Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [102]
He left the building. The rains had stopped, but there was still a strong wind trying to push the sodden air about. Disassemblers and ASPs were fast at work, he noticed, breaking down prefab buildings and cubicles, while the CLL-8s loaded them and other materiel into cargo lifters that had sat idle since before Jos had been assigned here. The patients were being loaded as well, by specially designed FX-7s using repulsor gurneys. Medlifters and refurbished cargo lifters would ferry them out of harm’s way. Patients were the first priority, of course, but it wouldn’t do to let the support staff be killed or captured.
It all felt rushed, hurried, and so strange it didn’t seem real. One moment, they were operating on pa-tients, repairing troopers as usual-and the next, hurry-ing to escape a war heading toward them like a runaway mag-lev train.
Jos hurried to his own cubicle and started to pack his essential gear. You were supposed to have a grab-and-go bag ready at all times, but after several months in the same spot, Jos had begun using the clean laundry and supplies in his travel bag, and as a result the kit was mostly empty.
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. Be-sides, 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 star-ship 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 in-stalled EM shielding and domes for the Vuh’Jineau 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 con-cerned look, then hurried for the door.
Jos was right behind him. "Don’t the Separatists real-ize 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