Star War®: MedStar I: Battle Surgeons

by Michael Reaves

  You could call it that. Den glanced around. The open compound was full of onlookers now, all squinting upward even though there was nothing more to see. “What about debris?” a Caamasi nurse asked nervously.

  “Debris?” the tech engineer snorted. “Only ‘debris’ from this gonna be gamma rays.” He waved one arm overhead, indicating the sky just above the base. “Don’t worry—energy shield over the whole place, remember?”

  Others began to weigh in with their opinions on what had caused the transport’s destruction. Den walked away, thinking.

  One thing was for sure—Filba was going to have his own meltdown over this, if he hadn’t already. Den pursed his lips thoughtfully, then changed his direction.

  Den approached the Ops building, which housed the supplies and the comm station, with a little trepidation. Though he’d only been on Drongar for a few days, he knew Filba of old; they’d first crossed each other’s paths on the rainy world of Jabiim, during one of the Republic army’s last stands. Den had been reporting on the battle, and Filba had been a requisitions officer who was dabbling in the weapons black market. The Hutt was, like so many others of his kind, willing to use anybody’s back as a vibroblade sheath, and had nearly gotten Den killed trying to curry favor with the rebel Alto Stratus.

  Den’s dewflaps tightened at the memory of it. Filba was a craven opportunist, with dreams of being a criminal overlord, just like his hero, Jabba. Perhaps ultimately even a Black Sun vigo, from the few slurred hints he’d dropped now and then when in his cups. Den’s opinion was that the Hutt didn’t have much chance of being a big noise in the underworld. All Hutts were invertebrates, but in Filba’s case a backbone was sorely needed. Despite all his bluster, Filba was the first one under the table when “Incoming!” was heard—And, given his size, usually the only one who fits, Den thought.

  Filba’s primary assignment was as quartermaster. As such, he was responsible for ordering and keeping track of any and all medical equipment, drugs, munitions and matériel, wetware, cybernetics, droids, sensors and communications gear, transport parts, food, and whatever latest spore-fighting chemicals the Republic think-tanks had come up with—and these were just the tasks Den knew about. The Hutt also monitored the holocomm station, sending and receiving orders and messages, usually between Admiral Bleyd and Colonel Vaetes, but occasionally combat instructions from the fleet admiral to clone troop commanders. These jobs would seem to be more than enough for any six beings, but apparently the Hutt insisted on keeping track of the bota harvesting and shipments as well. Den wondered when Filba found time to sleep.

  If I know Filba, the reporter thought—and, Mother help me, I do—his interest in the bota is more than just a job.

  Filba’s office was about what the reporter had expected: neat and organized, but also crammed to the ceiling struts with shelves, receptacles, and cabinets. These in turn were crammed with all manner of things, but mostly held various media for data storage. Den saw racks of holocubes, flatscreens, plastisheet files, and soon…it made his head itch just to look at all that information.

  The Hutt was facing a holoproj, conversing with someone in the reception field. That was all Den saw before a trooper stepped in front of him, his blaster rifle at port arms. “State your name and business,” he said.

  This clone was a noncombatant, no doubt detailed as part of Filba’s security. His armor was clean and white. “If you don’t have a good reason for being here, your head’s coming off.”

  “Den Dhur. Reporter, Galactic Wave. Just wanted to get Filba’s take on the—”

  The Hutt’s bulk loomed behind the clone guard. “It’s all right,” he said. The guard nodded and stepped away. Filba glared down at the Sullustan, raising himself up to his full, enormous—to Den, anyway—height. Behind him, Den could see that the holoproj Filba had been speaking with was now gone.

  “What do you want?” Filba growled.

  “Don’t try to intimidate me, slug-face, or I’ll let some hot air out of you.” Den had already pulled his recording rod from a pocket, and was posed to record Filba’s words; now he poked it in the Hutt’s belly as he spoke for added emphasis, regretting his action instantly when he pulled the rod, now dripping strings of slime, back.

  Filba slumped nearly half a meter. He looked—if Den was reading the expression on the huge, toadlike face right—very nervous. Den wrinkled his nose, noticing that the Hutt’s bodily secretions now smelled sour.

  “I just spoke with Admiral Bleyd,” Filba said. “Or rather, I listened while he spoke. He spoke quite loudly, and for a long time.”

  “Let me guess. He’s not happy about the transport being vaporized.”

  “Nor am I.” Filba wrung his hands; his fingers looked like damp yellow Kamino spongeworms. “More than seventy kilos of bota were lost.”

  “Along with three lives,” Den reminded him. “What do they call that? Oh, yeah: ‘collateral damage.’ ”

  His sarcastic tone made Filba glance sharply at him. The Hutt drew himself up and away, leaving a glistening, wide trail of mucosal ooze. Den was just as happy to have some space between him and Filba; the huge gastropod’s fear-scent was making him queasy.

  “People die in wars, reporter. What do you want?” Filba’s tone was cold; obviously he regretted the Sullustan seeing him in a moment of weakness.

  “Just a quote,” Den said in a conciliatory tone. No point in antagonizing him further; Filba might be a coward, but his jurisdiction over Rimsoo Seven’s shipping and receiving station, as well as much of the intel datastream, made him a powerful and influential individual—and a bad enemy once your back was turned. “Something official about the disaster that I can file with my story.”

  “Story?” Huge yellow eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What story?”

  “Naturally I’m going to mention this in my next uplink. I’m a war correspondent. It’s part of my job.” Den realized he was sounding defensive. He closed his mouth.

  “I can’t allow that,” Filba said primly. “It could damage morale.”

  Den stared at him. “Whose morale? The troops’? Nothing bothers them; cut off both arms and they’ll kick you to death. And if you’re talking about the base personnel, anyone who isn’t in a coma or a bacta tank knows about it already. It was kind of an attention-getter.”

  “This conversation is over,” Filba said, gliding away over his patina of slime. “You will not file any story on this incident.” He made an offhand gesture, and Den was suddenly yanked upward from behind. The clone guard had picked him up by his collar and was now carrying him, feet dangling, out of the chamber.

  Once outside, the guard set Den down—not forcefully, but not particularly gently, either. “No more dropping in unannounced,” he told Den. “Filba’s orders.”

  Den was trembling with anger. “Tell Filba,” he said, “that he can take his orders and—” He described graphically just how the Hutt could use his cloacal flap as a file folder. The clone guard paid no attention; he simply went back inside.

  Den turned and stalked toward his cubicle, keenly aware that several clone troopers and a few officers of various species were watching. Some were smiling.

  You will not file any story on this incident.

  “Wrong,” Den muttered. “Watch me.”

  8

  The explosion had drawn Jos outside the cantina, as it had most of the other occupants. His vision was just a bit hazy—somehow, those two drinks had multiplied into four—but the transport’s disintegration helped sober him up dramatically.

  He saw Zan and one of the other surgeons, a Twi’lek named Kardash Josen, and joined them; they, like everyone else at the base, were speculating as to the disaster’s cause. The prevailing theory was that the spores had mutated into something that could cause some kind of catastrophic reaction in the lift engines. And wasn’t that a pleasant thought…

  As they talked, Jos noticed Den Dhur striding across the compound toward his office, his dewflaps quivering with indignatio
n and anger. Intrigued, Jos moved to intercept him. The reporter was muttering to himself, and probably would’ve walked right by Jos if the latter hadn’t blocked his path. “Is there a problem? Anything I can do?” he asked, feeling a sudden rush of affection for the little guy; after all, he’d introduced Jos to Coruscant Coolers.

  “One side, Vondar. I’ll show him who he’s dealing with…”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Jos said, backing up in front of Dhur with his hands up until the latter finally came to a halt. “ ‘Him’ who?”

  “That ambulatory clot of rancor phlegm, that’s who! That condescending, officious sea scum! That—”

  “Ah,” Jos said. “Sounds like you and our esteemed quartermaster aren’t getting along.”

  “When I get through with him, he’ll be getting a long stretch of duty on the backside of Raxus Prime, or someplace even worse, if I can think of one.” Dhur’s dewflaps were vibrating so fast Jos could practically feel the breeze.

  “Look,” he said, “I’m the chief medical officer here, and you’re our guest. If you have a problem with Filba, or anyone else—”

  “It’s Filba who’s got the problem, Doc—he just doesn’t know it yet.” Dhur dodged around Jos. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got some work to do.” He disappeared into his cubicle.

  Jos watched him go, slightly nonplussed. While Filba wasn’t the easiest sentient to get along with, Jos had never seen the Hutt inspire this kind of anger in anyone. Usually the best Filba was capable of inducing was irritation. He wondered if Dhur’s earlier preoccupation in the cantina had anything to do with this.

  He decided to go ask the Hutt for his side of it. Usually he was inclined to let the principals in these matters work things out by themselves—as a doctor he had learned very early that often the best way to effectuate healing was to just get out of the way and let nature, or the Force, or whatever determined such outcomes, work its way. But, as he had told Dhur, one of his duties was to help Vaetes keep the peace.

  He turned to head for the Hutt’s sanctum when he noticed the Jedi healer emerging from her quarters. He changed course.

  “Not shaping up to be a very good morning, is it?” he asked as he drew near.

  She looked up at him from within her hood, and he was shocked at her pallor. “Padawan Offee, if you don’t mind my saying so, you look like you either just saw a ghost, or just became one. You need a shot of cordrazine stat—”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s just a momentary reaction.” She smiled sadly. “Your colonel was right—one gets used to all this very quickly. Too quickly.”

  Jos’s puzzlement must have shown on his face, because Barriss added, “I—felt the destruction. Through the Force. Not the agony of their deaths—that was almost instantaneous. But the recoil in the Force, the reaction to whatever motivated this heinous act—that was…intense.”

  “‘Heinous’? Are you saying that what happened to the transport wasn’t an accident?”

  She looked into his eyes; though her flesh was pale, her eyes were bright and intense. “Yes, Captain Vondar, that is exactly what I’m saying. It was not a malfunction caused by spores, or system failure, or anything like that. It was sabotage. It was murder.”

  Admiral Bleyd received the news while taking his daily sauna. His secretary droid delivered it, because none of the other organic beings on board the MedStar could comfortably enter the steam-filled chamber. Bleyd kept the temperature so hot it would blister the skins of most of the officers and staff. To him, however, it was comfortable.

  He read the flimsi, then crumpled the thin sheet. When he opened his hand, the sheet’s molecular memory immediately re-formed it, without even wrinkles. This did little to improve the admiral’s mood.

  Dressed and back in his office, he paced angrily. Who was responsible for this? He did not for one microsecond believe that it had been an accident. It was sabotage, subversion, and no doubt the beginning of a covert campaign to promote demoralization. Was it a ploy of the Separatists? Though the popular front promulgated by the HoloNet was that this was a war to stop the madman Dooku from spreading anarchy throughout the galaxy, in reality it was about commerce and capitalism, as most wars—even “holy” ones—were. The Confederacy and the Republic had not fielded armies and navies across the galaxy in the service of lofty ideals and sentients’ rights. It was all about economics. The Separatists and the Republicans on Drongar were fighting over bota and the potential riches attached to it, whether they knew it or not. Therefore, it didn’t make a lot of sense for a Separatist to sabotage a shipment of the only precious commodity that the planet had to offer.

  But there were other players in this game; players of stealth, who moved pieces even more transparent than a dejarik holomonster.

  Players like Black Sun.

  Bleyd cursed himself for a fool. He had, perhaps, let his greed and his eagerness to achieve wealth and status spur him into a rash alliance. The plot had been simple—too simple, no doubt. Filba, in charge of the shipping orders, had been skimming a few kilos here and there of the processed plant. Because of its adaptogenic qualities, bota was in even more demand than spice in some corners of the galaxy. Its potential value was so great, in fact, that its use as a medication by the Rimsoos here on Drongar had been strictly interdicted—a rich bit of irony, that.

  But transporting bota, even at hyper lightspeeds, was difficult because of its extremely limited shelf life. And that was where Filba had outdone himself. The Hutt had discovered a way to ferry the contraband across the galaxy without loss of quality. How he had come across this knowledge, Bleyd was still not sure. Filba was many things, but definitely not a scientist, so it could not have been born in the Hutt’s scheming brain. Most likely he had found and followed a trail on the HoloNet, or bribed someone for the information. The important thing was that, as far as they knew, the process had not yet been discovered by either the Separatists or the Republic.

  Bota’s decay process stopped if it was embedded in blocks of carbonite.

  Preserved this way, it could be shipped anywhere—if the blockades of both sides could be dodged. That was where Black Sun had initially come in. Filba had connections to the interstellar criminal organization, and they had struck a bargain: for a percentage, Black Sun would provide a YT-1300f freighter, with a modified hyperdrive, that could slip past both Republic and Confed blockades and smuggle blocks of carbonite carrying bota to the far corners of the galaxy.

  But it was now quite apparent that Black Sun was not satisfied with just a cut of the illegal profits they were making. They wanted the nexu’s share. Bleyd assumed that this calamity was some kind of a warning shot. No doubt they would be contacting him and Filba soon to—

  Bleyd stopped pacing as a new thought struck him. Was Filba double-crossing him? It was no secret that the Hutt wanted to be a vigo. And what better way to ingratiate himself with the crime cartel than opening the way for Black Sun to take over a profitable smuggling operation?

  Bleyd nodded. Yes. He had to consider that possibility.

  He stepped over to the observation port, looked down at the planet. The terminator line was just reaching the peninsula where RMSU-7 was based. The thick transparisteel showed his reflection, overlaid on the planet below him. An appropriate image, he thought. Because if Filba has betrayed me, there’s no place on this world or any other where he can hide…

  9

  Not all of the troops’ medical problems were traumatic. There was a section at the Rimsoo that housed patients who had illnesses or infections not related to battle, but which were bad enough to require monitoring. Allergies, idiopathic fevers, and a fair number of respiratory sicknesses—not surprising, since the air was full of spores, pollen, and other as-yet-unknown agents. Every planet had its own particular set of medical problems—bacteria, viruses, and, as here, spores. The state of galactic medicine was such that most patients on most planets could be healed, or at least kept alive, most of the time—but not always. And
sometimes the side effects of the treatment were as bad as the cure.

  Barriss Offee had agreed to do a rotation in the ward because her use of the Force was particularly well adapted to this kind of medical treatment. The Force could not in itself close a gaping wound—at least she did not have that kind of control—but it could help a sick person’s weakened immune system overcome attacks from pathogens.

  As she scrubbed down, the Padawan had other things on her mind. That the transport had blown up had not been an accident—this she knew with certainty. Was that sabotage somehow connected to her mission regarding the bota? There was no logical reason to assume so, but she felt that it was. Was that the Force prompting her? Or was it simply intuition, or even mere imagination?

  Her contacts with the staff on Drongar had not produced any dark undertones in the Force thus far. The doctors, surgeons, nurses, and support people all seemed to be more or less what they claimed. Yes, there were things going on behind their facades, tensions that they hid, passions that they suppressed, but nothing that smacked of espionage or thievery.

  Of course, she hadn’t met everyone yet, and there were some species that she simply couldn’t read at this point in her training. The minds of Hutts, for instance. Hutts’ inner selves were very slippery; when she reached for the core of one, it felt as if she were trying to pick up a transparisteel ball covered in ramjet lube. She was best with her own kind—so much so that at times during the last couple of years she had felt hopelessly provincial.

  An FX-7 med droid handed her the flatscreen chart of the patient in the Green Bed. Because the clones all looked exactly alike, each wore a Rimsoo ID tag around his right wrist. The staff had also taken to putting little colored pulse-stickers on the beds, and so, it had been explained to her, most of the nurses and doctors tended to refer to them as the Red Bed, the Blue Bed, the Purple Bed, and so on.

  The man in the Green Bed had an MUO—malady of unknown origin—that somehow caused his blood vessels to dilate suddenly, as if he were plunging into deep shock. The causative agent had not yet been found. The result kept his blood pressure so low that if he tried to stand, or even sit up quickly, he passed out from lack of blood feeding his brain. The planetside specialist in xenobiotics, a human woman named Ree Ohr, called it orthostatic hypotensive syncope of idiopathic origin—which, translated, meant: “somebody who faints every time he tries to stand or sit up quickly, and we don’t know why.” Doctors put great store into labels, as if naming an illness were in itself somehow going to cure it. The Jedi healers tried to be more holistic in their approach to treating the ill.