Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [3]
"When you get to be chief of surgery at Coruscant Med, you can make sure the next batch of dewy-eyed would-be surgeons has a better education. Old Doc Vondar, nattering on about the Great Clone Wars and how easy these kids today have it."
"I’ll remember that when they bring you in as a teach-ing case, Zan."
"Not me. I’ll dance at your memorial, Corellian scum. Maybe even play you a nice Selonian etude, per-haps one of the Vissencant Variations."
"Please," Jos said as he gingerly spread tissue apart to get a better look. "At least play something worth hear-ing. Some leap-jump or heavy isotope."
Zan shook his head sadly. "A tone-deaf Gungan has better taste."
"I know what I like."
"Yeah, well, I like keeping these guys alive, so stop embarrassing yourself in public and help me get this liver working."
"Guess I’d better." Jos reached for a set of healys and a sponge. "Looks like it’s the only way he’ll have a fighting chance, with you as his surgeon." He grinned behind his mask at his friend.
Working together, they managed to extricate the shrapnel from the artery with minimal damage. When they were done, Jos looked around with a sigh of relief.
"Well, kids, looks like a perfect record. Didn’t lose a single trooper. Drinks are on me at the cantina."
The others grinned tiredly-and then froze, listening. Rising over the steady pounding of the rain on the foamcast roof was another sound, one they knew very well: the rising whine of incoming medlifters.
The break was over, as most of them were, before it had begun.
2
The drop from orbit to the planet was faster than nor-mal, the pilot explained to her, because of the multitude of spores.
"Dey gum up everyt’ing," he said, in thickly accented Basic. He was a Kubaz, gray-green and pointy-headed, a member of the long-snouted species whose enemies referred to them derisively as "bug-eating spies." As a Jedi Padawan and a healer, Barriss Offee had learned early not to be judgmental of a species because of its looks, but she knew that many in the galaxy were less open-minded.
" ’Specially d’ventilators," he went on. "D’rot’ll eat t’rough d’best filters we got in a hour, mebbe less; y’got to change ’em every flight-you don’t, d’Spore Sickness get into d’ship and get into you. Not a good way to go, b’lieve it, coughin’ up blood ’n’ cooking in y’own juices."
Barriss blinked at the graphic scenario. She looked out of the small shuttle craft’s nearest viewport; the spores were visible only as various tints of red, green, and other hues in the air, and an occasional spatter of minute particles against the transparisteel, gone before she could see them clearly. She probed a bit with the Force, getting nothing like a sentient response, of course, merely a chaotic impression of motion, a furious muta-bility.
"D’spores are, um, adepto... uh..."
"Adaptogenic," she said.
"Yeah, dat’s it. Every time d’mechanics and d’medics come up wit’ new treatments, d’spores change, y’know? And d’treatments, dey stop workin’. Weird t’ing is, dey don’t cause problems at ground level, only when y’get up above d’trees, y’know?"
Barriss nodded. It didn’t sound pleasant. In fact, very little about this planet sounded pleasant, even though her information on it was still sketchy. According to the hurried briefing at the Temple on Coruscant, the Re-public’s forces and those of the Separatists were more or less evenly balanced on Drongar. The war here was lim-ited mostly to ground troops; very little fighting took place in the air because of the spores. On the ground, things were even worse in many ways. Among the prob-lems the forces on both sides encountered were monsoons with devastating electrical storms, soaring temperatures, and humidity over 90 percent. As if that weren’t enough, the atmospheric oxygen level was higher than that found on most worlds habitable for humans and hu-manoids. This often caused dizziness and hyperoxy-genation for nonindigenous