Star Wars: Death Troopers

Chapter 10 Triage

"Hang on, i'm coming." Zahara followed the 2-1B through the medbay to the bed where a guard named Austin crouched with his head between his knees. He'd come in along with another guard and a pair of maintenance engineers. Waste had triaged his new patients expertly, assigned them beds, and started working up Austin, who appeared to be the worst off.

"Thanks,'" Zahara told the 2-1B. "Go check on the others." Sitting down on the bed next to Austin's, she didn't wait for the guard to acknowledge her. "How are you feeling?"

He looked up at her stonily. "I want to talk to the droid."

"My surgical droid is otherwise engaged with your co-workers," Zahara said. "What happened to you up there?"

"What do you care?"

"It's my job. How many people were up there with you?"

Austin didn't respond. Twin rivulets of thick yellow snot were leaking out of his nose, down either side of his upper lip, and he smeared them away with his sleeve and started coughing again into his fist, a loose, rib-racking hack.

"Look," Zahara said, "I've got other sick inmates to look after. So how about dropping the attitude so we can focus on getting you bet-"You're a piece of work," Austin said, "you know that?"

"I've been called worse."

"You and your sick inmates. I bet you. " He broke off into another coughing fit, Zahara leaning back as the guard sprayed the air around him with microscopic droplets, then pivoted his head to glare at her again."… I bet.

you probably. " More coughing, thicker now. "You're nothing but a.»

"Tell you what," she said, "you'll have plenty of time to call me names later. How about lying back and letting me have a look at you."

Austin shook his head. "Send the droid. I don't want you touching me."

"Don't be an idiot. You're…"

"Send the droid."

Enough was enough; Zahara stood up. "Suit yourself."

"Captain Sartoris was right about you, you know," he said as she walked away.

"Excuse me?"

"You're sweet on cons. I'll bet that if I were some low-life Rebel scum you'd treat me like your only patient. Every sob story that comes along, you're ready with a sympathetic ear."

"Wow." She almost felt obliged to respond with some representational show of anger. "Your captain really knows me well, doesn't he?"

"He's a good man."

"Sure," she said easily. "Killing inmates is a real feather in his cap."

Austin gave a quick series of explosive coughs, then cleared his throat and whooped out a ragged breath. "That wasn't your call to make."

Zahara turned around to face him again. "Let me tell you some-thing about your heroic captain. He was in trouble long before what happened with Von Longo-even the warden knew it. Regardless of what he might have once been, he's now a burned-out wreck of a human being, a claustrophobic sociopath with…" She broke off when she realized Austin was grinning at her, a narrow, vulpine grin- she was only confirming everything he'd suspected about her. "What Captain Sartoris did to Longo here in my medbay was just the end product of a long and messy downward slide."

"And that's when you really started to like him, right?" Austin asked, that hard smile still wrapped across his otherwise sickly face. "You like 'em hurt and needy. That really flicks your switch, doesn't it?"

She felt her neck beginning to turn red and was suddenly sure that Austin could see it, too. "If you say so."

"I'm not the only one."

"Dr. Cody?" a synthesized voice called out. "Are you available?"

She turned and saw the 2-1B gesturing to her from the other side of the infirmary. On the bed beside it, one of the new patients-she thought it was the other guard, Vesek-appeared to be having a seizure. The two engineers and the trooper who had accompanied him were all sitting up watching with a mixture of dismay and revulsion.

"On my way."

By the time she arrived at his bedside, Vesek had started to slide off his mattress despite the surgical droid's efforts to restrain him. The guard's face had gone a nearly translucent shade of pale and his eyes were rolled back in his head while the rest of his body flopped and twitched erratically as if responding to some high-voltage electrical current. Then without any warning he fell on his back, his mouth bursting open to emit an uncertain urk sound, followed by an almost solid spray of bright arterial blood that shot straight up into the air like a geyser.

"Watch out." Zahara raised her hands to shield herself and the engineers sitting next to her. On the other side of the bed, the 2-1B continued to hold Vesek in place. When it looked up, she saw that its cowling and visual sensors were covered with blood. Vesek collapsed backward on the stained sheets, as if the act of vomiting had drained all the fight from him.

"Get him in the bubble," Zahara said. "All of them, the guards, engineers, whoever came off that Destroyer, get them sealed off from the other patients-now."

The 2-1B's sensors had already cleared themselves and reflected back at her attentively. "Yes, Dr. Cody."

"Run labs on them, a full tox screen, find out what they were exposed to up there."

"Anything else?"

She forced herself to stop and think, taking inventory in her mind. "We better let the warden know what's going on. He'll want updates."

"Right away."

"Wait," Zahara said, "I'll take care of that myself." She didn't wait around as the surgical droid started giving instructions to the engineers. Their faces were freckled with Vesek's blood, and they looked frightened now, more scared than sick.

"You," she said, looking at the name on his badge, "Greeley, how many men went aboard the Star Destroyer?"

"Two teams of five," Greeley said, "but…"

"Where are the other five men?"

"They came back before us."

On the bed, Vesek made a throaty groaning sound and shifted his weight, rolling onto his side so that his back was to them. The other two men stared at him with matching expressions of encroaching panic as the droid led them away.

"Hey, Doc, what's the good word?"

She turned and saw that Gat, the Devish, had left his bed and made his way over to see her. He was gazing at the guard on the blood-stained bunk, fingering his broken horn with the unconscious compulsions of someone prodding a loose tooth with his tongue.

"Nothing you need to worry about."

"I heard you say something about the bubble."

"I'm just playing it safe," Zahara said, "until we get a better handle on things."

The Devish cocked his head and then nodded. "If there's anything I can do, let me know, okay?"

"Thanks, Gat. I'll keep that in mind." Without thinking, she put one hand on his shoulder and felt another pair of eyes on her from across the room.

Austin was glaring at her.

And smiling.

She walked back to her workstation, thumbed the console, and watched as Kloth's face materialized on the screen in front of her. Some kind of contrast malfunction had rendered the image too bright, making it appear bleached and monochromatic. He was sitting at his desk, the viewport behind him partly eclipsed by the massive bulk of the Star Destroyer's underside directly above. It blocked out more stars than she had expected and gave the odd appearance of having arrived at their destination.

"Dr. Cody? What is it?"

"I'm down here with five of the men from the boarding party," she said.

"How are they?"

"Not good. I'm placing them in the quarantine bubble. Where's Captain Sartoris?"

"In his quarters, I assume. But Dr. Cody…"

"I'll need him up here, too," she said. "What about the other five?"

"That's just it." Kloth shook his head and she realized for the first time that the pallor on his face had nothing to do with the contrast of the monitor screen. "The second team never came back."