4.

Jos didn't recognize the Sull.u.s.tan, but that wasn't sur-prising. Rimsoo Seven wasn't exactly one of the Corus-cant s.p.a.ceports, but a small amount of traffic did cycle through.

Most of the newcomers were observers or offi-cers on tour, and, of course, there was an endless parade of clones. Some, however, were civilians: supply and materiel supervisors, bota harvesters, and various hired laborers. He'd even heard rumors that the base might be included in a HoloNet Entertainment tour. Many base functions were performed by droids, but most droids didn't last very long on Drongar. The WED Treadwells were constantly breaking their many delicate arma-tures, and the medical droids-the MDs, 2-1 Bs and FXs-needed constant maintenance due to the humid-ity and high oxygen quotient. Jos had had parts on back order from Cybot, Medtech, and other factories for months, but no joy was in sight anytime soon.

So when the Sull.u.s.tan strolled over with a drink in one hand and a friendly expression, the four made room for another chair. He introduced himself, adding that he was a string reporter for the Galactic Wave, one of the smaller holonews services. "Been asked to come over to HoloNet several times," he said, grabbing a handful of shroomchips from the bowl in the table's center. "But they're too mainstream, too party line for me. I like working on the edge."

"Do you disagree with the Republic's policies toward Dooku and his Separatists?" Barriss Offee asked.

Dhur's huge eyes appraised her for a few seconds while he swallowed. "Kind of unusual to see a Jedi Knight this far out," he said.

"I'm not a Jedi Knight as of yet. Until I complete my training, my t.i.tle is still Padawan," Barriss said. "And you haven't answered my question."

"You're right-I haven't." Dhur looked steadily into the Jedi's eyes. "Let's just say I disapprove of some of Dooku's methods."

The silence that followed threatened to become ten-sion. Zan said quickly, "We'd just offered to give our new healer the five-decicred tour. Care to join us?"

Dhur drained his drink. "Wouldn't miss it."

Five decicreds would be robbery for this tour, Jos thought as the four walked through the base. There really wasn't much to see: several foamcast buildings, the biggest of which contained pre - and postmed and the operating theater. Then there were the officers'

quarters-smaller cubicles, for the most part-the can-tina, mess hall, landing pad, refreshers, and showers. All this in a small valley overshadowed by tall, tree-like growths, mostly draped with something that looked similar to Naboo swamp moss.

The storm had stopped as suddenly as it began. Jos was sweating after a dozen steps; the air lay sodden and heavy, without a breath of movement. He watched Bar-riss Offee, wondering how she stood the damp heat in that heavy cloak. She didn't even seem to be sweating.

He wondered what she looked like under those robes...

"We do triage over there, where the lifters put down," Zan said to her, pointing to the west. "We keep a sepa-rate pad for the shuttles; that's where you two landed, near the harvesters' quarters." He pointed south. "The front's about seventy kilometers back. The lifters usu-ally come around from the east, because of the winds."

Jos became aware of Tolk's gaze upon him; she was watching him watch the Jedi. He glanced at her, and she grinned at him. He grinned back, somewhat sheepishly. No use trying to disguise his thoughts to her-she was a Lorrdian, and could read anyone's body language like a holo on max-mag. It was almost like telepathy.

He shrugged. Just idle curiosity, he thought, and saw one of the nurse's eyebrows arch: Oh, really?

He felt a moment of slight embarra.s.sment as he glanced back at Barriss. Since she was a Jedi-well, one in training, at least-had her connection with the Force already alerted her to his taking notice as well?

He had been most impressed by her work in the OT-her hands were fast and a.s.sured, wielding laser scalpels and mini pressor fields as she cauterized spurt-ing arteries and even aided in transplanting a kidney. If she had used any of the healing powers it was rumored that the Force had given her, Jos hadn't seen it-but then, he'd been rather busy himself.

He knew very little about the Force-not even how to test for it, because that knowledge was supposedly re-served for the Jedi. He was aware of the power of the mind-body connection, of course, but he had no talents in that direction. He was a surgeon; he knew how to slice and splice the innards of a dozen species, including his own. That was his talent, his gift, and he was very good at it. So good that at times he felt almost bored with the routine plumbing repairs he had to make, for the most part, on the clones. He very rarely lost one, and when he did, due to sepsis or hidden trauma or some other nasty surprise, it was hard to feel too much grief. Even in wars fought by individuals the doctors of-ten grew numb. It was easier still to do so when the next body to come under his laser looked exactly like the last one.

They really do all blur together sometimes...

It had bothered him at first. Now he'd grown used to it. After all, it was common knowledge that clones weren't true individuals, in the strictest sense of the word. Their mind-set had been standardized, just as their somatotype had been, in order to make them more effective fighters. No one ever heard of a trooper freez-ing under fire, or letting his fellows down on the front lines. It just didn't happen, due to subtle behavioral ad-justments ma.s.s-programmed into the amygdala and the other emotional centers of their brains. Jos wasn't sure, because he'd never had the opportunity to run i tests, but he suspected that their serotonin and dopamine levels had been adjusted as well, making them more fearless and aggressive. The bottom line was that one clone was pretty much just like another, and not only in appearance.

Of course, they weren't interchangeable units of a hive mind. Jos had seen evidence of individuation, but only in areas that didn't interfere with their ability to fight, or their loyalty to the Republic. They were true universal soldiers, genetically hardwired to fight with-out fear of death or sorrow at the deaths of their com-rades. It made them more effective warriors, to be sure, but it also made it hard to think of them as being each a unique organic sentient. He'd often heard them referred to disparagingly as "meat droids"... he didn't care for the term, but as a description, it seemed apt.

"...right, Jos?"

Jos blinked, realizing Zan had asked him something, but he had no idea what it was. He looked up at Zan, Barriss, and Dhur; they were standing on a small rise coated with the pale pink growth that was Drongar's idea of gra.s.s. A slight breeze had started, but it pro-vided little relief from the heat. The Jedi's cloak was stirred slightly. It parted momentarily in a gust, and Jos could tell that the body beneath the robes was... Not bad.

Not bad at all.

"Hey, partner," Zan said, amused. "How's about dropping out of hypers.p.a.ce and rejoining the group?"

"Sorry." He moved quickly up the rise to stand beside him, Dhur, and Barriss. "What was the question?"

"I was wondering if that storm was the start of the monsoon season," Dhur said.

"It doesn't start," Jos said, "because it never stops. Except for the poles, the whole planet is like this."

Jos didn't think Dhur's eyes could get any wider, but his last statement proved him wrong.

"You mean it's like this all the time?"

"Pretty much," Zan said.

"Actually," Tolk said as she joined the group, "this is a rather nice day. Only one lightning storm so far."

A far-off rumble of thunder came from the east. They all turned and saw a new storm front ma.s.sing dark gray on the horizon.

Jos glanced at Tolk. "You really should know better than to say things like that."

The second storm subsided around midnight, though the skies remained cloudy. Drongar had no large moon, and so Barriss, standing just outside one of the doors to the officers'

quarters, was surprised to see the huts and grounds illuminated by a wan light that shifted among green, pearl, and turquoise hues, as if the clouds were somehow noctilucent.

"It's the spores," Zan told her. She was not surprised that he had stepped out alongside her; she'd felt his presence in the Force before she could see him. "Some strains glow in the dark," he continued. "Clouds make a good backdrop for them. Though you'd think all the rain would wash them out of the air."

She nodded. The bands of variegated light, twisting slowly far overhead, were more impressive than many rainbows and auroras she'd seen on far more hospitable worlds.

It was nice to know that even Drongar had some beauty to offer.

"A lot prettier than the night sky, actually," Zan said. "We're so far out on the Rim that you don't see that many stars. And the whorl itself isn't visible from this hemisphere."

He grinned at her. "Not even a full moon to walk hand-in-hand under."

Almost by reflex, she felt his aura gently with the Force, and found nothing in him but friendliness. She smiled back at him. "Did you have a moon on...?"

"Talus. No, we had something much more spectacu-lar: Tralus, our sister world."

"Ah. The Double Worlds of the Corellian system. Two planets, orbiting each other as they circle their sun."

Zan nodded and looked impressed. "You know your galactic cartography."

"I would be a poor excuse for a Jedi if I did not."

He looked at her for a moment. Barriss could hear the sounds of the night all about them: the buzzing of the scavenger moths, the dopplering hum of a worker droid as it pursued its tasks, and, far away, the occasional dis-tant crackle of energy weapons and sharper cracks of slugthrowers. She might have thought she was imagin-ing them, but she could feel the reverberations of death and destruction quite clearly through the Force.

"And who were you," Zan asked, "before you be-came part of the Order?"

She hesitated as well before replying. "No one. I was brought to the Temple as an infant."

"Have you never tried to contact your parents, to find your homeworld's-"

Barriss looked away. "I was born on a liner in deep s.p.a.ce. My parents' ident.i.ties are unknown. I call no world save Coruscant my home."

Zan said softly, "My apologies, Padawan Offee. I didn't mean to pry."

She turned back and smiled at him. "It is I who must apologize. There is no excuse for rudeness. As Master Yoda says, 'If in anger you answer, then in shame you dwell.'"

"He's your instructor?"

"I am not Padawan to him; my Master is Luminara Unduli. Master Yoda is one of the most respected mem-bers of the Council." She hesitated, then added, "He has been a mentor to nearly all the Jedi currently in the Order. One student, to his great disappointment, left the Order and turned to the dark side of the Force."

"I don't have children," Zan said, "though I hope to change that once I'm off this damp rock. I would imag-ine that to lose a pupil like that must be almost as bad as a parent losing his child."

She nodded. "I hope that, someday, after this war is over, he will be able to return to training students. He has much to offer."

"As do you, Padawan Offee." Zan yawned and turned back to the door. "I'm going to grab some sleep while I can. You might want to do the same; if we're lucky, maybe tomorrow won't be too much worse than today."

He disappeared into the building. Barriss lingered a moment longer, thinking.

She had deflected his questions about her path by ' changing subject of the conversation.

Why? she won-dered. She wasn't sure. It had nothing to do with her as-signment, and she was not ashamed of her origins. Perhaps it was just the shock of the new, of being on a different world once more.

She looked up again at the glowing spores overhead. There were species and cultures that believed souls trav-eled among the stars, flitting endlessly from one celes-tial object to another. Those strands up there could almost be mistaken for something like that.

She noticed then that another strain of spores was working its way across the clouds; a band of crimson. It interwove with the subtler colors, its borders increasing steadily. By the time dawn broke, she knew, it would be the dominant hue.

Barriss turned away, going back inside the barracks before she could see the other strands overwhelmed by the red one.

5.

Sitting in the chow hall and eating a breakfast of grainmush cakes, poptree syrup, and dried kelp strips, Barriss Offee suddenly sensed a disturbance in the Force. The energy of it was that of impending combat - something she had learned to recognize. She stopped and tried to focus on a direction.

"Something?" Jos said. He was sipping a mug of parichka a few seats away.

She turned to look at him. "You said we are well be-hind our own lines here?"

"Yes. Why?"

"There is some kind of confrontation happening, quite close by."

The surgeon looked at his chrono. "Ah. That would be the teras kasi match. Want to go take a look?"

Last night's rain had washed away some of the acrid pollen and spore-float, but the afternoon air still had a moldy, sour tang to it as Jos led her from the compound. A hundred meters away, in a small natural amphitheater eroded from rock, perhaps twenty or twenty-five people were gathered; troops, mostly, though Barriss could also see a few humanoids of various types. They sat or stood in the rough semicircle formed by the rocks, watching intently the unfolding spectacle before them.

There were a few shouts of encouragement, but the crowd was, for the most part, silent.

On the floor of the amphitheater was a large, spray-foam mat, and upon this stood two humans. The men were bare to the waist, and wore thinskin briefs and wrestling slippers.

Both appeared to be physically fit, though neither was particularly large or bulky. One was short, dark-haired, and swarthy, thick with muscle through the chest and shoulders; the other was tall and slender, almost blond, and had several unrevised scars on his arms.

The scars didn't look like ritual ones-if there was a pattern, Barriss couldn't see it.

But it was obvious from their shapes that the marks had come from blades.

Barriss felt another roil of the Force, and knew this was where the disturbance had originated.

As they moved closer, Jos said, "Hand-to-hand com-bat instructors. The short guy is Usu Cley-he's from Rimsoo Five, about ninety kilometers toward the south pole from here. Cley was the Ninth Fleet Middle-Ma.s.s Champion two years running. I've seen him fight a cou-ple of times-he's very good.

"The other one is new; he's a replacement for our unit's instructor, who got blown up by a suicide droid last week. I haven't seen him move yet. Are you a bet-ting woman, Jedi Offee? They aren't due to start for a few more minutes. You could make a few credits-line is two-to-one in favor of Cley."

The Force swirled again in her, imparting a definite sense of menace, and it came, no question, from the blond fighter. "What the new man's name?"

Jos frowned, searching his memory. "Pow, Fow... something..."

"Phow Ji?"

"Yeah. You know him?"

"You have a bet down?"

"Ten credits on Cley."

Barriss smiled. Jos looked puzzled. "What?"

They stopped at one of the higher bluffs overlooking the sparring area. The two fighters moved toward the middle of the mat. The referee, a Gotal, stood between them, giving them instructions. It didn't take long; ap-parently outside of killing one another, just about any-thing went.

She said, "A couple of years ago there was a teras kasi tourney on Bunduki-that's where the art originated, you know. In the final match, a Jedi Knight, Joclad Danva, met the local champion."

"A Jedi? Against a local? That hardly seems fair."

"Danva had the peculiar skill of being able to divorce himself from the Force at times. He never used its power in his matches; only his personal skill, which was con-siderable. He was a virtuoso with twin lightsabers, one of the few ever to master the Jar'Kai technique.

I've seen holos of him, and he was a fantastic fighter. He could hold his own with most of the Jedi in practice."