The Darkness Read online

  The other spiders had fled, too, springing free and disappearing into fine cracks in the floor. Lina kicked and fought, managing to wrench one arm free.

  CR-8R was using one of his lower appendages to slice through the webs strung across the deck, the sticky membranes clinging to him as he forced his way through. Milo followed, trying to steer clear of the hanging threads.

  Then the droid was at Lina’s side, and Milo was grabbing at her hand.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Just stuck,” Lina said. “Did you see those spider-things? What were they?”

  Milo shook his head. “I’ve never seen anything like them,” he said. “Can you get loose?”

  Lina shook her head. “It’s really sticky.”

  “Hold still, Mistress Lina,” CR-8R said. “I’m going to cut you down.”

  Lina saw his appendage arm snaking up toward her, its cutting blade wreathed in sticky white web. She heard the snip of shears, then she dropped suddenly, hitting the floor hard on her back.

  “Oh, Mistress Lina, I’m so sorry!” CR-8R said. “I really must be more careful.”

  Lina tugged her other arm free and began to peel the webs from her clothes and hair. Her shirt and leggings glistened with gooey white threads, and her hair was a tangled mess. She struggled to her feet, stamping and kicking.

  CR-8R guided his glowlamps around the room, light piercing through the tangled forest of hazy cobwebs to the black walls behind. Milo gasped. “What happened here?”

  The far side of the deck was a mass of pipes and machinery. Lina recognized cooling ducts and energy converters, and tall banks of power cells. But it all lay in twisted heaps, as though something had chewed the metal up and spat it out again. The cells were dead, their casings cracked and their steel innards strewn across the floor. And everything was covered in the same sticky white webbing.

  “Well, I was right about there being a bug in the system,” Lina said. “Lots of bugs, as it turns out. And they’ve been busy.”

  “It’s incredible,” Milo agreed. “They feed on power and can chew through a plate-steel floor. It looked to me like they had metal skin.”

  “Cyborgs?” CR-8R asked. “But where can they have come from?”

  Milo shrugged. “A shipment?” he asked.

  “We need to get to the bridge,” Lina said firmly. “We can take a look at the Shade’s records, figure out what she was carrying.”

  “But keep your beams on this time, Crate,” Milo said. “It looked to me like they’re afraid of the light.”

  “A great plan,” CR-8R agreed. “Provided my batteries hold out.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Lina asked. “Let’s move.”

  They hurried back up the winding steps, CR-8R keeping his beams trained backward so Milo and Lina could stay in the light. As they climbed she heard the spiders swarming back onto the darkened deck, reclaiming their territory.

  They reached the top of the steps, weaving through the maze of crates. Many had been scattered when the gravity failed, and they had to clamber over a creaking, unsteady heap to reach the door.

  “Look,” Milo said, pointing. Lying on its side at the top of the pile was a large container made of thick metal plates. It had been torn open, the steel twisted outward as though something had forced its way free.

  “‘Cylo,’” Lina said, reading the word stenciled in heavy block letters on the side.

  Then CR-8R’s beams flashed one after another as he spun to face a heavy door set into the curved wall. He tapped in the code and the door slid open.

  Lina ducked through, scanning the bridge. The only light came from outside the ship, the distant gleam of the galactic center like a pale river in the blackness. Below the viewscreen was a long control panel and four chairs. But the controls themselves were dead, and the room was silent.

  She took a step forward, then froze. “Hello?” she called out. “Captain Mondatha, is that you?”

  Sitting in the pilot’s seat, her back turned to them, was a dark, robed figure.

  “HELLO?” LINA REPEATED.

  The bounty hunter did not move, sitting upright in her chair, her hand on the controls.

  Milo heard the door slide shut behind them. He followed Lina, stopping as he heard a crunch beneath his foot. He looked down. Something sticky and gray was oozing from under his shoe. He lifted it to see the flattened form of a spider, its metal body cracked to reveal gooey organic innards.

  Another lay just ahead of it, flat on its back, eight legs in the air. He saw a third lying on the control panel.

  Still the captain did not move. Lina reached out, touching the Shade gently on the shoulder. She was stiff as a board, frozen in place. Lina gave a tug and the chair turned slowly.

  The bounty hunter’s head rocked back and Milo saw two red marks high on her neck, piercing her skin. The Shade clutched another of the spiders, crushed in her fist. But her eyes were closed, her breathing shallow.

  “She’s unconscious,” Lina called. “Those things must have attacked her.”

  “And she must have fought back,” Milo said. “Bad move.”

  Lina pushed past the pilot’s chair, tapping the console. Nothing happened. “The navigation array’s completely drained,” she said.

  “Can you get it working?” Milo asked.

  Lina shrugged. “Everything seems to be intact, there’s just no power. Crater, can you find out what those things were and what they might have done to the ship?”

  The droid hovered toward the nearest energy socket, plugging himself in. “I’ll have to use my own power to access the data banks,” he said. “Hopefully this won’t take long.”

  “Look for the most recent shipments,” Milo suggested.

  “And the word Cylo,” Lina reminded him.

  Milo perched in the copilot’s chair. The air in the cockpit was cold and it tasted stale. The life support systems must have been failing like everything else. He wondered if they’d freeze before they ran out of air, or the other way around. No, he thought. Lina will figure out a way to fix it, like she always has before.

  “I’ve found it,” CR-8R said. “She picked up sixty crates, a week ago. She collected them from an Imperial research base, and the contact’s name was Cylo.”

  “So he’s a person?” Milo asked.

  “Or she,” Lina added.

  “A man, from what I can tell,” CR-8R said. “The Shade did her research. Her notes say that Cylo is a research scientist working on ways to fuse the organic with the robotic to create new forms of life.”

  “Sounds like our spiders,” Lina said.

  “So they are cyborgs,” Milo said in amazement. “Part robot, part animal.”

  “And all dangerous.” Lina frowned. “If one bite could take out the Shade, think what it could do to someone half her size.”

  “She is still alive,” CR-8R said. “That’s positive.”

  “But, Lina, they never bit you,” Milo pointed out. “Maybe they only attacked the Shade because she fought back.”

  “Or maybe they’re crazy little critters who love to suck human blood, when they’re not crippling starships,” Lina said. “We can’t take any chances.”

  “Well, we know they hate the light,” Milo said. “We can use that.”

  “How?” Lina asked. “All the lights are out.”

  “No, they’re not,” Milo reminded her. “They were still working in the cell block.”

  Lina frowned. “You’re right,” she said. “And those holograms were still going, too. Why haven’t they run out of power? We saw the main power cells. They were chewed to bits. Everything on the ship ought to be dead.”

  She scratched her forehead thoughtfully. Then Milo saw a light go on behind her eyes.

  “Oh, this bounty hunter’s smart,” she said with a grin. “She’s really smart. Think about it. On a regular freighter, the power cells are all stored in one place, right? The engine room. So if someone’s attacking you, all they nee
d to do is find that central source and knock it out, and you’re dead in space.”

  “I guess,” Milo agreed. He knew that the Whisper Bird had a single power grid controlling the whole ship. He had always assumed that was how all starships worked.

  “But what if you split the power cells up into separate sources?” Lina asked. “There’d be one for the bridge, that’s obviously been knocked out, taking the navigation systems with it. There’s another for the storage bay, and we saw how the spiders dealt with that. But there must be another in the rear, powering the cell block. She must also have separated out the security system, which is why the holograms keep popping up. And there might even be another cell powering the hyperdrive.”

  “So the ship could still fly?” Milo asked.

  “I don’t see why not,” Lina said. “But there’d be no way to control it. We’d end up going in circles.” She squinted her eyes, thinking hard. “We’d need to get the navicomputer working. And for that we need another power source. There’s only one we know of that’s definitely still in operation.”

  “Back at the cell block,” Milo said.

  “There was a box of tools back there,” Lina said. “We uncouple the power cell. Crater carries it up here. We hook it up to the navigation array, and as long as we can keep the spiders out we’d probably have enough power to get back to Lothal.”

  “Can you do that?” Milo asked excitedly. “Unhook it and rig it up?”

  Lina’s face fell. “I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never tried to do anything like this before.”

  “And I cannot promise my batteries will hold out,” CR-8R added. “I’m on backup power as it is.”

  Lina frowned. She opened her mouth to speak, then she shut it again. “There is another option,” she said at last. “One other person around here who knows a thing or two about spaceship repair. Everything there is to know, according to him.”

  CR-8R shook his head. “No,” he said flatly. “Stel is a criminal. An outlaw. We don’t even know what he’s been locked up for.”

  “But we can find out, can’t we?” Lina pointed out. “You could go back into the records and read his file.”

  “Maybe all he’s guilty of is stealing food for his family,” Milo suggested. “Or punching a stormtrooper.”

  “Or murder, or arson, or any number of horrendous crimes,” CR-8R shot back. “He’s not to be trusted.”

  “So check the files and make sure,” Lina insisted. “If you’re going to have to power down soon anyway, we need to know who we can trust. We don’t want to be out here alone.”

  CR-8R sighed, hovering by the socket. Then he sighed again and plugged back in. “Accessing confidential prisoner records,” he said. “I’m afraid the files have become badly corrupted. Those spiders must have been chewing on the data cables.” His metal face darkened. “Oh,” he said. “Oh, dear me.”

  He withdrew from the socket, frowning at the children. “I’m afraid you’re not going to like what I have to tell you,” he said.

  “Just say it, Crate,” Lina snapped impatiently.

  “One of those prisoners is just the man we’re looking for,” CR-8R told them. “He was imprisoned for hijacking an Imperial food transport and giving the proceeds to the poor. The other is…I can barely say it.”

  “The butcher of Brentaal IV,” Milo said under his breath.

  “Where did you hear that?” CR-8R asked.

  “Stel told us,” Lina admitted. “He said that was Davin’s nickname. That’s right, isn’t it? Davin’s the killer.”

  “But that’s just it,” CR-8R said. “I don’t know. One prisoner is a hero, the other a monster. But the files were so corrupted, I have no way of knowing which is which.”

  Milo let out a short, startled laugh. “Great,” he said.

  Lina shook her head. “But we do know,” she insisted. “Stel told us about Davin. He gave Milo the food bar. He’s been nothing but friendly since he came on board. Whereas Davin…”

  “Looks like a total psycho,” Milo agreed.

  “But how can we be sure?” CR-8R asked. “What if this is all part of Stel’s plan to make you trust him, to lull you into a false sense of security?”

  Lina sighed. “Why would he need our trust?” she asked. “He didn’t know all this was going to happen. Look, I know we’ve made some poor choices recently. But I don’t see how it could be any clearer. Either way, it’s a risk I’m willing to take.”

  She reached down to the Shade’s belt, unclipping the bounty hunter’s stun-stick. “I’ll take this just in case. Crater, where’s that storage locker? We don’t want her causing trouble if she wakes up.”

  “The locker is right outside that door,” CR-8R told her. “But I don’t think this…”

  “We don’t have a choice, Crate,” Lina insisted. “Here, I’ll take her feet, you get her arms. We’ll lock her in, just like she did to us. Then we’re going back to get Stel.”

  They shoved the Shade inside the empty compartment, and CR-8R used his welding attachment to melt the lock. Then they hurried back through the darkened cargo bay, the droid’s fading beams lighting their way.

  Lina heard the rustle of the spiders all around them, saw their fleeting forms darting into the shadows. But she knew they wouldn’t attack as long as she kept to the light.

  The stun-stick in her hand lent her courage. Blue energy shimmered on the shaft, and she held it up in front of her, remembering her dad’s stories about the brave Jedi and their lightsabers. This wasn’t quite as impressive, but it was a start.

  They passed the hole in the hangar floor, the spiders hurrying in and out on their own strange errands. The crates rose on either side, and they picked up the pace, seeing the door at the far end standing open.

  “Wait,” Milo said as they approached. “Didn’t we shut that?”

  There was a crash from behind them and Lina whipped around to see a stack of crates toppling to the floor. She heard a savage cry like that of an enraged animal. The crates rolled, spiders scattering frantically in all directions.

  “Run!” she yelled, shoving Milo through the door. CR-8R followed, gliding as fast as he could down the steps and along the narrow corridor.

  They heard bellowing behind them, crashing and thumping and the thud of footsteps. Then they reached the door to the cell block, tumbling through it into the light.

  “WHAT WAS THAT?” Milo asked breathlessly, skidding to a halt.

  Lina slammed the panel and the door slid shut, sealing them in. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it was big.”

  “Mistress Lina…” CR-8R said.

  Milo bent over, breathing hard. “Could there be someone else on the ship?”

  “Master Milo…” CR-8R tried again.

  Lina banged her fist on the solid steel door. “Whatever it was, or whoever, they’re not getting in here.”

  “Hey, shut up and listen to your robot!” someone snapped. “He’s trying to tell you something.”

  They turned. Milo froze in horror. Lina gasped.

  The gate into the far cell hung open, twisted almost off its hinges. The tin cup lay on the floor, crushed flat.

  Stel leaned against the bars of his own cell, staring in amazement. “I honestly didn’t think he had the strength,” the young man told them. “But he just kept pounding. Never said a word, just bang, bang, bang. I thought he was out of his mind, space crazy. Then I heard it snap.”

  “This hinge,” CR-8R said, pointing. “It was loose.”

  “The stormtrooper,” Milo said, remembering. “He threw him into the gate. That must have weakened it.”

  Lina shivered, remembering the bellow they’d heard in the storage bay. Davin must have been so close, it was a miracle he hadn’t caught them.

  “I was going to ask him to free me, too,” Stel admitted. “Then I saw the look in his eyes. There was nothing on that alien’s mind but murder. That’s when I knew where he was going.”

  “Wh-where?”
Milo asked.

  “After you, of course,” Stel said.

  “So why didn’t he kill you?” Lina asked. “He had the chance.”

  Stel gave her a crooked smile. “Maybe he likes me. Or maybe he just figured I wasn’t going anywhere.”

  “What do we do now?” Milo asked Lina. “If we’re trapped in here, what happens to your plan?”

  “What plan?” Stel asked. “You guys have a plan?”

  Lina explained about the spiders, Stel’s eyes lighting up as she told him about the separate power sources and her scheme to rig the cell block battery to the navicom.

  “Not a bad plan,” he said. “She’s a smart one, that Shade, huh? Separate power cells, why didn’t I ever think of—”

  There was a thump behind them and Milo jumped. It came again, the heavy door into the cell block shuddering violently.

  “He’s come for us,” Lina said, trying to keep her voice steady. “What do we do?” She thought she heard shouting, as though the madman was calling out to them.

  “I’ve got an idea,” Stel said. “It’s not as good as yours, but…”

  “Just tell us,” Lina pleaded, glancing back as the door rattled again.

  “Okay,” Stel said. “You two kids get safe in the cells. The droid opens the door. Davin goes for you. I hide against the wall and hit him with that stunner. He goes down, we lock him up, everybody celebrates.”

  Milo rolled his eyes. “Why are we always the bait?” he groaned.

  Stel laughed. “If it makes you feel better, think of yourself as a distraction. You’ll be safe in the cells. Me and the droid are the ones taking the risks.” He turned to Lina. “What do you say, boss? Do I get the job?”

  Lina gave him a thoughtful look. Then the thud came again and she nodded. “Crater, let him out. It’s the only way.”

  CR-8R paused for a moment, unsure. Then he tapped in the code and the gate swung open.

  Stel took a step into the hallway, a grin breaking across his face. “You won’t regret this,” he said. “Now, Lina, get in my cell. Milo, in yours. I’m not saying anything’s going to go wrong, but if it does I’d feel safer if you weren’t locked in together.”