. Lightning flashes at windows that weren’t there moments before, and she sees the skull masks of stormtroopers staring in—Temmin is crying, Brentin is yelling, and the Imperials kick in the door and drag him away. Outside isn’t outside. Outside is inside: the tangled conduits and piping of the Death Star battle station’s interior. Power cablings spark and energy lines shine red and now she’s in her Y-wing again, and she turns to peel away down a passage in order to lead the TIEs away from the Falcon but the flight stick is reversed and she pulls right but the fighter tugs left—her ship clips the Falcon, putting both of them into a spin. She sees the freighter slam into a massive concrete-and-steel post, dissolving into a ball of fire and debris.

Then her eyes are open—torn wide in a paroxysm of fear.

She’s being carried. A mirrored mask regards her. She starts to struggle, but the segmented arms tighten around her in a vise grip.

Her head twists to look for something, anything that can help her. And she sees the circular windows peering into closed chambers. Pods sculpted into the walls. Hard to see from below—but these were the blue lights, the portholes seen. She sees faces pass her. A Rodian. A woman she doesn’t recognize. Sinjir! Oh, gods, no, Sinjir—his eyes are shut, his mouth slack, a tube snaking toward and pushing up his nose—

Then something sticks into the side of her neck again.

A flush of fatigue washes through her, empties everything out.

They carry her toward an open chamber.

And she sees one more face as she passes—it’s him. It’s Brentin. Staring out from behind the window. His eyes are open. His mouth is working soundlessly in a scream. But she can hear his voice in her head: Why didn’t you ever come for me, Norra? You never looked. You never came. But now you’re here to join me at last…

—

Outside the windows of the control chamber, Bones is besieged. The droids are mobbing him, capturing his limbs before he can strike. One of their arms whips around his neck, lifting the B1—Temmin watches as Bones wrenches upward, about to be torn off his spine.

But then Bones pulls his body up, kicking out with both legs—those wretched feet sinking claws into the masks of two drones. With a scissor motion, Bones smashes the droid heads together. The lash leaves his neck and Bones drops to the ground in a crouch—but quickly he’s mobbed anew.

He doesn’t have long.

Temmin has to move fast.

“Kid, I hope you got some kinda idea, ” Solo says. “Otherwise, you’re trapped in the fishbowl with us. ”

“I…sure, yeah. ” He has no idea. They can see that. He didn’t have time! Outside, Bones screams a mechanized sound—

One of his arms clatters against the window. Separated from his body.

Think, think, think!

He can’t think. All he can do is panic. He can’t do this. His droid is getting torn apart in front of his eyes. His mother isn’t here. He’s trapped in this…room and he doesn’t have the power to change anything.

Wait.

The power.

Power.

That was the key to Aram’s compound, wasn’t it? Cutting the power. How is this place powered? Is it offsite? If it is—

“I say we shoot our way out, ” Jas says.

Solo nods. “I can get behind that. ”

“Wait! ” Temmin says. “Hold on. Look-look-look. ” He points out the window, snapping his fingers—there, along the far side of this room, nestled in the wall joint and running up along the eaves is a thick bundle of cable. As it gets higher, those cables break from the bundle and spread out like the branches of a tree—leading to a series of pods lining the ceiling, pods that…

Oh, no. Those pods contain people. Faces stare back. Distant, but plain to see now that he’s looking at them.

Those are the prisoners.

Jas says it before anybody else does: “They’re powering the ship with the captives. They put them into stasis and they become…generators. ”

“Human gonk droids, ” Solo says. “Disgusting. ”

And genius, Temmin thinks. “Which one of you is the better shot? ”

Jas and Solo both raise their hands at the same time.

“Aygir-dyski, ” Jas curses with a sneer. “I am. ”

Han waves her off. “Keep dreaming, honey. I’m the crack shot around here. Hell, maybe I have the Force. I should have Luke check. ”

“Never mind, ” Temmin says. “Both of you, get out there and shoot that cable. Now. ”

—

It’s like sinking into dark water. Norra can’t breathe. Panic chews through her like parasites. She feels herself settle into some kind of cradle. There’s a tickling sensation up her jawline, up her cheek, toward her nose. In front of her comes the hiss of a door closing—

It’s my tomb sealing up.

Thoughts chase one another in her mind like starving rats.

Temmin. Brentin. Leia and her child. Solo, Jas, everyone, anyone. I’m disappointing them.

She remembers a game as a child, a handheld game where you played these adventures and you got to choose where to go next—fight the monster or run from it, go through the swamp or run through the forest, choose a blaster or a sonic knife, be a pilot or a pirate…and now she realizes life is just like that. Just a series of choices. Sometimes you make the right ones and you get the good ending to the adventure. Other times you’re eaten by a rancor in the dark.

She never did those games right.

Maybe she didn’t do her life right, either.

Then, up through the darkness, a sound.

No. A voice.

The voice is distorted and mechanized—

She knows that voice. It belongs to a B1 battle droid.

Her son’s creation—a cobbled-together robot monstrosity that will protect her child to the point of its total obliteration. Just as she would. Just as she must right now because—Temmin’s here, isn’t he?

She couldn’t save Brentin. But she can save her son.

She fights her way through the dark water of her own drowning mind—Norra swims up through that septic layer of regret and fear, and she wills some part of her, any part of her, to wake up, to move. Her hand twitches and then the arm follows—before she even knows what she’s doing, she’s catching the door of her cradle just before it closes on her. She forces her eyes open, an act that is far more epic than it should be—but she manages it just the same. Her other hand flies to her face, where it grabs the tube snaking its way toward her nostril and yanks it away.

The ship’s voice cuts through the air—

“SOL-GDA has identified a perilous course of action and asks that you refrain from further violence against Ashmead’s Lock. Please lie down on the ground now with your hands at your sides. Thank you for your understanding. ” Then she repeats it in a language Norra can’t understand, nor does she care to try. All she can think about is finding the processor matrix of this IPU and emptying her blaster into it.

Norra struggles out of her chamber, pushing the door wider—

One of the mirrored droids appears. Its arm is tipped with another needle, and it plunges it toward her—

Norra skirts to the side, and the needle sticks into the cushion just behind her. Then she growls one word—“No”—and leaps.