"Now I believe you. All right. Thank him for me."

"I am afraid that will be quite impossible, sir. Phow Ji is no longer among the living."

A herd of curlnoses couldn't have kept Den from hur-rying into his cubicle to view the recording. He dark-ened the chamber, inserted the cube, and activated the projection unit.

The three-dimensional image flowered in front of him.

The scene was of a small clearing in a jungle. As Den watched, a Separatist combat droid scout eased into the clearing, did a quick 360 scan, then started across.

Phow Ji stepped into view in the foreground, his back to the cam. He wore a pair of blasters in low-slung hol-sters on his hips. The droid didn't appear to see or hear him, but this changed when Ji yelled, "Hey, mechani-cal! Over here!"

As the droid turned toward him, Ji s.n.a.t.c.hed the blasters from their holsters so fast that the action was a blur, and fired. The twin bolts caught the droid's visual sensor array, instantly blinding it.

Ji ran to his right, five or six fast steps, and dropped p.r.o.ne. The droid fired his laser cannon at the spot where Ji had been standing a moment before.

Ji rolled up to his knees and shot the droid again, and the bolts-there must have been at least six or seven hits-lanced into the c.h.i.n.k under its control box. This was, Den knew, a weak spot on this model's armor, but so small that it was seldom a problem in battle.

It was a problem this time. Blue smoke erupted from the droid's casing, the thing listed to one side, then ground to a halt, critically damaged.

Ji leapt up and ran, again to his right.

A trio of Salissian mercenaries came out of the woods, blaster rifles working. Streaks of incandescent plasma scorched the air.

Ji dodged, dodged left, then right, then stutter-stepped as enemy bolts fell short or to the sides. He also shot as he ran, once, twice, thrice-and all three merce-naries were hit with fatal body strikes. They went down.

A heavily armored super battle droid emerged from the woods, followed by two more mercenaries, but Ji was on top of them almost before they realized it. He bodyslammed into one of the mercenaries, shot the other, and fired three times more at the droid, which erupted in fire and smoke as had the one before. Den watched in astonishment. Mother's milk, but this was incredible shooting, extremely accurate for sidearm fire, especially from a man running full out over uneven ter-rain and using both hands.

Ji holstered his blasters, straddled the remaining merc, who was still alive and trying to get up. He grabbed the man's head from behind and jerked it powerfully to one side. Den could clearly hear the Salissian's neck snap.

He'd thought his capacity to be astonished had reached its limit. But then his jaw dropped as two more mercs emerged from the woods, and Ji drew both blasters and shot the guns out of their hands!

Den had never seen anything like this, not even in en-tertainment holodramas.

The small 3-D image of Ji holstered his weapons again and ran to engage the surprised Salissians in hand-to-hand combat. The first man went down from a hammer fist to the temple; the second caught an elbow to the throat. Then Ji drew his weapons again, so fast that they seemed to just appear in his hands, and fired into the woods at unseen targets.

He shot until the blasters depleted their charges, turning this way and that as he spied new targets. When the charge chambers were empty he tossed the useless weapons away, and charged into the forest out of sight.

A moment pa.s.sed-then a mercenary pinwheeled into the clearing and hit a patch of rocky ground head-first. Again, the snap of cracking vertebrae was audible.

Another mercenary staggered into view and collapsed, clutching a blackened, smoking wound in his midriff.

Ji backed into the clearing from the woods, a blaster rifle now in hand. He was firing on full auto, hosing more hidden enemies.

More Salissians emerged from the forest, shooting ri-fles and blasters of various makes. A pellet from a slugthrower hit Ji a glancing blow high on the right leg, ripping open the cloth and the flesh. Blood oozed, soak-ing his pants. He spun toward the man who'd shot him and blasted him squarely in the face.

Another discharge took Ji low on the right side, va-porizing cloth and punching through his body. Not fa-tal, because the beam's intense heat instantly cauterized the wound, but serious nonetheless. Ji turned calmly and shot his attacker in the chest.

Then things got really interesting.

A large shadow obscured the light. Ji looked up, and the angle of the recording cam tilted as well, to frame a large drop ship hovering about fifty meters overhead. A dozen Separatist soldiers, using repulsor packs, settled down into the clearing, firing as they did so.

Ji shot eight of them, leaping, dodging, and rolling as plasma bursts peppered the ground all around him. It was a Jedi-like display of acrobatic skill, but finally the Separatists found the range. Phow Ji went down in a hail of sizzling blaster bolts.

He lay on the ground, obviously mortally wounded. The remaining soldiers approached him cautiously.

As they reached the dying man, he pulled a thermal grenade from his pocket and held it up.

He smiled as he triggered it.

They tried to run, but there was no escape. The grenade blasted the clearing into a blaze of heat and light that, even with the cam's automatic dampers, whited out the 3-D image.

When the glare cleared, all that was left of Phow Ji and his enemies was a smoking crater in the damp ground.

Den realized he was sweating, even in the relatively cool environment of his cubicle. He reached out an un-steady hand and switched the unit off.

Then he realized he wasn't alone.

He spun about with a gasp-then relaxed as he recog-nized the figure behind him. "Did-did you see the whole thing?" he asked.

"Yes," the Padawan replied. "Phow Ji made sure I re-ceived a recording as well."

"What-why did he-" Den couldn't finish the ques-tion. He'd been on a lot of planets and had seen a lot of violence, but he had never seen anything like this.

Barriss Offee was quiet for so long that Den thought she hadn't heard him. Then she sighed and said, "I saved his life. Earlier today. He'd been hit by a poison dart, and I brought him back through the power of the Force."

Den nodded slowly. "I'm guessing he was less than grateful."

"He was furious. I thought he was going to attack me right there. I don't know why he didn't. Instead, he just turned and walked away.

"I went back to the base to do what I could for the wounded. Soon after we got the last man stabilized, a droid handed me a copy of this recording."

Den pulled the cube from its slot and looked at it. It would be worth a small fortune, given Ji's newfound heroic reputation. Had the Bunduki known this-had he wanted Den to profit from it, given that it had been the reporter who had, albeit unintentionally, caused that reputation? Had Phow Ji, in his own twisted way, been trying to repay Den?

"It still doesn't explain why he did it. One man, pur-posely starting a firefight against a whole platoon? That's crazy."

"He was m'nuush," she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"That's what the Wookiees of Kashyyyk call it. To Trandoshans it's davjaan inyameet-the 'burning in the blood.' Humans call it 'going berserk.' It's a state of sui-cidal rage and fury, a point where one's life no longer matters, and the only important question becomes, How many can I take with me? "

"I've heard of it. So you think Ji committed a kind of ritual suicide?"

"I suppose that's one way to look at it. With a consid-erable amount of genocide mixed in."

Den sighed. He slipped the holocron back into its case and put it on a wall shelf.

"What will you do with it?" Barriss asked him.

"I'm not sure. I could make some serious creds off it, no doubt about that. But I'd also be helping to twirl Ji as a war hero."

"And you have no use for heroes."

"I never said that," Den replied. "Properly indoctri-nated, they're great at drawing fire away from those of us who are smart enough to know we're cowards and cynics."

Barriss smiled as she turned to go. "Rest a.s.sured I'll keep this knowledge to myself, Den, but just so you know as well-your aura is not the aura of a cynic's, nor a coward's. It has definite glimmerings of hero, in fact."

So saying, she left the cramped chamber. Den stared after her.

"Oh, no," he murmured. "Say it isn't so."

37.

Even aside from the almost daily thunderstorms and mortar sh.e.l.l explosions that seemed a little closer than usual, the OT was particularly noisy. Jos was in the middle of a nasty bowel resection-the trooper on the table had apparently eaten a large meal a few hours be-fore he had been hit by a chain-gun round that had per-forated the small intestine-when the public address system came on. An excited voice, going too fast, said, "Attention, all personnel. Republic Medical Surgical Unit Seven will be relocating, commencing at eighteen hundred hours! This is not a drill! Repeat, this is not a drill!"

Jos said, "Put a stat on that, please."

Tolk hurriedly glued the incision closed, almost drop-ping the patch in her haste.

"Relax, Tolk. You have an appointment you're late for?"

"You heard that announcement?"

"Yeah-so?"

"Look at the chrono-it is now seventeen forty-five. In fifteen minutes, you're going to be standing in the middle of an empty swamp in the rain with war ma-chines trying to zap your inattentive b.u.t.t if you don't close this up stat."

"You think?"

Before she could answer, there came a boom! that shook the OT. The operating table vibrated enough so the patient jittered toward one edge.

"Blast!" Jos said. "What was that?"

Vaetes stuck his head into the room and said, "We just took a direct hit on the shield from a particle weapon. Main generator's out; we're on backup power. We don't know where they came from, but there's a bat-tle droid force more than eight hundred strong less than ten thousand meters from here, coming across the Jack-hack Slough at a goodly speed. The ground's too wet for the troopers to set up a defensive line. That'll also slow the droids down some, but it's still best you close up any and all open patients and get them ready to move, people. This mobile unit is about to live up to its name."

As if to punctuate his words, another explosion rocked the building, rattling it hard enough to knock bedpans off the wall racks. The pans. .h.i.t with harsh metallic clangs.

"Aren't those supposed to be in the cooler?" Jos asked. "The better to make our patients uncomfort-able?"

Behind him, Jos heard Zan swear, something in low Pugali that he missed most of, but which sounded ap-propriately vile. "If my quetarra gets damaged I'm going to personally hunt Dooku down, excise his reproductive organs, and feed them to the swamp snails."

"Glue this one shut and start a stabilization packet," Jos said to Tolk. "Soon as you're done, get your stuff packed. Where's our staging station?"

"Southeast quadrant, by the backup shield generator."

"Got it." He raised his voice. "All right, people, you heard the colonel. Time to close up shop and move it!"

Jos backed out of the sterile field, stripped off his gloves, and went to check on his staff and their patients. There was a procedure for moving the unit-there was a procedure for doing everything in the military-but they had been here for what seemed like forever, and Jos had gotten so used to it that he had forgotten most of the course of action.

Another vibration thrummed from the energy shield. If those hits were any indication, it was seeming more and more like a good idea to pack up the splints and hightail it to safer ground-a.s.suming any such thing existed on the planet...

He hurried down the corridor. They had practiced the drill several times, during those rare instances when there hadn't been any incoming patients, and everybody in the unit was supposed to know exactly what to do should the real thing ever come to pa.s.s. Jos looked at the faces of the orderlies and other functionaries as they pa.s.sed him, and was rea.s.sured to see that most of the staff didn't seem unduly worried; they were all doing their a.s.signments, more or less.

He left the building. The rains had stopped, but there was still a strong wind trying to push the sodden air about. Disa.s.semblers and ASPs were fast at work, he noticed, breaking down prefab buildings and cubicles, while the CLL-8s loaded them and other materiel into cargo lifters that had sat idle since before Jos had been a.s.signed here. The patients were being loaded as well, by specially designed FX-7s using repulsor gurneys. Medlifters and refurbished cargo lifters would ferry them out of harm's way. Patients were the first priority, of course, but it wouldn't do to let the support staff be killed or captured.

It all felt rushed, hurried, and so strange it didn't seem real. One moment, they were operating on pa-tients, repairing troopers as usual-and the next, hurry-ing to escape a war heading toward them like a runaway mag-lev train.

Jos hurried to his own cubicle and started to pack his essential gear. You were supposed to have a grab-and-go bag ready at all times, but after several months in the same spot, Jos had begun using the clean laundry and supplies in his travel bag, and as a result the kit was mostly empty.

The droids would load everything else in the cubicle, and far more efficiently than he could ever hope to do. Even if everything played out perfectly, though, there still wasn't any way under the merciless sun that the Rimsoo was going to be ready to leave by 1800-not unless the droids were all magicians.

Zan had gotten there ahead of him and was stuffing his socks into his quetarra case around the instrument.

"You can't take that on the transport," Jos pointed out as he packed. "It'll have to go on the freight carrier."

"I know. Why do you think I'm padding it with my socks?"

"Theft insurance? Anyone who opens it and gets a whiff of your socks will never steal anything again. Be-sides, I thought that case was reinforced duraplast." Jos zipped his go-bag shut.

"It'd have to be made of neutronium before I'd trust it with those droids. Some of the ASPs used to be star-ship cargo handlers. They could 'accidentally' destroy a block of carbonite in a durasteel safe."

"Attention, all personnel," came the PA 'cast. "The transports will be... "

A bomb went off in Jos's ear-at least that's what it seemed like. There was a deep rumble that suddenly dopplered up and into the ultrasonic, and the overhead light fell onto his bunk, shattering the tough plastoid legs as the bunk collapsed onto the floor.

"What-?"

"The energy shield backup generator just overloaded. It's down," Zan said. "Next direct hit's going to fry anybody outside protective shelter like a mulch fritter."

"How do you know that?"

"I spent one summer working for my uncle, who in-stalled EM shielding and domes for the Vuh'Jineau Mining Company. I know what a shield overload sounds like. We want to be somewhere else, fast." He snapped the quetarra case shut and grabbed his go-bag. "Hurry, Jos. The arrestors might help against lightning and even partially deflect a laser blast, but a direct hit'll vaporize them. Us, too." He gave the case a last con-cerned look, then hurried for the door.

Jos was right behind him. "Don't the Separatists real-ize that all these explosions are ruining the bota crops?"

"Maybe you want to wait here and bring it up with them. Me, I'd rather send them a nasty letter." Zan plunged through the door to join the exodus, with Jos following.

Den Dhur had been through hurried evacuations a couple of times before, so this one didn't worry him overmuch. Not until the shield went down. Then he started to get a little nervous. True, he was a journalist, and in theory the other side wouldn't shoot him if they scanned his ID tag, but there was more than one war zone with a cooked reporter or two to show that the system wasn't perfect. The advancing Separatist troops probably weren't targeting the medical facilities partic-ularly-at least they weren't supposed to be-but col-lateral hits were bound to happen with all the path-clearing bombardment going on, and whether noncom or soldier, a body dead for a few days in this weather smelled just as bad either way.

Den hurried toward his a.s.signed evacuation spot, us-ing what available cover there was along the way. Al-ready big clouds of greasy smoke boiled up from the swamp as high-oxy fires raged. You wouldn't think a swamp could burn, but you'd be wrong-dead wrong-if you based your survival on that. He'd once seen an entire continent aflame on-what was the name of that planet? He'd suddenly gone blank. Well, now was not the time to worry about old dangers, not when the stink of burning vegetation and ash falling like hot black snow told him that a droid army was slashing and burning its way closer every minute. Now was the time to leave the party; he could jet down the memory s.p.a.ce lanes later-if he had a later.

Everywhere, transport droids, ASPs, and loadlifters performed their tasks, breaking down shelters, packing crates, working fast and efficiently. Also working in company with the disa.s.semblers were several small wrecker droids, which shoveled up debris or used their built-in plasma torches to melt down sc.r.a.p metal, plas-teel cables, and other rubble considered not worth haul-ing away, but still too valuable to leave behind as raw materials for the enemy. Cla.s.sic scorched-dirt policy, and practiced by both sides.