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Jos nodded. True enough; the Fett clones were all identical, which meant that, in addition to no rejection syndrome concerns, the surgeons didn’t have to worry about where or how the plumbing went. Even in indi-viduals of the same species there was often considerable diversity of physiological structure and functionality; human hearts all worked the same way, for example, but the valves could vary in size, the aortal connection might be higher in one than in another... there were a million and one ways for individual anatomies to differ. It was the biggest reason why surgery, even under the best of conditions, was never 100 percent safe.

But with the clones, it was different-or, rather, it wasn’t. They had all been culled from the same genetic source: a human male bounty hunter named Jango Fett. All of them were even more identical than monozygotic twins. See one, do one, teach one, had been the mantra back on Coruscant, during Jos’s training. The instruc-tors used to joke that you could cut a clone blindfolded once you knew the layout, and that was almost true.

Ordinarily Jos wouldn’t be working on line troops, but with two of the surgical droids down for repairs, the only option was to let the injured triage up out in the mobile unit’s hall and die. And, clones or not, he couldn’t let that happen. He’d become a doctor to save lives, not to judge who lived and who didn’t.

The lights abruptly blinked off, then back on. Every-one in the chamber froze momentarily.

"Sweet Sookie," Jos said. "Now what?"

In the distance, explosions echoed. It could have been thunder, Jos thought nervously. He hoped it had been thunder. It rained here pretty much every day, and most nights, for that matter; big, tropical storms that tore through with howling winds and lightning strikes that lanced at trees, buildings, and people. Sometimes the shield generators went down, and then the only things protecting the camp were the arrestors. More than a few troopers had been cooked where they stood, burned black in a heartbeat by the powerful voltages.

Once, after a bad storm, Jos had seen a pair of boots standing with smoke rising from the hard plastoid, five body-lengths away from the blackened form of the trooper who had been wearing them. Everything in the camp worth saving had arrestors grounded deep in the swampy soil, but sometimes those weren’t enough.

Even as these thoughts went through his head, he heard the staccato drumming of rain on the OT roof begin.

Jos Vondar had been born and raised in a small farm town on Corellia, in a temperate zone where the weather was pleasant most of the year, and even during the rainy season it was mild. When he was twenty he’d gone from there to Coruscant, the planetary capital of the Republic, a city-world where the weather was care-fully calibrated and orchestrated. He always knew when it would rain, how much, and for how long. Nothing in his life up to now had prepared him for the apocalyptic storms and the almost vile fecundity of Drongar’s native life-forms. It was said that there were places in the Great Jasserak Swamp where, if you were foolish enough to lie down and sleep, the fungal growth would cover you with a second skin before you could wake up. Jos didn’t know if it was true, but it wasn’t hard to believe.

"Blast!" Zan said.

"What?"

"Got a chunk of shrapnel intersecting the portal artery. If I pull it loose, it’s gonna get ugly in here."

"Thought you said you had this one signed, sealed, and transported." Jos nodded to Zan’s circulating nurse, who opened a fresh pack of skins for Jos to slip his hands into. He wiggled his fingers, then stepped in alongside his friend. "Move over, horn head, and let a real doctor work."

Zan looked around. "A real doctor? Where? You know one?"

Jos looked down at the patient, whose interior work-ings were brightly illuminated by the overheads and the sterile field. He lowered his hands into the field, feeling the slight tingling that always accompanied the move. Zan pointed with the healy grippers at the offending chunk of jagged