Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [31]
"What’s really wrong, Jos?"
For a moment, he was tempted to tell her. What’s wrong? I’m lonely, a long way from home, and sick of death. I’m sitting next to a beautiful woman I’d like to get to know better-a lot better-but there’s no future in it, and I’m not the kind of man who wants a quick connect-disconnect, even though that seems like a ter-rific idea at just this moment.
It took no imagination at all to picture her on his cot, with her hair spread out on the pillow... and that was a bad lane to be spacing down, he quickly realized. So instead of speaking the truth, he said, "Just tired. Bio-rhythms are off. I need a vacation."
"Don’t we all." But she gave him a look, and for just a second he was certain she knew exactly what he was thinking.
Exactly.
Jos and Zan watched as the supply drop ship lowered on invisible repulsor waves. "They’d better have those biomarkers," Zan said. "I only ordered them half a standard year ago. A Tatooine Sarlacc moves things through its system quicker."
Jos mopped his brow and nodded, waiting for the ramp to lower. There were a number of things he’d ordered that the base needed desperately: bacta tanks and fluid, bioscan modules, coagulin, neuropreno-line, provotin cystate, and other first-line pharmaceuti-cals... the list was practically endless. One of the most important things on the inventory, however, was more droids. The order had been mostly for FX-7s and 2-lBs, but he had also requested a couple of new office work-ers; two of the four CZ-3s originally supplied had suc-cumbed to rust and overwork months ago, and the others were becoming eccentric. He suspected spore-rot.
The ramp lowered. Filba, of course, was there to in-spect the manifest, meticulously checking to see that every last synthflesh strip and chromostring reel was accounted for.
The two surgeons, along with several nurses and scrubs, watched the duraplast containers as they passed, trying to read the photostenciled content lists.
"Yes! Got the biomarkers at last," Zan said with a hiss of satisfaction. Then his tattooed jaw dropped. "What, only one case? They’ll be gone in a month! Typical..."
Jos was also disappointed as the last canister au-torolled past them. "So where are the droids I or-dered?" He looked at Zan. "Did you see any droids come off? Anything that even resembles a droid?"
Zan glanced over his friend’s shoulder. Before Jos could turn around, he heard a voice say, "I’ve been told I resemble one, sir." The words were precisely articu-lated, with that slight mechanical hollowness that comes only from a vocoder. He turned and saw a droid standing halfway down the ramp.
"Of course," the droid added, "those who said it might only have been trying to be kind."
Jos looked at the droid. It looked like one of the pro-tocol models that were ubiquitous all over the galaxy. If so, it had been refurbished a few times; the powerbus cables weren’t the standard models, if he remembered correctly. The recharge coupling was different as well. The light pewter armor had more than a few nicks and dents. Jos looked back at Zan. "I ask for office mod-els," he said. "Anything, even an old CZ model. And they send me a protocol droid."
"It’ll come in handy at all those fancy state dinners and diplomatic summits you’re always being dragged off to," the Zabrak said with a straight face.
"Oh, yeah. I don’t know how I’ve managed to survive here without my very own attache droid."
The droid muttered something behind him that sounded very much like: "Blind luck, I’d say."
Jos and Zan both turned and stared at him. "What was that?" Jos asked.
The droid came to attention, and even though his face was an expressionless metal mask, Jos felt that some-thing-fear? resentment? both? - somehow flashed there for a moment. But when the droid spoke again, the voice was emotionless, even more so than most