Star Wars - The Bounty Hunter Wars - The Mandalorian Armor

by K. W. Jeter

  glowing red, showed on the panel embedded in the

  magnetically reinforced durasteel. "Don't move. I promise

  I won't hurt you-but do n't move."

  "Are you frightened?" The taller of the two medical

  droids, a basic MD5 general-practitioner model, scanned

  her against the hole's rough circle of evening sky. "Your

  pulse is quite elevated for a standard hu-manoid form.

  Plus"-a tiny grid irised open on the droid's dark-

  enameled head, drawing in an air sample-"your

  perspiration contains significant levels of hormones

  indicating an emotionally agitated state."

  "Shut up. I also want you to do that." Rocks slid

  loose beneath her as she scrambled down toward the

  droids. "Just shut up."

  "Did you hear that?" The taller droid swiveled its

  multilensed gaze toward its companion, a white-banded MD3

  pharmaceutical model. "She's telling us to be quiet."

  "Rudeness." Dust sifted from the shorter one as it

  tucked its syringes and dispensing appendages closer to

  itself. "Foresight of difficulties."

  "Great-" Anger spurred her heart even faster. "Then

  you can't say you didn't know this was coming." She

  grabbed a vital-signs monitor sticking out antennalike

  from the taller one's head and slammed the droid against

  the dirt wall of the warren entrance, hard enough to send

  the lights dancing across its front display panel.

  Another pull in the opposite direction sent it crashing

  into the other droid; that one squealed as it toppled

  over, exposing the wheeled traction devices below the

  lower rim of its cylindrical body. "Now, how about

  shutting up?"

  "It seems like a very good idea." The taller droid

  retreated, flattening itself against the unopened secu

  rity hatch.

  She gulped down a deep breath, trying through sheer

  willpower to slow down her heartbeat and still the

  trembling in her hands. Few violent acts had been

  required in her life-as far as she knew; she had no

  memories of any life before finding herself at Jabba's

  palace-and even as something as minor as banging a little

  sense into the medical droids' heads was enough to dizzy

  her. Get used to it, she sternly told herself. The

  realization had already come to her that a lot more scary

  things were going to happen. That was all right; at least

  she was alive. Others in her position hadn't been so

  fortunate. The memory was still vivid inside her, of

  seeing the other dancing girl falling into the pit

  beneath Jabba's palace. That memory ended with screams,

  and the slavering growls of Jabba's pet rancor.

  "Excuse me, your ladyship . . ."

  That puzzled her. Neither Jabba the Hutt nor any of

  the others at his court had ever called her anything like

  that.

  "But you require medical attention." The taller droid

  kept its speech mechanism at minimal volume. A handlike

  examination module, with a fiber-optic light source

  mounted at the wrist, reached tentatively toward her

  face. "That's a very bad wound. . . ."

  She slapped away the droid's hand, before it could

  touch the edges of the jagged line running down one side

  of her face. "It'll heal."

  "With a scar." The taller droid shone the beam of its

  handlight lower, down to where the wound, the physical

  memory of a Gamorrean pikestaff, ended below her throat.

  "We could do something about that. To make it better."

  "Why bother?" Other memories, nearly as unpleasant as

  those from the pit, flooded her thoughts. Whatever her

  life might have been before, the time in Jabba's palace

  had been enough to convince her that beauty was a

  dangerous thing to possess. It'd been just enough to

  entice Jabba's sticky hands-and the hands of those

  underlings who had been his current favorites-but not

  enough to protect her when the Hutt grew bored with her

  charms. "I can do without it," she said bitterly.

  "Anger," noted the other medical droid. Need

  lessly-the scent of negative emotion was almost palpable

  in the warren hole's entrance. "Treatment

  inadvisability."

  "I remember seeing you." The taller droid's low,

  soothing voice continued. "At Jabba's palace." The

  handlight beam moved across her face. "You were part of

  the entertainment."

  "I was-" She glanced over her shoulder toward the

  warren's darkening entrance, to make sure no one was

  approaching, then turned back toward the droids. "But not

  now."

  "Oh?" An inquiring gaze seemed to move behind the

  droid's optic receptors. "Then what are you?"

  "I ... I don't know. . . ."

  "Name," spoke the shorter of the two droids.

  "Designation."

  "They called me ... Jabba called me Neelah." She

  frowned. Something-the absence of memory, rather than

  anything she could actually recall-told her that wasn't

  right. That name's a lie, she thought. "But . . . that's

  what they called me. . . ."

  "There's worse names." Voice brightening, the taller

  droid tried to comfort her. "Consider my own subidentity

  coding-" Its complicated hand pointed to a data readout

  on the front of its dark metallic body. "SHS1-B. Most

  sentient creatures can't even pronounce it. This one's

  luckier."

  "1e-XE." The shorter droid extruded a pill-dispensing

  module and gently tapped the back of her hand with it.

  "Acquaintance; pleasure."

  They're working on me, thought Neelah. She knew

  enough about medical droids-from where?- to be aware of

  the soothing effects they were designed to provoke in

  their patients. Anesthetic radiation; she could feel a

  low-level electromagnetic field locking into sync with

  the neurons inside her head, drawing out the lulling

  endorphins. . . .

  "Knock it off," she growled. She shook her head,

  snapping herself free of the droids' influence. "I don't

  need that, either. Not now." Neelah drew one hand back in

  a small but effective fist. "If I have to whack you

  again, I will."

  Like extinguishing a torch, the field abruptly cut

  out. "As you wish," said SHS1-B. "We're only trying to

  help."

  "You can do that by telling me where he is." The

  wound across her face stung once more, but she ignored

  it.

  "Who?"

  She nodded toward the security hatch. "The bounty

  hunter. The one whose hiding place this is."

  "Dengar?" One of SHS1-B's metallic hands pointed

  toward the warren opening behind her. "He's back at

  Jabba's palace."

  "Supplies," noted le-XE. "Various."

  "That's right." SHS1-B opened a small cargo pod

  bolted to the side of its body. "He sent us back here

  with what we required. As you see-antibiotics, metabolic

  accelerators, sterile gel dressings-"

  "Fine." Neelah interrupted the droid's inventory of

  its contents. "But Dengar-he's still back at the palace?"
r />   SHS1-B's head unit gave a nod. "He said he wanted to

  find one of Jabba's caches of off-planet edibles. That

  might take some time, though-the palace has been very

  badly looted by the Hutt's former employees."

  "Mess." le-XE rotated the top dome of its cylinder

  back and forth. "Disgust."

  There wasn't time to consider her decision. "Open the

  hatch," said Neelah, pointing to the magnetically sealed

  disk, the coded digits still blinking in its readout

  panel. "I want to go inside."

  "Dengar told us not to let-" The taller of the two

  droids caught the look in Neelah's eyes. "All right, all

  right; I'm opening it."

  The tunnel on the other side of the hatch descended

  at close to a forty-five-degree angle. Heading down it,

  with the droids clunking behind her, Neelah felt a

  claustrophobic panic crawling along her spine. The

  darkness and the close, scarcely ventilated air felt like

  the tunnel through which she'd crawled to escape from

  Jabba's palace. After what had happened to her poor

  friend Oola, any risk had seemed preferable to winding up

  as rancor food.

  Though her own death had almost found her, before she

  had gotten away. The scything blade of a Gamorrean

  perimeter guard's pikestaff had slashed the raw-edged

  wound on her face. She'd left the blade buried halfway

  through the guard's throat; Jabba had always made the

  mistake of hiring thugs who were bigger than they were

  fast. She'd only felt fear afterward, as she'd stepped

  over the widening pool of blood, then ran into the

  desert.

  In this dimly lit space, she was finally able to

  stand upright in a central chamber. "Where's the other

  one?" She glanced over her shoulder at the two medical

  droids as they emerged from the tunnel and clicked back

  into their normal positions. "The one you're taking care

  of?"

  "Dengar told us-" SHS1-B's voice snapped silent.

  "Over here," it said grudgingly. The taller droid led

  Neelah past disorganized stacks of weapons and ammunition

  modules, mixed with the discarded wrappings of

  autothermal field-ration containers. "It's not really

  suitable-this patient should've been medevac'd to a

  hospital immediately-but we've done the best we can. . .

  ."

  Neelah tuned out the droid's words. At the low,

  rounded entrance to the side chamber, she halted and

  peered inside. "Is he ... is he awake?" A dim glow filled

  the space; a black cable ran from a shielded worklight to

  a fuel-cell power generator in the middle of the main

  chamber's clutter. "Can he see me?"

  "Not with what we gave him." SHSl-B stood just behind

  her. "I prescribed a five-percent obliviane solution from

  le-XE's anesthetic stocks. On a constant basis, too; the

  patient's injuries are unusually severe. That was one of

  the reasons we had to go back to the palace, to try and

  find more. But if we didn't, the pain from this kind of

  trauma could go into a feedback loop and completely burn

  out th e patient's central nervous system."

  She stepped into the chamber, ducking under the

  doorway. An improvised bed, polyfoam stuffed inside

  flexible freight sheathing, left only a small space

  between the unconscious man and the medical droids'

  intravenous units and monitoring equipment. She squeezed

  past the humming machines, dials, and tiny screens

  ticking with slow pulses of light, and stood looking down

  at someone whose face she had never seen before.

  One of her hands reached to touch him, but stopped a

  few centimeters away from his brow. He looks worse than I

  do, thought Neelah. The man's flesh looked as raw as it

  had when she'd found him the first time, out in the

  desert; the skin that he had lost in the Sarlacc's

  digestive tract was replaced now with a transparent

  membrane, linked to tubes trickling fluids from the wall

  of machines alongside the bed. "What's this?" She touched

  the clear substance; it felt cold and slick.

  "Sterile nutrient casing." SHS1-B reached out and

  made a slight adjustment to one of the equipment

  controls. "It's what we normally use on severe burn

  victims, when there has been major epidermal loss. When

  we were in the service of the late Jabba the Hutt, we saw

  and treated a lot of burns."

  "Explosions," said le-XE.

  "Just so." SHSl-B lifted part of its carapace in an

  approximation of a humanoid shrug. "The kind of persons

  who worked for Jabba-the rougher sort of his

  employees-they were always blowing themselves up, one way

  or another."

  "Turnover. High rate."

  "That's true; there were always some we just couldn't

  put back together. But le-XE did get rather skilled at

  burn-treatment protocols. This individual's somatic

  trauma, however, is a little different." SHS1-B scanned

  over the unconscious figure. "No one, as far as can be

  recalled from our memory banks, has ever survived even

  temporary ingestion by a Sarlacc. So we're doing the best

  we can, with what we've got."

  Neelah glanced over at the medical droid. "Is he

  going to live?"

  "Hard to tell. An exact prognosis for this patient is

  difficult to make, due to both the severity and the

  unusual nature of his injuries. It's not just the epider

  mal loss; le-XE and I have determined that there was also

  exposure to unknown toxins while he was in the Sarlacc's

  gut. We've attempted to counteract the effects of those

  substances, but the results are uncertain. If we had

  access to records of other such humanoid-Sarlacc

  encounters, the probability of his survival could be

  calculated. But we don't. Though just on a personal

  basis"-SHSl-B's voice lowered, a simulation of

  confidentiality-"I'm surprised that this individual is

  still alive at all. Something else must be keeping him

  going. Something inside him."

  The droid's words puzzled her. "Like what?"

  "I don't know," replied SHS1-B. "Some things are not

  a matter of medical knowledge. Not the kind I have, at

  any rate."

  She looked back at the figure on the bed. Even like,

  this, with his mere human face exposed and unconscious

  beneath the machines' care, his presence brought a

  chilling unease around her own heart. There's something,

  thought Neelah, between us. Some invisible connection,

  that she had caught the tiniest glimpse of back in

  Jabba's palace. When she had looked up to the gallery and

  she had seen this man, unmistakable even when masked;

  seen him and felt the touch of fear. Not because of what

  she'd remembered at that moment, but because of what she

  couldn't remember. If this man stood somewhere in her

  past, he stood in shadows, stretching back farther and

  deeper than any mere rancor pit.

  "What about Dengar?" With another effort of will,

  Neelah brought herself bac
k to the present. "Why's he

  doing this? Taking care of him?"

  "I have no idea." SHS1-B's optic receptors gazed at

  her blankly. "He didn't tell us, when he came to the

  palace and found us. And frankly, that's not a matter of

  concern to us."

  "Unimportance," said le-XE.

  "We're programmed to provide medical care. After

  Jabba the Hutt's death, we were just glad to be provided

  with an opportunity to do that."

  That left the other bounty hunter's agenda as a

  mystery to her. She'd taken a chance when she left this

  one out on the desert sands, where Dengar would find him.

  She'd been horrified by the extent of his injuries; there

  would have been no way she could have taken care of the

  rawly bleeding man. In Jabba's palace, she had seen

  enough to be aware of the enmity, the professional

  rivalry and personal hatred, that existed among all

  bounty hunters-but then, this one would have been no more

  dead if Dengar had found him, then gone ahead and stood

  on his throat until he'd stopped moving. Instead, a

  certain strange sense of relief had stirred in her as

  she'd crouched behind an outcropping and had witnessed

  Dengar examining the injured man. That same inexplicable

  emotion had risen when she'd followed the medical droids

  to this hiding place and had found the man still alive. .

  . .

  There wasn't time to ponder what that meant. You've

  been here long enough, she warned herself. Whatever

  Dengar's motives might be for keeping his rival alive, he

  might not be so charitably inclined toward her. Bounty

  hunters were secretive creatures; they had to be, in

  their trade. Dengar might not be happy to find that

  someone else was aware of not only his hiding place, but

  what-and who-was inside it.

  "I'm going to leave now," Neelah told the droids.

  "You carry on with your work. This man must stay alive-do

  you understand that?"

  "We'll do our best. That's what we were created for."

  "And-you're not to tell Dengar anything about me.

  About my being here at all."

  "But he might ask," said SHSl-B. "Whether somebody

  had been here or not. We're programmed to be truthful."

  "Let's put it this way." Neelah leaned her scarred

  face closer to the droid's optics. "If you tell Dengar

  about me, I'll come back here and take you apart, and

  I'll scatter your pieces all across the Dune Sea. Both of

  you. And then you won't be able to do your jobs, will