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II. pleyver: space force medical station

Lieutenant commander Nyls Jessan ran a hand through his straight blond hair and turned off the desk comp with a satisfied sigh. “Another day, another eight-point-six-five credits. Everything taken care of in back, Namron?”

“All secure, Commander.”

“How about that spacer off the Stellar Cloud?”

“Sent him home at eighteen-thirty with capsules and a prescription, sir,” said Namron. “Unless somebody rings our doorbell during the night, we’re empty.”

Jessan pushed his chair away from the desk and leaned back to look at Namron. Seen from that angle, with the light of the setting sun glinting off a row of service medals that went back to the Magewar, the petty officer made an impressive sight. Jessan wondered yet again whether Space Force had assigned the older man to Pleyver with an eye toward offsetting his own distinctly unheroic appearance.

But looking like a recruiting poster come to life didn’t stop Namron from being an efficient corpsman as well as good company with his limits. Jessan leaned his chair even further back, and propped his boots up on the edge of the desk.

“If I had the choice,” he said, “I’d put the clinic on an outpatient-only basis indefinitely. Right now, if we have a medical disaster bad enough to fill all the beds, I don’t know where we’ll find the staff to handle it.”

Namron nodded. “Any word on when Space Force is going to send us a few more people?”

“They’re still trying to work out the allowance list,” said Jessan. “But even a reservist would help.” He sighed, and contemplated the toes of his boots with dissatisfaction. “I’ll put through the request for more personnel again in the morning. Maybe somebody will read it this time.”

“Like they did the one for the healing pods?”

Jessan gave a theatrical shudder. “Don’t remind me about that,” he said.

The clinic’s accelerated healing setup had been scheduled to arrive via the Space Force shuttle from High Station six months ago. So far, the supply shipments had included any number of improbable items, but the pods remained undelivered.

He stretched and yawned. “Oh, well. Time to pack it in and get some sleep, just in case the dawn flight comes in at midnight again.”

Namron shook his head indulgently. “The pilot hasn’t been hatched who likes to show up in town after the bars are closed.”

“Let’s hear it for Flatlands and its exciting nightlife,” said Jessan, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. Pleyverans liked to think of their planet’s only spaceport as a wide-open den of iniquity, but the Portcity’s tawdry fleshpots held few attractions for a native of Khesat. As Jessan had written to Ari Rosselin-Metadi shortly after arriving on-planet and taking stock of the situation, “Flatlands is the sort of place that gives decadence a bad name.”

Footsteps from the back of the clinic heralded the arrival of Clerk/Comptech Second Class Peyte with a folder of printout flimsies. “Comps and comm links all secure, Commander. Got anything else for me?”

Jessan reached up an arm and snagged the folder. “Nothing before the supply shuttle gets here. Check with Petty Officer Namron before you turn in.”

“Roger out, Doc.” Peyte disappeared again into the back of the clinic.

Jessan riffled through the printouts, trying to decide whether taking them to his quarters would really put him ahead of tomorrow’s workload, or only keep him from getting to sleep.

Without warning, the buzzer at the clinic’s front door broke the late-hours quiet.

“So much for a restful evening,” Jessan said with a sigh. He swung his feet back down to the floor and brought his chair upright. Across the room, Namron was already toggling the clinic door open.

Two men—one slight and grey-haired, the other tall and much younger, his narrow face disfigured by an ugly red eye patch—waited on the threshold with blasters in their hands. The panels had barely reached full dilation before the pair shoved past Namron and flattened themselves against the walls to either side of the entry. The younger man slapped the toggle switch with his free hand.

Mandeynan, thought Jessan, taking in the man’s ruffled shirt and queued-back brown hair. His heavy blaster, and the dried blood stiffening the front of his expensive shirt, said something more: this particular Mandeynan was dangerous, and already in bad trouble.

The door shut with a click. Jessan came to his feet. “Do you need medical assistance?”

The older man’s left arm hung motionless in the way that spelled “broken” to a trained eye, but he shook his head. “No time. Do you have a comm link here?”

“Of course,” said Jessan.

“Get on it, then,” said the Mandeynan. “Call Space Force, and tell them to come in heavy.”

Jessan looked from the grey-haired gentleman to the beardless dandy in the bloodstained shirt. “Mind telling me what’s going on first?”

“Later,” snapped the Mandeynan. He edged over to one of the front room’s tall, narrow windows and peered out at the darkening street, blaster at the ready. “Make that call while you still have the chance—they’ll be here any minute now.”

“ ‘They’?”

The Mandeynan gave Jessan an angry glance. “Damn it, will you stop asking questions and make that call?” As he spoke, a blaster bolt flashed into the interior of the office, melting a curly-edged hole through the window-pane next to the Mandeynan’s head and scorching the material of the far wall.

The older man shook his head. “Too late, I’m afraid.”

The Mandeynan fired twice out the broken window. “We’re not dead yet, Professor. For the last time, Commander—where do you keep the comm room in this place?”

That accent’s pure Galcenian, thought Jessan. He’s more than just Mandeynan, no matter how he dresses.

“Through the door to the back and make a right,” he said. “Who are you people?”

“I’m Tarnekep,” the young man said, and snapped another shot out the window. “And that’s the Professor.”

The Mandeynan fired one more time, and sprinted for the ulterior of the clinic. Then Jessan heard a muffled whump from somewhere outside, and all the lights went out.

“What the hell?” came a shout from deeper inside the building. Peyte, that would be, seeing one of his beloved comps go down.

Tarnekep’s voice came from near the back door. “Just how many people are in here?”

“Three,” said Jessan. “Me and Namron, and that was Peyte you heard in the back.”

“Where’s your weapons locker?”

“This,” said Jessan, feeling his urbanity starting to wear thin, “is a walk-in clinic and recruiting center. We don’t have a weapons locker.”

His eyes were adjusting to the twilight filtering in from the street. A bar of light from a hand-torch swept across the room as Peyte walked into the office.

“Hey, Doc! We lost power!”

“Turn that off!” snapped Jessan and Namron together.

Peyte turned the light off, so that only the grey light from outside remained, and asked in plaintive tones, “What’s going on around here, Doc?”

“Visitors,” said Jessan. “That’s Tarnekep there by you. He wants to use the comm setup. Go show him how.”

“Whatever you say, Doc. C’mon, you.”

The two men vanished into the back. After a moment, Peyte’s voice said, “Damn. The relays are out.”

Tarnekep’s voice said something brief and nasty. So he dresses like a Mandeynan, thought Jessan, and talks like a Galcen-born aristocrat . . . and swears like a spacer in back-alley Gyfferan. Not your usual mix, at all.

Peyte and Tarnekep reappeared. “Somebody’s taken out our communications,” said the comptech.

“I heard,” said Jessan. He looked over to where the Mandeynan’s pale face made a lighter blur against the twilight. “What’s going on here, anyhow?”

“Our ship’s docked up at High Station,” said the Mandeynan. “And the locals have closed the commercial shuttle port.”

Jessan shook his head. “If Security’s after you, I can’t do anything to help.”

Tarnekep snorted. “Do Security Enforcers fire into Space Force installations without talking first—even on Pleyver?”

Jessan knew that the Mandeynan was right, which meant the men shooting at them were somebody’s private troops. And in that case, he thought, I can’t solve my problems by handing these two over to the folks outside.

The Professor’s quiet voice cut into the conversation. “If need be, Commander, Captain Portree and I will surrender ourselves into Space Force custody.”

“No,” Jessan told him. “Consider yourselves under Space Force protection instead. You wouldn’t be the first spacers to bite off more trouble dirtside than they could handle. And let’s wait until Security gets into the act before we start talking about surrender. Peyte!”

“Sir?”

“Is the comm set in the hovercar back in working order?”

“Fixed it yesterday, Doc. You want me to make a dash for it and get a call patched through to High Station?”

“I’d better do that part,” said Namron. “Those guys out there don’t seem too particular who they’re shooting at, and your coverall’s going to look like civvies in a dim light. That goes for you, too, Commander.”

Jessan had to agree. His working uniform, like Peyte’s, lacked flash—but Namron’s glittering splendor, meant to impress potential recruits, would mark the petty officer as Space Force from the moment he came into view.

“Get the patch through to High Station,” he said. “Tell them we’ve got a bit of trouble down here with somebody’s private army, and ask them to send the shuttle down stat. Then get in touch with local Security.”

“Yes, sir!”

Namron saluted and headed for the door. The Professor toggled the panels open and Namron stepped through, the last of the fading light reflecting from the heavy gold braid of his dress uniform. Seconds later, a blaster bolt came zinging out of a window across the street. The scarlet beam caught Namron in the chest, just above his impressive row of service ribbons.

The petty officer staggered backward and fell against the building’s outer wall to the left of the door. A second later he twitched and tried to rise.

Jessan ran for the doorway. “He’s alive,” the Khesatan called over his shoulder to Peyte. “Go get a shock set.”

“Sure, Doc,” said Peyte. “I’ll be right with you.” The clerk/comptech vanished into the back.

As soon as Jessan reached the door, he dropped to his belly and crawled the last few feet toward the injured man. He grabbed Namron’s right arm, but neither his first nor his second try got him enough leverage to move the man inside. A blaster bolt scorched a line into the pavement ahead of him as he inched himself farther out.

Suddenly, a long-legged figure sprinted past him. It was the Mandeynan. Without saying a word, the youth ran forward, took hold of Namron’s left shoulder, and heaved the bigger man sideways. Jessan caught Namron under the armpits and started dragging the petty officer inside. He heard the high whine of a blaster going off nearby. Then he was inside with his patient, and the door was cycling closed.

The petty officer groaned—under the circumstances, a beautiful noise. Peyte reentered the room, a medical kit in his hand.

“Let’s get Namron bedded down,” said Jessan. “I don’t know how long it’s going to be before we can get him out of here and into a healing pod.”

As he finished speaking, a white flash lit up the entire front row of windows, and the building rocked with an explosion.

Peyte stared out at the street. “Those bastards blew up the hovercar!”

Moments later, the room’s remaining unbroken windows bulged and deformed inward, then shattered onto the floor. Dark shapes filled the window frames, clambering in and firing blasters as they came. Tarnekep and the Professor fired back until the room was filled with crossing streamers of colored fire. As suddenly as it had begun, the assault ended, leaving behind a only a deafening silence and a couple of bodies on the floor.

Funny, thought Jessan, straightening up from where he’d flung himself across Namron when the glass started flying. You’d have thought there’d been more of them, from the racket they made coming in.

Now all he could hear was a scrabbling sound. He looked, and saw one of the bodies moving, trying to crawl toward a blaster lying on the tiles. Tarnekep must have caught the same faint noise; before Jessan could shout a warning, the Mandeynan turned away from the windows and swung one boot in a short, fast arc that connected with the crawling man’s head. Jessan heard a snapping noise, and the body lay still. Tarnekep stooped for the weapon and stuck it into the waistband of his trousers.

“Anyone hurt?” the Professor asked.

“I’m fine,” said Tarnekep. “But we can’t hold this room. Not with all these damned windows.”

“True. Are there any other ways into the building, Commander?”

“No more windows,” Jessan said, working over Namron as he spoke. “Two doors, and the cargo bay in the rear.”

“Then I suggest we fall back.”

A blaster bolt flashed into the room as the Professor spoke, searing the plast-block of the opposite wall. Jessan took that as a hint and began crawling backward, dragging Namron along with him. The other two followed.

Peyte, shaken but unflappable, brought the pillows and blankets into the comm section. The self-powered emergency glows on the control panel had cut in when the power died. By their dim luminescence, Jessan and the comptech bedded Namron down among the equipment—warming him, raising his legs, and putting a pressure bandage over the blaster wound in his side.

“Move that desk in front of the door for a barrier,” said the Professor. “We’re going to see more fighting before the night’s over.”

Jessan nodded at Peyte. The clerk/comptech took up one end of the desk and said, “Seems quiet enough right now.”

“It’ll get noisy again,” said Tarnekep shortly from the desk’s other end. When the table had been moved into place, the Mandeynan wiped the sweat off his face with one bloodstained sleeve and asked, “Where can we cover the other doors?”

“The corridor makes a T branch a little way back from here,” said Jessan. “You can watch both doors from there. And the stairs and elevator from lower stores come up just around the corner.”

Tarnekep nodded. He took the spare blaster from the waistband of his trousers and handed it to Jessan. “Do you know how to work one of these?”

“This may only be the Medical branch,” he said, “but it’s still the Space Force. Yes, I’m qualified.”

“Then you and Peyte go back and hold the rear doors while the Professor and I keep them out of the front.”

Jessan took the blaster and stood up. “Just who are those people out there?” he asked, checking the charge on the weapon. Half-full—it could be worse. “Assuming I make it through the night, having their names is going to make writing the report a whole lot easier.”

“If I told you,” said Tarnekep with a thin smile, “they’d probably want to kill you, too.”

“Namron didn’t know their names, and it didn’t help him a bit.”

The two strangers were silent; Tarnekep bit his lip. After a moment, Peyte said, “They can’t just sit out there and shoot at us all night.”

“No, Peyte,” said Jessan wearily, “they’re probably going to come inside so they can shoot at us even better. Everybody else in the district is closed up, remember, and it’s a long time until morning.”

“Sorry, Doc.” Peyte sounded crestfallen, the way he usually did whenever his knowledge of people didn’t match his handiness with robots and computers.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Jessan. “Come on—looks like we get to guard the back doors.”

He and Peyte walked toward the rear. With the power down and the air ckculation off, the corridor smelled of dust and anesthetics. The medical odor gave Jessan an idea.

“Wait a minute,” he said, as they passed one of the treatment rooms, and ducked inside. Working mostly by feel, he picked up three small cylinders of oxygen and a large bottle of antiseptic. Arms full, he hurried back out.

Peyte looked at him curiously. “What’re you going to do with those, Doc?”

“Give somebody a surprise.”

Jessan piled up his loot near the far door and retired with Peyte to the crossing. He settled down on the tile floor, leaning back against the plast-block wall and stretching his long legs out in front of him. A few feet away, he could hear Peyte doing the same.

“Rest while you can,” he said to the clerk/comptech. “I’ll take first watch.”

“Are you kidding, Doc? I joined the Space Force for excitement, and all I’ve done so far is look up the right forms for signing underage semisentients. Do you think a repair crew’s going to be along soon to fix the lights?”

Jessan shrugged. “I don’t know. A crew will probably come out as soon as the Power Service notices a break in the net—but how many crews have to turn up missing before Power gives in and yells for Security?”

“In this neighborhood?” asked Peyte. “At least a dozen.”

Silence for a few moments, then Peyte spoke up again.

“Who are those two guys, anyway? That one with the eye patch—there’s something funny about him.”

“A number of funny things, if I don’t miss my guess.”

“Yeah. I was right next to him, trying to work the comms—and Doc, that’s not his blood he’s got all over him.”

“I didn’t think it was,” said Jessan. He frowned a little. There was a noise—or had he imagined it?—down at the end of the hall.

Firing broke out again in the front room. The bolts of energy flowing into the front office lit the whole clinic as far back as the rear corridors in an aurora of multicolored light. The sound of the blasters almost drowned out a hollow booming at the far door. Never mind the sound-and-light show, Jessan said to himself, as the door fell inward and half a dozen attackers surged forward into the hall. You ’ve got trouble of your own back here.

He took careful aim—Just like a target range, nothing to worry about—and fired into the stuff he’d left piled up at that end of the corridor. The bolt ruptured at least one of the oxygen cylinders, and the sideshock broke the bottle of antiseptic wide open. Flammable liquid mingled with pure oxygen escaping from the ruptured cylinder, and the resulting fireball rolled up and down the hall in both directions before it faded.

“My, my,” said Jessan, with some satisfaction, as the ceiling gave way and buried the back door under a heap of rubble. “That was impressive.”

From the front, Tarnekep’s rather breathless voice called, “You two all right back there?”

“We’re fine. They won’t be trying that door again, either. How are you two doing?”

“Making it. Do you have a moment to come play medic?”

“It’s what they pay me for.”

Jessan handed his blaster to Peyte. “If anything tries to get in from the outside, shoot it.”

“Got you, Doc.”

Jessan ran toward the front. The table still stood across the inner door, and a quick check reassured him that Namron’s condition hadn’t changed, but the throat-clawing aftersmell of a blaster fight hung undissipated in the stagnant air. Tarnekep sagged exhausted against one wall, and the Professor sat at the comm station, checking his blaster one-handed with intense concentration. Jessan looked over at Tarnekep, and the younger man made a tired gesture in the Professor’s direction.

“Right,” said Jessan. “Let’s see about you, then—‘Professor,’ did you say to call you?”

“I didn’t,” said the grey-haired man. “But it suffices.”

“Then ‘Professor’ it is,” agreed Jessan. “Tarnekep . . . if you could be so kind as to bring over one of the extra blankets, I can rig a sling for this arm. There’s no accelerated-healing setup here, I’m afraid, and until the power comes back on there’s no way to mend the bone for you, either. If you like, though, I can give you something for the discomfort.”



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