Star Wars - Gathering Shadows - The Origin of the Black Curs - Unpublished Read Free Page A

said, “it has something to do with this humming in my head.”

    “Well, well, well,” Platt said, peering over the ridge. “Our boy Harkness certainly knows how to sniff out Imperials.”
    “How many?” Tru’eb asked. He was a short distance below her in the gully.
    Platt slid down the steep rock wall and handed him the macrobinoculars. “Look for yourself. I make it about two, maybe three. See them?”
    Tru’eb got a foothold in the crags and hoisted himself up into the thick, tufted grass on top of the ridge. “I can’t see anything,” he said. “The fog is even worse over there.”
    “The yellow switch polarizes the lenses. See the hill directly across from us? It runs into that cliff, you can’t miss it. Now look at the a ledge sticking out of the cliff, out over the hill. You see the Imperials?”
    “No… Just trees and plants…”
    “They’re sitting in a dugout under a camouflaged lean-to.”
    “Ah, yes,” Tru’eb said alter a moment. “Army scouts. But I don’t see a garrison.”
    “I don’t even see any valley,” Platt said.
    Nonetheless, Platt’s chrono indicated they were some 1,200 meters above sea level. This neck of the mountains was permeated by rocky ground and sheer cliffs topped with conifer trees. The Bare Forest, the locals called it. Or at least that was what their guide had called it before he had bolted with the repulsorlift a day earlier. At least he had left them some supplies and a one-person emergency inflation shelter, the latter of which had been an awfully tight fit last night.
    Still, Harkness had left a trail of blaster-charred trees and discarded rations. Those clues led Platt and Tru’eb straight into the remains of the Rebel camp—a flat, razed area with scattered ashes, melted tent frames, and smashed comm equipment. The trees were bent and broken, probably crushed by AT-ATs. Platt was hard-pressed to imagine where one of those would have come from. All around was the acrid smell of burned flesh and spent blaster packs; Platt had to avert her eyes from the scattered bodies. Most of them had been shot in the back, Tru’eb told her. The rest were charred beyond recognition.
    “Those scouts have an E-Web, did you notice?” Tru’eb said, adjusting the sights. “But there are, let’s see, 130 meters between us and them. I doubt they would be able to see us from there.”
    “They wouldn’t, if I wasn’t wearing red. Duck back down.”
    “You really ought to re-think your wardrobe one of these days, Platt,” Tru’eb said dryly.
    Platt grinned. “I thought you appreciated my keen fashion sense.”
    “I do. It’s my whole reason for living.”
    Platt took back the macros. Then she looked up at the murky sky. “Say, Tru’eb…”
    “Yes?”
    “Did everything around here just go really quiet, or is it me?”
    They listened, and looked at each other. All morning there had been a constant chattering and hissing of birds, which had suddenly stopped. Platt pulled out her blaster.
    “Did our Green Boys notice us?” she whispered.
    “Let me have a look—”
    Something came crashing through the underbrush behind them. Platt and Tru’eb spun around, but when the thing came out of the mist, they just stood where they were, frozen.
    It was a Sullustan in New Republic military fatigues. But something about him was not quite right, and horribly surreal: his eyes were a milky gray and his head tilted at a grotesque angle. His arms hung at his sides, waving around slightly at each step as the head jarred and bobbed.

    “Walking Dead!” Tru’eb hissed, backing away from the Sullustan, who seemed to be headed purposefully toward him.
    Platt fired a blue stun-bolt into the Sullustan’s chest. He gave a wild spasm and then flopped to the ground.
    Silence. Platt and Tru’eb looked at each other.
    “Was that real?” she whispered, and looked at the ground again. The Sullustan still lay there with his face in a mud puddle. In his back was a week-old blaster