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She nibbled at her lower lip. “I’ve been contacted by the director of Surgical Nursing Services on MedStar.”

“And…?”

“And they want me to rotate up for a Continuing Medical Education short course in decubitus care. Six hours, lecture and lab.”

He snorted. “A CME class on bedsores? What idiot came up with that one? We don’t have patients here long enough to develop decubitus ulcers! Anyway, with the massage fields it’s not a—”

“I know. The order came directly from the admiral’s office.”

Jos frowned. “I see…anything else?”

“According to an old friend in SNS, as of this morning I am the only surgical nurse onplanet who has been ordered to take the class. What do you think that means?”

The answer was fairly obvious. Why would the admiral’s office order a single nurse to attend a course that was, given the nature of the Rimsoo treatments here, pretty much useless?

“Great-Uncle Erel,” Jos said, his voice tight. “He wants to check you out—and he doesn’t want me around when he does it.”

She nodded. “That’s how I figure it.”

Jos sat up. “I can tell MedStar we can’t spare you right now,” he said.

She shook her head. “No. I’ll have to talk to him sooner or later. Might as well be now. I’ve been holding my breath ever since you told me who he was.”

“Tolk—you don’t have to—”

She leaned over and put her hand over his mouth. “Shush. I’m a big girl. I won’t melt if your uncle looks at me crooked. If he is going to be family—” She stopped. “Are you having second thoughts?”

He put one hand on her cheek. “Never.”

She smiled. “All right. Then I’ll go see Uncle Admiral and we’ll find out what’s what. It’ll be fine.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m a face reader, Jos. At least we’ll know where we really stand with him.”

He was still worried, and obviously she could see it in his expression. She grinned, took his hand from her cheek, and kissed his palm—and worrying about his uncle suddenly fell off the top of his to-do list.

11

The MedStar frigates were the acme of the Republic medical corps’ fleet. Equipped with state-of-the-art xenoand biomedical facilities that would rival those of many planetside hospitals, MedStar-class vessels were designed to accept Rimsoo-stabilized ill or injured patients and, when necessary, continue their treatment. Such ships were extremely expensive, and there were but a handful of them presently in active service. Given the nature and length of the war, others were being built as quickly as Kuat Drive Yards could turn them out.

In war, the roads to victory—or defeat—always wound through mountains of bodies.

Column, seated in the transport headed for MedStar, gazed through the small, thick porthole at the verdant landscape rapidly dwindling below. The ship’s A-Grav field ensured that the crew and passengers remained at a comfortable planetary constant, but, judging by the quickness with which Drongar fell away from them, the spy estimated that the transport had to be pulling at least five g’s. The reason for the swift ascent was to pass quickly through the spore strata. Column watched as colonies of the single-celled proto-animalcules splashed against the transparisteel port like insectoids against a windscreen. Smears of color, most of them various shades of red or green, were turned into liquid streaks by the transport’s speed.

Drongaran life was both mutagenic and adaptogenic, and its rate of evolution seemed to be constant, rather than punctuated, as well as extremely rapid. Studies had found that the species on this world possessed DNA that granted undedifferentiation properties to virtually every cell of the organism, allowing it to adapt to environmental threats in an astoundingly short time. The swift mutability posed a real threat to the aliens who had come here to harvest bota. Spores, bacteria, viruses, RNA-ersatz, and no doubt millions of other tiny life-forms yet undiscovered roiled through and clogged everything on Drongar. A ship traveling through the spore clouds had to hurry; tarry too long, and