Death Troopers

"I had the time of my life on this one, I have to say. I'm doing the final edits now, and I've tried to make it into exactly the kind of book you'd want to read if you were a child of the 70s who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy and really digs horror in the vein of The Shining and Alien, with a little dose of William Gibson mixed in."

- Joe Schreiber

Death Troopers is a novel by Joe Schreiber that was released on October 13, 2009. It takes place about a year before A New Hope. The paperback is set to be released on October 26, 2010.

Back cover
No fate could be more terrifying than being trapped in deep space.

Unless there's something unknown out there with you.

Internal flap
When the Imperial prison barge Purge &mdash; temporary home to five hundred of the galaxy's'' most ruthless killers, rebels, scoundrels and thieves &mdash; breaks down in a distant, uninhabited part of space, its only hope seems to lie with a Star Destroyer found drifting, derelict and seemingly abandoned. But when a boarding party is sent to scavenge for parts, only half of them come back &mdash; bringing with them a horrific disease so lethal that within hours, nearly all aboard the Purge will die in ways too hideous to imagine.''

And death is only the beginning.

The Purge's'' half-dozen survivors &mdash; two teenage brothers, a sadistic captain of the guards, a couple of rogue smugglers and the chief medical officer, the lone woman on board &mdash; will do whatever it takes to stay alive. But nothing can prepare them for what lies waiting onboard the Star Destroyer amid its vast creaking emptiness that isn't really empty at all. The dead are rising, soulless, unstoppable, and unspeakably hungry.''

Plot summary
The engines on the prison barge Purge break down and the ship is left drifting in space near a seemingly-abandoned Star Destroyer. Seeking to salvage parts to repair the engines, Warden Kloth of the Purge sends a boarding team on the Star Destroyer, the Vector. When the team returns, most of it is infected with a deadly virus, which then spreads to the rest of the Purge. The survivors, after the barge's dead passengers are reanimated by the virus, flee to the Destroyer. While there, they encounter hordes of the resurrected dead crew of the Destroyer. After a long and dangerous trek through the ship to the bridge, they find the controls destroyed. Along the way, some of the group break off or die. After returning to the hangar to get to a shuttle, the survivors encounter survivors of the Destroyer itself and realize that the zombies have learned to keep them and their shuttle in the hangar. When one of the survivors sacrifices themselves to shut off the controls, the survivors of the Purge escape and flee.

Behind the scenes
On September 10, 2009, the tie-in Death Troopers: Recovered Messages from Purge was released over various Star Wars fan sites.

On October 12, 2009, Star Wars Galaxies released an update in which players could interact with the Death Troopers story.

"'After a mysterious turn of events the Empire has mustered an enormous military presence in a remote location on Dathomir. Imperial High Command has issued a travel warning to notify citizens to avoid travel to the planet if possible. Citizens that cannot avoid travel to Dathomir should be aware that certain locations are now considered restricted areas. Unauthorized travel by citizenry to these restricted areas may result in fines, arrest or both. While rumors have circulated that restricted areas are being used to contain a biological threat, no official report has been confirmed or denied by High Command.'"