[Republic Commando] - 03(139)

The droid had followed him. “He’s not in there. Move along.”

“Where did they all come from? Not Gaftikar. That was a stroll in the park.” But not for Fi: that was galling, and Dar-man still didn’t know if it had been a booby trap or a cannon round, hostile or friendly fire. For some reason, it mattered a lot, even though he knew no good would come of knowing the answer. “Shouldn’t they be shipped out to Rimsoos?”

“No, very few casualties were sustained on Gaftikar,” said the droid. “These men are from a number of engagements in this quadrant. The Mobile Surgical Units can’t handle any more at the moment, so they’re sending them to vessels with spare medbay capacity.”

So the Republic could order a top-notch army and all its kit, but they didn’t get around to providing the medical support. Darman wanted to go and slap some sense into the Republic, but didn’t know who to start with even if he could. “Show me Bay Eight,” he said.

Darman tried not to look to either side of him, but he did and in one of the emergency bays med droids were working on a trooper. He couldn’t see the type of wound because the man was lying flat and the droids were obscuring his view. but he could see the deck of the bay, and it was covered in blood. A small cleaning droid was mopping it clean, working its way around the equipment unnoticed.

For some reason, the scene stopped Darman in his tracks. A mop. They were using a domestic mop to wipe up the blood. Somehow it summed up how routine this was, how much a part of the daily round, how mundane, that men bled out their lives and the cleaning droids carried on keeping the ship spick-and-span. Where was HNE and its holocams now? This scene never intruded on the holonews bulletins. All Darman’s vague resentment and fears suddenly found a sharp focus, and he was angry in a way that he hadn’t been before.

“Bay Eight, tank one-one-three,” the med droid beside him said sharply. “I have patients waiting.”

At least Fi had been first in line for a bacta tank. The droid left Darman in a forest of blue-lit transparent tubes full of men, and for the first time since he’d known Fi, Darman had the panicky sensation of not being able to recognize him; the fluid distorted like a lens, and the men inside were sedated, so there was no way to recognize him by facial expression or scars. But he had the tank number.

Fi’s injuries were all internal. Darman wished he could have said the same for some of the troopers he passed: bacta could heal a lot, but regenerating limbs wasn’t one of its properties.

In tank 113, Fi hung suspended in a surgical harness, breather mask held in place by filaments looped behind his ears, a very regular trail of bubbles rising slowly to the surface of the bacta; he was on assisted breathing, then. He looked peaceful. But Darman didn’t like that because he’d seen more than enough dead men with that same look of ab-sent serenity.

“Hey, Fi,” he said quietly. He put his hand flat on the transparisteel. They said coma patients often heard what was going on around them, so Darman treated Fi as conscious. “You’re going to be okay, ner vod. Better hurry back, because Corr’s taking your place, and you don’t want him to get all the girls, do you?”

Darman watched Fi for a while, drumming gently on the glass with his fingers. They’d all started life in a tank a lot like this. Darman was determined Fi wouldn’t end it in one. Now that he could stand outside all this, he could see it for the loveless, isolated, sterile excuse for life that it was.

Someone walked up behind him, very carefully. He knew Niner’s gait anywhere.

“The med droid’s getting annoyed with us trooping in here,” Niner whispered, draping his arm over Darman’s shoulder. “Fi’s stable. They say they’ve stopped the swelling in the brain, so they’ll drain him down and take him off the sedation in a couple of days and do scans. Then they’ll know what shape he’s in. We’re going back to Triple Zero anyway even if Leveler isn’t-we have to meet up with Corr and get a new squad in shape.”

“Why do they need to sedate him when he’s in a coma?”

“In case he wakes up in that thing and starts thrashing around.”

“Ah.”

“He’ll be okay.”

“What happens if he isn’t? What if he’s still in a coma? What happens then?”

This was where it got difficult. Men were wounded all the time, and some died, and some survived and were sent back to their units. It was the first time Darman had wondered why it was all so tidy.

“I don’t know,” said Niner. “I’ll ask Sergeant Kal.” Darman knew why he hadn’t asked the question before. though. The answer was brutally pragmatic. If it took too much effort to save a man, he wasn’t a priority. He died.