Star War®: MedStar I: Battle Surgeons

by Michael Reaves

  Jos glanced at Tolk. “You really should know better than to say things like that.”

  The second storm subsided around midnight, though the skies remained cloudy. Drongar had no large moon, and so Barriss, standing just outside one of the doors to the officers’ quarters, was surprised to see the huts and grounds illuminated by a wan light that shifted among green, pearl, and turquoise hues, as if the clouds were somehow noctilucent.

  “It’s the spores,” Zan told her. She was not surprised that he had stepped out alongside her; she’d felt his presence in the Force before she could see him. “Some strains glow in the dark,” he continued. “Clouds make a good backdrop for them. Though you’d think all the rain would wash them out of the air.”

  She nodded. The bands of variegated light, twisting slowly far overhead, were more impressive than many rainbows and auroras she’d seen on far more hospitable worlds.

  It was nice to know that even Drongar had some beauty to offer.

  “A lot prettier than the night sky, actually,” Zan said. “We’re so far out on the Rim that you don’t see that many stars. And the whorl itself isn’t visible from this hemisphere.” He grinned at her. “Not even a full moon to walk hand-in-hand under.”

  Almost by reflex, she felt his aura gently with the Force, and found nothing in him but friendliness. She smiled back at him. “Did you have a moon on…?”

  “Talus. No, we had something much more spectacular: Tralus, our sister world.”

  “Ah. The Double Worlds of the Corellian system. Two planets, orbiting each other as they circle their sun.”

  Zan nodded and looked impressed. “You know your galactic cartography.”

  “I would be a poor excuse for a Jedi if I did not.”

  He looked at her for a moment. Barriss could hear the sounds of the night all about them: the buzzing of the scavenger moths, the dopplering hum of a worker droid as it pursued its tasks, and, far away, the occasional distant crackle of energy weapons and sharper cracks of slugthrowers. She might have thought she was imagining them, but she could feel the reverberations of death and destruction quite clearly through the Force.

  “And who were you,” Zan asked, “before you became part of the Order?”

  She hesitated as well before replying. “No one. I was brought to the Temple as an infant.”

  “Have you never tried to contact your parents, to find your homeworld’s—”

  Barriss looked away. “I was born on a liner in deep space. My parents’ identities are unknown. I call no world save Coruscant my home.”

  Zan said softly, “My apologies, Padawan Offee. I didn’t mean to pry.”

  She turned back and smiled at him. “It is I who must apologize. There is no excuse for rudeness. As Master Yoda says, ‘If in anger you answer, then in shame you dwell.’ ”

  “He’s your instructor?”

  “I am not Padawan to him; my Master is Luminara Unduli. Master Yoda is one of the most respected members of the Council.” She hesitated, then added, “He has been a mentor to nearly all the Jedi currently in the Order. One student, to his great disappointment, left the Order and turned to the dark side of the Force.”

  “I don’t have children,” Zan said, “though I hope to change that once I’m off this damp rock. I would imagine that to lose a pupil like that must be almost as bad as a parent losing his child.”

  She nodded. “I hope that, someday, after this war is over, he will be able to return to training students. He has much to offer.”

  “As do you, Padawan Offee.” Zan yawned and turned back to the door. “I’m going to grab some sleep while I can. You might want to do the same; if we’re lucky, maybe tomorrow won’t be too much worse than today.”

  He disappeared into the building. Barriss lingered a moment longer, thinking.

  She had deflected his questions about her path by changing subject of the conversation. Why? she wondered. She wasn’t sure. It had nothing to do with her assignment, and she was not ashamed of her origins. Perhaps it was just the shock of the new, of being on a different world once more.

  She looked up again at the glowing spores overhead. There were species and cultures that believed souls traveled among the stars, flitting endlessly from one celestial object to another. Those strands up there could almost be mistaken for something like that.

  She noticed then that another strain of spores was working its way across the clouds; a band of crimson. It interwove with the subtler colors, its borders increasing steadily. By the time dawn broke, she knew, it would be the dominant hue.

  Barriss turned away, going back inside the barracks before she could see the other strands overwhelmed by the red one.

  5

  Sitting in the chow hall and eating a breakfast of grainmush cakes, poptree syrup, and dried kelp strips, Barriss Offee suddenly sensed a disturbance in the Force. The energy of it was that of impending combat—something she had learned to recognize. She stopped and tried to focus on a direction.

  “Something?” Jos said. He was sipping a mug of parichka a few seats away.

  She turned to look at him. “You said we are well behind our own lines here?”

  “Yes. Why?”

  “There is some kind of confrontation happening, quite close by.”

  The surgeon looked at his chrono. “Ah. That would be the teräs käsi match. Want to go take a look?”

  Last night’s rain had washed away some of the acrid pollen and spore-float, but the afternoon air still had a moldy, sour tang to it as Jos led her from the compound. A hundred meters away, in a small natural amphitheater eroded from rock, perhaps twenty or twenty-five people were gathered; troops, mostly, though Barriss could also see a few humanoids of various types. They sat or stood in the rough semicircle formed by the rocks, watching intently the unfolding spectacle before them. There were a few shouts of encouragement, but the crowd was, for the most part, silent.

  On the floor of the amphitheater was a large, spray-foam mat, and upon this stood two humans. The men were bare to the waist, and wore thinskin briefs and wrestling slippers. Both appeared to be physically fit, though neither was particularly large or bulky. One was short, dark-haired, and swarthy, thick with muscle through the chest and shoulders; the other was tall and slender, almost blond, and had several unrevised scars on his arms. The scars didn’t look like ritual ones—if there was a pattern, Barriss couldn’t see it. But it was obvious from their shapes that the marks had come from blades.

  Barriss felt another roil of the Force, and knew this was where the disturbance had originated.

  As they moved closer, Jos said, “Hand-to-hand combat instructors. The short guy is Usu Cley—he’s from Rimsoo Five, about ninety kilometers toward the south pole from here. Cley was the Ninth Fleet Middle-Mass Champion two years running. I’ve seen him fight a couple of times—he’s very good.

  “The other one is new; he’s a replacement for our unit’s instructor, who got blown up by a suicide droid last week. I haven’t seen him move yet. Are you a betting woman, Jedi Offee? They aren’t due to start for a few more minutes. You could make a few credits—line is two-to-one in favor of Cley.”

  The Force swirled again in her, imparting a definite sense of menace, and it came, no question, from the blond fighter. “What the new man’s name?”

  Jos frowned, searching his memory. “Pow, Fow…something…”

  “Phow Ji?”

  “Yeah. You know him?”

  “You have a bet down?”

  “Ten credits on Cley.”

  Barriss smiled. Jos looked puzzled. “What?”

  They stopped at one of the higher bluffs overlooking the sparring area. The two fighters moved toward the middle of the mat. The referee, a Gotal, stood between them, giving them instructions. It didn’t take long; apparently outside of killing one another, just about anything went.

  She said, “A couple of years ago there was a teräs käsi tourney on Bunduki—that’s where the art originated, you know. I
n the final match, a Jedi Knight, Joclad Danva, met the local champion.”

  “A Jedi? Against a local? That hardly seems fair.”

  “Danva had the peculiar skill of being able to divorce himself from the Force at times. He never used its power in his matches; only his personal skill, which was considerable. He was a virtuoso with twin lightsabers, one of the few ever to master the Jar’Kai technique. I’ve seen holos of him, and he was a fantastic fighter. He could hold his own with most of the Jedi in practice.”

  “And…?”

  “And he was defeated in the Bunduki match.”

  Jos raised his eyebrows, then looked away from her toward the bare-chested men on the mat. The ref backed away, and the men assumed fighting positions.

  “No,” he said.

  “Yes. Master Danva was beaten by the local teräs käsi champion, Phow Ji. Your new combat instructor.”

  Jos sighed. “I see. Well, it’s only credits. And it’s not like there’s anything to buy around here…”

  As they watched, the two fighters circled, watching each other. Cley kept his left side facing his opponent, his legs wide in a bantha-riding pose, left hand high, right hand low, fingers formed into loose fists.

  Ji stood aslant to Cley, his right foot leading, his arms held wide, hands open. He looked vulnerable, but the invitation was false, Barriss knew. They were a step and a half apart, and Barriss recognized this as knife-fighting distance—just outside the range of a short blade.

  They kept circling. Cley was too wary to fall for the obvious trap. It looked more like a jetz match than a fight, the delicate balance between them holding as one man shifted, ever so slightly, and the other responded with an equally subtle move.

  The onlookers rumbled uncertainly, aware something was going on, but not sure what.

  Then Cley made his move. He lunged, driven by powerful legs churning hard, and he was very fast. He launched a two-punch combination, a left and a right, low and high, and either would have been enough to end the fight, had they landed.

  Ji didn’t back away, but instead stepped in to meet the attack. His own punch crossed the centerline and deflected Cley’s highline strike a hair, just enough so that his hit missed. Then Ji’s punch caught Cley flush on the nose, but that wasn’t the end of it. He continued his step in, put his right leg behind Cley’s leading foot, caught the man’s throat in the V of his thumb and fore-finger, and swept him, shoving him down onto the mat hard enough to momentarily imprint Cley’s form into the resilient foam. Then he dropped into a deep squat and drove the elbow of that same arm into Cley’s solar plexus. Cley’s breath burst out in a rush.

  Ji stood, turned his back to the fallen man, and walked away. Cley lay on his back, trying to regain his wind, unable to rise.

  Just like that, the fight was over. Once the attack had been launched, the entire sequence had taken maybe three seconds, total.

  “Sweet soalie!” Jos said. “What did he do?”

  “Looks like he just cost you ten credits, Captain Vondar,” Barriss said.

  Jos watched as the fight medic checked Cley over and decided that the man wasn’t hurt badly enough to need more than first aid. He had never seen anything like that before—a fighter as experienced as Cley getting floored so fast and so easily. Phow Ji was good.

  Jos had taken the basic training required of all military personnel, of course, and had learned a couple of tricks, but those were nothing compared to what he had just witnessed. He still wasn’t sure what he had seen. One moment the two men were jockeying for position—the next, Phow Ji was strolling away and Usu Cley was on his back trying to remember how to breathe.

  What would it be like to know that you could really take care of yourself like that, when push came to shove?

  That you could defeat a Jedi in hand-to-hand combat?

  It was hard even to imagine. Of course, the fastest moves in the galaxy couldn’t block a blaster’s particle beam or a projectile from a slugthrower. Although he’d heard that Jedi were actually able—through the Force, he supposed—to anticipate such attacks before they were launched, and thus block or avoid them—seeing the immediate future, in effect. He wasn’t sure if he believed that. But one thing was for sure: his credits would be on the new guy from now on.

  Beside him, Barriss stiffened, and Jos looked up to see the fearsome Phow Ji approaching, wiping his face with a towel.

  Seen up close, the man’s features were lean and hard; his lips seemed set in an expression not quite a sneer. This was a man who knew just how dangerous he was, and wasn’t shy about letting others know as well.

  “You’re a Jedi,” he said to Barriss. It was not a question. His voice was even, quiet, but full of confidence. He ignored Jos as if the latter weren’t there. Jos decided that was fine with him.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “But not fully fledged yet.”

  “I am Barriss Offee, a Padawan.”

  Ji smiled. “Still believe in the Force?”

  Barriss raised an eyebrow. “You don’t?”

  “The Force is a tale made up by the Jedi to scare away anybody who would stand against them. Jedi are not impressive fighters. I hardly broke a sweat, dropping one a while back.”

  “Joclad Danva did not use the Force when you fought him.”

  “So he said.” Ji shrugged, wiped his face with the towel again. “Hot day. You look a little sweaty yourself, Jedi. Here—”

  He tossed the towel at her.

  Barriss raised her hand as if to catch it. The towel stopped in midair. It hung there for maybe two seconds. Jos blinked. What in the—?

  The towel dropped and landed at Barriss’s feet. She had not taken her eyes off Ji. “The Force is real,” she said, mildly.

  Ji laughed and shook his head. “I’ve seen much better illusions from traveling carnival mages, Padawan.” He turned and walked away.

  Jos looked at the towel, then at Barriss. “What was that about?”

  “An error in judgment,” Barriss said. “I allowed myself to become annoyed.” She shook her head. “I have so far to go…” She turned and started back toward the compound. Jos watched her go for a moment, then picked up the towel and looked at it curiously. It was a perfectly normal sheet of absorbent syncloth, the kind that one usually did not see hanging in midair as if from an invisible hook. It was damp from the teräs käsi master’s sweat, but otherwise unremarkable.

  He had just seen his first demonstration of the Force.

  As shows went, it wasn’t in the same league as dodging blaster rays, turning invisible, or shooting laser beams from one’s eyes—all of which he’d heard that Jedi could do. But it had been pretty impressive, all the same.

  He wondered what else she was capable of.

  When he’d looked at her, standing on the rise of ground outside the base, the wind blowing her robe behind her, he’d felt a powerful attraction—or thought he had, at least. There was a sense of inner strength and peace about her that appealed strongly to the healer that he, too, was at heart. But that same tranquillity also made her seem remote and unapproachable; more like a simulacrum of a woman than the real thing. Some men were attracted by the appearance of aloofness, but not Jos.

  On top of that was this power she had. Though he’d heard about the Force all his life, he realized now that he’d never really believed such a thing could exist. Like so many others in his profession, Chief Surgeon Jos Vondar was a pragmatist—he believed in what was real, what was quantifiable and measurable. What he’d just seen had been—there was no other word for it—spooky.

  A sudden crackle nearby caused him to start and spin around. The perimeter field was not far away, and something had brushed against it and gotten zapped for its trouble. The charge wasn’t strong enough to kill, but it was definitely unpleasant to anything smaller than a Tatooine ronto.

  Jos started back toward the cluster of huts. Not that there was anything in the jungle anywhere near that big to worry about; it had probably been a w
riggler. This was the largest land-based life-form they’d noticed so far: a sluglike thing about five meters long and half a meter thick that undulated in a zigzag pattern across the ground. Its cilia could deliver a powerful electrical charge, enough to knock a grown man off his feet, but it wasn’t usually fatal. All the terrestrial fauna they’d seen so far, even large ones like the wriggler, were invertebrate. Supposedly there were aquatic creatures of much greater size and variety in Drongar’s oceans, but he’d never seen one, and was just as glad to keep it that way.

  His thoughts turned to Barriss again, and he sighed. It was pointless to wonder if he was attracted to her or not. Even if he was, and even if her Order condoned outside relationships—something he had no data on, one way or the other—it was still impossible. The Jedi were not the only ones with traditions.

  Any further thinking on this was interrupted by the signature whine of approaching medlifters. Almost glad of the distraction, Jos started to trot back to the base.

  6

  This run was a bad one. There were four full lifters, which meant sixteen wounded troopers. Three had died en route, and one was too far gone to attempt resuscitation—one of the nurses administered euthanasia while Jos, Zan, Barriss, and three other surgeons scrubbed up.

  One of the clones was covered with third-degree burns; they had to cut his armor free. He had literally been cooked by a flame projector. Fortunately, one of the three working bacta tanks they had was empty, and the trooper was quickly immersed in a nutrient bath.

  The condition of the remaining eleven ranged from critical to guarded, and were triaged accordingly. Jos pulled on his skin-gloves while Tolk briefed him on his first case.

  “Hemorrhagic shock, multiple flechette injuries, head trauma…”

  Jos glanced at the chrono. They were about ten minutes into the “golden hour”—the time window most critical for a trooper’s survival of a battlefield injury. There was no time to waste. “Okay, let’s get him stabilized. He’s lost a lot of blood, and he’s got an asteroid belt’s worth of metal in his gut. Pump in some vascolution, stat…”