Jos scrambled to his feet—or tried to; Drongar suddenly seemed to be rotating in several directions at once, and he fell again, this time landing alongside Bar-
riss. His face wound up in the mud, only a few centimeters from hers.
He saw her open her eyes.
Another cannon blast scorched the ground a meter in front of them, ripping up rows of bota and raining fragments of the plant down around them.
Barriss rose to her feet—just how, Jos could not have said. She seemed to levitate—one moment she was sprawled on the ground, and the next she stood upright. Impressive as that was, however, it was nothing compared to her next action.
As Jos watched in astonishment, the Padawan leapt across the bota field, covering a distance of at least ten meters in a single bound. As she arced through the air toward the droid, Jos saw another flash of light. At first he thought the droid had fired again, but then he realized the glow came from Barriss's hand.
She had drawn her lightsaber.
Jos had seen images and holos of the Jedi weapon in use, but he had never before seen one in real life. Barriss's energy blade was an azure streak about a meter in length. It made a sound like a nest of angry wing-stingers, and, even over the noisome stenches borne on the breeze from the nearby swamp, he could smell the acrid scent of ozone it produced.
He watched, openmouthed, as Barriss landed next to the battle droid. Before it could fire again, she struck a single blow with the energy weapon that sheared halfway through the droid's torso. Sparks erupted, and the droid collapsed.
Jos managed to get to his feet and stay there as the Padawan deactivated her lightsaber. Hooking it to her belt, she walked back to him, taking care to go around
the bota field to avoid causing any more damage to the precious growths.
"That...," he said, at a loss for words for one of the few times in his life. "That was .. . you're amazing."
She made a grimace of annoyance. "I'm an unwary amateur," she replied. "Had I been more mindful of the Force, that droid would never have gotten close enough to attack us.
"We'd better get back. I think that was a single scout that managed to penetrate our lines, but there might be more." She started back toward the base, and Jos hurried to keep pace with her.
"I can't believe it missed us," he said.
"It appeared to be battle-damaged; perhaps its targeting computer was malfunctioning. In any event, I doubt such luck will be ours more than once. Best we hurry. Also, we need to get you treated—you look like you've been shaving with a raven thorn."
Jos was in ready agreement with that. Suddenly facing Tolk in the OT didn't seem nearly as traumatic. This was an aspect of the war he had not been exposed to until now. It wasn't one he was eager to experience again.
And, of course, Zan was not impressed when he did get back.
"You're ten minutes late," he said.
"I nearly got killed by a battle droid," Jos said.
"No excuse. It didn't kill you, didn't even burn off a leg or anything."
Jos only half heard him. His mind was occupied with the memory of Barriss Offee battling the droid. She had been spectacular using that lightsaber. So far, most of the ekster women were a lot more exciting than the en-ster women he remembered back home . ..
34
Jos had enough on his mind that he was paying scant attention to the chip-cards. The coins, flasks, sabers, and staves upon them held no real meaning for him. Around the table, the other players looked at their hands, brooded, or made classic comments:
"Son-of-a-bantha, who dealt this mess?" This from Zan.
"That would be me," Den said. He glanced at Jos. "I tried to cheat in your favor, Doc—didn't you get a pure?"
"Very funny," Jos replied. "If this bomb was any bigger, they'd be calling this the Drongar asteroid field."
"Spoken like a being trying to up the bets," I-Five said.
"You going to bet, fold, or just whine?" Tolk asked Jos.
Her tone of voice was like a sonic disruptor fired straight into his chest. To his surprise, he'd found that nearly getting killed while out trying to clear his head yesterday had not bothered him nearly as much as Tolk's new coolness toward him.
But that's what you told her you wanted, wasn't it?
He looked at his hand. What with holding the Queen of Air and Darkness, the Evil One, and the Demise, he
was so far below negative twenty-three that there was no way he could win, given the mathematical laws of this particular galaxy. When his turn came, he folded.
Bets went into the hand pot. After the next card, Zan folded also.
Den dealt the remaining players—Tolk, I-Five, Barriss, and himself—another card. The Jedi dropped out.
Zan leaned back and said, "So, Den, weren't you going to write a story about Phow Ji?"
The reporter paused a beat in his deal, then resumed. "Yeah."
"So when are we going to see it?"
"With any luck, never."
Jos thought this was odd, since Den seemed to have pretty high opinion of his abilities as a writer. He'd told his sabacc cronies a few days previously that he planned on eviscerating the Bunduki in pixels. Naturally, Den had cautioned them, this data wasn't to be considered broadband, as the Sullustan had no great desire to be rendered into shaak fodder by Ji. "What happened?" Jos asked.
Den didn't answer. Tolk called, the hands were turned over, and she won with an even twenty-three. Of course.
"Lucky at cards, unlucky in love," Den said.
Tolk glanced at Jos, then smiled at Den. "So why won't we be seeing the story, Den?"
"Oh, you'll see it, if you bother to look. They ... butchered it. I laid it out as how our friend Ji was the scum of the galaxy and that feeding him feetfirst to a hungry rancor was too good for him."
"And . . . ?" Barriss said.
"And they . . . twirled it, so that now he doesn't sound ... so bad." Den shuffled the cards. "Not bad at
all, I'm afraid. Seems the audience is tired of grim news at the moment. According to my editor, they've been getting a lot of that lately—battles lost here, systems cut off there, and so on. Dooku's forces might be getting their metal behinds kicked in the long run—if you believe the Republic flacks, anyway—but it doesn't sound like that to the viewing public. They want heroes."
"Phow Ji is not in any way, shape, or form a hero," Zan said. "He's a murderous thug who kills people for fun."
"A fact I went to great pains to point out, believe me. But that doesn't matter. Ji can be trimmed and lubed enough to fit the slot. So it has been decreed by voices louder than mine, and so, apparently, shall it be."
There was a moment of shocked silence as the other players digested this.
"That's not a twirl, that's a Class-One troopship's gravity-gyro on full spin," Jos said.
"We gonna talk, or are we gonna play cards?" Den said, passing the deck to him. "Your deal, Doc."
"The way my luck is running, talk is a whole lot cheaper," Jos said. "I'm already down fifty creds."
Zan looked like he'd just been hit with severe vestibular disorder. "But—they can't make a coldhearted no-creche like Ji into somebody for people to admire!" he sputtered. "The man keeps trophies of all the people he's murdered!"
"Enemies of the Republic, each and every one," I-Five said. "That's how they'll twirl it."
"This is unbelievable news, Den," Barriss said. "You must be horribly disappointed."
Den was quiet—he seemed to be editing his thoughts. "It is. I am," he said finally. "But I'm not all that sur-
prised. I didn't just fall off the purnix lorry yesterday, after all. I've seen it happen to others. I've even had it done to me before—though never to this degree." He snorted. "Our warped Phow Ji will probably get a rich entproj contract out of it, if he doesn't dice the agent who offers it to him. 'The Hero of Drongar,' coming to your home three-dee soon."
"Sweet Sookie," Jos said.
; "Heroes are transient," Den said, in a tone that sounded like he was trying to convince himself more than the other players at the sabacc table. "They come, they go, and they tend to die more often than everybody else in wartime. If one is real and another is a product of the media, it's all the same, in the long run. None of it really matters."
"I'm going to go out on a spiral arm here and guess you have no use for heroes," I-Five said.
Den shrugged. "They make good copy sometimes. Other than that, no."
"So there's nothing for which you would risk your life?"
"Good maker, no. I don't believe in all that spiritual stuff. I don't expect to be recycled as something higher up the food chain in another incarnation, or to see the Spectrum at the end of the galaxy, or discorporate and become one with the Force. For me, what you see is what you are, and when the lights go out, that's it. So why should I court the Eternal Sleep any sooner than I absolutely must? No risk, no loss. Heroes are, save for those who wind up being in the category completely by accident, either fools or selling something."
Jos looked at the droid. "What about you, I-Five? Given your construction, you could last five hundred, a
thousand years or more. Would you put your durasteel neck and all those centuries on the line if there was a good chance somebody would ax it?"
I-Five said, "It would depend on why. I've mentioned before that I still have some memory damage I'm endeavoring to repair, and it seems from some of the recently recovered bits that I may have performed some 'heroic' actions in my past." He fanned his cards. "I must say I'm interested in learning the circumstances."
Den shook his head, then looked at Barriss. "You, I expect it from—you're a Jedi, that's what you do. The medical folks—well, I've seen some of them who'd charge a particle cannon at the drop of a glove, so they're as crazy as clones, too, in my 'cron." He glanced at Jos, Zan, and Tolk. "No offense," he added.
"None taken," Zan said.
Den shifted his gaze back to I-Five. "But I didn't expect to ever encounter a droid with delusions of valor. You, my metallic friend, are in need of some serious rewiring."
"And you," I-Five replied as he tossed a credit into the hand pot, "need a damper slapped on your cynicism chip."
Jos, Zan, and Tolk smiled. Zan took the deck of cards. "Maybe my luck will change," he said.
"It better not while you're dealing," Jos said.
Zan shuffled, then put the customary blank card at the bottom of the deck, marking where the shuffled cards stopped. He put the deck down for Barriss to cut. As she did so, he said, "I guess I'm what they'd call a devout agnostic. I don't know if there's something bigger than us or not, but I think that we should attempt to live our lives as if there is."
"A philosophy more beings should espouse," Barriss said.
Den rolled his eyes but said nothing.
There flashed into Jos's mind once again an image of CT-914's quiet grief for his comrade. He looked up from his cards and saw Barriss watching him, a look of sympathy on her face.
He glanced at I-Five. The droid was studying his cards, but he appeared to sense Jos's attention, because he looked up. Jos had gotten quite good at reading the subtle shifts of luminosity in I-Five's photoreceptors, but this time the droid's expression was enigmatic.
The moment stretched.
"Jos," Zan said. "It's your turn."
"What are you going to bet?" I-Five asked.
What indeed?
Jos dropped his hand and stood. "I'm out," he said. "I'll see you all later."
Zan blinked. "Where are you going?"
"To pay a sympathy call," Jos said as he left.
35
Jos walked across the compound, slipping an osmotic mask over his nose and mouth as he did so, because the concentration of spores in the air was unusually heavy. He was so preoccupied with his thoughts, however, that he barely noticed them, or the syrupy heat of midday.
He was thinking about space travel.
His training was in medicine, not applied and theoretical physics—he smiled slightly, remembering the irascible Dr. S'hrah, one of his teachers, who had zero tolerance for any discipline outside medicine—"You're a doctor, not a physicist!" would be his take on Jos's woolgathering—but he knew the basics and the history, as did anyone with anything more than a dirt clod for a brain. Travel between star systems was made possible by moving through hyperspace, an alternate dimension not all that different from realspace, in which superluminal velocities were easily reached. In ancient times, this had been thought impossible, since the legendary Drall scientist Tiran had proven conclusively, more than thirty-five thousand years ago, that time and space were inseparable, and that the speed of light was an absolute boundary that could not be crossed.
But Tiran's Theory of Universal Reference did not prohibit anything traveling faster than light—it only
disallowed traveling at the speed of light. If the "lightspeed barrier" could somehow be bypassed, one could theoretically shift easily from realspace to hyperspace and back.
Galactic colonization had initially been accomplished by generation ships, and this made it impossible to knit the separate worlds together in a viable galactic civilization. Finally, after centuries of experimentation and frustration, the best scientists of the Republic found a way to create and contain negative pressure fields strong enough to power a portable hyperdrive unit. At long last, affordable and ubiquitous superluminal travel had been achieved.
This accomplishment, of course, had quickly led to the Great Hyperspace War and various other forms of unpleasantness, but that wasn't where Jos's thoughts had taken him today. The problems of achieving FTL speed made a nice metaphor for breaking through to new concepts. If you could somehow make it past the initial barrier of perception, then the galaxy you found yourself in wasn't really all that different from the one you'd left behind. In his case, it was a galaxy in which artificial intelligences and cloned personalities had to be judged on an equal emotional footing with organics, but, once that concept was grasped, it proved to be not that hard to assimilate.
It did, however, require some adjustment—and some apologies.
Barracks CT-Tertium was the largest of the three garrisons at Ground Base Seven, which was located at the edge of the Rotfurze Wastes, a region of severe ecological blight two kilometers from the Rimsoo. Jos requisi-
tioned a landspeeder and was there in less than ten minutes. He was far enough behind the lines to feel relatively unconcerned, although he could hear, on several occasions, the distant crackle of particle beams and the muffled whump! of C-22 frag mortars. Apparently the Separatists weren't all that worried about bota damage anymore.
At GB7 he was directed to a tiny 4.5-square-meter billet, barely large enough for the bunk-and-locker combination that constituted CT-914's home away from—actually, Jos realized, it was just his home. Unless one counted the vat from which the clone had been decanted in Tipoca City on the waterworld Kamino, CT-914 had no place else he could call his own.
The bed had been made to military precision, the blankets as smooth as the surface of a neutron star. The locker was ajar, and closer inspection proved it to be empty.
What was puzzling, however, was the spot over the head of the bed, where the trooper's designation should have been. Instead of reading ct-914, the frame was empty.
Jos spied a Dressellian corporal nearby and hailed him. The Dressellian, surly like most of his species, saluted somewhat resentfully upon recognizing a superior officer. Jos asked him where Nine-one-four was.
"In the recycling vats, most likely," was the shocking reply. "Along with most of his platoon. They were ambushed by a Separatist guerrilla attack two days ago."
The Dressellian waited a moment, then, seeing that the human captain was not likely to be asking any more questions immediately, saluted again and continued about his business.
Jos slowly left the garrison, stunned. In the last hour or so he had come to think
of Nine-one-four as exemplifying all of his newfound knowledge of the clones' essential humanity, and to suddenly learn that he was dead was almost as big a shock as hearing of the death of an old friend or a loved one. He had felt compelled to seek the clone out and apologize to him, hoping that, somehow, such an expiation would simplify some of the challenges of an awareness that now included respect toward more than organic life alone. But instead he'd found that CT-914 had joined his vat-brother, CT-915, in death. And Jos knew that it would be a long time, if ever, before their deaths, and all the others perpetrated by this war, would seem to be anything but senseless and despicable.
He tried to still his racing thoughts for a moment, to have a few seconds of silent respect for the fallen warrior. But it seemed that, no matter how still he willed his mind to be, it kept filling up with images of Tolk.
On board the MedStar frigate, Admiral Tarnese Bleyd studied the flimsies before him, the results of his latest round of inquiries into any suspicious or surreptitious 'casts from the personnel of Rimsoo Seven. With a growl he swept them off his desk and onto the floor. Nothing— just the usual air and space chatter to be expected. Nothing to give him the slightest clue as to who might have been spying on him when Filba died, or why.
Bleyd growled again, an almost subsonic sound, deep in his throat. As long as whoever on the other end of that spycam remained at large, he, Bleyd, was in danger. The recording might even now be circulating over the HoloNet, or being viewed in the private chambers of
some investigative committee back on Coruscant. The situation was intolerable.
Think, curse you! Use that hunter's brain, those predatory instincts. Who would be the most likely being to possess a surveillance cam, and who would have reason to shadow him, to attempt to record him in some kind of illegal activity?
Perhaps Phow Ji, that Bunduki martial artist he'd encountered? Bleyd considered, then shook his head. Such undercover activity would be much too subtle for such a thug. Perhaps he should reconsider the possibility of Black Sun—
Star Wars - MedStar 01 - Battle Surgeons Page 21
