Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [61]
Aside from its other virtues, the ship had a pleasing aerodynamic shape, a kind of elongated figure eight. There was, after all, no reason an admiral’s transport couldn’t look as good as it flew.
This jaunt was a piece of dream cake. As he lanced through the atmosphere toward the surface, he was pondering his other problem: credits, and how best to amass as many as possible as quickly as possible with-out risk of detection.
"Please identify yourself," came the request from the main Republic ground battery control.
Bleyd smiled. They had to ask, but they certainly knew who he was. The sensor profile of his lighter was unique-there was nothing in twenty parsecs that looked even remotely like it.
"Admiral Bleyd here," he responded, his voice crisp. "On inspection tour from MedStar Nineteen." He rat-tled off the current identification code, which was changed daily on his order.
There was brief pause while the officer in charge pre-tended to check to make sure his commander wasn’t some Separatist spy coming to bomb a poor Rimsoo unit squatting in a swamp. Then: "All fine, sir. Proceed to designated landing quadrant, and welcome, Admiral."
Bleyd shut off the comm without responding.
It was not the money per se, though that certainly had its appeal on some level. No, it was the recovery of honor, the prestige, the righting of wrongs-that was what a bank full of credits represented. He had already managed to build himself a nice sum, enough so that, if managed correctly, it would keep him fed and clothed and reasonably comfortable for the rest of his life. But the goal was not merely to retire in comfort; no, the goal was much more important than that. The goal was honor.
Mixed in with this was, of course, a degree of vengeance. There were beings who needed to be dealt with, old grudges settled, and a dynasty to begin. He had to find a mate, marry, produce heirs, and make cer-tain that his sons and daughters would be sufficiently wealthy so as to guarantee their rightful places in the galaxy. This war would be over eventually.
The Repub-lic would prevail-he didn’t doubt that, inconceivable that it would not-and life would go on much as it had before. A peaceful galaxy, with ample opportunity for the landed and wealthy to prosper even more-these were things to be taken for granted. No sane being wanted war, save that it served his own ends. There were fortunes to be made in times of conflict, power to be gathered, and when this one was done Bleyd and his descendants would be among the rich and powerful. Of that, there was no doubt.
The doing of it was not so easy, but he was both clever and resourceful. Small amounts of the bota could con-tinue to be diverted and stored. His dealings with Black Sun would have to cease-a major theft was out of the question-but he could hide a lot of the valuable adap-togen on a ship the size of a MedStar, stack it in blocks of carbonite disguised as something else, and take it back to civilization himself, bold as you please. The ma-terial would never show up on a manifest, nobody would know it existed, and it would only become more valuable as time went by. A thousand kilos of pharma-ceutical-grade bota stashed in some warehouse would eventually be worth millions all by itself.
But there were other things a smart admiral could do to enhance his fortune. A medical system necessary for a Rimsoo could be ordered in duplicate, and one of them could find its way elsewhere, perhaps to some world in desperate need of such a facility, and bartered for something of equal value but more portable. Pre-cious metal or rare gems, say. And a couple of first-class medical droids misdirected to some frontier planet