MedStar_ Battle Surgeons Part 6

Den turned back to the being across from him, a stubby Ugnaught med-mechano specialist named Ro-rand Zuzz who was a head under his own height.

"Fascinating," Den said. "Tell me more."

Zuzz drank the rest of whatever foul-smelling concoc-tion he was using to alter his brain chemistry and set the empty gla.s.s down. The odor-some kind of carboxyl-based intoxicant-reminded Den of week-dead mell-crawler, and he did not consider himself fortunate to know that stink as a reference. The bottle, which the droid had left on the table, was labeled tyrusian red ale, and the slogan read: because yellow doesn't look good in s.p.a.ce. What does that mean? Den wondered.

"Well, yar, I kin tell ya t' job is one o' t' toughest in t' service, you bet, yar."

His Basic was rough; Ugnaughts didn't generally bother to learn the common language of the galaxy un-less they had to, but Den had heard and understood a lot worse.

"Dem docs alla time yellin' 'Fix dis! Fix dat!' like they 'spect me t'pull t' spare parts outta m'backside! Supply ain't deegle dung on dis world, you bet. Docs," he mut-tered, staring moodily into the dregs of his drink.

The server droid rolled over and put the fresh drinks on the table. It cheeped something, and Den impatiently waved it off.

"Yes, yes, on the tab."

The droid beeped acknowledgment, then rolled away.

"You work with Filba, is that right?"

The tech picked up his new drink, gulped a third of it. "Ah. Dis good. What was I sayin'?"

"You were telling me that you work with Filba."

Zuzz shook his head. "Dem 'utts 'r worse'n humans. Fussy no-creche-fecal-retents, y'know?"

Den nodded. "Oh, I hear you, brother. Know one, know dem all."

The Ugnaught c.o.c.ked a bleary eye at him. Easy, Den. He's not drunk enough for you to start talking like you're clade-breds quite yet.

Zuzz belched. "I mean, I'm tryin' to zero-reset t' whole biosensor array for Recov'ry, every single milkin' machine, and I can't get t' 'utt t'spring for a de-cen' calibrator!"

"I can't believe it," Den said. "What sc.u.m."

"Got dat right, bloodline." He glanced around, then leaned forward. " 'Tween you 'n' me?"

he said in a low, slurred voice. "D' 'utt's got somet'in goin' on t' side. I t'ink dem creds went into Filba's pouch, y'know what I'm sayin'?"

"Really?"

"Oh, yar. I bin keepin' an eye on 'im. 'E's collectin' sweetsap from somewhere, y'know what I mean?"

"Oh, yar, bloodline," Den said. He smiled. Filba was going to be milking sorry he had gotten in Den Dhur's way. You could scan that and zap it to the bank.

10.

It was a little thing that did it-it often was a little thing. In this case, it was a female human lab tech laughing at something the guy sitting at the next table with her had said. It wasn't loud, but it was a happy sound, the sound of someone forgetting, for a blessed moment, the grim realities of the Rimsoo. All of a mo-ment, Jos remembered a girl from primary school, the first one he had made laugh. True, he had accomplished this by hopping about, pretending to be a Selonian with a hotfoot, but they'd both been seven years old at the time.

He stared at the food part.i.tioned into the various compartments of the meal tray that sat before him. Though he knew he should eat to keep his strength up, he was finding it hard to work up an appet.i.te. Oh, the food was okay-the powdered hawk-bat eggs did have a slightly gritty texture, but the shroom steaks weren't bad, since they were local. Still, overall, it wasn't one of the more memorable meals of his life.

Jos sighed. If not for this war, he would probably be at home, starting a practice with his father or perhaps one of his aunts or uncles-there were a lot of doctors in his family, and several surgeons-and maybe, after a hard day in the operating theater, going home to his impressive conapt in the sw.a.n.k Golden Beach area of Coronet. His spouse would meet him at the door; a bright, funny, s.e.xy female companion with whom he could share his life and love. Maybe even children...

Abruptly, the food on his table held no appeal. What he wanted to do with his few precious minutes of free time was to go back to his cubicle and crawl into his cot, pull the thin syncloth sheet over his head, and sleep for a week. A month. However long it took for this blasted war to be over and done with so he could go home.

Yeah, he was a surgeon, and yeah, you couldn't slice without seeing blood, but being up to your ankles in it? Every day? That was hard.

It didn't matter that the vast majority of the troops were clones, all stamped from the same press, and all programmed not to fear war. Even though they weren't quite individuals, they still suffered and died, and the ones who didn't die he and his colleagues had to put back together any way they could, desperately jury-rigging and cobbling procedures, swapping out organs and patching up wounds, and then send them back out to suffer again. And maybe, this time, die.

There were days when he hated the talent in his hands and nerves that made it possible for him to slice and plastistrip and heal. Perhaps, if he'd been trained in something else-genomics, maybe, or bio-robotics-he wouldn't be on this stinking planet, mired in this stink-ing war. Of course, he'd rather be behind the lines in a Rimsoo than in the thick of things. His genetic pro-gramming didn't include immunity to fear, after all. But he didn't really want to be here in any capacity.

Jos thought of Barriss Offee, of the attraction he had initially felt for her. It was just as well that it hadn't continued, he told himself, since she was not permes.

The fact that she was off-limits, however, did nothing to a.s.suage his loneliness. He wanted someone for a life mate, someone to be close to, to cherish. But he would have to wait until he was back in his home system for that to happen.

He stared moodily into the depths of his tanque tea, as if some answer might be divined from the root frag-ments bobbing in the murky liquid.

"Stare any harder and it'll evaporate."

He glanced up and saw Tolk standing there, in her off-duty whites. The light from the chow hall door was behind her, putting her in partial silhouette, but not so much that he couldn't still see her features. Everything went out of his head except for one thought: Son-of-an-ibbot! She's gorgeous!

It wasn't as if he hadn't been aware that his chief nurse was human, and quite attractive; that was obvious to anybody with one working eye. But the same prob-lem that existed with the Padawan also applied to Tolk: she was not permes. The Vondars and the Kersos-his father's and mother's clans-were very solidly enster; disciples of a long and traditional sociopolitical affilia-tion in which Jos had also been raised. A big part of an enster's core belief system was that no marriage could be made, much less consummated, outside the inhabi-tants of one's own planetary system. The more extreme zealots restricted it even further, refusing to allow any affiliations offplanet. No exceptions were made.

Yes, a young man or woman could go offworld, and yes, even the staunchest Ensterites might turn a blind eye if a son or daughter somehow managed a temporary al-liance with one of the eksters-the "outsiders"-but when you came home, you left your wild urges behind. You did not bring an ekster home to meet your parents.

It was simply not done-not unless you were willing to give up your clan and be renounced and ostracized for the rest of your life. Not to mention bringing shame and contempt on your immediate family.

All this flickered through his thoughts at lightspeed. He hoped none of it showed, given a Lorrdian's un-canny ability to read expressions and body language. Tolk wasn't an empath, like Klo Merit was, but she could pick up and decode the smallest physical clues to just about any species's mood.

"Tolk," he said casually. "Sit. Have some tea. In fact, have mine."

Tolk sat, took his cup and sipped from it, looked at him closely, and said, "Who died?"

"About half the troops in the Republic military forces, seems like lately."

"We're keeping eighty-seven percent of those who ro-tate through our surgery alive."

He shrugged. She took another sip of his drink. "Okay, thirteen percent of a big number is still a lot. But it could be worse."

She had a nice scent about her; something slightly musky, yet fresh. He'd never noticed that before. Of course, the glare of the operating theater's UVs and the overlapping sterile fields tended to wipe out odors, which was generally a good thing, given what gases sometimes escaped when a vibroscalpel pierced body cavities.

"What's really wrong, Jos?"

For a moment, he was tempted to tell her. What's wrong? I'm lonely, a long way from home, and sick of death. I'm sitting next to a beautiful woman I'd like to get to know better-a lot better-but there's no future in it, and I'm not the kind of man who wants a quick connect-disconnect, even though that seems like a ter-rific idea at just this moment.

It took no imagination at all to picture her on his cot, with her hair spread out on the pillow... and that was a bad lane to be s.p.a.cing down, he quickly realized. So instead of speaking the truth, he said, "Just tired. Bio-rhythms are off. I need a vacation."

"Don't we all." But she gave him a look, and for just a second he was certain she knew exactly what he was thinking.

Exactly.

Jos and Zan watched as the supply drop s.h.i.+p lowered on invisible repulsor waves. "They'd better have those biomarkers," Zan said. "I only ordered them half a standard year ago. A Tatooine Sarlacc moves things through its system quicker."

Jos mopped his brow and nodded, waiting for the ramp to lower. There were a number of things he'd ordered that the base needed desperately: bacta tanks and fluid, bioscan modules, coagulin, neuropreno-line, provotin cystate, and other first-line pharmaceuti-cals... the list was practically endless. One of the most important things on the inventory, however, was more droids. The order had been mostly for FX-7s and 2-lBs, but he had also requested a couple of new office work-ers; two of the four CZ-3s originally supplied had suc-c.u.mbed to rust and overwork months ago, and the others were becoming eccentric. He suspected spore-rot.

The ramp lowered. Filba, of course, was there to in-spect the manifest, meticulously checking to see that every last synthflesh strip and chromostring reel was accounted for.

The two surgeons, along with several nurses and scrubs, watched the duraplast containers as they pa.s.sed, trying to read the photostenciled content lists.

"Yes! Got the biomarkers at last," Zan said with a hiss of satisfaction. Then his tattooed jaw dropped. "What, only one case? They'll be gone in a month! Typical..."

Jos was also disappointed as the last canister au-torolled past them. "So where are the droids I or-dered?" He looked at Zan. "Did you see any droids come off? Anything that even resembles a droid?"

Zan glanced over his friend's shoulder. Before Jos could turn around, he heard a voice say, "I've been told I resemble one, sir." The words were precisely articu-lated, with that slight mechanical hollowness that comes only from a vocoder. He turned and saw a droid standing halfway down the ramp.

"Of course," the droid added, "those who said it might only have been trying to be kind."

Jos looked at the droid. It looked like one of the pro-tocol models that were ubiquitous all over the galaxy. If so, it had been refurbished a few times; the powerbus cables weren't the standard models, if he remembered correctly. The recharge coupling was different as well. The light pewter armor had more than a few nicks and dents. Jos looked back at Zan. "I ask for office mod-els," he said. "Anything, even an old CZ model. And they send me a protocol droid."

"It'll come in handy at all those fancy state dinners and diplomatic summits you're always being dragged off to," the Zabrak said with a straight face.

"Oh, yeah. I don't know how I've managed to survive here without my very own attache droid."

The droid muttered something behind him that sounded very much like: "Blind luck, I'd say."

Jos and Zan both turned and stared at him. "What was that?" Jos asked.

The droid came to attention, and even though his face was an expressionless metal mask, Jos felt that some-thing-fear? resentment? both? - somehow flashed there for a moment. But when the droid spoke again, the voice was emotionless, even more so than most 3PO models.

"I said, 'I'm instructed to stay-' here, that is. On Drongar. I think you'll find me more than competent to a.s.sist you, sir. I've had extensive medical programming, including access to the database files of Sector Gen-"

"What's your ID cla.s.sification?" Jos interrupted.

"Eye-Fivewhycue, sir."

Zan frowned. "I've never heard of a Fivewhycue line."

The droid glanced at Zan and hesitated a moment be-fore answering. Again, although the rigid features did not change, Jos felt somehow that the droid was mo-mentarily unnerved by Zan's appearance. But when the I-5YQ answered, it was politely.

"A modification of the Threepio series, sir, with cer-tain changes in the cognitive module units. Its design borrows somewhat from the old Serv-O-Droid Orbots model. The line was discontinued by Cybot Galactica not long after its inception, due to litigation." The droid hesitated, then added, "I am usually called I-Five."

The two surgeons looked at each other. Jos shrugged and said to the droid, "Okay, I-Five.

You'll be doing double duty-data storage and secretarial as well as as-sisting in the OT.

Think you can handle that?"

I-Five hesitated before answering, and Jos felt again, for just a fraction of a second, that the droid wanted to respond in kind to his sarcasm. But I-Five simply said, "Yes, sir," and followed them as Jos and Zan started across the compound.

Strange, Jos thought. The heat must really be getting to me if I start expecting droids to mouth off...

11.

The man from Black Sun couldn't believe it.

"This is a joke, right? You're tapping my b.u.t.tons."

Bleyd said, "Not in the least." He had disarmed Mathal at blasterpoint, and the man was nearly having a seizure in his disbelief.

"You're insane!" Mathal's tone was truculent, but his eyes were darting about nervously, and Bleyd could al-ready smell the man's fear-sweat.

"In your position, I might think so, too. But I'm afraid it's not that simple. Now listen carefully. The hatch is locked. The code that opens it is here, in my belt pocket. If you want to leave this vessel alive, you'll have to collect it from me. There is a large knife in plain sight somewhere on this deck with which you may arm yourself for your attempt."

Mathal glared. "Yeah? What's to stop me from breaking your neck right now?"

"You could try, even if I didn't have a blaster, but I wouldn't advise it. I am stronger than you, and my her-itage is... somewhat fiercer. Your chances of victory would be exceedingly small. Even with the knife and me barehanded, the odds are probably no better than fifty-fifty."

"When I get back to my vigo and tell him about this, he's going to have your skull for a drinking cup."

"That may well be," Bleyd said. "But only if you get past me. I'll give you two minutes before I come for you. Next time we see each other, one or both of us dies." Bleyd flexed his hands, feeling the tendons in them mov-ing like oiled cables. "You'd best hurry." He nodded in the direction of the spinward corridor.

The human knew a real threat when he heard it, Bleyd gave him that much credit. He tucked his bluff and bl.u.s.ter away and took off, fast. In ten seconds he was out of sight around the corridor's curve.

Bleyd gave him the rest of the allotted time, enjoying the slight, lingering, sour odor of the man's sweat, then started down the corridor opposite the direction Mathal had taken.

The weapon was closer this way, and there were several places wherein he could hide to watch it and wait. He would allow the man to collect the knife-that was only fair, since a Sakiyan's muscles and ligament-attachment angles were mechanically su-perior to those of a human's, making Bleyd at least half again as powerful as a strong man, and a good deal quicker as well.

Had he been hunting for food, if there had been a mate and younglings to feed back home, he would have pulled a blaster and shot the man dead without a sec-ond's hesitation. Then dressed him out, shouldered him, and started home. Survival demanded efficiency, and you did not give food-prey any chance-you did not risk yourself if you had a family to feed.

If you died, so would they, and then both monthrael and yithrael-per-sonal honor and pride honor-would be forever stained.

Ah, but sport hunting, when there were none depending on you... well, that was completely different. If you were stronger, smarter, and better armed than your prey, where was the challenge? Any well-armed mind-less drone could kill. The quarry of a real hunter should have a chance to win. If you made a mistake hunting a predator, it should cost, and if that cost might be your life, that was the spice that made the game taste best.

Mathal might be only a messenger boy now, but Bleyd knew that Black Sun operatives usually began their careers at the basic levels. Once upon a time, be-fore he had been recruited by Black Sun, Mathal had been freelance muscle, paid for his ability to offer vio-lence or even death. He was not a gra.s.s eater, Bleyd knew. He was a predator.

Hardly in Bleyd's cla.s.s, of course. Bleyd was a first-rate hunter. Armed with naught but a lance, he had stalked s.h.i.+stavanens on Uvena III. He had taken a ran-cor with a pulley bow and only three quarrels. He had tracked and killed unrepentant Noghri with a pair of hook-blades whose cutting edges were no longer than his middle fingers.

He could not remember the last time he had made a potentially fatal error on a sport hunt.