"Steve Perry - Battle Surgeons" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

quite used to, sadly. What's even more sad is that you'll get used to it as well, very quickly."
Jos wasn't quite sure what the proper protocol for greeting a Jedi was, but he didn't see much point in
worrying about it at the moment. "Let's hope the Force is with you, Jedi Offee," he said, having to raise his
voice to be heard over the rising whine of the repulsors. "Because it's going to be a long, hot day." He
started toward the open landing area in the camp's center, where the initial triage calls were pronounced on
the wounded as they came off the lifters.
Barriss Offee moved quickly to keep up with him. He trusted she was willing to tackle whatever was in
store. She's a Jedi, Jos told himself—she's probably got what it takes.
For her sake—and the troops'—he hoped so.




3
The full-spectrum light in his office was dimmed—as a Sakiyan, Admiral Tarnese Bleyd could see farther
into the infrared than most beings, and he preferred to spare himself the harsh glare that many of the
galaxy's species needed for illumination. Most sentients considered themselves enlightened to some degree,
but to those who could see things as they really were, the rest of the galactic population was stumbling
about half blind. Un-fortunately, the sighted few were all too often handi-capped by the blindness of the
masses.
Bleyd frowned. He knew himself to be one of the Re-public's most capable admirals: smart, clever, and
deft. Given the proper venue, he could have risen easily to the top of the military's chain of command in
short order. Become a fleet commander, at the least; perhaps even a Priority Sector High Commander. But
instead, his supe-riors had seen fit to shunt him to this Maker-forsaken, backrocket planet in the hind end of
nowhere, to pre-side over the administration of a lowly MedStar, a med-ical frigate fielding Rimsoo units
charged with patching up clones and collecting an indigenous plant.
He feared for the stability of a commonwealth that could make such ill-advised decisions.
Bleyd stood and moved to the large transparisteel view-
port. Drongar filled a quarter of the sky "below" him. Even from orbit the planet looked vile and pestilential.
From the surface, he knew the sky would have a sickly copper tint caused by the clouds of spores
constantly adrift in the upper atmosphere, and the rampant, al-most virulent growth that covered everything.
He shivered, rubbing his upper arms. His skin was the color and texture of dark, burnished bronze, but
that didn't mean Tarnese Bleyd didn't feel the cold occasion-ally. Even when the temperature was set to a
comfort-able thirty-eight degrees.
The only parts of the planet, with its vast, continent-spanning jungles and marshlands, that remotely
re-minded him of the veldts of his homeworld were the few isolated patches where the bota grew. He
couldn't even see those from orbit. By far the largest fields were on Tanlassa, the bigger of two
landmasses in the south-ern hemisphere. The Jasserak engagement—the only ac-tive conflict zone on the
planet, at the moment—was taking place on the Tanlassan western shore.
Bleyd turned away from the port and made a gesture. A hologrammic display appeared before him,
showing a translucent image of the rotating planet. Alphanumerics cascaded on either side of the globe.
The admiral brooded on the stats. He knew most of them by heart, and yet he often felt compelled to
review them. Some-how, it was comforting to know everything about the planet that was going to make
him rich.
According to the Nikto survey team that had first discovered the system, nearly two centuries ago,
Dron-gar was a relatively young world, with a radius of 6,259 kilometers and a surface gravity of 1.2
Standard. It had two small moons—nothing more than captured asteroids, really. There were three other
planets in the
system, all gas giants orbiting in the outer reaches, which meant Drongar was well shielded from meteor
and cometary impacts. Drongar Prime was approxi-mately the same size as Coruscant Prime, but it burned