MedStar_ Battle Surgeons Part 10

He looked surprised. "Is that how you see it?"

"Is there another way to see it?"

Ji smiled and spread his hands in a gesture of inno-cence. "I was unarmed, one against three, on a battle-field in a war, my dear Padawan. I was but utilizing the skills that I am paid to utilize. I'm a soldier. It is not considered murder to kill the enemy."

Barriss had stopped stretching; now she stood, arms folded against her chest, looking at the Bunduki master. "You're an expert fighter, and your hands and feet are as much weapons as a vibroblade or a stun baton," she told him. "Those men had no more chance than they would have had you used a blaster on them. Pretending otherwise is disingenuous."

"Are you calling me a liar, Jedi?"

There was no mistaking the danger in his tone now. This is exactly what he wants you to do. Ignore him. Turn away.

She faced him squarely. "Yes."

He smiled again, a cruel, triumphant smile. "Such an accusation presupposes the willingness to back it up. Would you care to demonstrate the efficacy of your mystical Force against my expertise?"

With the greatest of difficulty Barriss held her anger in check and kept her mouth shut.

She conjured up be-fore her mind's eye the disapproving visage of Master Unduli. It helped, a little. She had known when she'd first spoken that this was the road down which she'd started, had known it was the wrong path for her. And yet, here she was...

After a moment, he laughed. "That's what I thought. I beat one of your Jedi Knights in a hand-to-hand match, and it wouldn't really be fair for me to pick on a lowly Padawan, now would it? Enjoy your exercise, Jedi."

He turned contemptuously and started to walk away.

Barriss couldn't stop herself. She raised her hand, concentrated, and closed her open fingers into a fist.

As Ji took another step, time seemed to slow for Barriss. Ji's left foot came forward, and as it approached his right, his boot twisted inward, no more than a few degrees - just enough to catch the heel of his forward boot.

He tripped.

A man of lesser skill would have fallen flat on his face upon the wet ground. And, despite her knowledge that it was wrong, Barriss would have enjoyed that sight.

But even as he fell, Ji tucked into an ovoid shape, one arm curving, hand turned inward slightly, so that his motion looked like a deliberate action: he dived, rolled on his arm, shoulder, and back, coming up and turning slightly, a neat gymnastic move that left him standing in balance and facing her.

"Careful," she said. "The ground is slippery from the heavy dew."

He stood there for a moment, glaring. The sense of menace hung heavy in the air, the currents of it swirling about in the Force like a dark whirlwind. But even as angry as he was, he maintained control.

He turned away.

Once he was gone, Barriss shook her head at her ac-tion. What had she been thinking? One did not use the Force for such childish, trivial things. It was wrong to take such petty action, even against a villain such as Phow Ji. Yes, it could have been an appropriate demon-stration, designed to teach, to show that the Force was valid, but she knew this had not been the case. It had been a personal response, driven by anger, and she had known better from the beginning. Great power had to be wielded with great care, and taking an obnoxious character down a level because you thought he deserved it was simply not sufficient justification. It was chasing a fire gnat with a turbolaser. Her Master would have been extremely displeased.

She was never going to become a Jedi Knight by be-having thusly.

Barriss sighed and went back to her stretches. Her road was hard enough already. Why did she keep strew-ing boulders in her own path?

17.

Den Dhur had seen a number of odd sights in his years on interstellar a.s.signments. To the best of his memory, however, he had never seen a droid sitting alone in a cantina.

When he walked in out of the syrupy heat of midday, it took his eyes several moments to adjust, even with the droptacs' aid. As his vision cleared, he saw that the bar was mostly deserted. Leemoth, the Duros amphibian specialist, was seated in a far corner nursing a mug of Fromish ale, two clone sergeants sat at the bar, and at one of the nearer tables was the new protocol droid, I-Five.

There's something you don't see every day, Den thought. First off, droids rarely sat at all. Most of the more humanoid models were capable of the posture, but since they never got tired, there was no real reason for it. But I-Five was sitting there, albeit somewhat stiffly. His photoreceptors were trained at the plasticast tabletop. Even though there was no expression in the metal mask of a face, Den got a distinct feeling of melancholy from the droid.

On impulse, he pulled up a chair, sat down across from I-Five, and raised a by-now-well-practiced finger to the cantina's tender. "We don't see too many droids in here," he said to his companion.

"At these prices, I'm not surprised."

Den's eyebrows went up. This was something un-usual-a droid with a sense of humor. The tender brought the reporter his drink-Johrian whiskey. Den sipped it, watching I-Five with interest.

"I heard you were helping Padawan Offee earlier in the OT."

"True. It was-quite an experience."

Den took another sip. "If you don't mind my saying, you seem rather-unusual for a droid.

How did you come to be a.s.signed here?"

At first it seemed that the droid was not going to re-ply. Then he said, " 'I am cast upon the winds of s.p.a.ce and time, like a planetesimal spun eternally between suns.'"

Now Den was shocked. "Kai Konnik," he said. "Beach of Stars. Winner of the Galaxis Award for best novel last year, if I'm not-"

"Two years ago," I-Five corrected him.

Den stared at him. "You have an impressive knowl-edge of literature for a droid."

"Not really. My memory banks are programmed with more than two hundred thousand novels, holo-plays, poems, and-"

"I wasn't talking about memory," Den said. "Most protocol droids have the capacity to store that much in-formation. And most droids, if asked to quote from a particular work, can access it as easily as you just did. But," he continued, leaning forward, "I've never met any kind of droid yet who could use the material meta-phorically. Which is what you were doing."

Silence for another moment; then the droid emitted something that sounded remarkably like a human sigh.

"At times I wish I were a carbon-based being," he said. "The concept of intoxication is attractive."

"It has its advantages," Den agreed as he took an-other drink. "You going to tell me why you're in here?"

Again, I-Five seemed disinclined to speak at first. Then he said, "Nostalgia."

Den waited. He'd come into the cantina to see if he could dig up any more dirt on Filba, but so far this was more interesting. If I-Five hadn't been a droid, Den would have plied him with drinks to loosen his tongue. It seemed, however, that little loosening would be needed. The droid obviously wanted to unburden him-self to someone.

"I used to spend a fair amount of time in establish-ments much like this one," I-Five continued. "Places like the Green Glowstone Tavern and the Dewback Inn, in the Zi-Kree sector on-"

"Coruscant," Den finished. "I know them both well. Nasty part of town; they call it the Crimson Corridor." He finished his drink and signaled for another. "I found a lot of good leads to stories there." He looked at I-Five in silence for a moment. "Most watering holes don't like droids; some old superst.i.tion, I believe. I'm surprised your master got away with bringing you in with him."

"Lorn Pavan wasn't my master," the droid said. "He was my friend."

The muscles in Den's forehead were starting to get sore from their strenuous workout.

"Your friend?"

"We were 'business a.s.sociates.' We traded under-world information, ran sabacc numbers, brokered the occasional minor government intel-that sort of thing. Not exactly the thrilling life one sees in the holodramas, but it did offer an occasional frisson or two."

"Colorful," Den commented. When the droid did not continue, he said, "Well, you're a long way from the big city now, as I'm sure you've noticed. Why are-?"

He broke off, noticing I-Five's sudden s.h.i.+fting of at-tention from him to a group of surgeons who had just entered. Among them was Zan Yant, who carried his quetarra. Den a.s.sumed there would be music later on, after the cantina filled up a little more; that was the usual way of it. He didn't mind; he liked Yant's musical choices, for the most part, although the Talusian's homeworld compositions sounded to him like two sand cats in a sack.

The droid, however, seemed a bit-nervous. I'd swear he somehow shows expressions with that metal mug of his, Den thought. The concept was surprising, but no more so than the idea of a droid having the emotions necessary to produce those expressions.

Den's second drink was set down before him, and he lifted it thoughtfully. "So, what motivated you to pack up and leave such a rewarding existence?"

I-Five said, "I have no idea. Lorn and I were being pursued by..." He seemed to be choosing his words carefully. "... an a.s.sa.s.sin."

"A Zabrak," Den said casually. He watched the droid's face carefully this time. His photoreceptors didn't get bigger, but they did get brighter, which some-how conveyed surprise just as well. That's it, he thought. The eyes are the most expressive organs in most humanoid faces. You can read a world of meaning into their slightest movement.

Somehow, I-Five gets much the same results by varying the intensity and an-gle of those optical sensors of his.

He was so intent on figuring out how the droid showed expression that he almost missed I-Five's reply. "Do I rummage around in your data banks without permission?"

"Sorry; reporter's instincts. It was obvious that some-thing bothered you about seeing Yant come in, and since I'm a.s.suming you're not a music hater-"

"Congratulations. The a.s.sa.s.sin was an Iridonian Zabrak. Quite deadly; a martial arts master skilled enough to make Phow Ji look like a drunken Jawa. He had... other skills as well."

Den nodded. "I see. Yant's from Talus, if that makes any difference."

I-Five didn't reply to that. "This a.s.sa.s.sin stole an item of value from us and fled Coruscant, into orbit. Lorn and I were about to go after him, and then-the next thing I knew, I was serving on a spice-smuggling freighter."

"Any theories?"

"I think Lorn deactivated me to keep me out of dan-ger. By then this had turned into something very per-sonal for him, you see. Someone he cared for greatly had sacrificed herself to save us, and-"

"Sounds like a great story," Den said. "Wish I'd been around to write it up."

"Trust me-you don't. This a.s.sa.s.sin was-" I-Five hesitated, then shook his head-another disturbingly human action.

"Black Sun?"

"Worse. Far worse. Besides," he said softly, "what's a story without an ending?"

"Every story has an ending."

"This one doesn't-not for me. I don't know what happened to Lorn. I suspect he's dead, but there's no way to know for certain. I've tried to find out, but this all took place more than a decade ago, and routes of in-quiry are limited for droids, even droids that know how to hack past pyrowalls and other computer defenses. The entire thing seems to have been completely hushed up at an extremely high level."

"Now you're getting me interested," Den said. "Nothing like a good conspiracy story, although they tend to go over better when there's not a war on. I'll see what I can dig up."

"Dig too deep on this, and you may be the one who gets buried," the droid said darkly. "I have no idea how I escaped being mindwiped. All I know is one minute I was at the s.p.a.ceport on Coruscant; the next I'm helping feed people's glitterstim habits across the Core systems.

"That's subjective, of course. According to my inte-rior chrono, I was deactivated for about twelve standard weeks. From what I was able to learn afterward, I was part of some kind of barter arrangement. I was on the Kessel Run for six years; then the smugglers'

s.h.i.+ps were raided by a local system's solar patrol. I was confiscated and auctioned to a merchant captain-why, I'm not certain. There are still large gaps in my data banks I can't account for-several years' worth, in fact.

"When the war began to spread, the Republic confis-cated as many droids as they could to keep them out of the Separatists' hands. I was serving as a house droid for a n.o.ble family on Naboo when the order came. My pro-gramming was augmented with medical training, and now here I sit in this... picturesque... establishment, telling you my life story." He paused.

"I really do wish I could get drunk."

"Maybe you're lucky you can't. If you've been this forthcoming to everyone you've met,"

Den said, "It's a wonder you haven't been reprogrammed. Most folks have little patience with an uppity droid."

"Do tell. No, I've kept my sparkling wit and efferves-cent personality firmly in check until now, rest a.s.sured. It's been somewhat lonely, I must say."

"So why tell me all this? Do I just have that kind of face?"

"I'm tired of the charade," I-Five replied. "I'm tired of playing a meek little automaton to humans and their ilk, especially after watching the brutal results of or-ganic sentients' inability or unwillingness to coexist. The more I see of all this carnage, the more convinced I am that a CZ-Three maintenance droid could do a bet-ter job of running the Republic."

Den couldn't resist a grin. "That's sedition, you know."

"Who, me?" The droid's photoreceptors projected innocence. "I am but a humble droid, built to serve." He sighed again. "Perhaps I just need my disgust damper recharged."

"Or maybe you just need to get drunk."

"That, too."

"Of course, in order to accomplish that, you'd have to be organic."

I-Five actually shuddered. "Perish the thought." He stood. "Excuse me. I have duties to perform; most of them involve changing dressings and administering spray hypos. Thoroughly fulfilling tasks for a being of my capabilities, I must say. Perhaps I'll occupy the ninety-nine percent of my cognitive module not en-gaged by my ch.o.r.es by solving Chun's Theory of Re-ductional Infinity. Or composing a light opera."

Den watched I-Five leave the cantina. A few moments later Zan Yant began to play, a slow, soulful melody. It seemed the perfect accompaniment to Den's bemused mood.

A droid that had been accorded equal status by his sentient owner? Den had heard of such things before, but always before they had been fiction. For a droid to actually be emanc.i.p.ated, even informally, was some-what revolutionary. He wondered why he wasn't more shocked by the idea.

It did seem a good reason to have another drink, however.

18.

Usually, whenever he had a few moments in which to try cutting through some of the caked sweat, spores, and grime that Drongar so liberally provided, Jos used the sonic shower, which was faster and more efficient than chem-wipe or water. Step in, click the foot switch on, and the dirt was vibrated right off-no muss, no fuss. At least the base had that basic level of technology working, most of the time.

Today, however, he stood under the pulsing beat of a fluid nozzle, and the water, piped and filtered from a deep aquifer, was cold. Cold enough to cause chil-blains, cold enough to make breathing harder than usual.