Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [22]
The trooper shrugged. "Whatever. How many aboard?"
"Two loaders," a human, whom Den didn’t recog-nize, said. "And the pilot. "
The trooper shook his head and turned away. "Freak-ing shame."
You could call it that. Den glanced around. The open compound was full of onlookers now, all squinting up-ward even though there was nothing more to see. "What about debris?" a Caamasi nurse asked nervously.
"Debris?" the tech engineer snorted. "Only ’debris’ from this gonna be gamma rays." He waved one arm overhead, indicating the sky just above the base. "Don’t worry-energy shield over the whole place, remember?"
Others began to weigh in with their opinions on what had caused the transport’s destruction. Den walked away, thinking.
One thing was for sure-Filba was going to have his own meltdown over this, if he hadn’t already. Den pursed his lips thoughtfully, then changed his direction.
Den approached the Ops building, which housed the supplies and the comm station, with a little trepida-tion. Though he’d only been on Drongar for a few days, he knew Filba of old; they’d first crossed each other’s paths on the rainy world of Jabiim, during one of the Republic army’s last stands. Den had been re-porting on the battle, and Filba had been a requisitions officer who was dabbling in the weapons black mar-ket. The Hutt was, like so many others of his kind, willing to use anybody’s back as a vibroblade sheath, and had nearly gotten Den killed trying to curry favor with the rebel Alto Stratus.
Den’s dewflaps tightened at the memory of it. Filba was a craven opportunist, with dreams of being a crim-inal overlord, just like his hero, Jabba. Perhaps ulti-mately even a Black Sun vigo, from the few slurred hints he’d dropped now and then when in his cups. Den’s opinion was that the Hutt didn’t have much chance of being a big noise in the underworld.
All Hutts were in-vertebrates, but in Filba’s case a backbone was sorely needed. Despite all his bluster, Filba was the first one under the table when "Incoming!" was heard-And, given his size, usually the only one who fits, Den thought.
Filba’s primary assignment was as quartermaster. As such, he was responsible for ordering and keeping track of any and all medical equipment, drugs, munitions and materiel, wetware, cybernetics, droids, sensors and communications gear, transport parts, food, and what-ever latest spore-fighting chemicals the Republic think-tanks had come up with-and these were just the tasks Den knew about. The Hutt also monitored the holo-comm station, sending and receiving orders and mes-sages, usually between Admiral Bleyd and Colonel Vaetes, but occasionally combat instructions from the fleet admiral to clone troop commanders. These jobs would seem to be more than enough for any six beings, but apparently the Hutt insisted on keeping track of the bota harvesting and shipments as well. Den wondered when Filba found time to sleep.
If I know Filba, the reporter thought-and, Mother help me, I do-his interest in the bota is more than just a job.
Filba’s office was about what the reporter had ex-pected: neat and organized, but also crammed to the ceiling struts with shelves, receptacles, and cabinets. These in turn were crammed with all manner of things, but mostly held various media for data storage. Den saw racks of holocubes, flatscreens, plastisheet files, and so on... it made his head itch just to look at all that information.
The Hutt was facing a holoproj, conversing with someone in the reception field. That was all Den saw be-fore a trooper stepped in front of him, his blaster rifle at port arms.
"State your name and business," he said.
This clone was a noncombatant, no doubt detailed as part of Filba’s security. His armor was clean and white. "If you don’t have a good reason for being here, your head’s coming off."
"Den Dhur. Reporter, Galactic Wave. Just wanted to get Filba’s take on the-"