Chapter One
Kamino
There were no banner ticket parades as the world was as much a waterworld as Mon Calamari. But where Mon Calamari had some land-masses, Kamino had none. It was supposed by everyone that the two worlds held that to be somewhat of a rather strong common ground to start an unbreakable relationship and amid the flurry of excitement and hope, Prentiss Blood had arrived on the galactic scene.
A new place, a new life, a new hope.
The wisp of salt in the air as he hurried from the transport to the entrance out of the billowing rains gave Prentiss the impression that a person could start with a clean slate here. Seeing the water run down the smooth wall of buildings stirred longings that he could wash away the sins of the past; even those that stuck to a person like the dirtiest of sludge grease. Inside the great entrance hall was warm and as his clothes dried he took in the sights in wonderment. This was, by far, the cleanest place he had ever visited.
With a professional's eye, he saw that there would be ample opportunity not only to learn new methods and skills but a chance to practice those he'd been developing.
He was but a small drop in the bucket with regards Humans who'd emmigrated to this planet of one billion. Even so, however, despite the excitement the arrival of the representatives of the Mon Calamari Republic had caused, space was becoming an ever increasing, if subtle, worry for the natives.
There was only so much room their surface cities could boast of and the construction of additional spires from the ocean floor reaching to the surface took time.
But such was not the concern of Prentiss. He came with a calling and soon a long slender Kaminoan had walked up to welcome him. As it turned out, he was expected.
"Doctor?"
Prentiss gave the alien his best smile by way of answer since it still hurt to talk despite the scars on his neck having healed and motioned for the welcome committee to show him the way.
Literally and figuratively.
"Scalpel," whispered Prentiss as he probed the delicate skin of his patient with his gloved fingers.
As the instrument was handed to him the conversation in the operating room continued.
"It's settled," started the tall Kamino, Ranu Ru, who had been observing the procedure. "We would get all the rights, protections and privileges of those in the Mon Calamari Republic.."
"So we are going to see a greater influx of Republicans in the city's halls, yes?" came Haley, the surgeon's aide as she swabbed the blood that flowed from the incision Pentriss had made.
Ranu Ru, whose expression seemed to be carved in stone, replied in a polite tone, "Of course."
"Where are we going to put them?" Haley shot back, using a clamp to hold back the flesh.
Unhindered, Ranu Ru, answered, "Why the Rooming Association will no doubt find.."
"Where?" Haley persisted but Pentriss called her to task.
"This is a delicate cut to make, please focus here." his whisper seemed to get their undivided attention.
As the doctor folded back the cut flesh, he turned to Ranu Ru, "Here is the gland where it started."
The Kaminoan moved closer using a visor that allowed for extreme magnification.
"Haley, take a scrapping sample so Ranu can run his tests. Then we will seal the cut back and close her up."
"Doctor, you have no idea how much this means to me.." Ranu had started and Prentiss shut out the praises and comments on how Kaminoan hands were too large and bulbous to be used for such delicate work.
Prentiss just looked at the unconcious Kamino lying on the table wondering, not for the first time, if Ranu Ru's approach could be considered actually 'tackling the problem'.
It was an ailment that struck a minority of Kamino females damaging their reproductive organs. But what Ranu Ru was proposing was the cloning of healthy glands to perhaps be transplanted into the ailing females.
A reaction to the effect of the illness and given the Kaminoan's excelling science of cloning technology techniques, perhaps even a good idea. But to Prentiss, it was the attention given to this idea and this idea alone that was eclipsing the search for the reason the ailment struck to begin with.
To force a solution to a problem rather than tackling the causes could force the ailment to adapt as well. And if experience was any teacher, it would not be an adaptation they would like.
It was an approach the Kaminoans seemed to employ in everything from everyday life to politics. In their negotiations with the Calamari Republic, they had come to near blows over their differing lifestyles in aquatic environments and even though ultimately the negotiations succeeded, he wondered if the representatives from the MCR acknowledged the underlying drawbacks and difficulties inherent with the realities of life on Kamino before the placing the conditions of wartime aid and economic support in their laps.
The Kaminoans had only so much to work with even with the infrastructure put in by Chaddwick Fearsons of the Jutraalian Empire and while they held contracts with outersystems, the kind of economical support the Calamari Republic would need seemed to far outweigh what Kamino could give.
But that was the past. An agreement was made and the Mon Calamari Republic were here as their starships entered the system and Prentiss shrugged off his concerns. What did he know anyway for he was just a doctor?
The operating crew had left and once he was satisfied with the patient's status, he pulled off his gloves and began to wash his hands. The warm water was relaxing.
Just then, a shudder seemed to rock the entire structure and Prentiss had a quick vision of hungry fish snapping their jaws together in the oceans underneath him.
He was wondering what had happened when someone burst into the doorway nearly out of breath, "The government building has been bombed!"
What the hell!?
He was beginning to gather a crew together to respond to the crisis when he was blocked by Calamari soldier. "I am sorry doctor, but we cannot allow you to leave."
"Who the bloody hell are you?" Prentiss shouted ignoring the pain in his throat that flared.
"Sir, we are providing air-medical lifts here. There is rioting in the halls and causeways and an uprising is occurring. Shock Troops are entering the City to ensure stability!"
Prentiss did not really care what job the Mon Calamari was sent to do. But he focussed on the words that affected him.
"The wounded are coming here?!" he demanded. If the fish-eyed creature before him wavered, shocktrooper or not, he would not be in Prentiss' way for much longer.
"On my honor, Sir! They are coming!" Prentiss gave a begrudging nod to the trooper.
"I won't keep you then," he whispered and motioned Haley over who was carrying several portable units.
"We're staying!" he shouted as sirens began to wail as alarms went off warning of the riot dangers. "Have the staff prep the wings for emergency surgeries."
"Which doctors should I recall?" she shouted back and Prentiss looked back to the Calamari ShockTrooper noting it's hard, white armour and brutal weaponry.
"Those with wartime experience!" he answered with a snarl.
It's happening again!
Chapter Two
Kamino
"Open your eyes!" came the call as the hands covering Prentiss' eyes moved away. Doctor Prentiss Blood looked at his new office and a grin came to his face. His various accolades and certifications were neatly displayed on a singular wall while, behind a spartan desk, was a panoramic view of the Kamino seascape.
He even did not mind that it was raining. A most common daily occurance that he got used too over time.
His staff, Haley, his aide, Ranu Ru, a Kamino Observer who learned from Prentiss and now held a certification of his own and Boxer, an anesthesiologist worth his weight in gold credits grinned like ewoks with a golden droid.
The construction was over and Prentiss marveled at not only how quickly the Calamari built New Reef Town but how damn good it looked. Especially his offices.
His contributions during the Uprisings when MCR first came came to the notice of the MCR Representatives and they approached him with centralizing his practice with other fellow medical professionals.
That business with the rebel clones stealing children and capturing the city a year before had impressed upon the leadership that resources needed to be centralized and organized and Prentiss wholeheartedly agreed. The way the clones took over and the speed with which they did it never sat well with the good doctor.
The nightmares and screams of those he could not save still haunted him, as if the line of all the ghosts of his failures grew bigger. The brutality of the soldiers undoing all the work he and his staff put into patching people back together by tearing themselves apart nearly drove them all mad. It was a time that he hoped never to face again as they only brought up deeper, sadder memories.
As if there were nightmares he just could never hide from threatening to snap that thread of sanity sending his world of whatever he now loved spinning out of orbit into the dark recesses of space never to be reclaimed.
But that was the past...
Eventually, Captain Fregrad, of the Calamari MC-40 Light Cruiser Alliance, had left the planet after completing the various projects and duties leaving the new mayor of the city, Tyunner Scoon, to pronounce the city a "Glorious City of Peace and Harmony" and the Mon Calamari Governor of Kamino in firm control of the world.
And that was the past...
"I cannot thank you enough.." he said, his throat no longer hurting with speaking. He had been too busy to worry about the construction details of where he would be practicing in New Reef Town leaving the details to his staff. Their decisions and taste had genuinely impressed the doctor and he smiled warmly at his friends, "I give you the day off," he concluded grandly and his staff scoffed at the thought though they were not really scoffing. When he tried to draw them to discuss the new operating rooms they pulled him from the building and sought out a restaurant.
*
"So, Ranu Ru, what do you think of the Mon Calamari Governor of the planet. I understand this is the first time a non-Kaminoan has held the position?" Haley and Ranu Ru were always discussing politics which, of course, Prentiss held himself above.
"It is odd but so far, I have noted no ..."
A spectacular explosion lit up the twilight of the ocean world from a city not too far from New Reef Town cutting off Ranu Ru's answer.
"What the--" Boxer stood up sharply knocking his chair over as other patrons of the restaurant began to babble among themselves.
"REBELS!" screamed someone and Prentiss wrinkled his nose in distaste remembering the clone insurgents attacks on the city. He was sure Captain Fregrad had removed that threat for good!
"THEY ARE GOING TO RETAKE THE CITY!" another shouted and the doctor had had enough.
"EVERYONE RETURN TO YOUR HOMES!!" He bellowed. "WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT--"
Another explosion, this time inside New Reef Town, shook him off the table while Imperial Scimitar Bombers flew overhead, the winds whipping off their wing panels causing a curdling shriek as they passed.
Familiar sirens and alarms began to wail and the planetary arial batteries tried to open up only to explode as the fast moving Tie Interceptors cleared the path for the slower bombers.
Prentiss shook the nervousness out of his body and, ignoring the panic and hysteria behind him, stared at the craft's attack patterns.
It was almost surgical in technique and a detached part of him appreciated the pattern.
"They are taking out the military installations first that would hinder the bombers from completing their mission." he mused.
His detachment ended when he turned around and saw his staff in various states of fear, Haley looking at him strangely.
He raised his eyebrows, "Which means military medical staff will be first performing triage and attending to the needs of those military targets first hit by the fighters. Come, someone needs to be onsite where those bombers hit next and there are going to be many injured! We haven't got time to waste!" The others bolted to action, grateful for getting a command, any command, that they could focus on rather than the fires of destruction raining down on the cities.
*
Prentiss was surprised that the body count was not as large as it could have been given the explosions. Even then, however, he still had to think above the screams and panic of the citizens. Parents screaming for their children, children screaming for their parents, families shouting out for their loved ones. It was pandemonium and as he finally pulled down his mask letting the operating attendants finish dressing the wounds he had worked in, he saw his staff, equally exhausted, sitting under an open canopy listening the replay of the holonet news.
"Is the Mon Calamari Republic at war with the Empire?" he asked with a frown throwing his disposable safety coveralls into a trash recepticle.
Haley shushed him as a weary looking Mon Calamari came on.
No.. not weary looking! Injured!
"I guess Mon Calamari is at war," Ranu Ru said, stating the obvious. "If the Imperial Fleet is attacking there as well."
"Where the hell are our ships?" Boxer grunted in annoyance. "Where the hell is Captain Fregrad?"
"Not here," Ranu stated calmly, "Or, quite possibly, dead."
"But we are pretty far off the beaten path! Why is the Empire here? Here of all places?"
No one answered as the Calamari Governor listed his conditions to the Imperial Commander overhead.
The blood in Prentiss face drained at that threat and everyone went quiet. There, in the shade of a single moment, the Calamari Governor had just given the choice of life or death for them all into the Imperial Commander's hands.
It was not something taken lightly.
"Can he do that?" Boxer asked, clearly not liking the idea of fighting until the last man stands.
He was overheard by a group of Calamari and Azguards and quickly stammered, "I mean, I am no Imperial-lover or anything but I did not wake up today thinking I would die!"
Would the Governor do that? Just like that? Stop the medical staff from doing their job and simply stick a blaster in their hands and say, 'hold this hall'... or 'hold this causeway'?
"Why can't they just leave us alone?" Haley asked.
"Because we have joined the Mon Calamari Republic." Ranu Ru answered, "And..because of our history with the Empire and our own expertise, we are a valuable commodity."
Prentiss looked at Ranu Ru as the Kaminoan finished, "They will not reject the Governor's offer. They want what you have. With more clone soldiers, they'll try to sweep the galaxy under their control once more."
"A virus spreads," Prentiss commented, "and so why would they destroy that which can spread their particular brand of infection?"
"Then we should fight," Haley stated firmly.
The answering communcation from the Imperial fleet in orbit came through.
"One hour?!" someone shouted. "Is the man daft!?"
Prentiss narrowed his eyes. No. Just shrewd. No time to think about anything but leaving.
Boxer turned to Haley, "Do you still want to fight?"
The woman's face reddened, "I don't want to fight at all. I am talking about what we should.."
"We should get over to the military camps and see if we can help them pack up. I am sure some of the injured would be hard pressed to leave in such short a notice," Prentiss ordered, interrupting his aide from deciding anything foolish.
Treatment of anything required timing.
Hell, it required knowledge of a cure and right now, we do not know what, where or how to treat this new viral infection..
Prentiss put those thoughts aside as he prepared for more panic.
*
The Imperial Stormtroopers may have blocked the temporary field hospital but that did not stop Prentiss from pushing two of them aside shouting that their presence was endangering his patients.
Haley, Boxer and Ranu Ru were standing in front of some gray-uniformed Imperial Officer and Prentiss suddenly felt a stab of fear at the risk his staff was taking. He was perfectly at ease with risking himself but his staff...
They should know better!
"What the hell is going on here!" he started trying to get the officer's attention off of an angry Haley and onto himself.
The Officer pointed to the unconscious patient on the bed behind his staff, "This..." he stared at the Calamari patient blankly for a moment, "..thing has violated Commodore Gevel's explicit orders."
"I am not military," Prentiss growled out.
The Imperial Officer pointed to the patient, "But it is."
"He is a patient under my care."
"His presence violates the orders of the Commodore and therefore voids the surrender agreement." the officer stated flatly.
Prentiss looked at the Imperial officer with something akin to horror. "You cannot be serious!?" he cried incredulously.
"As per Commodore Gevel's orders, I am allowed to offer the prisoner transport out of the system. Please have him prepared to move--.."
"He CAN'T be moved!" Prentiss yelled indignantly. "That's why he's still here! His condition is critical and he must be monitored round the clock!"
"Captain?" the officer suddenly called out and a Stormtrooper came to attention, "Inform the Commodore that there is a Calamari military unit that is refusing to accept transport."
"Now wait a minute! WAIT!" Prentiss suddenly opened his palms. "I am not refusing you because I want too. To move him is to kill him. Please, it is not a desire to disobey your wishes but a medical necessity that prevents him from leaving."
The Imperial officer turned slowly back to the doctor. "I cannot have an enemy military unit within our lines."
"MY GOD MAN!" Prentiss exploded again, "What harm is he going to do to you lying here unconscious!?"
"Doctor, I cannot have an enemy military unit on our world. I also must follow the Commodore's orders to the letter of the law or the surrender becomes void. Now that is somethign I am sure you do not want to happen as the surrender has your previous governor's stipulation that the population remain unharmed. We are willing to provide transport for this.." he motioned to the patient, "..which would honestly serve all of our purposes. But you have told me that to move him is to kill him. I must ask, are you one hundred percent sure of this?"
Sensing hope, Prentiss nodded. "I am sure."
"I see.." the officer's voice trailed and Prentiss hoped beyond hope that the man would come up with a workable solution.
As it turned out, he did.
Faster that Prentiss could have thought possible, the officer's sidearm was drawn and a single shot hit the patient killing him instantly.
"There." the officer stated flatly, returning his weapon into his holster. "Problem solved."
Nodding to the stormtrooper contingent, they moved smartly away to the next issue.
"Carry on, Doctor." the officer admonished before leaving.
Prentiss could only stare at the man's back in stunned shock.
..workable solution, my foot!
Prentiss felt like a patient being told he had to undergo severe radiation treatment for cancer.
A workable solution...but not a good one.
He found it hard to maintain his professional detachment.
Chapter Three
Bandomeer
The series of events that led Prentiss Blood and his staff to Bandomeer stemmed from nothing more than the reasons that had led Prentiss to Kamino years prior. It seemed no matter where they went, no matter what situations they caught themselves in...they seemed to face the very worst of what life had to throw at them.
They saw the carnal underside and unrepentant destruction living beings could bring to each other so much so that clinical detachment seemed like a fading dream with each passing experience.
It was to happen all over again.
Prentiss cursed as the readings began to deviate from the stability of a few minutes before.
"Get that clamp!" he growled out holding steady the strings of arteries and veins exposed with his left hand taking care that his nervousness did not make his right shake. Haley swabbed the sweat beading on his forehead as the instrument was delivered.
Boxer was busy trying to ensure the stability of the child that he put under knowing that the boy's condition made doing so risky. But the operation had to move forward or the boy would have no future life.
Grasping the clamp with his right hand, Prentiss was all business even as a sonic boom shattered glass and shook nearby buildings.
"Bloody hell!" he muttered knowing his staff was doing their best to keep their fear down. The Tie Fighters had let loose as Coalition and Empire courted the hearts of Bandomeer. At least the Coalition had courted. The Empire? They sent warships and simply bombed the planet.
While the bombardment pretty much confirmed everything the Coalition representative had said about the Empire, the sad fact of the matter was that an Imperial warfleet orbited overhead and the Coalition forces were days away.
It was called "gunboat diplomacy" and Prentiss hated every bit of it. Especially as he saw the results of such diplomacy scattered in various stages of pain throughout his hospital.
The bombing had stopped but not the Tie Fighter fly-bys meant to impress up on the good people of Bandomeer their predictament. Between the fighter's shreiking and the sonic booms as they moved in and out of the sound barrier, the people were rattled and nervous.
It was the time the Imperial Captain decided to appeal to the masses to join the Empire.
It was, by far, the stupidest speech Prentiss had ever heard.
"I would suppose that he means too much for the people like us is not good for it seems the Empire seems to desire more and more worlds.." came Ranu Ru's calm, dry reply as Prentiss and his staff listened. They had arrived late to the party and so were standing a ways back though the size of the crowd did not deter Captain Thorton from his speech. He had the means to have his voice projected and it seemed like the little man preened as he did so.
"I may be mistaken, but did he just call us stupid?" Haley frowned.
Ranu Ru's facial expression did not change, as was a habit with Kaminoans, but his voice inflection indicated a hint of dry humor, "Of course, Ms. Haley. Too much freedom, too much liberty, too much money and too much medical insurance is obviously a bad thing and we are stupid for thinking otherwise.."
Prentiss chopped up the statements in his mind with a surgeon's care, "He's looking at it from an oppressor's view and obviously those things are a threat to an oppressor's regime."
Boxer turned to Ranu Ru, "He means aliens."
Haley's frown deepened, "How can the Empire give us the same freedoms if there are limits on some? It's not the same freedoms then if some are removed!"
Ranu Ru, "Obviously, the Imperial Captain cannot subtract which is ironic since adding is not a good thing either."
"Is he for real?" Haley stammered out. "The Empire blew the crap out of Kamino. Did he not just bomb the crap out of us for simply listening to the Coalition Representative as is allowed in the Bandoomeer Constitution?"
Others in the crowd muttered, remember that the Coalition all but declared war. They also know that Bandomeer was not a Coalition world and therefore free to carry out it's own interests. The Coalition may not have declared war in so many words, but the Empire had yet to declare war on Bandomeer despite the slaughter they carried out.
"Like the one he is using now?" Ranu Ru asked to know one in particular. "Join us or die. Can't get more underhanded than that."
Haley turned to the Kaminoan, "You think that is what this is coming too?"
As Captain Thorton continued to talk about losses the Bandomeerians could expect with whatever they decided to do, the crowd was muttering among itself.
“Another lie,” Kach continued, “That Mr. White claimed was that you would no longer be able to enjoy the rights you enjoy now if you joined the Empire. That is a complete lie and he most certainly knows it.
"You think that is what he will say at the end?" someone asked and Prentiss saw that groups of people were talking among themselves muttering, the more observant of them knowing what was eventually coming.
Captain Thorton, oblivious to everything but the sound of his voice, continued..
"Like what?" Boxer demanded indignantly though he was only heard by those standing close by.
Boxer shouted, “Get on with it!”
"Then it's your word against theirs. There's no proof of anything.." muttered Prentiss.
Then the Imperial Captain uttered something amazing.
Prentiss turned to Ranu Ru. "Why would Imperial Agents have to make a fighting retreat if they were discovered? The gathering was open. There could be 200 Imperial agents there for all we care.
And why worry about fighting retreat unless you are up to mischief?"
"So, if the crowd reacted to that mischief and found the instigating Imperial agents, then of course, our civilians would have been shot by Imperial snipers."
Haley was shocked, "They entered a public gathering prepared to shoot Bandomeer citizens for defending themselves?"
"Evidently, the Bandomeer police are embarrassed over that admission and the fact that they did not catch and arrest the snipers. I am sure if Bandomeer put snipers above a gathering on Coruscant, the Empire would have gone into conniptions." Ranu Ru pointed to a group of civil security and police as they murmured to themselves.
"Do as I say, not as I do.." muttered Boxer.
"Cheap tactics all right." Boxer murmured.
"That's it? We can go about our business and remain free? He's giving us the chance?" Haley asked shocked. She turned to Ranu Ru, "Apparently, you were mistaken.."
Ranu Ru simply stood there patiently.
Prentiss seemed shocked at the conclusion the Captain seemed to give. "I guess Haley is right. It doesn't make sense infiltrating our gatherings and attacking us only to let us go in the end.."
The good doctor's voice trailed off and Ranu Ru remained quiet, patiently waiting.
"Here it comes.." Ranu Ru whispered.
The crowd's tone turned nasty at the threat to fire bomb the cities of Bandomeer.
Whatever hope of negotiation, whatever hope for reconciliation, whatever thread there was for moderate action went up in smoke.
"Well, there it is.." murmured Prentiss. "The right or wrong of the matter is irrelevant. If they have their orders... they'll always shoot." he remembered the Calamarian patient on Kamino.
"He said the bombardment yesterday would be ordered if we join the Coalition. And this time, he'll be aiming at our cities." Haley gasped.
"Apparently, Captain Thorton has very little moral impetus to stand in the way of mass genocide. If he's ordered to carry it out, he will. How can people live under this sort of arrangement? What good is freedom of religion if the nearest Imperial officer can simply shoot you on sight because he got an order?"
"Alderaan was destroyed by such an order," Ranu Ru commented and Prentiss' face went white.
"It is the same evil. It is the same Empire... a little bit more polished, a little bit slicker but when you get down to the meat of it, the people are left to the whims of those in charge. And if they can kill and bombard worlds simply on an order, then there is no rule of Law that we, the people, can appeal too?" Haley asked turning to the others. "Is there?"
"Bandomeer is going to join.." Prentiss said even as the people around him gasped.
"Of course, we're going to join!" Boxer burst out. "Thorton is going to blow us to hell if we don't!"
Prentiss frowned thoughtfully. "It seems to me that our efforts to out-distance this infection is not working. It also seems that our trust in outside efforts to stem the spread also is not well placed and ineffective."
"So what do you propose, doctor?" Ranu Ru inquired, suddenly interested.
"That a more proactive approach to this disease be taken."
Ranu Ru contemplated this. "We do know the symptoms, we know the dangers and along term damage it causes."
"What the bloody hell are you talking about?" Boxer growled and then sheepishly, "No disrespect intended Dr. Blood."
Haley caught on, "But you said that treatment needs specific requirements to maximize effectiveness. We don't know..."
Prentiss smiled grimly. "The first proactive step to combating any illness is analysis. And, in order to analyze anything, we must first procure the proper equipment."
Ranu Ru added, "There is also the operating capital necessary to purchase such equipment, quality control protocols to be observed, staff to be trained.."
"Staff?" Boxer asked again, rather confused. "We are staff.."
"Ahh.. but Boxer, we are but a singular private practice and much more resources will be required to combat this illness of galactic preportions. We need our practice to grow but to grow with the necessary skill to provide competent and objective analysis so as to formulate an effective treatment."
Ranu Ru mused, "Who knows, our practice may grow large enough for us to be our own HMO."
Prentiss grinned, "You certainly do not think small, my friend."