Let's Read Star Wars: Death Troopers!

Star Wars? Good. Resident Evil? Also good.

Unfortunately, unlike Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, they are not two great tastes that go well together. I am, of course, talking about Death Troopers.

At first glance, you might think otherwise:

LOOK AT THAT FUCKING COVER! Seriously, I bought this based on the cover alone. Doesn't that just scream "HOLY SHIT!"?? My god, how could this possibly suck?

Also, remember how Shadows of the Empire was this big media tie in? Apparently it wasn't the last. Turns out that a little project called Death Troopers was tied into Star Wars Galaxies.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST! There is no way this could possibly suck balls, right? RIGHT??

Ok, maybe I'm being a teensy bit hard on it. It does have some very cool moments..it's just that they're very few and far between.

Never having heard of the author, Joe Schreiber, before, I took it upon myself to google him and see if he's done anything else of note at all. Looks like all he's done is 3 horror novels, a book set in the Supernatural universe, and a upcoming sequel to this pile of shit tentatively titled Black Orchid. 

I'd list the "Dramatis Personae" that seems to be de rigeur for all sci-fi novels these days, but you know what? It doesn't fucking matter because half of them are going to die quickly, and other main characters are going to unexpectedly pop up later.

So hold steady good goons, because this is going to fucking hurt.

Chapter One - Purge

Really, this chapter serves absolutely no purpose beyond introducing two of the main characters with possibly the most goddamned ridiculous names in the entire EU: Trig and Kale Longo, sons of Von Longo. 

Trig looks like Ron Howard made it with a gungan apparently.

Apparently they have something planned for the following day, but we're given fuck-all for details so far. They're prisoners on board the Imperial Prison Barge Purge, and were picked up along with their father as con artists or somesuch. Who cares.

Chapter Two - Meat Nest

We start off with the sight of breakfast aboard the Purge. Needless to say, it sucks. Trig reminisces about his father's death two weeks ago.

There was a sticky, smelly closeness to their unwashed bodies, and Trig thought of the phrase meat nest again, and felt a little nauseated. 

At no point has this phrase used beyond the title of the chapter. Trig and Kale go off to complete their deal with someone.

Chapter 3 - Where the Bad Air Goes

There's a pointless encounter with a prison guard, and we move on. Turns out they want to meet with the "Delphanian Face Gang", led by a character named Aur Myss, who was second in command to a character named Sixtus Cleft.

Whether Myss's nearly vertical sneer was a genetic accident or the result of one of his legendary knife fights was a matter of perpetual speculation among the other inmates. Below the flattened suede accordion of his nose, a row of mismatched tribal piercings dangled from the drooping lower lip, collected like trophies from all the other crew leaders while Myss and his boss, Sixtus Cleft, had slowly consolidated the Face Gang's position as the Purge's preeminent prison crew.

Terrific.

Kale asks for his payment, and Myss indicates an empty patch of floor in front of them. Kale accuses Myss of trying to rip them off, and Myss all but admits he's had Sixtus murdered, taken over the gang, and will not be honoring old arrangements. In fact, he claims that he's promised his men that they can murder the Longo brothers. In response, Kale reaches out and tears off Myss' piercings. They then run off, until they notice that the Purge has stopped moving.

Chapter 4 - Medbay

We now meet the sole interesting character in this book, prison doctor Zahara Cody. And under the term "interesting" I'm also including the "surprise guest stars" that show up later.

Wookiepedia just sucked all the interesting out of her.

Her sidekick is the comedically nicknamed medical droid "Waste". How humorous! The chapter starts by having Waste inject a Dug with a syringe of kolto. The Dug quickly plays dead, until Dr. Cody shoves it off the examination table. Turns out a lot of inmates onboard the Purge fake illness to keep away from the rest of the population. Which is probably a good idea. We also meet a Devaronian named Gat, who apparently is sufferring from cirrhosis of one of his livers. Turns out that most Devaronians are alcoholics, and the alcohol does more damage to their physiology because their blood is based on silver instead of iron. Kind of interesting, I guess.

Gat had a horn snapped off in a prison fight or something and has a nervous habit of fiddling with it. Cody wants to know if they've reached the penal colony yet because the engines have stopped, and thinks about the resignation she'd submitted following the death of the still comically named Von Longo. 

We are then treated to a quick flashback sequence of her pre-Purge life, none of which really matters. She thinks a bit more about Von Longo, and a deathbed visitor he had by the also comically named Jareth Sartoris, captain of the guards aboard Purge.

Seeing as I've already had one Bowie-lookalike, Sartoris will look like his Final Sacrifice namesake.

Chapter 5 - Word

Hey, guess whose pov we're going to now? Yep, we're going to Sartoris, or as the MST3K crew called him, Garth Vader. You know what? I'm officially changing his name. Garth wanders until he meets 3 other guards named Vesek, Austin, and Armitage. They want to know why they've stopped, the rumor is both their engines blew. Vesek gives the weakest Star Wars curse word ever "Stang", then ribs Armitage over his pompadour hairdo, implying it's done that way to impress Cody. They move on to the warden's office, whose name is Kloth.

Turns out Kloth had his office decorated to seem larger than it actually was, with holograms on the walls. However, Garth has noticed a blownpixelvoxel in one corner, and has his suspension of disbelief completely ruined.

Kloth confirms that the engines are fucked, and they're still 7 days away from their destination. However, there just happens to be a Star Destroyer in the area, and although they're not answering the distress calls, the Purge is going to approach anyway because they can detect a handful of life forms. I think you can probably guess where this is going.

Kloth insists that even if the ship is deserted, they're at least gonna steal an engine so they can keep going to their destination, and dismisses the other guards, but wants to talk to Garth. Turns out that Cody actually saw Garth kill Von Longo in the Medbay during a "antiquated interrogation technique". 

First GIS result for "Garth Kill Von Longo". Also, "Garth Kill Von Longo" is an anagram for "Thank Grooving Loll".

Kloth states that this will be Garth's opportunity to redeeem himself in the eyes of the crew and the inmates and dismisses him. We are then treated to the charming image of Garth sweating through his uniform's armpits. Terrific.

Chapter 6 - Dead Boys

We are now treated to Trig Troy staring at the Rodians across the aisle from him...mostly because they're staring back and mutterring in their crazy Greedo-Talk. Apparently they've been having a staring contest ever since the Purge went into lockdown. The rest of the prisoners on board are just going nuts, screaming, banging on shit. At least until a guard threatens to throw the next speaker into the hole. Then someone giggles, setting the whole cacophony off again. Terrific. The guard steps into sight, and Troy identifies him as Wembly. 

He was a fat man in his late fifties, with a loosely knit face, veins on his nose, and lines cut deeply beneath his watery eyes-eyes made for crying, a mouth made for laughter, shoulders made for shrugging, Wembly was a walking miracle of compulsive self-expression. 

Ladies and gentlemen, this man is not ICO Wembley. He cannot be. There is only one person this can be!

!!ROWSDOWER!!

Rowsdower quickly informs Troy and Kale that they're walking dead men for ripping off half of Aur Myss' face. Kale quips that he only ripped off the ugly half. lol. Rowsdower's droid sidekick informs Troy and Kale that Myss has set a 10000 credit bounty on each of their heads. Rowsdower expresses some regret that the kids are going to get shivved in the shower, and tells them he'll do what he can to protect them, although, he freely admits that what he can do amounts to sweet fuck all.

He also informs them about the Star Destroyer they're about to dock with to get supplies from. And after Rowsdower leaves, they notice the Rodians are still staring at them, probably spending those credits in their heads.

Might I recommend some plastic surgery...or maybe shooting lessons?

Chapter 7 - Destroyer

Now we're back with Garth Vader, who's leading a team through the docking tube to the Star Destroyer, and it becomes even more obvious that Garth's got a little touch of the claustrophobia. His group of guards has been joined by a pair of Stormtroopers, because, why not? Garth wisely realizes that if there's something worth worrying about on the Destroyer, two fucking Stormtroopers aren't gonna make a whole fucking lot of difference. 

Upon reaching the docking bay, one of the guards asks the obvious question about what in the name of Emperor Palpatine's Testicles could have happened to wipe out the entire crew of a Star Destroyer? Another guard comments that their preliminary scans revealed no contaminants, so breathing shouldn't be a problem. An engineer states that everything on their end checks out, so their scans couldn't be malfunctioning, and calls it a ghost ship.

By the way, this ghost ship is called the Vector.

Joe Schreiber: Subtle as a sack of hammers.

Garth breaks the group into two teams of 5, but keeps both the Stormtroopers on the same team, because that makes perfect sense. Suddenly faced with the vast expanse of the Vector's docking bay as compared to the tight quarters on the Purge, Garth now finds him both sufferring from claustrophobia and agoraphobia. So we have a guard who seems like a sociopath, who freaks out in tight as well as open spaces. So that's great. 

Aside from this being a ghost ship, there's another sign something is wrong: Other ships are in the docking bay other than TIE-based craft or Lambda shuttles. Namely, freighters, shuttles, and what looks like a modified Corellian Corvette.

You. Fucking. Wish.

Garth wisely decides that these are captured craft, and unless they have the parts they need, who gives a flying fuck? However, despite the negative life-form readings, they spot something lurking in the shadows behind some TIE fighters...they creep forward sloooooowly....and then........


BINARY LOAD LIFTERS! OH MY GOD!

No, wait. Who gives a fuck?

Garth then leads his team into the lower maintenance levels of the Vector, while two of his people make small talk about Vader of all people.

"I ever tell you I saw him in person once?" 
"Who, Vader?" 
Vesek nodded. "My transport was due for a routine inspection. All of a sudden my CO's having a major sphincter moment, scrambling us up to the flight deck, all spit and polish, making sure everything's extra shiny. Next thing I know, we're lined up in the hangar and his transport's landing and there he is." 
"What's he like in person?" 
Vesek considered. "Tall." 

Please note: This may be the first recorded utterance of the word "sphincter" in a Star Wars novel.

Garth gets pissed off at that time and tells them to kindly shut the fuck up. While his team searches for the parts he "supervises" and tries to call the other team. All they get is static with the words ".med lab...quadrant sevente..." in it, followed by "...in...vat...." Spooooooky. Garth then loses track of his engineers...for about a sentence. He gets everyone back together, but one of his men. Austin has begun coughing. 

Pictured: A better book.

Chapter 8 - Lung Windows

Say what you say? We'll get to the explanation in a minute, hang on. And like I indicated before, it's actually pretty cool. 

Anyway, we'll be spending this chapter from the P.O.V. of Armitage, who if you recall is one of Garth's flunkies. We are informed that he's an artist, but are given no indication of why he's working for Imperial Corrections. So it's probably not important. He thinks to himself that he needs to paint the contents of Bio-Lab 177. Turns out he slipped away from the rest of his team who've been ragging on him being attracted to Dr. Cody. So, apparently, the Purge is staffed with high schoolers.

Anyway the dominating feature of the lab is a large vat, filled with some kind of gel. At first he thinks that there are some weird winged organisms being held in suspension in the tank, monitored by wires and tubes. 

From a distance the pink things looked like an unlikely hybrid of flowers, peeled fruit, and some species of embryonic winged animal whose like he'd never seen - they resembled a flock of tiny, skinned angels.

This is an artist's depiction of an angel:

And this is actually what's in the vat:

Yeah, the tank is full of human fucking lungs.

Gross.

Creepy too, because they're all breathing in perfect harmony. See? This is actually kind of cool in a sick twisted way. As Armitage watches, their breathing rate increases. He also notices that the tubes leading out of the lungs are pumping some grey stuff out into a set of black tanks. Suddenly, at full respiration, they all hold their breath....


And they fucking scream.

I have no fucking idea how, but holy shit, this is easily the coolest chapter of the book. Armitage staggers backwards, the scream is so fucking loud it's starting to trigger his fight-or-flight reflex. For some equally fucked up reason, someone's attached microphones to the part of the trachea featuring the vocal cords, Armitage turns around....and finds out he's not alone in the lab.


BOO!

Chapter 9 - Descent

Here we see that Schrieber subscribes to the Dan Brown school of "Hey, let's have a chapter that's less than a page in length!". All this chapter indicates is that the group of people with Garth Vader are all getting sick now. Yep. That's it. Moving on.

Chapter 10 - Triage

Back to Dr. Cody, who with Waste are trying to treat Garth's people. Austin, who if you remember, was the first one to start coughing, refuses to be treated by Cody at all, and wants the droid to do any exams.

Hey, Austin, you might change your mind when it comes time for it to check your prostate.

Austin is seeming more and more like a refugee from The Stand; seriously, the description of his symptoms reads like it was cribbed right out of fucking Stephen King.

Twin rivulets of thick yellow snot were leaking out of his nose, down either side of his upper lip, and he smeared them away with his sleeve and started coughing again into his fist, a loose, rib-racking hack. 

Austin finds enough strength to mock Dr Cody for being a human being when it came to treatment of the inmates. The charming scene is interrupted by Waste who calls for help while another one of the group begins having a grand mal seizure so bad that even the fucking droid can't hold him down. By the time she gets over there, the guard, named Vesek, gives a little "urk" sound, then vomits blood up into the air.

Apparently, not enough to kill Vesek outright, because he collapses back, still breathing raggedly. At this point, Cody finally realizes, "Holy shit, I actually better quarantine these fuckers!" and tries to figure out where the rest of them are. Gat, the Devaronian wanders by to see what's going on, and is warned back by Cody. 

She then goes to call the warden, and only then discovers that the other team never came back.

Chapter 11 - Red Map

We start with Garth Vader having a nightmare involving him trying to find a map of the Vector on his hip by ripping the skin off it. 

Steeling himself, he hooked the first two fingers of his right hand and raked them as hard as he could into the muscle above his hip, ignoring the dry-ice spike of pain and thrusting in deeper to peel back the outer tissue layer. The fat came loose from his flank with a sickening ease. Blood gushed out of his side, hot and steaming, running down his legs and filling up his boots. 

Gross. Anyway, he's woken up by two guards at his door wearing hazmat suits, wanting to escort him to the infirmary on Dr. Cody's orders. They tell him everyone else is in quarantine, and he better get his ass in there too. He decides to comply, because he needs to ask Vesek something.

Chapter 12 - Big Midnight

Hey, let's see how Troy and Kale are doing! Right now they're watching the Rodians across the hall get sick and die. Seriously. They try to ask a guard what the hell is going on, but get no answer. Then someone next door to them begins asking who they are, and about the price on their heads. It tells them that no-one will collect that price, because he's the one that offerred it and Myss wants the pleasure of killing them himself. 

Turns out Myss requested a transfer next to them just for the opportunity to kill them the next time the guards let them out. Myss verbally taunts them about Garth killing Larry Czonka, causing Kale to lose his temper.

Looks pretty calm to me.

He reaches through the bars to grab at Myss, but Myss gets him first, at least until Kale is rescued by none other than....

He smacks Myss with his billyclub/whatever, and asks Kale if he still has all his fingers. Kale asks about the hazmat suit he's wearing, but Rowsdower just shrugs the question off, although he does indicate the Rodians across the hall are pretty much fucked. A scream comes from up the corridor, and upon seeing what made it, Rowsdower lumbers off like a pussy. 

And actually, you really can't blame the guy, considering that what was screaming was another guard, who's charging down the hall with a torn suit until he slams into the bars of Troy and Kale's cell spraying blood like one of the plague victims from Outbreak.

Where is Dustin Hoffman when you need him??

The dying guard mutters something about being unable to stop something, then wanders off after Rowsdower. Kale tries to reassure Troy, but is interrupted by Myss making fun of Troy's crying. Across the hall, the Rodians continue to die. 

Chapter 13 - Molecules

Back to Dr. Cody now, who's having some problems due to the fact that most of the Imperial officers on board are now in Sickbay, and are rapidly dying. Garth arrived a little earlier and is in the quarantine area waiting for her. The warden has been bitching her out in the meantime because she hasn't been able to cure the illness yet. Problem is, depending on the species of the victim, the plague acts different. And now Waste wants her attention too...but it's because her friend Gat is dead.

So long you magnificent Devaronian bastard.

Also, Warden Kloth wants to talk to her again. At this point, aside from Garth Vader and Vesek, everyone who returned from their boarding party is dead now. Waste also claims that he has so far been unable to analyze the virus. He claims that all he can determine that the viruses are using "quorum sensing to communicate with one another inside the host".

According to Wikipedia:

Quorum sensing is a type of decision-making process used by decentralized groups to coordinate behavior. Many species of bacteria use quorum sensing to coordinate their gene expression according to the local density of their population. Similarly, some social insects use quorum sensing to make collective decisions about where to nest. In addition to its function in biological systems, quorum sensing has several useful applications for computing and robotics.

Apparently, the virus remains dormant in the host's body until it reproduces to the point that the host is completely fucked. Imagine HIV not going active until it's attached itself to all the T-cells in the victim's body. Also, Waste is pretty sure that the Hazmat suits don't do shit against it, but so far aside from her, the only person unaffected is Garth. An alarm across the infirmary goes off, and then another, and another. Waste offers to see to the dead while she talks to Warden Useless. Cody promptly replies that the Warden can go fuck himself, and goes to check on the first alarm, and realizes that as much as she hates him, she needs to talk to Garth.

Chapter 14 - Bubble

Cody enters the quarantene bubble thing to talk to the one and only Garth Vader. She sees him leaning over poor Vesek, whose gone a rather startling shade of white. She demands to know what happened, Garth gives a witty response about her being the doctor. Oh Garth, you card. She intubates Vesek with some difficulty thanks to the inflammation in his throat. Garth blandly asks if Vesek is going to make it, to which Cody responds "Probably not." Garth then declares he's outta there, which Cody takes exception to, seeing as he's a walking disease factory. Garth shoots her down, mocks her credentials, and prepares to storm off. Cody tries to stop him by addressing him by his first name (which, if you remember, is actually Jareth), but all that does is make him realize that she's scared shitless, making him point out

"Every exposed inmate and guard on this barge is going to die in the next few hours, while you stand there in your isolation suit with your tools and your droids. I hope you enjoy answering questions, because there's going to be plenty of them waiting for you." He reached out with one finger and very gently placed it against her sternum. "You'll spend the rest of your life living this down." 

Mike Myers was unavailable for comment.

Dr. Cody begs to know what they saw in the Star Destroyer, to which he claims not a damn thing. She then gives him a clean bill of health, and he implies he's going to rat her out to the warden as he walks out. Ratting her out for what exactly, it doesn't really specify. Cody begins feeling a little vertigo, so she immediately decides 'Fuck this shit.', breaks open her isolation suit to Waste's mounting horror, and demands that he run blood tests on her to see if she's infected. 

So this is who the Empire was hiring as doctors. Anyone else just wanna sign on up?

Chapter 15 - VHB

So Garth is marching towards the Warden's office, and he's packing a pair of blaster rifles he took from some dying stormtroopers, and then promptly dropped them with said rifles. As he marches, he notices more people dying all around him, but of course he doesn't give a shit. He reaches the office, and rings the bell, at which point his internal monologue tells us why he's armed to the teeth at the warden's office: He wants the access codes to the escape pods. Captain Garth Vader is not one to go down with the ship, no sir. 

Turns out he had tried to get the codes out of Vesek, but seeing as Vesek was a hallucinating, feverish mess, he'd started to choke the fucking life out of him, because, hey, why not? Garth's meager little conscience tries to complain about it, but he justifies it by claiming that Vesek was dying anyway. 

Garth pounds on the door for a bit, thinks about blasting his way in, and the door opens. After he steps in, he gets hit with a wave of odor that's permeating the hallways, a sort of blend of ammonia, vomit, blood, and shit as the book indicates. Warden Kloth is laying in a pool of blood and something grey, and Garth reflects that this sick trembling thing is what the Warden truly was all along. Kloth wants to abandon ship, and rambles for a bit about how he's going to cover his ass to Imperial Corrections, and Garth has to smile and the level of delusion that Kloth is operating under. He asks for the codes, now. Kloth realizes that Garth is planning to just leave him here, or worse, seeing as both of Garth's guns are pointed at him now. Kloth regrets not relieving Garth from duty after the Larry Czonka incident, so Garth jokes that he can make it his last official act as Warden. Kloth grudingly hands over a keycard with the codes, and has a little story for Garth. Let's listen in, shall we?

"There's a subsection of the Imperial Corrections Psychological Profile Exam known as the Veq-Headley Battery. It's specifically skewed to indicate any underlying psychopathological attitudes in the applicant. . . with the understanding that such things might come in handy in service to the Empire." His tongue came out and moistened his upper lip. "Would you like to know how you scored on your VHB, Captain Sartoris?" 

Garth responds by blowing Kloth's head clean off his fucking shoulders in what is possibly the most graphic death in the entire history of fucking Star Wars.

The effect at close range was nothing short of spectacular. Warden Kloth's entire cranial vault sheared away in a dense cloud of scarlet, gristle, and bone. His neck and shoulders flopped sideways, torqued on some invisible axis with the leftover momentum of the energy blast, and then landed with a wet splat, skidding backward in the spattered reservoir of blood. 

I seriously don't know whether to applaud Joe Schrieber for pushing Star Wars to another level or to be sick to my stomach. Maybe a little of both.

Garth turns around and spots a guard who just witnessed the whole thing. Garth comments that he did the Warden a favor, spots the tell-tale signs of infection on the guard, and offers him some of the same, at which point the guard simultaneously wets and shits his pants. Garth realizes he's hit his kill quota for this chapter, and has already won the free toaster oven, and tells the guard to fucking run for it, while he makes his way to the escape pods.

Chapter 16 - In the Cage

Hey, let's go check on Troy and Kale. They're the last ones alive in their cell block from all appearances. Troy just keeps muttering that they're the only ones still alive, Kale keeps bitching him out for stating the obvious. Now instead of the screaming, they have to deal with the smell of rotting bodies. Of course, they shouldn't be decaying that quickly. Only then does Troy wonder why in the fuck are he and his brother not only still alive, but not coughing?

Kale decides to get the plot moving, and starts shouting for someone to let them out...and amazingly the cells all open. At which point, Kale utters the greatest piece of exposition ever put to print:

"Somebody heard us."

They sneak out of the cell, when Troy suddenly remembers who's in the cell next to them. Aur Myss tears out of the cell next to them, trying to rip out Kale's eyes. However, any size advantage that Myss has over them is slightly mitigated by the fact that Myss is sick as well. Troy tries to strangle Myss from behind, but all that does is draw Myss's attention to him, at which point we find out that Delphanians have mouths like vaginas. Seriously. But, it turns out he dropped a knife he was attacking Kale with, so Kale stabs him through the back of his head. Good-bye, cunt-face.

They head towards the control room to find out who let them out, and they find the corpse of Rowsdower on the controls.

Commemorative Rowsdower shirts will be available at the end of the page.

Rowsdower's wacky droid sidekick tells them it was the last thing he did.They tell the droid to come with them, but the droid declines...because it thinks it's still going to be rescued? Well, they decide 'Fuck the droid', and decide to hunt down the escape pods as well. On their way to the escape pods, they see some fucking twisted shit.

Outside one cell, a dead guard lay with his back against the bars. Trig saw that he'd been tied by the wrists and around the neck by the two dead inmates inside the cell. The inmates had since died of the disease, but that hadn't been what killed the guard. The cons had somehow lured him close enough to bind him there and then tortured him to death, stabbing, slashing, and mutilating him with the crude, sharpened instruments that were still clutched in their dead hands. 
They saw an inmate, an alien species that Trig didn't recognize, comprising two conjoined bodies, one twice the size of the other. The smaller body had already died and fallen limp, while the larger one cradled it weakly like its own child, weeping and trying to breathe. It didn't even look up at them as they walked by. 

They also spot a baby wookiee trying to wrap the arms of it's parents around itself. Ok, yeah, that's pretty rough. They try to get it to follow them, but it doesn't understand them...so instead of doing the sensible fucking thing and trying to take it along, they again decide 'Fuck it', and leave it behind. And get about 50 feet before it starts to scream, mixed with the sound of something eating.

Did I say that was rough? I meant it was fucking horrible. From my read through, this is seriously the most fucked up thing in the whole book. So they naturally take right fucking off.

Chapter 17 - Tisa

POV Change! Dr. Cody has just finished watching the last of her patients die, when Waste walks up to tell her the results of her bloodwork. Little late there buddy...especially considering he was able to synthesize a fucking cure from her blood. Seriously. But Cody decides the responsible thing to do is see if there's any other survivors and administer the cure. So she decides to go to the bridge and check for lifesigns. Waste wants to go with her, but she insists he should stay in the in sickbay in case any survivors come looking for medical help. 

However, almost immediately after leaving the sickbay, she realizes survivors aren't goddamned likely to turn up considering the vast number of corpses lying everywhere. But she gets to the bridge without incident, and we find out that the flight crew nicknamed the ship's computer's voice "Tisa"...and have been caught chatting it up on the long trips. Gross.

Fun fact, the major river in The Ukraine is apparently also called Tisa. No idea if Chernobyl survivors chat it up or not.

So Cody runs a scan, and out of 522 inmates and crew, there are 6 people left including her. So the Star-T Virus is about 98.85% fatal. She has the computer pinpoint exactly where the survivors are, and finds that aside from her on the bridge, there's one on the administration level (That'd be Garth), two in the General Population levels (Troy and Kale)...and two in solitary. She realizes that whoever is in solitary might be dangerous, but might also have been completely isolated from the infection, so they're probably most in need of inoculation with the cure Waste found.

She calls Waste to update him on the situation, and asks him to meet her down there.

Chapter 18 - Solitary

Cody makes her way down to the Solitary level, and trips on a pile of dead guards. Looking at them she finds one of them had written a saccharine note to his wife, which I will not repeat here so we don't all end up with the 

SPACE-DIABEETUS!!!

She takes the letter with her, and one of the guards' blasters..opens the first cell...and nothing.

So she opens the next cell, and the blaster in her hand is fucking useless because a fucking Wookiee charges out at her. She backs off, babbling slightly, and finally gets the blaster pointed at it. At the same time, she hears the other prisoner pounding on the door of his cell. She tells the Wookiee to not goddamned move a muscle while she opens the other cell..to reveal a dark haired man in his early twenties.

He demands to know what is going on, and wants to know if she's the one bringing dinner. She tries to explain what's happened, but in the process, raises the blaster a bit, causing the Wookiee to start to get a little more antsy.

I think you all know where this is going.

Yeah, it's fucking Han Solo and Chewie in a vain attempt by the author to make the plot cool.

Chapter 19 - Pod

So on their way to the escape pods, Troy's convinced that he and Kale are being followed. He insists he can keep hearing breathing and footsteps behind him. Apparently, he thinks Kale can hear it too, which for some reason is increasing his panic level. They spot the escape pods and exchange some useless banter about whether or not they'll both fit and whether Kale can operate it. Kale gets a little frustrated and possibly considers leaving Troy behind, except Garth Vader arrives.

Needless to say, Garth isn't happy to see the sons of one of his most recent murder victims, except apparently the boys have no idea that he killed Larry Czonka. Garth orders them away from the escape pod, despite Kale's protests that there's enough room for all of them, and demands to know if Garth is just going to let them die on the ship. Garth gives one of his crazy grins, and tells them that the only reason he hasn't killed them yet is because then he'd have to go to the trouble of moving their corpses out of the escape pod.

Garth Vader - A Practical Man

Kale and Troy continue to protest, and Garth finally holds one of his blasters to Troy's head telling them to shut the fuck up, so Kale grabs Troy and moves away from the pod. Garth gets in and takes off. Farewell you loveable psychopath. Kale stands in shock for a moment before he remembers his brother is standing next to him. He gives Troy some meager platitudes, and tells him that he's got an idea.

Chapter 20 - Lifeday

OH DEAR GOD, NO!

So Dr. Cody is checking out your friend and mine, Han Solo. But who could blame her, really? She tries to explain what is going on, but Han isn't having any of it. He asks Chewie if he buys any of this crap, and Cody can pick up from Chewie's inflection that he doesn't buy it for a minute. Han then takes a minute to check out the good doctor and comments that she looks fine..not to mention fiiine. She explains that she has an immunity, and explains that they might be immune, but the ship's solitary wing is completely isolated, even having a separate air supply...which doesn't make a fucking lick of sense. I'm going to go on a tangent here, sorry, but, why the bloody blue fuck would a prison ship have a separate oxygen supply for the solitary wing? Is there someone in this thread who works for some Department of Corrections who could explain the goddamned logic involved with that? Or is Schrieber just punking us again?

Anyway, Cody tells Han and Chewie that she needs to give them the inoculation Waste cooked up and pulls out a needle. Naturally, Chewie is not big on this at all. He snarls, and apparently gives off some kind of feral musk odor. That's an image I needed in my mind Schrieber, thanks a bunch. Now when I watch Star Wars and Chewie goes into action, I'm going to have to imagine him spraying like a fucking skunk everywhere. Asshole.

Han complains that he's not big on needles, especially at blasterpoint, so she lowers the gun finally. Han continues to protest, until he finally fucking notices the pile of goddamned corpses just outside the door.

Han and Chewie finally smell the stench of death in the air....oh fuck me, I gotta comment on that. In every other EU book at some point, the authors (no matter how fucking incompetant) point out that Wookiees have a fantastic sense of smell, and Chewie has just taken 5 goddamned minutes to pick up on the fucking stench of goddamned death???? If my brain is not completely fried by the end of this read through, I'm gonna go cave in Joe Schrieber's head with a baseball bat. We are seriously approaching Traviss levels of insanity here. Fuck. Me. Senseless.

Han finally agrees to let Cody give him a shot, and reacts in horror when he finds out that he's the first human test of the stuff. Suddenly, Cody realizes that Chewie isn't fucking human, and this shit could possibly have a serious negative effect. However, she realizes that neither she or Chewie have a choice considering the alternative is to let him catch space-T Virus. Well, none of this occurs to Chewie who puts his arm out for the needle, so she finds the vein and gives him the shot.

At which point Chewie starts tripping fucking balls.

The first thing Chewbacca felt was the pain of the young ones. It came at him from everywhere at once, a threnody of wounded voices, assailing him from all sides. He didn't know what it meant except that something bad had happened here aboard the barge, and now it was happening to him, too. In a horrible way he felt as if he were part of it, complicit in these unspeakable crimes, because of the injection that the woman had given him. The sickness she'd implanted under his fur, under his skin, was alive and crawling through him, a living gray thing going up his arm to his shoulder to his throat, and the sickness clucked its tongue and whispered, Yes, you did those things, yes, you are those things. 
Had he done it? Had he somehow hurt them? 
But that couldn't be right. The doctor hadn't poisoned him; she'd injected him with a cure. Then why did it hurt so much, and why did he still hear the young ones screaming? 
His skull felt like it was filling with fluid, blocking out his sense of smell. But his hearing was keener than ever. Voices were shrieking at him, no longer pleading but accusing him of unspeakable atrocities, and when he looked down at his hands he saw that they were dripping with blood while the rank, salty flavor of their blood was in his mouth. 
And then the sickness was in him. 
And the sickness wanted to eat. 

So now Wookiees are apparently latent psychics or something. I dunno. Fuck. Chewie then starts flashing back to various lifeday celebrations in his life..so I'll give Joe Schrieber credit for one thing: He is the first author in the EU to even acknowledge the existance of the Holiday Special as far as I'm aware. So, Bravo? I guess?

He trips a few more balls, then we switch POV back to Cody and Han, who are dodging flailing Wookiee limbs while Chewie has a complete grand mal seizure. Han has realized at this point that just giving a different species an untested inoculation meant for a human is a pretty goddamned stupid thing to do, and Chewie sprays more musk. Yuck. Also, his throat is swelling shut. So Cody does the sensible thing...emergency tracheotomy with the syringe! Well, kinda. She actually uses the syringe to extract some kind of pinkish-grey crap from Chewie's throat, gets rid of it, then goes back for more.

Chewie continues to trip meaningless balls for a bit, then recovers when he recognizes Han and Cody. Cody tries to dress the needle wound in his throat, but seeing as it's covered in fur, she freely admits it's kind of a half-assed job. They decide to make their way back to the infirmary, when something becomes obvious: The pile of corpses is gone. Even their weapons. They get to a turbolift and we find out why the droid was called Waste: Waste of Space, Waste of Programming...and the poor deluded robotic fool thinks it's a term of endearment. When the lift stops, Cody gets another shock...because all the corpses in the halls are gone too.

Creeped out yet? I know I am...about this goddamned hack getting this piece of shit published.

Chapter 21 - They Woke Up

So Han and Chewie follow along with Dr. Cody. Han doesn't like the way she keeps looking over her shoulder. Hey, Han, she just released you from solitary, knows absolutely nothing about you, and a shitload of corpses just fucking vanished. Lighten up.

We finally find out some backstory as to why Han and Chewie are even here: The Falcon was boarded and impounded. No indication why they'd been boarded, what they could've been smuggling, nothing. They were in solitary because Han had tried to stage a riot so they could escape during the confusion. Oops.

Anyway, we finally arrive at sickbay, and it's empty too. All the piles of corpses? Fucking gone. And from first appearances, so is the droid Waste. Han decides to ask a pertinant question: If they're the only ones left, how in the hell are they going to get away? Cody suggests the Star Destroyer they're still apparently docked with. Han points out, hey, that's where the disease came from so maybe its a good fucking idea to stay away from it. And that's when they find something.

Gross.

Except two of the fingers are missing at the knuckle. Cody recognizes a ring left on it as a class ring from the ICO Academy. Then they find Waste. Something ripped the droid to pieces. Remember how Threepio was blown apart in Empire? Imagine that, except somebody then took a sledgehammer to the pieces. It recognizes Cody, and it's apparently suffered some CPU damage, because here's how it responds to a question about where the corpses went:

"I'm sorry. There isn't any left. It doesn't walk without three and the two places. I'm sorry. Every reasonable attempt was made." The 2-1B clicked and something sparked and clanked deep inside its lower processors. "We must uphold the sacred oath of. . ." It stopped, hiccupped, and seemed to regain some sense of what she'd asked it. "An amazing thing. They're miracles, really. Marvelous." And then, with terrible brightness: "They woke up!" There was one last small internal click, although this one sounded more jarring, broken, and when it spoke again its voice sounded thick and sluggish. "They just. . . eat." 

At which point it dies completely.

So long, farewell, auf wiedersein, adieu.

Cody asks Han and Chewie if they might have any ideas how to fix it...but now they've disappeared too.

Chapter 22 - Bulkhead

Let's go check up on Troy and Kale. They've spotted some graffitti on the wall, and because it's in Delphanian they guess it's a warning to keep out of their gang's turf. Kale tries to make Troy relax by reminding him that everyone else is dead. I don't think you thought your cunning plan through there. Like Cody, Troy is more freaked out by the sudden absence of corpses. They find a location where their dad, Larry Czonka, stashed some blasters and power packs. Kale takes a pair of rifles for himself, and a pistol for Troy. Troy doesn't want a gun, but Kale insists because Troy is the little brother and he is not the goddamned Batman.

Kale then engages in some circular logic, figuring that there has to be a second escape pod because they need there to be one. Then he also points out that the Empire likes to do things in twos. And soon enough, Kale is proven correct when they find another pod. Troy thinks to himself 'Uh, don't we need some codes like Garth had to operate it?', but decides to keep that information to himself. They hear someone coming, and Troy fumbles with the pistol, trying to set it for stun because he's a pussy.

It's just Han and Chewie coming, Han assumes the standard "Don't Shoot" position, while Chewie begins growling and presumably spraying more anger musk everywhere. Kale wants to know what they're doing there, and Han points out that they're both looking for the same thing. Kale says that there isn't enough room for all of them, making Han smirk for some reason. He asks if they even know how to use either the blasters or the pod, and because Troy is a massive pussy his voice cracks when he responds "Sure!" But it turns out that Han was distracting them so that Chewie could get the drop on them.

Chewie proves his Wookiee superiority by by quckly disarming and beating the shit out of a pair of terrified teenagers, and Han quickly reappropriates the blasters. Han, at this point in his career a total asshole, decides he and Chewie are going to abandon not only the kids but Dr. Cody as well, except Cody's turned up at this point and flat out tells Han that they can't get anywhere in that pod because they don't have any access codes for it. Luckily though, Cody knows how to unlock it from the bridge...but first she wants Han and Chewie to stop pointing the fucking blasters at the fucking kids.

"Hey, they pulled 'em on us,"

Stay classy, Han. He and Chewie decide to accompany Cody to the bridge, while the brothers Longo decide to keep watch over the escape pod. GEE I WONDER IF THEY'RE UP TO SOMETHING???

They insist that they get to keep at least one of the blasters, and Han, who I'm pretty sure at this point in his life is not only an asshole, but a whiny asshole to boot, whines that they're not getting his. Chewie glares at him as if to say "Grow the fuck up", so Han finally acquiesces and gives them back the pistol. Troy then asks if there's anyone else alive, and after she says no and leaves, he realizes that he's a putz because he should've asked her what happened to the fucking corpses.

Shit for brains.

Chapter 23 - Inside

So Kale explains to Troy how they're gonna screw over Han, Chewie and Cody by jumping in the escape pod and launching it the second the door opens. Troy objects because it's not like Cody ever did anything to them; in fact she tried to save their father's life. Kale just thinks that Troy has a hard-on for her (probably), and that the Empire will probably send out a search team to find her. Suddenly an alarm goes off, so Kale decides to fuck off and find out what's going on. Yes friends, the older brother, armed with a rifle, just abandoned his little brother to go check out an alarm. Not only that, but he makes a point of telling his brother to not goddamned move.

There's no way this plan could be a bad idea!

Troy stand there, slowly freaking out, and the alarm stops. He thinks maybe it was a result of the pod being unlocked, so he tries the door. Nope, still won't open. He looks through the small window..and sees something move. His brain threatens to shut down, he insists he's just imagining things, except he now hears a scratching sound from in the pod. He calls Dr. Cody on a comlink she gave him, and she tells him that they haven't found the opening controls yet. He tells her that there's something in there, so she rechecks the bioscan, nope nothing in there. Meanwhile the scratching is now a full-blown clawing, and there's a weird slobbering sound inside the pod.

He insists that there's something inside, but she ignores him and pops the hatch.

Chapter 24 - Futureproof

So Kale comes back to find Troy missing, and the door to the escape pod wide open. Cursing the fates that he's stuck with a brother who can't follow a simple plan to backstab people they just met, Kale takes a look inside the pod, and is hit with a wave of some kind of festering odor. Leaning back out of the pod, he spots the comlink that Troy was talking to Dr. Cody on, so he gives her a ring. He tells her that his dipshit little brother is missing, and would she be so kind as to check the lifeform readings to find him? She puts him on hold, and Kale spots scratch marks on the inside of the pod's door...scratches so deep that they actually gouged the durasteel. Cody takes Kale off hold and tells him that there's a lifeform 15 meters to his right. He sees nothing, but decides to have a look just to be safe. He spots a jeffries tube maintenance shaft door, and opens it on up, just to be hit with another wave of stench. He calls out for Troy, and we find out at this point that Kale never shut off the alarm. In fact, he'd spotted a bulkhead with a bloody handprint, and realized that leaving your little brother alone is a pretty numbfuck thing to do.

Pictured: Numbfuck with apple, pecans, pancetta, and sweet maple dressing.

So Kale calls down the shaft for Troy again, and like the proverbial mynock out of Mustafar (see what I did there?), Troy charges out of the shaft and tackles Kale. Troy's prison outfit is torn all over, he smells like the inside of the pod, and if he doesn't have a good case of PTSD at this point I'd be very surprised. He latches onto Kale like a baby orangutan onto its mother, and Kale asks him a few times what happened, but gets absolutely no response. He tells Troy everything will be fine, but thinks to himself that he's a lying sonofabitch.

Chapter 25 - Deadlights

Oh great, tired of ripping off survival horror games, Joe Schrieber is back to ripping off concepts from Stephen King again. Terrific.

If Pennywise shows up, I officially quit.

Well we open this chapter to find Han trying to repair the ship's engines from the bridge, and he's not having much success...probably because on a ship as large as the Purge only a retard would have the engines directly under the bridge, unless the bridge is at the ass end of the ship. If it wasn't for the distinct lack of a superweapon, I'd suspect that Schrieber is KJA in a new disguise....unless the "superflu" qualifies as a superweapon, I dunno. Fuck, why am I reading this again?

Anyway, Han announces that the ship is a floating scrap pile. Dr. Cody states that the escape pod is open and ready to go...when Tisa, the computer, breaks in. Apparently, she just picked up four more lifeform readings. Cody's obviously confused, because how the fuck did that change? She asks the computer for an updated scan of the ship, and the screen displays a massive amount of dots in the lower sections of the ship, swarming towards the administration level. Han wants to know what they are, and Cody simply states "Life-forms." Han briefly debates giving her a smack in the chops for being a wiseass, and demands something more specific. Cody, wasting valuable time, asks the computer why it didn't pick up on them before?

"There were no positive life-forms earlier, Dr. Cody."

Just like a fucking computer, amirite? Anyway, more dots start appearing on the screen, and Han starts to panic, wanting to know how in the hell they get out of there. She flatly admits that there is just the way they came in, and the escape pod area...which is now completely overrun by red dots according to the computer. So long, Troy and Kale, I wish. The red dots, which Cody is calling in her head "deadlights", are now getting uncomfortably close to their area. She decides the only option now is to make for the Star Destroyer, which Han thinks is incredibly stupid, but realizes that they really don't have a choice. At which point, they all hear the sounds of the approaching zombie hoard:

It was a thunderous, bullying shriek, charged with rage and hunger and condensed down into a solid wall of inhuman noise. It stiffened the blood in her veins. They were rising up from the admin level, pounding up the steps. Zahara looked forward to where she knew the docking shaft stood. As she whirled back to look in the direction of Han and Chewbacca, yelling that they needed to get out of here, now, she saw Kale Longo burst through the half-open hatch leading up from the admin level, hauling his younger brother's body in his arms. 

Kale screams at them to run, Han gets his priorities mixed up and wants to know where the other blaster is, Kale explains he had to drop it to save his fucking brother's life asshole. Han and Chewie run to shut the door behind Kale, and Dr. Cody leads the charge to the docking tower connecting the Purge to the Vector. They find it quickly enough, and it's at that point that door that Han and Chewie closed literally explodes open.

After more than half the book, the zombies have finally fucking arrived.

Chapter 26 - Army of Last Things

So Kale drags Troy into the turbolift in the tower, followed by Cody, Han and Chewie are still halfway between the door they just closed and the turbolift, and they're shooting back at "whatever" is coming. Cody's screaming at them to hurry the fuck up, and they finally get inside. 

That's when Troy sits up suddenly and says "Dad?" Kale doesn't understand, but Troy starts shouting that he saw him out there, and tries to get out of the turbolift. Kale tackles him and looks up to spot the reanimated remains of Larry Czonka.

OH GOD, THE HORROR!

He's surrounded by a group of reanimated prisoners and guards, and ol' Larry isn't looking too hot.

His dead yellow skin was mottled with two weeks' morgue rot, his skull grotesquely swollen and partially collapsed on one side so that Kale could see, very clearly, the grinning hinge of the old man's jaw clicking in its socket. 

....Waitaminute. Maybe I just haven't read far enough into the book to find an explanation for this, but I spot a massive plot hole incoming. Ol' Larry's been dead for two weeks. They found the Star Destroyer....48 hours prior at most! So Joe Schrieber's just making the rules up as he goes now. Turns out you don't have to catch the virus when you're alive to become a zombie, you just need to be a corpse when the outbreak happens?? Jumped. Up. Jesus. H. Christ. One second.

*5 minutes of banging my head against the wall later*

Ok...I think I've killed enough braincells to keep going. Luckily, this is a short goddamned chapter.

So Kale is watching his old man staggering towards him, actually fucking drooling as he gets closer, and at this point he decides to scream. Han and Chewie get Troy back inside, but they're also mesmerized by the horror in the hallway, Cody is trying to cover Troy's eyes...and something grabs Kale's leg. So he screams again, but apparently doesn't even hear himself do it, which begs the question of how he knew he was screaming.

Chapter 27 - Say It Three Times

So Kale wakes up and Doc Cody is kneeling beside him, wrapping a bandage/tourniquet around his shin. Cody tells him they made it up inside the Star Destroyer. Kale notices that the pain in his leg is so bad that it nearly makes him vomit. He asks where Troy is, and the Doc tells him that he's ok, just sitting down nearby. Kale then asks if his zombified father bit him, and Cody dodges around the question. 

Han and Chewie are over by the docking hatch, and Han announces that the zombies are crawling up the shaft, and could they kindly get the fuck out of there now? Kale thinks again about Larry Czonka biting him, and decides to be sick, but all he can manage is a series of dry heaves. 

Han insists again they need to get moving, and Cody asks where he wants to go. Han states the command bridge, so maybe they can get the ship moving and away from the Purge (ignoring the fact that they'd probably drag it along for awhile seeing as they're connected). Chewie gives a "dubious growl", and Han flatly states that "if you've flown one ship, you've flown 'em all".

Uh, Han, see all those people operating controls? You've got five people. Good luck, buddy.

Also, apparently the docking bay they're in is the size of several football fields, or at least so large that the "perimeters stretched out so far that they seemed to elude the eye".

SPERG ALERT!
According to Wookieepedia, the Vector is an Imperial-I class Star Destroyer. Therefore, the ship itself is 1.6 kilometers long. In addition, the standard complement of TIE-style fighters was 72 total starfighters for an Imperial I. Just for the sake of argument, let's say that they're all standard TIE fighters on the Vector. In addition, they usually have a few AT-AT barges for transporting the walkers down to planets, but no exact numbers are given. Let's say 5 barges per Star Destroyer, and,8 Lambda shuttles. So. 72 TIE Fighters at 6.3 meters long each, 5 barges at about 30 meters long each, and 8 shuttles at 20 meters long each. Now, obviously they're not all in a straight line, that would be stupid. So let's say we put the TIEs in rows of 9, the barges in a row behind them....wait. Why the fuck am I doing this? Who gives a fuck? 

Eat a bag of dicks, Schrieber.

Anyway, Kale tries to stand on his injured leg, fails miserably, and starts bleeding even more heavily. Cody tells him that if he tries to move again, he'll die and Troy will get to watch the whole thing! She tells Han and Chewie to take Troy, she'll stay with Kale. Troy wants to stay with him, but Kale tells him to go, and tells him that it wasn't their Dad they saw on the Purge. Han offers to give Cody the blaster, but she declines because she knows that if the zombie hoard gets through the hatch, she and Kale are pretty fucked no matter if they have a gun or not.

Chapter 28 - Things You Don't Forget

So Han, Chewie, and Troy head off across the insanely huge hanger. Chewie apparently keeps commenting that he doesn't like the smell of this ship, and Han agrees. Other than the sound of their footsteps and Kale and Cody's voices behind them, it's very quiet. He thinks about the zombie that was in the escape pod back on the barge, it had been one of the inmates, and he'd barely avoided it by going into the maintenance hatch and clinging to the wall, while it went screaming past him, hurtling to the bottom. And then he thinks about what Kale said, about the one zombie not actually being their dad, except he still doesn't believe it because as decayed as it was it still had ol' Larry's eyes.

Maybe it should've given them back. Hey-ooooooh!

Troy considers the idea that none of this is happening, and he's just crazy. Unfortunately, he rules that out pretty quickly. He keeps hearing a scuttling sound behind him, but doesn't see anything except the fading shapes of Kale and Cody. He does decide that the virus is scarier than Darth Vader, and actually makes Vader looks innocent by comparison.

Pictured: Dawwwwwwwwwwwwwww

Han notices that the kid is going back into shock and manages to snap him out of it. Sensing that Troy is not okay at all, Chewie gives him a big reassuring hug. Again, daaaaawwwwwww . Troy thinks of it as being wrapped in a warm, slightly musty-smelling blanket. Troy acknowledges he's a little better, and they start moving again, when they hear screaming behind them.

Chapter 29 - Sine

Nothing too really worry about folks, it's just the horde of undead in the docking tube screaming their heads off...and it sounds like EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, so in other words, Schrieber's back to ripping off Stephen King again. Who wants to bet that when that hatch opens it's actually the Crimson King? Any takers?

It actually could be pretty kickass if it was this version of the Crimson King though.

Anyway, Cody thinks that the screaming is oscillating in a way that she can't help but graph in her mind, when Kale groans and tells her to cut off the leg that his dad bit. She tells him between zombie screams (represented by eeeEEEEeee in the text) that amputation isn't necessary. He insists that something is coming up through him, he doesn't care how much it hurts, just cut the damn leg off. Cody thinks of her space-hippocratic oath and tells him she can't do it, so Kale tells her to kill him. She asks how bad the pain is, and he tells her that there is no spoon pain. He tears off the bandages, Cody tries to stop him, he shoves her off, and Kale shows off the zombie's handiwork: the area around the bite is already looking gangrenous, and the grey shade of it is visibly climbing up his leg, past his knee to his thigh...and the whole leg is pulsating. Gross. She thinks of it as a hand, sliding visibly under his skin towards his torso. Double gross.

Kale starts screaming at her to get rid of it, so Cody tears out her medkit while the grey pulsing has reached past his waist, and is now rippling in his abdomen. She grabs a scalpel and jabs it just below Kale's navel (or as Schrieber bluntly puts it, "his belly button". Seriously? Did you have a word quota Schrieber?) Kale starts screaming in pain instead of horror, while she widens the incision, reaches inside, and feels something squirming. She grabs it, squeezes, and like a pimple it bursts over her hand. When she pulls it out, whatever just exploded over her hand coagulates, wiggles and actually fucking crawls over her hands. It stings her hands, so she quickly wipes it off, tries not to vomit in Kale's abdomen, while Kale starts slipping back into shock...although he's stopped screaming now. She tells him that she needs to go back in and make sure there isn't any more, but doesn't find any. She notices that the grey color is still present on Kale's skin, but it's not spreading any more. Kale has now passed out at this point, so she tries to dress the new wound, and notces afterwards that the screaming in the docking tube has stopped...but now there's screaming coming from the other side of the Star Destroyer, which is far louder than Han, Troy, and Chewie would be capable of.

Chapter 30 - Black Tank Blues

So Chewie is worried about Troy, because he isn't talking. Chewie acknowledges that neither is Han, but Han isn't "chatty" under the best of circumstances at this point in their relationship. But Chewie is of the opinion that kids need to express themselves, and seeing how Troy has been witnessing horrors beyond imagining in the last few hours, Chewie thinks that if Troy doesn't express his feelings about them soon, it's gonna bite all of them in the ass.

Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca moonlights as a child psychologist. Now think about it; that does not make sense!

Troy had just heard Kale screaming his head off as Doc Cody went rooting around his his belly to pop his Zombie Zit, and Han comments that Kale will be all right, while still goading Troy onwards to keep him away from the docking shaft before the zombies broke through. Troy is hearing none of it, and starts fighting Han, actually kicking and punching him before Chewie actually starts carrying Troy like some kind of unruly luggage. After 20 minutes of being carried like this, Troy lets Chewie know that he will walk like a good boy now. 

Chewie starts thinking about how much he hates the smell of this ship, seeing nothing but random mouse droids and shit. In one corridor they find broken Stormtrooper helmet, and another dangling from a chain just like on the cover of this stinker. Han kicks over the helmet on the floor, at which point they notice that the lower part of the helmet has been broken away to expose the mouth. They apparently find another blaster, and Chewie thinks that now he'll be better able to protect Troy.

At this point, I actually GIS'd the phrase "Rowsdower Chewbacca", which resulted in Leslie Nielsen staring at me in a befuddled fashion.

Han spots a stack of shipping crates blocking the corridor ahead of them, runs to investigate them, conveniently ignoring the giganting label on them IMPERIAL BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS DIVISION. Han starts trying to move them out of the way by himself, causing one of the crates on top to fall over, and a red canister comes out of the crate, slams into a wall and rebounds back to Han. Han rhetorically asks what the fuck the Empire was dicking around with, and takes a closer look at the canister, determining that its valve is broken, and there are no identifying markings on it at all. Troy meanwhile is exploring the pile of crates and possibly planning to make a fort out of them, and finds more of the canisters. Chewie acknowledges that Troy's dex score is higher than his, because it takes him longer to get up the stack of crates. He looks inside, finds a few more red ones, but the majority of the canisters are painted black. Chewie picks one up, hears some sloshing sounds and tells Han that whatever it is, there's plenty of it. Han wonders if the black ones are a different formula or something as the canister slightly slips out of Chewie's grip. Chewie puts it back in a hurry after making a minimal effort to ensure that it wasn't ruptured in any fashion. Chewie then thinks about why it slipped: The sloshing hadn't stopped after he stopped moving it...it just kept moving.

Han complains that coming aboard the Destroyer was a stupid fucking idea, no matter the army of Zombies behind them. Then they hear a hissing sound...which magnifies to a giant scream from overhead. Troy's mouth drops open in dull surprise/horror, so Han shoves him behind Chewie, as the ceiling buckles, disgorging another army of Zombies. Chewie and Han open fire, causing the rest of the roof to give way, Chewie secures Troy further behind him, while they continue to spray the Zombies with blaster fire. They quickly realize that if they fight, they're fucked, so they retreat behind a blast door and slam it shut. Chewie quickly notices a look of pure fright on Han's face, aging him 20 years in .5 seconds. Han is about to say something when the horde starts slamming on the door, so they rightly fuck off.

Chapter 31 - Coffin Jockeys

Hey friends, guess who's back?

Fucking DeviantArt.

Yes, Jareth Sartoris, AKA Garth Vader! Everybody's favorite psychopathic prison guard is back in the story! He's still in his escape pod, which has partially crumpled, trapping his right leg. He manages to free it with surprisingly little effort, and quickly determines that it isn't broken. He tries to figure out how long he's been unconscious and what the fuck happened. Turns out just after he launched the pod, leaving the brothers Czonka behind, he'd felt guilty for an instant before remembering that Imperial Corrections had taught him that "There are no children here. They are inmates and convicts, Enemies of the Empire". We get a little backstory on Garth now, how his father was a crook and...*groan*...death stick addict...was abusive, beat him regularily, only stopping just before Garth was killed each time. Then at 16, Garth grabbed a wrench and killed his old man by caving in his skull. He dumped the corpse in an ally, then lied about his age and signed on with the Empire. Tragic, no? Sorry Schrieber, if you're trying to build up sympathy for a character who to this point has been protrayed as a combination of Nurse Ratched from Cuckoo's Nest and Byron Hadley from Shawshank Redemption...it ain't gonna fuckin happen, dipshit.

Anyway, turns out the Star Destroyer's tractor beam was on, so almost instantly after launching the pod, Garth went rocketing into the Vector's docking bay. And with no one to adjust the tractor beams as the pod entered the bay, it slammed against the internal tractor beam emitter. All that was 4 hours ago. Wah Wah Whaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Garth releases the pod's door and kicks it open, because he's hardcore, and finds that the pod ended up between an old X-Wing and TIE fighter...and he reflects on how he ended up "imprisoned between two icons of the galactic power struggle"...oh, COME ON! Again, a character portrayed to this point as unrelentingly psychotic, who killed not only the main character's father, almost killed one of his men, and went ahead and blew his boss's fucking head off before leaving two teenagers to die is now a goddamn poet?? HAAAAAAATE YOOOOOOOOU SCHRIEBER!!

ANYWAY, Garth gets out of the pod, and looks around the bay for a bit, spots more TIE fighters and thinks of how the TIE Pilots were nicknamed "coffin jockeys". He looks more closely at the fighters and notices that the hatches have been ripped open, trailing wires and whatnot. Garth then hears screaming (presumably Kale getting his Zit-ectomy), and he starts to get scared. He has some kind of flashback to his father (no idea why), as more screaming starts (this time presumably the Zombie Horde), and somehow he determines that "They were the screams of the dead...corpses who didn't want to stay buried". Oh fuck me senseless.

Anyway, then he hears blasterfire.

Chapter 32 - Hate Trip

A hate trip? Why that's exactly what I'm experiencing in regards to this book and its shitty author! Hey-oooh!

Anyway, Cody hears the same blasters, and starts dragging Kale away from the shaft. Kale comes to semi-consciousness and tries to ask who's shooting. Turns out that the Zombie horde inside the tube has blasters, and has decided that instead of trying to claw their way out, why not try blasting their way out? So Cody keeps dragging Kale further away. As the hole gets bigger, some of the Zombies start trying to pry the door open. One arm carrying a gun pops out of the hole and starts firing blindly. At that, Cody trips over her own feet, looks up, and sees that the hole is big enough for the Zombies to start climbing out. One of them, a former guard ends up impaled on a spike of metal from the hatch. Kale starts shouting at her, but she can't hear what he's saying. 

Then just as Troy and Kale had spotted Larry Czonka, she spots the shambling corpse of Gat, that crazy Devaronian. At which point she hears Kale telling her to drop him and run. She refuses, and keeps dragging him despite his constant demands to drop him. As her adrenaline hits, she starts easily outpacing the horde, she's gonna make it, even with Kale....


Oh shit, one of 'em just blew Kale's head off with a lucky blaster shot.

Dang.

What's left of his face kinda looks like this I guess.

Seeing as the horde has kinda made up her mind for her, she drops the dead weight and fucking cheeses it.

Chapter 33 - Catwalk

So after fleeing the newest Zombie horde, Han, Chewie, and Troy have been running blindly. Seriously, this was Han's solution to getting away from the horde secured behind a set of blast doors: To run around blindly and hope to space-Christ that they don't run themselves up the ass end of said horde. Then again, this is the same man who charged headlong into the Stormtrooper barracks on Death Star I, so I guess this is actually in character for him, I dunno.

Anywho, Troy briefly worries that Han's gotten them turned around, and they're gonna run into some old friends, but decides to forget that idea because further madness lies that way. Instead he insists that they're running in circles, to which Han frankly tells him that no one likes a backseat driver, shut the fuck up. 

"I swear to god, if you kids don't stop fighting back there, I'm turning this ship around and no-one is going to space-Disneyland!!!"

Trig insists that the direction just doesn't feel right, and Han agrees that running around a Star Destroyer being chased by a horde of the living dead doesn't feel right, no sirree bob.Han at that point acknowledges that he doesn't have a fucking clue where he's going, and decides to backtrack a bit. He reaches down and touches the deck, and is somehow able to tell by the vibrations in the deckplates that the conning tower is close because they may be standing virtually on top of the primary power generator. He opens a hatch in front of them, revealing a bottomless pit.

Because that makes sense to have on your capital ship. Really. Han determines that its the housing for the main engine turbine, because in order to generate Ion power, you need a good turbine. Troy asks how they get across, and Han points out a small catwalk, no more than 2 feet wide...and Troy responds that there's no guardrail.

Ok, has anyone besides Family Guy pointed out that there is a disturbing lack of safety on board Imperial ships/superweapons? You'd think that someone would realize, "Hey, we keep losing a lot of guys by the main engine turbines of our Star Destroyers, usually by the catwalks. Hey, I've got an idea! Guardrails!" Why is Palpatine so afraid of living up to Space-OSHA standards?

I mean, Han's badass and all, but he's no Big McLargeHuge.

Han tells Troy, this is the way across, so suck it up princess. Troy refuses, displaying a sudden fear of heights. He tells Han that Zombies be damned, he'll just wait there until Han gets things happening. Smart idea. And Han agrees. Seriously, why didn't the Republic Department of Child Services not take his kids away at some point? Seriously, putting Jacen in a foster home might have saved the galaxy a lot of grief later on.

Troy then has some self-loathing for being too big a fraidycat to go across the damn catwalk. He waits to see if Han and Chewie reassure him that they got across, or to see if they scream as they plummet to their respective deaths (SPOILER: They don't). He peers over the edge of the abyss, and hears a rustling sounds, which he assumes is the Zombie horde's main nest. He turns around, and who should he see but his brother Kale in 3/4 profile!

Because the rest of his face looks like this if you remember.

Kale looks at him for a moment, then walks through a door. Troy chases after him, and finds out that the room contains a mountain of trash. 

Chapter 34 - Skin Hill

Yeah, that's not trash, it's what bodies on this ship aren't walking around. A big mountain made of corpses, the ones that were too eaten to get up and move around on their own. Troy starts having another panic attack, and screams out some kind of combination of 'Help' and 'Kale', which I assume sounds like "HELAAAAAALE!!"

And that's when something comes burrowing out of the pile. Yeah, it's a zombie, and Troy figures it actually ate its way out. The zombie chases Troy in a circle around the pile for a bit, then Troy sees light 15 meters above, and decides to go for broke and climb the pile of corpses. He narrowly gets to the ventilation duct, sees the zombie still coming and cheeses it.

Chapter 35 - The Whole Sick Crew

Let's check in now on Garth Vader, who is currently watching some of the zombies breaking off from pursuing Doc Cody and coming after him. He recognizes some of his coworkers and former charges, and hears a sound behind him. Yep, they flanked him. He briefly wonders if they're just animals, or if they might enjoy watching him squirm. Schreiber regales us with the volume of drool they let off as they approach (apparently zombie Wookiees have entire waterfalls of saliva), then the Zombies charge. Garth climbs up on the nearby X-Wing, drops into the pilot's seat and tries to lock himself in, but the canopy is broken. He then realizes that this was a stupid fucking idea. The zombies start trying to tip the fighter over like GNR fans in Vancouver attacking a RCMP cruiser, and Garth finally notices that weapons are online. Just as several zombies get the canopy open and start clawing at him, Garth opens fire, vaporizing about half the zombies, and causing enough recoil to knock the fighter backwards into a shuttle. 

LASERS DO NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Garth scrambles through an emergency hatch in the shuttle, and blacks out for a bit. When he wakes up, he finds out that a few of the Destroyer's crew survived! Shocking! The few survivors have been starved to the brink of survival, and one introduces himself as Commander Gorrister. The Zombies outside have found some more blasters and are trying to blast their way in, but Gorrister reassures Garth that hand blasters aren't designed to crack open a spaceship's hull.

Gorrister then fills us in on what happened to the Vector: 10 weeks before, the tanks of virus that Han, Chewie, and Troy found started to leak. They'd left a system called Meglumine carting the canisters, and were ordered to go to a planet called Khonji Seven. Some members of the crew wondered if the leak had been a deliberate test, but for that, we'll have to read the prequel Schreiber's writing (not for all the pussy in the world). The main batch of survivors tried to seal off the zombies, but that didn't work worth a damn once they figured out the blasters. So they figured "Let's get the fuck out of here", but by then the Zombies had also figured out the tractor beam. Also, apparently there were 30 survivors to begin with, but now they're down to 7.

Why?

Well, even though the shuttle had access to plenty of water, well, food is a little scarce. And none of those 7 have a lot of meat left on their bones, as opposed to a certain prison guard who was kind enough to drop in.....

Chapter 36 - Lab Rat
Ok, back to Dr. Cody. She's running her ass off, her legs are cramping, et cetera. Finally, she ends up at a Bio-Lab...and what safer place is there to hide during a zombie attack than a lab where the virus was probably researched? Especially one that has the lock broken ripped off the fucking wall.

Cody flat out admits it's a stupid fucking idea, but still goes ahead and enters the lab. Inside, it's a pretty typical lab...except for the bloodstains, and the half broken 3PO unit. She starts randomly punching keys at a terminal until a wall opens, revealing two corpses, wired up to the bejesus, kind of like some sort of sick twisted marionette act.

And then one of the corpses lifts it head. The other also notices, and they both start doing some kind of weird mid-air Zombie Shuffle. Cody particularly notices that the zombies have tubes in their chests, pumping out the same grey shit she ripped out of Kale's stomach before he died. She's briefly distracted by some creepy sounds in the lab, and then the isolated Zombies start swinging themselves against the glass. 

Then she's grabbed by a Zombie from behind. She whips around, grabs a pair of syringes, and jams them into its eyes. It gives one of their weird screams, falls to the floor, Cody makes a break for it...until she hears the Zombie try to "speak".

"Frrrng unn ufff. . ."

Yes, friends, this random string of syllables actually qualifies to Cody as "talking".

Well, that's Dr. Cody off my Secret Santa list.

Thinking that she injected the Zombie with some sort of counter-agent, she decides to try to interrogate it. Asking "What did you do? What happened here?" elicits a chilling response:

"Thrggh uff usss. . ."

My God, the dialog here just gives you fucking chills, doesn't it???

The Zombie then pulls one of the syringes out of it's head, and starts drawing something on the wall with it until the tip breaks. Then it looks back at Cody, no longer seeming so sympathetic to her. And whatever it was trying to write/draw, it's illegible. So the Zombie jumps her, but instead of the standard tactic of trying to eat her, instead it starts trying to strangle her. 

Just as she starts blacking out, a 2-1B droid comes over and cuts the zombie's head half-off with a bone saw. She initially mistakes it for Waste. She sheds a few tears for the fallen toaster, and asks this droid what the fuck happened here. 

In a strictly scientific sense, I do know that my programmers were working on an easily conveyed chemical means of slowing the normal course of decay in living tissue. Ideally the virus would be able to take over nerve receptors and make the muscles fire even after clinical death has resulted. 

She asks the droid where she can find a working computer, and has to resist hugging the big lug.

Chapter 37 - Lifter

When we last saw Garth Vader, he was about to become a 3 course meal for a bunch of starving survivors. However, in his mad escape to get away from his local horde, he made a mistake in his favor....he left the X-Wing Canopy open.

Yep. The Zombies now have access to a fighter. And it's guns.

The zombies are now blasting the freighter with the X-Wing's cannons, which means lunch is now on hold. In fact, it's so much on hold that Garth, angry at nearly becoming lunch to these dorks, grabs Gorrister, opens a hatch in the roof, and pitches him to the horde before climbing out himself. Garth pitches out a few more of these sad sacks before finally taking pity on the remaining few. He tells them to stay put while he tries to get the tractor beams off, and takes off in a mad dash across the hanger. He fights his way through, getting out of the hanger and bumping into one of the lifters they used earlier when they were initially on the ship.

And then Garth realizes he's been bitten.

Chapter 38 - Bridge
So Chewie and Han arrive on the bridge to find that it's been gutted for the most part. Chewie sets about trying to find the tractor beam controls, while Han amuses himself by sitting in the captains chair and executing some simple manuevers. Finally he does something dumb, the entire destroyer jolts and Han is knocked on his ass. He stands up...and Chewie's gone.
He quickly tracks down the errant Wookiee, who's holding...a baby Wookiee. A very sick baby Wookiee. Han asks it where its family is, and it points to a closed door with blood running out from under it. They open the door to find 3 more Wookiees eating some Imperials.

Oops.

The three wookiees charge Han, who manages to drop them relatively quickly. And thats when he feels a small pair of clawed hands wrapping around his throat. He turns to see the snapping face of the baby, but it quickly evaporates into a spray of blood as Chewie blows its head off. And Chewie is not too happy about having to do that, either.

Chapter 39 - Stop

(Just what I wish this book would do! HEY-OH!)

So Troy is climbing through the ventilation shaft, and he's finally nearing the exit...which just happens to be right at the abyss he'd been trying to avoid crossing with Han and Chewie earlier. Insert "Wa Wa Waaaaaaaaaaaah" sound here.
Troy doesn't have any choice here, because the zombie in the helmet is right behind him now. And then the helmet falls off.

And it was older brother Kale the whole time. 

Shocking. Zombie Kale starts lunging at Troy, trying to have him for lunch, drooling all over him, trying to bite him. Troy actually does something logical, and shoves Kale out the vent and into the abyss.

Chapter 40 - Awakening
So, Kale was pitched over the side into the abyss. And seeing as Troy is now looking down in the abyss as well, he now sees the entire zombified crew of the Star Destroyer looking back up at him. And they're making that weird screaming sound. You know what? For zombies, they are fucking loud.
At first they start trying to climb out, but the walls are too slick. So instead they open fire. Yep, still armed to the teeth. They manage to knock the vent Troy's been crawling around in off it's moorings. He flies out and just barely manages to grab the catwalk. As he's clinging for dear life, he thinks about how much he wants to get shot before he drops into the horde. 
Han and Chewie miraculously turn up at the end of the catwalk, and start waving at Troy to get the hell out of there. Why? Because more zombies are working their way out of the remains of the vent. 

Three more Imperials squirmed free after that, spilling out like hideous, fully formed offspring from some unthinkably fertile ovipositor.

Ew. Another zombie jumps out and manages to grab onto Troy's leg. And he can't help but notice something. Piercings. This isn't an Imperial, it's Vagina-Face from the first part of the book!

Chapter 41 - Blackwing
Ok, enough blistering action, let's go back to Dr. Cody. She's in the hangar control room, looking down at what she estimates to be thousands of zombies. And they keep up the damn screaming. She starts tooling with the computer, typing in a password that was apparently written on the floor of the bio-lab: "blackwing". She enters a command to disable the tractor beam, but the computer responds that the tractor beam is already disabled. So now she decides to ask the computer "what is blackwing?"

Blackwing: 
Imperial bioweapons project I71A. Galactic virus dissemination and distribution algorithm . 
CLASSIFIED: TOP SECRET. 
Project status: In progress.

Cody looks back out the window and notices something. The zombies are climbing into the ships...and they're carrying big, black tanks. At the last moment, she notices that a bunch of the zombies have also turned the X-Wing around...and the guns are aimed right at her. And they're still functioning, because now they're shooting at her.

Chapter 42 - River
Han has realized that if he or Chewie try to rescue Troy, they're all fucked. He contemplates trying to blast Vag-face, but realizes that he could just as easily hit Troy. Looking at Chewie, he realizes that they really have no choice...they're gonna try to save Troy. 

Too late, he let go.

Seriously.

About fucking time.

Except somebody just saved his ass with some kind of hovercraft. Somebody wearing a prison uniform.

Garth, why hast thou forsaken me?

He flies up to grab Han and Chewie, and Troy notices the bulging bite on his arm. Garth asks Han if he can fly the lifter thing. He points to his wound and tells Han that he doesn't have much time. Han points out that he and Chewie are just a little busy laying down covering fire. So Garth asks Troy if he can do it. See, the lifter is overloaded, and is inching closer to the horde. He grabs Troy, sticks him in front of the controls and tells him about the shipload of cannibals in the hangar. He tells Troy that Larry Czonka was actually a good man, and jumps. 
Ok. Until this point, ol' Garth has been portrayed as a remorseless killing machine. And we're suddenly expected to believe that he's grown a fucking conscience out of goddamned nowhere, just because he was going to die? I...I just......brain....breaking....I...hate..you...Schrieber....

You know what, there's like 10 pages left in this bitch. Let's do this.

Troy fights to get the lifter under control, there's zombies everywhere, clawing at the undercarriage. They rocket away from the horde and Cody radios them, letting them know that she's under attack in the hangar. They quickly arrive, but the whole wall with the hangar control is now on fire thanks to the x-wing the zombies have....I swear I'm not making this shit up...propped it up with blocks to fire at Cody.

All Troy can spot is Cody's hand sticking out from under a pile of rubble.

Chapter 43 - Death and All His Friends

Not satisfied with ripping off Resident Evil & Stephen King, Schrieber sets his sights on Coldplay.

Troy takes a moment to think about how much he hates the zombies, and drives the lifter next to the Imperial shuttle. They climb on board, find out that White, the soldier Garth talked to, is dead, and now there are only 2 survivors. The hangar bay opens and the zombies start flying out en masse. Han notices that some of them are actually licking the glass canopies of their ships. Han flies the ship out of the Star Destroyer, and one of the two surviving Imperials staggers into the bridge...missing an arm. He gasps something about the zombies and collapses. Han looks back into the crew compartment and sees a zombie in the middle of eating the other survivor. Chewie and Troy are hiding from it, but it quickly spots Han and starts heading for him. Han stumbles backwards and trips over the severed arm, blacking out for a moment.

Chapter 44 - Freebird

Hey, guess who else got onto the ship with no one noticing? Dr Cody, and she manages to blow away the zombie before it can hurt anyone else. After she shoots it, it starts oozing some kind of grey sludge out of every available oriface. Cody hypothesizes that they do that if they're too far away from the primary site of infection. She points out that all the ships that flew out of the Destroyer are now dead in space. And here's where things get all techno-babbled.

"That was Blackwing's flaw," Zahara said. "It's going to keep them from spreading it any farther than this." 
"Blackwing?" 
"That gray liquid in those tanks was a highly refined version of the virus. The whole operation was set up to create an unlimited supply of it, probably so that the Empire could manipulate its behavior wherever they wanted." 
"So all those zombies down there," Han said, "they were just the middlemen? Like a means to an end?" 
Zahara nodded. "I think so. Their resurrected bodies were probably intended to be the suppliers and distributors. But without constant and direct exposure to the virus, they can't function." 

You know, as opposed to simply MAKING IT AN AIRBORNE FUCKING VIRUS THAT JUST KILLS THE VICTIM OUTRIGHT, WHILE NOT TURNING HIM INTO THE WALKING DEAD!!!!!! GAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Cody then reveals that the hand they saw was actually White, the guy Garth saved. Whoop-de-shit.
Troy asks where they're going, and Han pretty much says that anywhere that isn't infested with undead. 
The book then skips ahead to when they've sold the shuttle, Han and Chewie plan to spring the Falcon from impound, but Cody claims that she has unfinished business.

Epilogue
Cody and Troy go to deliver the letter that one soldier who died of the initial plague wanted her to pass on. Big whoop, the-fucking-end.

OR IS IT?!

HOW THE FUCK DID THIS WARRANT A SEQUEL/PREQUEL?!?!