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

Surgeon Jos Vondar was a pragmatistтАФhe believed in what was real, what was quantifiable and
measurable. What he'd just seen had beenтАФthere was no other word for itтАФspooky.
 A sudden crackle nearby caused him to start and spin
around. The perimeter field was not far away, and something had brushed against it and gotten zapped for
its trouble. The charge wasn't strong enough to kill, but it was definitely unpleasant to anything smaller than
a Tatooine ronto.
Jos started back toward the cluster of huts. Not that there was anything in the jungle anywhere near that
big to worry about; it had probably been a wriggler. This was the largest land-based life-form they'd noticed
so far: a sluglike thing about five meters long and half a meter thick that undulated in a zigzag pattern
across the ground. Its cilia could deliver a powerful electrical charge, enough to knock a grown man off his
feet, but it wasn't usually fatal. All the terrestrial fauna they'd seen so far, even large ones like the wriggler,
were inverte-brate. Supposedly there were aquatic creatures of much greater size and variety in Drongar's
oceans, but he'd never seen one, and was just as glad to keep it that way.
His thoughts turned to Barriss again, and he sighed. It was pointless to wonder if he was attracted to her
or not. Even if he was, and even if her Order condoned out-side relationshipsтАФsomething he had no data
on, one way or the otherтАФit was still impossible. The Jedi were not the only ones with traditions.
Any further thinking on this was interrupted by the signature whine of approaching medlifters. Almost
glad of the distraction, Jos started to trot back to the base.




6

This run was a bad one. There were four full lifters, which meant sixteen wounded troopers. Three had
died en route, and one was too far gone to attempt resuscita-tionтАФone of the nurses administered
euthanasia while Jos, Zan, Barriss, and three other surgeons scrubbed up.
One of the clones was covered with third-degree burns; they had to cut his armor free. He had literally
been cooked by a flame projector. Fortunately, one of the three working bacta tanks they had was empty,
and the trooper was quickly immersed in a nutrient bath.
The condition of the remaining eleven ranged from critical to guarded, and were triaged accordingly. Jos
pulled on his skin-gloves while Tolk briefed him on his first case.
"Hemorrhagic shock, multiple flechette injuries, head trauma ..."
Jos glanced at the chrono. They were about ten min-utes into the "golden hour"тАФthe time window most
critical for a trooper's survival of a battlefield injury. There was no time to waste. "Okay, let's get him
stabi-lized. He's lost a lot of blood, and he's got an asteroid belt's worth of metal in his gut. Pump in some
vascolu-tion, stat..."
Barriss watched Jos at work for a minute, admiring his skill and quick decisions. Then she opened herself
to the Force, letting it tell her where her abilities would be most needed. She felt it guide her feet toward
Zan's table, where the Zabrak was working on another trooper, assisted by an FX-7.
"Is there a problem?" she asked.
"Take a look," he replied.
She stepped closer. The naked body lay on the table, intubated and dotted with sensor lines and drips. He
did not appear wounded or injured, but the skin was a mot-tled purplish colorтАФit looked like one gigantic
bruise.
"He's been hit with a disruptor field," Zan said. "Bioscan shows his central nervous system's been fried. I
thought we could do something, but he's past that. Au-tonomic functions are stable on life sustain right now,
but they won't last. And even if we could reestablish consciousness, he'd be nothing but meat."
"What can be done?"
He shook his head. "Nothing. We can harvest his or-gans, use 'em to patch up the next one who needs a