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[Republic Commando] - 03(149)

By:Karen Traviss




Galactic City, Coruscant, 482 days after Geonosis

It might have been someone at the door, or the chrono alarm, or even a warning from the environment controls, but the beeping woke Besany. Then she realized it was the comlink on her bedside table making a sound she seldom heard.

She’d set it to make a different sound when calls came in from any of her secure codes-meaning Ordo, mainly. She didn’t want to miss him if he tried to contact her. Fi’s situation made her realize more than ever that she had to make more of what time she had with Ordo. But when she rumbled for the device and answered, it was Skirata.

“I forgot the time on Coruscant,” he said. “Sorry. I woke you, didn’t I?”

“It’s okay. Just getting an early night.” She sat up and shook herself to try to clear her head. “What is it?”

“Fi. Don’t worry, he’s still in one piece. But I need you to do me a favor.”

It didn’t even occur to her to hesitate. “Let me get my datapad.” She felt around on the table for it and sent a glass of water tumbling over the carpet. “Ready.”

“We’re having a little trouble over his care, and if you could keep an eye on him, it’d be appreciated.”

“Of course. Anything.” The alarm bell that went off now was real but silent, deep in her head: she probably knew more about the absence of medical support than Skirata did. “Where is he?”

“Jusik managed to get him admitted to the main neuro unit at Republic Central Medcenter by making a few calls, but now there’s some argument about keeping him there, and you’re the nearest one to the medcenter to smooth it out. I wouldn’t dump this on you if I could get one of my boys there faster, Bes’ika.”

You ‘re very good at making me feel like one of the family. How well you know me. “I’d do it anyway, Kal, even without the psy ops. Consider me co-opted by reason of vulnerability, the general desire to do what’s right, and the fact that I fell for your son.”

There was a pause. Maybe she’d been too frank.

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Skirata sounded frayed; things were probably worse than he was letting on. “Sorry. I don’t even know I’m doing it half the time. But if I didn’t trust you to do what I’d do myself if I was there right now, I wouldn’t ask. It’s just a bureaucratic thing.”

“I’ll make sure Fi is getting the best medical care, whatever it takes. I’m good at bureaucracy…”

“Ordo updated you, then.”

“I know he’s in a coma, that’s all. What level?”

“Niner said zero response to stimuli last time.” It had all slipped into the unemotional world of medical jargon. “No brain activity, but still breathing unaided. I’m sending you the patient ID details now so you can get past the receptionist droid.”

“I’ll get over there right away.”

“Thank you, Bes’ika. Everything hit us at once this time, or else-“

“Anytime. No need to apologize.”

“You go careful with the other stuff, okay?” He meant her investigation of the cloning activity. “You got us some solid-gold intel, but it’s not worth getting killed for.”

“Isn’t that the risk you all take?” Another pause. “Even a manipulative old chakaar like me feels guilty sometimes. Whatever it costs, you know I can pay.”

Or General Zey can. “I’ll call you as soon as I’ve resolved it,” she said. It was Treasury-speak, but she’d flipped into that persona now. “Whatever it takes. It’s nothing a budget code can’t resolve.”

It could have been worse, she told herself, automatically putting on her work suit. It could have been three in the morning, when she’d be too sleep-befuddled to be any use. She tied her hair back in a severe tail because loose blond hair got her instant attention, grabbed her bag-and blaster, because Skirata wasn’t joking-and called an air taxi.

RCM was a small city of a medcenter with its own traffic system, and it took several passes around the internal skylanes for the pilot to find the entrance to the neurology unit. Besany didn’t like medcenters, and the moment she walked into all that bright-lit, antiseptic state-of-theartness, she felt agitated. It was where her father had died. That was all it would ever be to her, and no amount of exquisite fresh flowers in the lobbies could change that. Skirata probably knew he’d plugged some gap in her life, but he couldn’t know how well.

“New admissions,” she said to the orientation droid, holding her anonymized datapad up to its port. There was a lot to be said for knowing how to cover your tracks. “Here’s the patient ID.”