MedStar Duology

For other uses, see MedStar.

The MedStar Duology is a novel series written by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry. Set in 20 BBY, the duology focuses on a Republic Mobile Surgical Unit on the front lines of the Clone Wars, where Barriss Offee has been stationed. The duology contains the two novels MedStar I: Battle Surgeons and MedStar II: Jedi Healer, which were both released in 2004.

The short story "MedStar: Intermezzo", also written by Reaves and Perry, was published in August 2005 and takes place between the two novels. A Hardcover omnibus collecting both novels in a single volume was published by the Science Fiction Book Club.

Publisher's summary

“The galaxy-wide civil war between the Republic and the Separatists is a war fought on a thousand fronts, with heroism and sacrifices on both sides. But nowhere is fighting more fierce than on the fetid swamp world of Drongar, where a ragtag military medical unit wages a never-ending war of its own…

Jedi Padawan Barriss Offee and Chief Surgeon Jos Vondar are two of a handful of Republic medics on Drongar, where battle rages over the control of bota, a priceless plant that can be found nowhere else in the galaxy. The pace is brutal, as an endless line of medlifters brings in the wounded and dying—mostly clone troopers, but also soldiers of other species. And the conditions are nearly impossible, as both organic healers and medical droids battle soaring temperatures and humidity, monsoons with devastating electrical storms, pestilential life forms and constant technical malfunctions to save lives.

For Jos Vondar—a wisecracking surgeon who sees clones as interchangeable body parts, droids as simple machines and attractive Lorrdian nurses as socially unsuitable for romance—Drongar will become a theatre for love, grief, epiphany… and treachery.

For Barriss Offee—A Jedi in training, whose primary mandate is to augment the doctors and surgeons, but also to make sure the bota is harvested, packed and shipped correctly—Drongar will be her trial by fire, the test that will determine whether or not she has what it takes to be a Jedi Knight.

But while the healers desperately cope with both personal and medical crises, others plot to profit from the chaos – either by dealing bota on the black market or by manipulating the events of the war itself.“

Plot summary

On the tropical planet Drongar, Republic and Separatist forces wage war for the control of bota, a powerful adaptogenic plant that can be refined into a wonder drug with a wide range of effects. The rapidly mutating nature’s of the planet’s biosphere ensures that Drongar is the only source for bota, and the plant needs to be refined or frozen in carbonite quickly lest it becomes useless. To patch together the number of clone troopers wounded in this ongoing battlefront, the Republic maintains an orbital MedStar frigate, as well as a scattering of Republic Mobile Surgical Units on the surface. These RMSUs (or “Rimsoo”) are temporary hospitals that can be packed up and transported to new locations on short notice.

Padawan Barriss Offee joins the doctors of Rimsoo 7, using her Jedi healing abilities to assist in their near constant of wounded clone forces. Among the Rimsoo staff are Jos Vondar, a weary surgeon who struggles with his feelings for Tolk le Trene, a Lorrdian nurse. Vondar’s conservative Corellian upbringing prohibits him from coupling with a non-Corellian. When it becomes evident that life in a battlefield may end with little notice, he forgoes social taboos and openly shows his love for Tolk. Vondar’s best friend is Zan Yant, a gifted Zabrak surgeon who is also a sensitive musician. Yant is secretly stealing small samples of bota to cure ailing clones who are beyond traditional treatment. The strictly regulated nature of the bota makes it, ironically, illegal to use on the warriors who are defending it. Yant is killed in a Separatist attack. His position is filled by a young doctor from Tatooine, Kornell “Uli” Divini. A friend to the surgeons is Den Dhur, a quick-witted but cynical HoloNet news reporter sniffing out stories, often while planted in the cantina. Dhur strikes up an unusual friendship with I-5YQ, a modified protocol droid of mysterious origin and unusual wisdom. Intrigued by the droid’s vivid personality, Dhur helps I-Five find a means of achieving the electronical equivalent of inebriation. As a side effect of its digital drunkenness, I-Five’s blockage memory disappears, and he recalls being the property of Lorn Pavan, an information broker who once operated in the Coruscant underworld. I-Five’s new purpose is to return to the capital and watch over Jax Pavan, Lorn’s young son who has been taken into the Jedi Order.

Amid the endless cycle of combat and surgery, intrigue also permeates the Rimsoo. A shadowy being named Kaird is secretly a Black Sun agent, tasked with ensuring that bota shipments make their way to the criminal organization. Also lurking on the scene is a triple agent, Klo Merit. In plain view, he’s a sympathetic minder – a psychotherapist assigned to help the overworked surgeons. For the Separatists, he is a saboteur named Column, seeking vengeance against the suffering his people endured in the Clone Wars. For Black Sun, he is a spy known as Lens. Merit secretly carries out explosive sabotage on the orbiting MedStar to benefit the Confederacy, resulting in the loss of thousands of Republic souls. While treating a mortally wounded clone trooper with illicit bota, Barriss Offee accidentally injects herself with the refined plant extract. It results in a temporary surge in the Force, granting her unprecedented access to the universal energy field. Such a huge increase in power is very tempting to Barriss, but she refuses to give in to its allure. Still, it gives her enough insight to realize that there is a traitor at Rimsoo 7. Vondar confronts Merit and is forced to shoot the minder dead when Merit tries to kill his accuser.

Bota’s constant mutation leads to its inevitable obsolescence. Within a generation, it will modify itself until it is useless. Kaird’s attempt to steal a viable batch of bota fails when his grifter accomplices betray him, replacing the bota in his carbonite carrying case with an explosive. With bota no longer a potent miracle drug, the Separatists and the Republic both abandon Drongar. Dhur and I-5YQ depart for Coruscant, as does Barriss Offee, who is returning to the Jedi Temple. For her resistance to power for power’s sake, she is considered to have passed the Jedi trials and is elevated to the rank of Jedi Knight.

Development

The Medstar books were envisioned as the Star Wars answer to the M*A*S*H movie and television series, replacing the mobile army surgical hospital of the Korean War with an RMSU on Drongar. Inspiration firmly rooted in the real world resulted in several nods to our terrestrial culture hidden in the text. For example, in Jedi Healer, the RMSU is visited by an entertainment troupe that includes Epoh Trebor, Annloc Yerj, and Eyar Marath – references to USO entertainers Bob Hope, Jerry Colonna, and Martha Raye.

Other sly references include such cantina beverages as Janx spirit and an interrupted order of Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, both drinks famously featured in the Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy novels by Douglas Adams.