| “ | These are the true songs of Lifeday. These songs are eat and kill. Eat and kill. | „ |
| ~ The Sickness to Chewbacca |
| “ | I'm going to eat you and you are going to taste good to me. | „ |
| ~ The Sickness speaking through Gat |
| “ | The flesh is our fuel. And the books are our fuel. And this planet is our fuel. All things are our fuel. They exist only to be consumed by us! | „ |
| ~ The Sickness to Dail'Liss |
The Infected are the titular main antagonists of the 2009 novel, Death Troopers, and the 2010 prequel novel, Red Harvest. They are people infected with Imperial Bioweapons Project I71A (Also originally known as the "Sickness" later known as "Blackwing") which turned them into mindless beasts with a hunger for flesh.
Characteristics[]
Like typical zombies, the infected are undead and eat the living. They typically have yellowish skin and dead eyes. However, what sets them apart from most zombies is their ability to learn. They can operate machinery and even wield blasters. This is due to the way the sickness was designed. Those infected are also able to communicate with each other by screaming.
The sickness is an airborne disease however some do possess immunity to the airborne strain but can still be infected through bites. The virus is portrayed as a sentient grey liquid that burns when it comes into contact with skin. The one weakness the sickness has is that those infected cannot survive far from the source of the infection.
History[]
The virus was originally created by the Sith Lord, Darth Drear through Sith alchemy. Unfortunately Drear, along with his students were infected with the virus. The virus was then discovered by Darth Scabrous, who then named it the "Sickness" and began abducting his own students for experimentation and created the same formula for it with the usage of the orchid. However he also fell to the infection along with the entire Sith Academy on the planet, Odacer-Faustin.
At that time, the Sickness gave Scabrous the ability to command hordes of the infected to pursue the survivors and intended to make himself immortal by capturing Hestizo attempting to use her to complete a ritual to kill her by ripping her heart out to consume it, but she escapes and kills him by telepathically communicating with the orchid's power to explode his head off and slices him apart with Darth Drear's Sith Sword and a lightsaber belonging to her brother, Rojo, defeating him as well as avenging Rojo, whom he killed and the entire infected students and teachers of the Sith Academy was destroyed from the tower's defenses on itself. The bounty hunter Tulkh was revealed to be infected from an infected Tauntaun and asks to be ejected to space while the remaining zombie, Lussk, revealed himself to have escaped the incineration and made his way to the ship to attack but Hestizo, knowing that the Sickness could have this opportunity to spread, injected both of them into space, putting an end to the virus for the time being. Despite this, Hestizo feared that the virus would one day make its potential return.
Over three thousand years later, Hestizo's fear of the virus's return came true as Darth Vader learned of the virus and commissioned the virus to be synthesized by the Imperial Biological Weapons Division to be useful against rebels and freedom fighters such as the Rebel Alliance. The virus was named Imperial Bioweapons Project I71A, or "Blackwing". The virus was synthesized aboard the Imperial Star Destroyer "Vector". However, due to a breach thanks to the troopers mishandling the hold on the tanks containing the virus, the entire star destroyer became infected with the virus and the protocol to contain it failed due to a malfunction in the Vector's engine which results to losing power thus the infected massacre the entire crew. (Though some were able to escape and the remaining survivors sealed themselves in an Imperial shuttle). The infected then activated a tractor beam to attract any nearby ships to be brought to the Vector to prevent them from ever escaping and use the ships to spread when they are ready. At one point an X-wing fighter was pulled to the Vector with the pilot killed by the infected and reanimated into another zombie.
Ten weeks later, the Vector crossed paths with the Imperial Prison Barge "Purge", which was on its way to transport inmates to a corrections facility on the detention moon known as Gradient Seven. The purge became caught in the vector's tractor beam, resulting in the purge's thrusters being damaged. After attempting to contact the Star Destroyer, a boarding party, Lead by Captain Jareth Sartoris, was sent to scavenge for parts to repair the purge's thrusters. Only half of them come back.
However, after being exposed to the Star Destroyers contaminated air, the remaining members of the boarding party brought the virus to the purge, which lead to nearly everyone aboard being infected with the Blackwing. Sartoris, Dr. Zahara Cody, Trig and Kale Longo possessed immunity to the airborne strain. Dr. Cody was able to use the natural immunity in her blood to synthesize an antivirus, which she gave to the only other uninfected people, Han Solo and Chewbacca. It was then that everyone aboard the purge that was infected were reanimated. and attacked the six survivors. Along the way, Kale and Sartoris became infected. Kale eventually turned while Sartoris sacrificed himself to save the four remaining survivors. While this was happening the infected began to get into confiscated spacecraft to spread the sickness, however, due to being so far from the vector, the infected lay dormant result to both of the spacecrafts crashing into each other, destroying both the infected pilots with the Blackwing tubes, leaving the Vector to drift through space.
Despite this, the project was continued on the planet Dathomir one year after the Battle of Yavin where the imperials begin to continue their work on the virus. However, an accident occurred and the virus escaped as it spreads and infects any in the area, forcing the Empire to put up a quarantine. Though the virus was contained and a majority of the infected witches with it were eradicated, but the three of them survived and learned to control the virus, becoming known as the Sisters of the Void.
Trivia[]
- In the audiobook of Death Troopers, their background screaming is the asylum ambience soundtrack from Postal 2.
