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Kornell Divini.”
    Hotise was a short, rotund man, probably seventy or so, with white hair and a cropped beard. He wore office grays, and the clothes were cut well enough that they had to be tailored. He was checking off a list on a flatscreen. He looked up, nodded at the tech. “Thanks, Vurly.”
    The tech nodded, said “Sir,” and left.
    “Welcome to
MedStar Four
, Doctor,” Hotise said. “Glad to have you aboard.”
    Uli nodded. “Thank you, sir,” he said. His apparent lack of enthusiasm must have showed. The old man cocked an eyebrow that had more hair than a leafcrawler.
    “Not happy with this assignment, son?”
    That earned Uli’s new commander an incredulous look. “Not happy? I did my first tour in a Rimsoo unit on a swamp world where your lungs could fill with spores in five minutes if you weren’t wearing a filter mask. I patched up maybe a thousand clones, and I was supposed to be rotated back to my homeworld and discharged a civilian at the end of it. That was … five? six? hitches ago. I lost track.”
    Hotise nodded. “Imslow,” he said.
    “That’s right.” IMSLO stood for “Imperial Military Stop Loss Order.” Too many skilled people who’d been drafted had had enough of the military after the Clone Wars, and when their compulsory service ended, wanted nothing more than to go home. With the action against the Rebels heating up, the Empire couldn’t allow that. Doctors, in particular, were in short supply; hence, IMSLO. A retroactive order mandating that, no matter when you’d been conscripted, once you were in, you were in for as long as they wanted you—or until you got killed. Either way, it was kiss your planned life good-bye.
    Imperial Military Stop Loss Order
. An alternative translation, scrawled no doubt on a ’fresher wall somewhere by a clever graffitist, had caught on over the last few years: “I’m Milking Scragged; Life’s Over.” The memory brought a faint, grim smile to Uli’s lips.
    “Sorry, son,” his CO said. “It’s not my policy.”
    “But you
are
career navy.”
    The older man nodded. “We each have our chosen path.”
    “Not exactly true, is it? If I was on
my
chosen path, probably you and I would never have met.”
    Hotise shrugged. “What can I say? I don’t run things back in civilization—I just do what I’m told. We were short a surgeon. I requisitioned a replacement. You’re him. You weren’t here, you’d be someplace else where the Empire deemed you necessary.
    “It ain’t Imperial Center General or Big Zoo, but it’s quiet here. Not like a Rimsoo tent out in the tall grass. Nobody is shooting at us. Most of what we see is the occasional industrial accident or normal wear and tear. You could do better, Captain, but you could also do a lot worse. War is ugly, but that’s how it is.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “You can drop that part. We’re pretty informal around here. I’ll have a droid show you to your quarters, and you can take the tour and settle in.” Hotise looked at Uli’s orders. “Says here you’re originally from Tatooine, Dr. Divini.”
    “Uli.”
    Hotise squinted at him. “Beg pardon, son?”
    “People call me Uli. It’s a Tusken word—means—”
    An alarm blared, cutting him off. Uli didn’t need a translation:
Incoming!
    A secretary droid rolled up on a single wheel. Its gyroscope squeaked a little right at the edge of Uli’s hearing as the spinning wheel kept the droid upright and stable. It stopped in front of Hotise. “Sir, Ambulance Ship Nine is onthe way to Dock B with twelve workers injured by an oxygen tank explosion at the construction site.”
    Uli noticed that the droid’s vocabulator had, for whatever reason, a kind of musical lilt that he found pleasant. It was as though the droid were a character from a light opera, about to burst into song at any moment.
    “It should be arriving in six-point-five minutes,” the droid continued. “Field medics list primary damage due to compressive injuries,