Star Wars: Death Troopers

Chapter 41 Blackwing

Zahara tried three keyboards before she found one that worked. Fingers trembling, she jacked it into the secondary workstation and held her breath, waiting to see if they were compatible.

The 2-1B had declined to accompany her up to the hangar control room, electing instead to stay in the bio-lab, "in case I'm needed." But the droid's directions had been flawless. He had sent her through a Byzantine maze of walkways that delivered her to a service lift, and she'd taken it straight up to the pilots' ready room, through another set of doors that opened on hangar control itself.

The large enclosed booth stood at least thirty meters off the docking floor. From her current vantage point she could see everything- the six or so random ships that the Destroyer's tractor beam had sucked in on one end, and on the other, the half-destroyed docking shaft that had brought them up here from the barge.

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.