#29 Everything's Bigger on Coruscant
Goose slept fitfully that night, but if there had been any dreams she'd already forgotten them by the time she woke up. The med droid had returned around mid-morning to pronounce her in good health and free to go, then left promptly. It seemed that her clothes and all other personal effects, besides the GAR-issue identi-tags on a chain around her neck, had been removed prior to her transfer to Republic Central Medcenter, so the hospital had issued her a set of shapeless, baggy, one-size-fits-all humanoid coveralls.
She hadn't received any military orders telling her where to report to once she had been discharged from the hospital, nor did she have a comlink with which to contact the army and ask for instructions. Even if she had one, she didn't know what com-code to enter. Unsure of what she should do, Goose had left her room in the hopes of finding a com-terminal with a directory or another being who could help her. The placard by her door had read "GOSLING, VALERIE: LEVEL 96, WARD 5, BAY A/4."
At the moment, she was wandering the halls of the neurology unit, still on level 96, but somewhere in the midst of ward 11. Needless to say, Goose was utterly lost and growing more frustrated by the minute. Of course, she had been to numerous medcenters before, but this was bordering on ridiculous. The hallways, all a uniformly pristine white and brightly lit, appeared to go on into eternity with hardly any markings to indicate where in the sprawling complex she was. There were no exterior windows, at least where she was, and it gave her the incredibly uncomfortable feeling of being trapped in a blindingly white, antiseptic, state-of-the-art vrelt maze.
Nearly a half an hour ago, she'd come across a building schematic displayed on a wall and had headed in a direction that she thought would take her to this floor's lobby, where she would be able to get some information. However, she must have taken a wrong turn (or several) and was beginning to believe she was walking in circles. Hadn't anyone here ever heard of signage? On top of that, she hadn't seen a single living being since stepping out of her room and it was starting to seem like the massive facility was completely empty.
Several more minutes of aimless wandering passed before, at long last, Goose finally stumbled into the cavernous lobby. It was more of an atrium, really, with a burbling fountain in the middle of it and a variety of exotic plant species arranged in a way that was aesthetically pleasing to most sentients. Seats holding beings waiting for their appointments or to visit family members were interspersed throughout the decorative foliage to afford some feeling of privacy.
The overall effect was one of calming tranquility, so different from the stark utilitarian feel of the rest of the hospital that Goose was too busy being surprised to feel relieved to have finally escaped the labyrinth. Shaking herself out of her momentary stupor, she headed toward the information kiosk, located on the other side of the lobby. As she walked across the room, however, Goose began to notice the other beings in the lobby giving curious or sidelong glances in her direction.
It occurred to her that most of them appeared to be well-to-do Coruscantis, if their fashionable and well-made clothing was anything to go by. Goose was suddenly painfully aware the ill-fitted, rather unflattering coveralls she'd been given to wear. She lengthened her stride, but squared her shoulders and tried not to look like she was in a hurry. Strangely, she was beginning to feel like more of an outsider here than she ever had among the 501st.
Not soon enough, she arrived at the information kiosk. It was manned by a single orientation droid, a rather unsophisticated stationary unit whose sole purpose to its existence was to give directions.
"Good day, madam," it greeted in a flat monotone. "How can this unit be of assistance?"
"I need to get back to my battalion, the 501st," Goose said hopefully. "Can you find out if it's still on Coruscant?"
The droid paused while it processed the request, then replied, "Apologies. This unit is unable to access military servers to acquire this data."
Goose groaned in frustration. Her best option now would be to go to the nearest GAR base and ask there. The only problem was that she didn't have a single credit-chip in her pockets, and that meant she couldn't get an air taxi. Walking didn't sound feasible either; the closest base could be in a completely different sector of the city, dozens of miles away. This day just kept getting better and better.
Seeming to register her distress, the droid added, "Of course, Republic Central Medcenter offers a courtesy shuttle service to any location within this district of the city. Grand Army Headquarters is within that range."
She blinked in surprise. It hadn't even occurred to her that RCM would have its own shuttles.
"Oh! Yes – yes, that would be great," she answered hurriedly, as if the droid might change its mind if she hesitated. After all, this was the first break she'd had in ages.
"Very well," the droid said as it withdrew a datapad from under the counter and began to program it. "This device contains the coordinates of your destination and will connect to the facility's sensor system to guide you to the shuttle platform."
The orientation droid handed the datapad over to her. Its display contained the entire layout of the floor she was on, with a blinking dot where she was standing and a glowing line indicating where she had to go to reach the shuttles. Goose sighed. If only she had been given one of these before she'd left her room…
After thanking the droid politely, Goose started to follow the path indicated on the datapad. It led her through the atrium to a bank of turbolifts on the opposite wall. Again, she felt uneasy as she walked past the other people in the lobby – and that feeling only intensified when a little girl no more than four standard years old, wearing a frilly pink dress and with ribbons in her hair, ran giggling past Goose, chasing a toy as it rolled away.
Goose was so startled she almost stopped in her tracks. It took her a long moment to realize that that girl was the first child – excluding the Huttlet and Skywalker's padawan – she had seen in longer than she cared to remember. Slowly, it dawned on her that this was, for lack of a better term, the most utterly civilian place she'd seen in months. After so much time spent in a military environment, this peaceful and mundane setting felt altogether alien.
If anything, this realization only unsettled her even further. What did it mean? Hadn't she dreamed of being a civilian again since the first moment she was drafted? When had that changed? Had it changed? Goose pushed the button on the wall to call a turbolift, and waited impatiently until it arrived. She gave a sigh of relief once she was aboard and the doors had hissed shut, blocking out her view of the lobby. Perhaps she was just getting too worked up over this. She had just woken up from a coma, after all.
The turbolift hummed gently as it descended forty-two floors, and Goose gradually calmed down. She was in the army now, for better or for worse, and she could worry about being a civilian later. On level 54, the datapad instructed her to disembark, then guided her across a skybridge that connected to an adjacent building. The bridge was enclosed, but its walls were made entirely of transparisteel, giving a far more magnificent view of the city than she had been able to see from her room's small window the night before.
In the daylight, Goose could tell that the medcenter was massive. So large, in fact, that it had its own internal traffic system and looked more like a small city than a hospital. Of course it made sense for such a densely populated world to have health care on an industrial scale, but there was still something off putting about a facility so vast that it required its own global positioning system for anybody to successfully navigate its endless maze of hallways.
Next, the 'pad directed her to another turbolift that took her down another couple dozen levels, then led her out to an uncovered landing platform on the side of the building, hundreds of feet in the air. The height was dizzying, so Goose tried her best not to look down when she stepped into one of the several courtesy shuttles waiting on the platform. The shuttle was automated, so she inserted the datapad into its interface port and waited for it to scan the coordinates of her destination.
Goose took a seat in one of the plasticast chairs bolted down to the floor as the shuttle lifted off. A small vidscreen at the front of the shuttle flickered to life, playing a pre-recorded message asking her to respect the property of Republic Central Medcenter, and enjoy her flight. When the recording finished, the vidscreen displayed the shuttle's route through the city, along with her estimated time of arrival at GAR headquarters.
It would be about forty-five minutes, traffic willing. Goose sighed, slouching a little in her seat in an effort to find a comfortable position on the unpadded chair. Viewports along the walls offered panoramic vistas as the small craft sped through the heart of the Senate District, the very capital of the Republic, but she could muster neither the energy nor interest to enjoy the view. The countless skyscrapers all looked so similar she'd be hard pressed to tell one section of the skyline from another, anyway.
As she sat alone in the silence of the empty shuttle, Goose began to feel…abandoned. In a way, she was disappointed that she'd woken in an unfamiliar place without a single friendly face in sight. Of course, she did not expect herself to be the top of anyone's priorities; after all, nearly an entire company had died on Teth, and there was still a war to win. And yet, she could not dismiss the fact that there had not even been any sort of message – a note, even – to show that anyone knew or cared whether she was alive or dead.
She heaved a sigh of resignation. What did it matter, anyway? She could not be sure if Coric or Rex had survived the assault on Teth, since the final minutes before she blacked out were a total blur. There was no way she could claim to have been close to either of them. though; she only occasionally bantered with Coric, and oftentimes it seemed the Captain only tolerated her because she was good with a vibroscalpel. If they had lived, she couldn't fault them for overlooking her. They'd lost more that day than she could ever imagine.
Goose was fairly certain that Jules was alright, being safe aboard the Resolute during the disasterous attack. He was the only one she could even begin to call a friend – a fact she was now starting to regret. Why had she never bothered to get to know the other troopers? They had been under near-constant siege, of course, and she had been so drop-dead exhausted she hadn't had the time to get to know the others. Only him.
Another sigh escaped her. There was no use getting too agitated over it. She'd only known them for less than two months, after all. Goose tried to relax. That morning had been unnecessarily stressful. Although, it wouldn't be morning for much longer – it was nearly noon already. She yawned and felt her eyelids droop. A sudden wave of fatigue had washed over her, and the comforting drone of the shuttle's engines soon lulled her to sleep.
All too soon, Goose was startled back to wakefulness when another recording played on the vidscreen, telling her she had reached her destination and wishing her a pleasant afternoon. She stood up and rubbed her eyes groggily, somehow feeling even more tired regardless of her impromptu nap. The shuttle doors slid open, and Goose stepped out onto a landing platform in front of what had to be GAR Headquarters.
The building was massive, like all the others she'd seen on this city-world, except this one shared none of the elegant architecture and glittering transparisteel she had come to associate with Coruscant. It was squat, boxy, and an uninspiring drab gray color, its only embellishment being the symbol of the Grand Army emblazoned across the front. A twenty-foot wall surrounded the perimeter, a ray-shielded gate the only entrance in sight. Despite it being considerably shorter than the other towering spires around it, the looming structure still had a rather imposing presence.
Warily, Goose approached the security post in front of the gate, acutely aware that she was still wearing the pajama-like medcenter coveralls. Security would have to be tight, this being the headquarters of the entire Grand Army, and she didn't look forward to convincing the sentries that she was, however unwillingly, a captain in that army. At the very least, she would avoid mentioning that she had recently woken from a coma before wandering out of the neurology unit.
In an effort to appear less like an escapee from a mental hospital, Goose squared her shoulders and walked up to the guardhouse in a way that she hoped would look confident. As far as she could tell through the slightly tinted transparisteel window, a single trooper wearing red-striped armor manned the post.
"Good afternoon," she greeted as casually as she could. "Captain V. E. Gosling of the 501st battalion. I'm trying to reunite with my company."
He made no response, but seemed to tilt his head as if to get a better look at her. There was no way Goose could see the trooper's expression through his helmet, but she would bet that he was eyeing her suspiciously. Belatedly, she realized she'd forgotten to offer any sort of identification, and quickly pulled the chain with her identi-tags off her neck and handed them to the guard through an opening in the window.
"Er, there, that should clear things up," she added with an awkward laugh, finding his silence unnerving.
The trooper accepted the identi-tags and scanned it in his computer terminal's data slot. Goose's identification information, including her rank and current assignment, popped up on a holographic display. For a fleeting moment, she almost didn't recognize the holo-image of herself. It had been taken just after she'd been drafted, and she looked so…young. Naive. Almost like another person entirely. Had she really changed that much?
"Everything checks out," the trooper said with a hint of surprise, handing back her identi-tags and derailing Goose's train of thought. "Forgive me for my initial hesitation, ma'am, I wasn't actually expecting…"
He didn't finish the sentence, perhaps out of concern that she'd be insulted, and it occurred to her that she probably outranked him.
"Well, don't worry about it. If I were you, I wouldn't have believed me either," Goose replied with a rueful shrug. "Anyway, would you happen to have any idea if the 501st is still on Coruscant? I've been recovering in a civilian medcenter and I haven't heard from them in weeks."
"Of course, ma'am." The trooper keyed something in on his computer, and shook his head when he saw the result. "I'm sorry, ma'am. The 501st shipped out over a week ago, and there is no information as to when they will return."
Goose groaned in growing frustration. At this point, it was starting to feel like the universe was mocking her.
"Great. That's just kriffing great," she grumbled under her breath.
"Ma'am, may I suggest you check the recovery wards in the barracks?" he added cautiously. "The 501st did leave some men behind to recuperate from their injuries. From what I heard, their last mission was pretty tough."
"Their last mission? What else did you hear?" Goose questioned intently. Maybe he would know something about the outcome of Teth.
"Apologies, ma'am. I never asked for the details," the trooper answered.
She tried to hide her disappointment. "That's alright. Thank you, trooper."
"Ma'am," the trooper acknowledged with a salute.
He lowered the security barrier, allowing her to enter the compound. On the other side of the wall, Goose could see that this place was nearly as gargantuan as the medcenter she'd just come from. Aside from the massive building directly in front of her, there was also a collection of smaller warehouses around what appeared to be a repair yard, filled with battle-damaged walkers, gunships, and artillery pieces in various stages of disassembly.
Beyond that was a sprawling empty space that looked large enough to accommodate an Acclamator-class assault cruiser with room to spare, near to which was a refueling station. Past the landing field was another large building, although it appeared to be only a few stories tall and stretched almost the entire width of the base. If she had to guess, Goose would pick that as the barracks. The building right in front of her looked like it was for administration; where the rear echelons discussed strategy and supply lines from the safety of their conference rooms.
Trusting her gut, Goose headed for the building at the far end of the base. Unsurprisingly, it took her a while to get there, the two buildings being over a kilometer apart. Not being in particularly good shape, she was breathing a little heavily when she finally reached the barracks. Up close, it seemed like it went on forever; they could probably fit an entire sector army in there and have bunks left over.
"Why is everything on this planet bigger? What, were the architects overcompensating for something?" Goose muttered as she headed toward a door, "Could've at least built things closer together."
For such a large building, the doors felt incongruously small. There were several of them, spaced out evenly every few hundred meters, each wide enough to fit five people across. Goose walked in when they opened automatically, and was greeted by a large, empty hallway. It was the first time she'd ever stepped foot inside, of course, but there was something…comfortingly familiar about its military construction.
Thankfully, there were signs clearly marked MEDBAY in glowing red letters directing her through the endless halls and passageways, otherwise she'd have gotten hopelessly lost within seconds. The medbay was located in the center of the complex, with the rest of the building being comprised of identical "blocks" each designed to house an entire legion of men. It seemed that every block had its own mess hall, training facilities, and supply office as would any self-contained barracks, except they were all connected into one almost never-ending whole.
At first she'd had the hallways to herself, although eventually Goose had started to pass troopers wearing green-striped armor. It wasn't too obvious, given that they wore helmets, but she could tell they were staring by the subtle way they slowed down as they walked past her. None of them tried to stop her to ask what she was doing there, probably assuming she was allowed to be there since she'd gotten past security. Nevertheless, she walked briskly to avoid such an encounter.
If at all possible, Goose was beginning to feel even more uncomfortable in her shapeless coveralls than she had earlier. For the first time ever, she actually wanted to get back into her uniform, if only so she wouldn't look quite so out of place anymore. It was strange, how the object of her past resentment now seemed…preferable. Just a few weeks prior she'd probably wouldn't have been able to imagine a situation in which she would miss those green fatigues.
What felt like (but really wasn't) several kilometers later, Goose finally arrived at the barracks medbay. It was significantly larger than the one aboard the Resolute, but had only a few operating rooms. Since it was meant more as a facility for troopers to recover from their injuries rather than undergo surgery, most of the space was dedicated to rows of bacta tanks and wards filled with biobeds. It had been more than two weeks, so she assumed none of the troopers from the 501st would still be in bacta, and headed to the nearest recovery ward.
At the entrance to each recovery ward was a roster of the designations of the patients within, but no names. Goose groaned for the umpteenth time that day as she stared at the column of CT-numbers. She'd never bothered to learn the serial number of any clone she met, so the list in front of her was essentially gibberish. This was getting her nowhere. She looked around for someone to assist her, but the only droid around was a maintenance unit, not programmed to communicate in Basic, cleaning the floors. There didn't seem to be any organic staff either.
Goose dithered for a while, knowing full well that she would become the instant center of attention if she walked into a ward, and felt like she'd already had her fill of being stared at for the day. Then she heard something, so faint she almost missed it – the sound of things falling off a shelf, and the muttered curse that followed. Almost without thinking, Goose followed the noise down the hallway and around the corner.
Before her was a clone, wearing maroon off-duty fatigues, struggling to pick up packages of bacta patches with one hand while the other arm rested in a sling. His back was to her, and he could easily have been any other trooper in the Grand Army, but some instinct in her insisted that it could be no one else.
"…Jules?"
A/N: Well, if it isn't another cliffhanger... You might have to wait a little while, though, because I'm going to Canada tomorrow!