The droids would load everything else in the cubicle, and far more efficiently than he could ever hope to do. Even if everything played out perfectly, though, there still wasn’t any way under the merciless sun that the Rimsoo was going to be ready to leave by 1800—not unless the droids were all magicians.
Zan had gotten there ahead of him and was stuffing his socks into his quetarra case around the instrument.
“You can’t take that on the transport,” Jos pointed out as he packed. “It’ll have to go on the freight carrier.”
“I know. Why do you think I’m padding it with my socks?”
“Theft insurance? Anyone who opens it and gets a whiff of your socks will never steal anything again. Besides, I thought that case was reinforced duraplast.” Jos zipped his go-bag shut.
“It’d have to be made of neutronium before I’d trust it with those droids. Some of the ASPs used to be starship cargo handlers. They could ‘accidentally’ destroy a block of carbonite in a durasteel safe.”
“Attention, all personnel,” came the PA ’cast. “The transports will be—”
A bomb went off in Jos’s ear—at least that’s what it seemed like. There was a deep rumble that suddenly dopplered up and into the ultrasonic, and the overhead light fell onto his bunk, shattering the tough plastoid legs as the bunk collapsed onto the floor.
“What—?”
“The energy shield backup generator just overloaded. It’s down,” Zan said. “Next direct hit’s going to fry anybody outside protective shelter like a mulch fritter.”
“How do you know that?”
“I spent one summer working for my uncle, who installed EM shielding and domes for the Vuh’Jinêau Mining Company. I know what a shield overload sounds like. We want to be somewhere else, fast.” He snapped the quetarra case shut and grabbed his go-bag. “Hurry, Jos. The arrestors might help against lightning and even partially deflect a laser blast, but a direct hit’ll vaporize them. Us, too.” He gave the case a last concerned look, then hurried for the door.
Jos was right behind him. “Don’t the Separatists realize that all these explosions are ruining the bota crops?”
“Maybe you want to wait here and bring it up with them. Me, I’d rather send them a nasty letter.” Zan plunged through the door to join the exodus, with Jos following.
Den Dhur had been through hurried evacuations a couple of times before, so this one didn’t worry him overmuch. Not until the shield went down. Then he started to get a little nervous. True, he was a journalist, and in theory the other side wouldn’t shoot him if they scanned his ID tag, but there was more than one war zone with a cooked reporter or two to show that the system wasn’t perfect. The advancing Separatist troops probably weren’t targeting the medical facilities particularly—at least they weren’t supposed to be—but collateral hits were bound to happen with all the path-clearing bombardment going on, and whether noncom or soldier, a body dead for a few days in this weather smelled just as bad either way.
Den hurried toward his assigned evacuation spot, using what available cover there was along the way. Already big clouds of greasy smoke boiled up from the swamp as high-oxy fires raged. You wouldn’t think a swamp could burn, but you’d be wrong—dead wrong—if you based your survival on that. He’d once seen an entire continent aflame on—what was the name of that planet? He’d suddenly gone blank. Well, now was not the time to worry about old dangers, not when the stink of burning vegetation and ash falling like hot black snow told him that a droid army was slashing and burning its way closer every minute. Now was the time to leave the party; he could jet down the memory space lanes later—if he had a later.
Everywhere, transport droids, ASPs, and loadlifters performed their tasks, breaking down shelters, packing crates, working fast and efficiently. Also working in company with the disassemblers were several small wrecker droids, which shoveled up debris or used their built-in plasma torches to melt down scrap metal, plasteel cables, and other rubble considered not worth hauling away, but still too valuable to leave behind as raw materials for the enemy. Classic scorched-dirt policy, and practiced by both sides.
It wasn’t going too badly, Den thought. This place should be loaded out in twenty or thirty minutes and on its way to a more secure location. By the time the droid army arrived, all they’d find was a dry patch in the swamp, with nothing remaining behind in the fading evening light. With any luck at all, anyway.
The big problem, of course, lay in giving up the bota fields. Even though it grew like—well, like weeds—all over Tanlassa, official policy was to prevent Separatist access to it in any way possible. Even as Den continued on his way, watching the base literally coming down around his ears, harvesters both mechanical and organic were gathering up as much of the precious plant as possible—what little was still viable after all the heavy artillery pounding. A transport was standing by to carry the harvesters and their cargo to safety, while several modified decon droids waited to douse with herbicide the bota that had to be left behind. If you couldn’t have it, you didn’t want your enemy to have it, either. A shame to destroy stuff that valuable, but casualties of war and all that.
Five hundred meters away, there came a bright, actinic flash, followed by a loud boom! and the sense of air rushing in that direction. Then a wave of heat, noticeable even in this hellish place, washed over him.
Den grimaced. Had that thermal bomb drifted a degree or two in this direction on launch, he and the rest of the Republic personnel here would be charred history. It was definitely time to leave.
He saw part of the surgical crew in the rapidly darkening camp as they scrambled to get to their pickup points. Jos, Zan, Tolk, and a couple of the techs hurried through the gathering darkness toward a surgical evac shuttle that hovered a few feet above the ground. I-Five was with them.
More smoke blew into what was left of the camp. The heat rose as the fires grew, creating pockets of unique weather. An occasional charged particle or blaster beam lanced through the gathering gloom, still distant but all too visible, eerie green or red shafts of ionized air that Den imagined he could hear sizzling through the burning swamp.
Noise, heat, explosions, the stink of fear in the air. Different each place he’d been, but exactly the same.
Run! Fast! Hide! You could taste it.
Personnel transports floated into view, repulsor turbines thrumming and burbling, and worker droids began herding people onto them. Good, good—Den hurried toward them.
Something blew up on the far side of the camp—it sounded like a generator flywheel coming apart, judging from the metallic whistles that followed. Den hunched down lower as he scuttled along. Wouldn’t want to be in front of those hurtling chunks of metal—sometimes a high-rev flywheel could send shrapnel screaming for kilometers before it buried itself deep into whatever it hit—be that dirt and mud or flesh and bone.
There were a thousand ways to die in a war zone, but the results were all the same…
38
The evac point for Jos, Tolk, and several others was just ahead, and Jos saw there was a vessel waiting for them. He didn’t recognize the type, but it looked big enough, fast enough, and empty enough to suit him just fine. He felt a sense of relief. They were going to make it!
Through the smoke and the gathering gloom he could just make out Zan, Tolk, I-Five, and one or two other med techs hurrying along with him. “You people doing all right?” he called. “Anyone need help?”
“Yes—all of you,” the droid replied. I-Five was striding rapidly along, more sure-footed on the uneven ground than any of them. “For example,” he said, looking at Jos and pointing ahead of him, “you’re about to walk into a large patch of purple stingwort.”
Jos drew up short. The droid was right—a swath of the venomous plant, one of the nastier examples of Drongar’s indigenous flora, coated the ground directly ahead of him. I-Five’s warning had saved him from days of excruciating pain, if not possible anaphylactic shock and death.
“Thanks,” Jos said as he moved quickly along the trail the droid had cleared for him. “I didn’t know you packed a laser.”
“I didn’t either, until about thirty minutes ago,” I-Five replied. “Another link in my grid became accessible. I also have some unique harmonic vocalization abilities, it seems.”
“Really,” Zan panted as he tried to keep pace—the Zabrak had never been big on physical fitness, and was paying the price for that now. “We’ll have to try some duets together—assuming we make it through this move in one piece.”
“Don’t worry,” Jos said. “This time tomorrow you’ll be serenading us all with that thing you’ve been working on—you know, the one that sounds like someone strangling a Kowakian monkey-lizard?”
“If you’re referring to my latest tone poem,” Zan replied somewhat stiffly, “All I can say is—”
Whatever he was about to say was lost as another particle beam blast, perhaps a hundred meters away, showered them all with mud from the nearby bog. The organics cried out in disgust—I-Five just kept on walking as the effluvium slid from his metallic skin.
“Nice trick,” Tolk said as she tried to wipe her face with her sleeve, which merely moved the thick sludge from one place to another. Jos resisted an urge to try to help her—after all, he wasn’t any cleaner than she was.
“Isn’t it? I’m rather pleased with it,” I-Five said smugly. “My integumentary sensors analyze the mud’s chemical composition and viscosity coefficient, then electrostatically repel it. Another little trick of which I am capable that I discovered only recently.”
“I’ll remember to ask for that when I have my next upgrade,” Tolk said.
“Of course, some of the same effect can be accomplished by ultrasonic vibration. Please allow me.”
“Wow!” Zan put both hands to his ears as he stumbled slightly. “Easy, will you? That hurts!”
After a moment’s puzzlement, Jos realized that Zan, whose ears obviously accommodated notes his own could not hear, was reacting to an ultrasound that I-Five was producing. A moment later he realized why—the result was much the same as a sonic shower. A considerable amount of the muck and mire seemed to magically evaporate from their skin and clothes. They weren’t clean, but at least they no longer looked like Fondorian mud puppies.
“I-Five, I take back every nasty thing I ever said about you,” Jos told him. “Except for the times you beat me at sabacc.”
They reached the evac vessel’s boarding ramp and hustled into the vehicle. A few people were already on board, including Klo Merit and Barriss Offee. Jos blew out a soft and quiet sigh. Safe.
“Are all your memory gaps closed now?” Zan asked I-Five as the ship lifted on its repulsor beams and began its ponderous journey.
I-Five said, “Not quite. But the process seems to be heuristic—the more connection nodes my cyberinformatic programs implement, the faster the process goes.”
“Good,” Tolk said. “I’m looking forward to learning about your heroic moments.”
“You and me both,” the droid said.
Jos glanced through the viewport, but there was nothing to see save an occasional flicker of what might be either heat lightning or Separatist weaponry. Other than that, the Drongaran night was as black as an assassin’s heart.
“How does the idea of being a hero make you feel?” he asked I-Five, and it was only after the question had left his lips that he realized that it had not felt odd in the least to ask a droid about its feelings. Welcome to stochastic hyperspace, where all bets are wild…
I-Five seemed to be giving the answer some thought. “It’s intriguing,” he said at last. “Somewhat exciting as well. As I explained to Padawan Offee, human behavior fascinates me, and a big part of that is your ability to choose the path that harms the least. Not all species have that option.
“Obviously my emotional and intellectual parameters were determined by human manufacturers. My fear is that I’ve been programmed—or reprogrammed—to sacrifice myself, if necessary, for the greater good. If a moment for such a heroic act comes, I would want to make the decision, not some predetermined algorithm. And I’d like to believe I’d choose the greater good.”
A utilitarian droid, Jos thought. Who’d have thought it?
A burst of sickly greenish light from above leaked through the viewports. It didn’t fade, and after a moment Jos realized that the Separatists had fired one or more hover-flares. A moment later an explosion, uncomfortably close, rattled the vessel’s framework.
“I hope they’re not getting our range,” Zan said. He glanced through the still-open cargo bay entrance—and suddenly froze, his face registering stark horror in the putrid light.
“No!” he screamed, and leapt for the open ramp.
39
Den saw his transport idle to a halt at the pickup point just ahead. At least the big, rectangular vessels had some armor plating—once you were inside you would have a little more protection than being out in the open afforded. He aimed for the transport. In the pallid lights of the hover-flares he saw his favorite pubtender, Baloob the Ortolan, clamber up the boarding ramp into the craft. He grinned. Good. A being who can mix drinks that well deserves to survive—
Another ear-smiting explosion rocked the area, knocking Den from his feet. A good thing, too—before he could get up, several chunks of metal, one the size of a landspeeder, hurtled just above him like meteors, the shrieks of their passage splitting the air. Den grabbed his ears in pain.
A freighter barge went past on his other side, repulsors humming. Two of the smaller flywheel chunks hit it hard enough to embed themselves in its hull. The impacts momentarily canted the barge, and whoever had packed it had apparently missed a pressor field node or two, because several pieces of luggage fell off and went bouncing over the wet ground.
Somebody’ll be looking for clean underwear tonight, Den thought. Too bad—
“No!” somebody screamed.
Den glanced at the surgical evac vehicle, fifty meters or so ahead. He saw I-Five restraining Zan, who looked like he was trying to jump from the vessel. Den followed Zan’s frantic gaze and saw the reason: one of the fallen pieces from the cargo carrier was an instrument case—the one Zan carried his quetarra in.
Most of the base’s personnel were loaded and moving away from the chaotic scene now, and Den was about ten meters away from joining them on his waiting transport.
“Stop!” Zan screamed again, nearly breaking free. If it wasn’t for I-Five holding him, the Zabrak would have leapt from the carrier in a futile attempt to save his quetarra. Futile, because by the time he’d reached the instrument all the transports would be too far away and moving too fast for him to catch. He wasn’t an athlete, the Zabrak. And what pilot would risk a ship filled with patients and doctors to rescue just one man, no matter how impressive his music?
As Den watched, I-Five and Jos Vondar hauled the stricken Zan back into the carrier, which continued to move off into the twilight, slowly picking up speed.
Den headed for his own transport at a trot. He looked at the quetarra case. It was only a dozen meters away—if he changed course now, he might possibly be able to grab it up and still reach his transport—
Something else blew up, much closer this time. He heard the unmistakable thwip! of shrapnel zipping past him, mere centimeters away. Not as big as the flywheel fragments, but big enough to punch a hole through him and let his life out very quickly.
Your ride is over there, Den! Go, go, go!
But Zan’s anguished cry echoed in his mind—the cry of someone who had just lost a big part of himself.
Without further thought, Den turned and trotted toward the fallen
instrument case.
His inner voice went straight to lightspeed: Are you milking insane? Get on the transport, now!
“In a minute,” he said aloud. “Just got to grab one more thing—”
His inner voice was not placated. Fool! Moron! Idiot! You would risk your life for a—a—musical instrument? This is beyond lunacy!
“You heard him play,” Den said. “A guy like that needs his art to survive.”
His inner voice called him names that would make a Slime Sea sailor blink.
But by then, he was there. He grabbed the case without slowing down, even though it felt as if his arm was being pulled from its socket—how could such light and beautiful music come out of such a heavy instrument?—and veered back toward the transport.
He could see several beings gathered at the open cargo gate, among them Zuzz, the Ugnaught who had spilled his guts—or whatever Ugnaughts used for guts—about Filba. It felt like months ago; hard to believe it had only been a week. They were all waving frantically at him to hurry. And he was trying, but the blasted case seemed to be increasing its mass exponentially every minute. And it was too awkward to carry by the handle. He swung it up and over his head, hanging on to the case’s neck with both hands and letting the body cover his back like a bizarre carapace.
Something big and heavy slapped the case from behind suddenly, knocking it into Den’s back and sending him sprawling. The sound of the explosion took half a second to reach him after he was up and moving again, so it wasn’t that close, he told himself.
Just close enough to almost kill him.
Den set his teeth, grabbed the case with both hands, and ran for all he was worth.
Eager hands reached down, grabbed him, pulled him on board. The transport swooped up and forward, leaving most of Den’s viscera back on the ground, or at least that’s how it felt. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the ground where buildings had stood only moments before was now scorched and pitted dirt. As he watched, another mortar hit, producing a blast that nearly burst his eardrums and almost fried his optic nerves. He realized that both of his droptacs were gone—probably knocked out of his eyes when he was hit by that concussion wave. Ditto his sonic dampeners.
Star War®: MedStar I: Battle Surgeons Page 24
