Part 38 (2/2)
”Your favorite.”
”You can't have favorites. But he's probably the one I overprotect most, yes.”
”What are you going to do if you succeed with this scheme and they ... well, leave home?”
”I have no idea, ad'ika.” Skirata rubbed his face wearily with both hands. ”I forgot how to be Kal Skirata a long time ago. It's probably better that he never comes back.”
Redemption came from the strangest sources; perhaps it was easier to find in the dark, extreme places that forced a man to sink or swim. Etain walked around the homestead, which was even bigger than she'd first thought-more a chain of connected redoubts than a farmhouse-and when she pressed her face to the transparisteel insets in one of the walls, she could make out the faint boundaries of fields backing onto the complex.
It was the perfect spot for vanis.h.i.+ng without a trace. It was exactly what the Cuy'val Dar, soldiers so disconnected from normal life that they could step out of it indefinitely at a moment's notice, would think of as a safe haven. It was a remote, well-defended spot on a remote planet with a population smaller than most Core world neighborhoods, let alone cities.
It struck her then that this wasn't Rav Bralor's home. It was Skirata's. This was the retirement property Mereel had alluded to. Bralor was looking after it for him. If she'd lived there, it would have had all the trappings of a real home-yaim'la, that was the word. Lived-in, warm, familiar. This was a construction site.
Etain found she'd walked in a circle and now was back at the main entrance. Pulling her cloak up over her head and mouth to keep out the cold, she stepped outside to check if Aay'han was still there-with Nulls, she could never predict anything-and saw Ordo and Mereel. They were sitting on the coaming of the open port-side hatch, chatting in the faint yellow light of the cargo bay, their breath emerging as mist. They really are crazy-it s freezing out here. She caught a word or two of the conversation before they noticed her.
Whatever they were talking about, Ordo was saying he almost wished he hadn't started it, because it broke his heart to see Buir'ika like this. Mereel a.s.sured him Kal'buir would understand.
Buir'ika. She could work out even from her smattering of Mandalorian language that it was an affectionate word for ”father.” Everyone seemed to be wallowing in guilt tonight. ”I don't care how genetically superior you are,” she said loudly. ”Go to bed like good boys.”
Mereel laughed. Ordo just looked uncomfortable. ”Yes, Buir” Mereel said. It was the same word for ”mother” or ”father.” Mando 'a didn't bother with gender. ”We'll brush our teeth, too.”
Etain waited for them to close the hatch before she shut the doors and made her way back to the heart of the complex. Skirata was asleep, or at least in that doze from which he seemed to wake so quickly. She found a blanket, shook off the dust, and laid it over him, as she'd once seen Niner do.
Maybe it wasn't such a terrible thing to hand Venku over to him after all.
Medbay, Republic a.s.sault s.h.i.+p Leveler, 482 days after Geonosis ”I'm not accustomed to working with an audience,” said the droid. ”Please let me get on with my task.”
Atin had taken on the role of enforcer today. The med droid didn't seem to care which clone it was arguing with. Darman and Niner stood on either side of Atin, making it clear that it would be easier to give in than have to argue with them four times a day.
”I spent serious time in bacta,” Atin said. ”Twice. I don't have happy memories of it, so when Fi wakes up I want him to see his brothers as soon as he opens his eyes. Rea.s.surance. It's a scary experience for us. Reminds us of the gestation tanks.”
The droid was only partially moved. ”How very primal. Move behind the observation screen, then.”
”Okay.”
”And after brain damage like this, he might be very disoriented. Do you understand? He might have problems even recognizing you at first.”
Darman didn't care if Fi swung a punch and thought they were Neimoidian accountants as long as he was conscious. They could sort out the rest later.
”We get it,” Atin said.
The three commandos stepped out into the pa.s.sage, hel-mets held one-handed, and peered through the transparisteel like med students watching a master surgeon.
”Pity that Bard'ika isn't here,” Niner said. ”He'd have sorted this lot out.”
Darman felt a little wounded by the omission. ”Or Etain: But Jedi can't influence droids.”
”I meant a spot of creative slicing. Sometimes I think he's better than me.”
The technician droids moved the bacta tank out of position on repulsors and onto a recessed platform in the treatment area. Fi, breather mask still in place, hung more heavily on the suspension straps as the pale blue liquid was pumped away and the cylindrical tank descended below deck level. The droids moved a repulsor gurney into place and maneuvered Fi onto it, placed a temperature sensor somewhere that would have raised a loud objection had he been conscious, then covered him in a padded blue wrapping. The mask was still breathing for him.
”He looks awful,” Darman said. He placed his forearm on the transparisteel and rested his forehead against it. Bacta didn't leave you wrinkled and white like plain water did, but Fi looked dead; the contrast between his pallor and his black hair was stark. ”Is he still chilled?”
Niner shrugged. ”Well, that blue thing could be a heating pad.”
They waited. A droid kept hovering back to check the sensor readout, and eventually Fi didn't look such a waxy yellow color.
”Here we go.” Darman wasn't keen on seeing a needle go into flesh-his own or anyone else's-but he made himself watch as the senior med droid moved in with a cannula and slipped it into the vein on the back of Fi's hand. What Dar-man might have been able to do if he'd seen anything go wrong, he had no idea, but he had to keep watch for Fi's sake. The droid took a syringe and began injecting a pale yellow liquid into the cannula. ”So this stuff reverses the sedation?” Atin nodded. ”I was all bright and breezy pretty fast. He might not be, remember.”
Darman's gaze darted between the chrono on his forearm plate and Fi, and the urge to protect him-from what, from a med droid?-was hard to suppress. The minutes flicked by on the display, and the droid was joined by another. The two began attaching sensors to Fi's scalp, shaving off more small patches of hair-oh, he'd be really mad when he saw what they'd done to his hairstyle-and sticking the discs in place. They seemed to be checking brain activity.
”How long is this going to take?” Niner said. ”Shouldn't he at least be conscious by now?”
But he wasn't. The senior med droid repositioned the sensors, checked the readout, and then stood back in processing mode for a few moments, the panel on its chest flickering through a sequence.
Then it unhooked the filaments from the breather mask and removed the tube from Fi's throat. Darman couldn't work out what was going on at first. But Fi's chest wasn't moving, no rise and fall of steady breaths, and that was the point at which Darman started to think in terms of going in there and resuscitating like he'd been taught. The droid seemed to be watching Fi intently. Then it turned away to the trolley full of instruments, slipping items into the steribag for autoclaving.
”That's it, I'm going to...”
And then Fi took a long gasping breath and coughed. The droid spun around as if it hadn't been expecting that at all. Fi was breathing on his own again, but he certainly wasn't conscious.
Darman was a stride from the doors when Niner stepped in his way and pushed through ahead of him.
”Droid,” he said, ”you want to tell me what's going on? What happened there? Is he okay?”
The med droid placed more sensors on Fi, this time on his chest and throat. ”He's breathing unaided, and I wasn't antic.i.p.ating that outcome.”
”So why did you take the shabla tube out of him, then?” Darman snapped. He got the picture now, all right. They thought Fi was dead. ”What's that about?”
The droid just followed its protocols. It dealt with a steady stream of wounded and dying men every day, and Fi was no more special to it than the next trooper. It was nothing personal at all. ”His brain scan showed insufficient activity.”
”You mean you pulled the plug on him?”
”I a.s.sessed him as brain-dead. That's still my professional opinion. The medical protocol is that we don't continue life support if a patient is still showing isoelectric scans after forty-eight hours.” The droid paused. ”Flatlining, I believe you call it.”
The words. .h.i.t Darman like a punch in the gut. It wasn't supposed to be like that. Republic medical care was the best there was: prosthetic limbs, bacta, microsurgery, nanophar-maceuticals, you name it, the stuff of which miraculous recoveries were made. Fi couldn't end up like this. Darman refused to accept it.
Niner had his fist clenched, held against his leg. For a moment Darman thought his sergeant was going to vibroblade the med droid like he'd done to so many combat tinnies. But Niner could always keep control.
”What happens in a regular medcenter?” he said, voice cracking.
”They have separate medical protocols. The Grand Army operates under different terms.”
And Darman didn't need to be told what those were. He wanted to take it out on the med droid, but it was just a ma-chine and had no more rights than he did. ”You can't just leave him there. What are you going to do?”
”This has never happened before during my service. I have no instruction to keep a patient on extended life support in these circ.u.mstances. This medbay is for emergency and acute care only.”
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