Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [40]
"We’re done. We can rest now."
Rest? What was that?
He stumbled away from the table. Tolk moved to help him. "Careful," he mumbled. "Someone turned up the gravity." He peeled his gloves off, his hands fumbling, and tossed them at the waste hopper. They missed. He thought about going to pick them up, but the idea of bending over was too much to bear. He might never get up.
He looked around. Others were finishing, or had just finished working on injuries, and they, too, had the look of stunned exhaustion-the same look that had been on the common face of all those who had come under his knife.
"How-how bad was it?"
"Bad." He saw streaks of moisture along the top of her mask, where it had soaked up her tears.
"Did we save any?"
"A few."
He tried to walk, staggered. She grabbed his arm, steadied him. "I don’t want to know the percentages, do I?"
"No. You don’t."
Jos felt himself slump even more. "I feel like I just went ten rounds in an arena on Geonosis." He wanted-needed-a drink, but that was far too much effort to contemplate, too.
All he could think of now was finding a flat spot where he could collapse. It didn’t even have to be flat. A pile of rocks would do...
He looked across the tables at Zan. His friend managed to lift his hand in a half salute or wave. Jos re-turned it, then staggered toward the door.
And once outside, he heard the sound of more incoming lifters.
Jos started to laugh. And, for a long, frightening moment, he couldn’t stop.
14
Want to see something interesting?" Dhur asked.
Jos, Zan, Tolk, and Barriss were in the cantina, all drinking some form of alcohol, except the Jedi. It had been four days since that hellish influx of wounded. These days interesting was a loaded term, as far as Jos was concerned. But, as long as it didn’t involve slicing into wounded troopers, he decided he was up to it.
"Have a seat," Jos said. He waved at the tender, who nodded and started mixing. He knew who Dhur was and what the Sullustan drank by now.
Dhur sat and pulled a small device from his pocket, a stressed-plastoid and metal sphere, about the size of a human child’s fist. He held it up.
Jos squinted at it. "Can’t say I’m overly enthralled," he said. "Wait-" He took another drink, set the mug down, and squinted at the device again. "Nope," he said. "Still not enthralled."
"Looks like a spiceball," Zan said. "That would be interesting."
Jos raised his mug in silent agreement.
Barriss said, "It’s from a cam droid. Military grade, looks like."
"Give the Jedi first prize," Dhur said. "I got this from a harvester, who happened across it in the field after a recent sortie by the Separatists. Apparently it was pretty much destroyed in the battle except for passive func-tions-couldn’t move, no weapons online...
even its comm was out."
"Still not exactly front-page news, now, is it?" Jos said. "There are pieces of blown-apart droids all over the place."
"Think I broke a tooth on one in my grainmush this morning," Zan added.
The server arrived with Dhur’s drink. "Put it on Von-dar’s tab," Dhur said. He looked at Jos. "Money back if you don’t think it’s worth it."
Jos nodded at the droid, which registered the transac-tion and moved off. It wasn’t as if he had anything else to spend his pay on here.
"Just a wild guess," Zan said, "but I’m thinking it’s not the sphere itself we’re interested in here."
"Can’t get anything past you, can I? Watch." Dhur set it on the table and activated it.
The holoproj rezzed up from the sphere, one-sixth life-sized. There were some broad-leaved trees, a lot of burned-out or blown-up droids, and a few clone troop-ers lying about.
Everything was canted, at an odd, low angle, as if recorded from a few centimeters above the ground.
"I’ve seen dead troopers, too," Jos said. "Lots of them. Don’t even have to go into the jungle for that, we’ve got a service brings ’em right to your door."
"Shut up, Jos," Tolk said, without