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

merely a chaotic impression of motion, a furious muta-bility.
"D'spores are, um, adepto ... uh ..."
"Adaptogenic," she said.
"Yeah, dat's it. Every time d'mechanics and d'medics come up wit' new treatments, d'spores change,
y'know? And d'treatments, dey stop workin'. Weird t'ing is, dey don't cause problems at ground level, only
when y'get up above d'trees, y'know?"
Barriss nodded. It didn't sound pleasant. In fact, very little about this planet sounded pleasant, even though
her information on it was still sketchy. According to the hurried briefing at the Temple on Coruscant, the
Re-public's forces and those of the Separatists were more or less evenly balanced on Drongar. The war
here was lim-ited mostly to ground troops; very little fighting took place in the air because of the spores. On
the ground, things were even worse in many ways. Among the prob-lems the forces on both sides
encountered were monsoons with devastating electrical storms, soaring temperatures, and humidity over 90
percent. As if that weren't enough, the atmospheric oxygen level was higher than that found on most worlds
habitable for humans and hu-manoids. This often caused dizziness and hyperoxy-genation for nonindigenous
life-forms, and, for the Separatists' battle droids, rust. Hard to believe, Barriss thought, but even the
incredibly tough durasteel alloy of which the droids were constructed would oxidize if conditions were
extreme enough. The high oxygen con-tent also limited military engagements, for the most part, to
small-arms fire: sonic pistols, small blasters, slugthrowers, and the like, because of the high risk of fire from
laser and particle beam armament.
What kept both sides struggling for control of this
pestilential quagmire of a world was bota, a plant somewhere between a mold and a fungus,
which, to date, had been found almost nowhere else in the galaxy. It grew thick on this backwater planet,
but all attempts to transplant it offworld had failed. The plant was ex-tremely valuable to both sides,
because, like the spores and other flora and fauna on Drongar, bota was highly adaptogenic in its effects.
Many species could benefit from itтАФhumans used it as a potent broad-based an-tibiotic, Neimoidians
sought it as a narcotic painkiller, Hutts utilized it as a valuable stimulant almost as pow-erful as glitterstim
spice, and many other species found it useful for still other functions. Moreover, the stuff had virtually no
side effects, making it a true wonder drug.
Processed by freeze-drying, the resulting product was readily transportable. Its only drawback was that,
once harvested, it had to be processed quickly or it degener-ated into a useless slime. And, to make things
worse, the plant was quite delicate. Explosions going off too close to it could shock it to death, and it
apparently burned like rocket fuel when ignited, despite the gen-eral dampness of the landscape. Since
bota was the rea-son both sides were here, this was yet another reason for military engagements to be
limitedтАФfighting over a field of the stuff would be useless if it burned up, died, or went sour before it could
be collected.
Bota was also one of the main reasons Barriss was here. It was true that her primary mandate was to
aug-ment the doctors and surgeons who cared for Republic troops, using her skills as a healer, but she was
also sup-posed to keep an eye on the harvesters, to make sure that the bota was being packed and shipped
to offworld Republic ports as it was supposed to be. The harvesting
operations had been folded in with the Rimsoo proce-dures to save money and expedite shipment. Neither
she nor her superiors had any problems with that. Any advantage the Republic could gain over the
Confeder-acy was valuable and desirableтАФthe Jedi certainly had no love for the rogue Count Dooku, who
had caused the deaths of so many of them two standard years ear-lier on Geonosis.
She strongly suspected that she was here for another reason as well: that this assignment was part, or all,
of her trials. Her Jedi Master, Luminara Unduli, had not told her that such was the case, but not all
Padawans were warned in advance that they were about to be tested. The nature of the trial, and whether
or not the Padawan would know about it beforehand, were mat-ters left entirely to the discretion of the Jedi
Master.
Once, about six months ago, she had asked Master Unduli when she could expect to begin her Jedi trials.
Her mentor had smiled at the question, and said, "Any-time. All the time. No time."