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

the disinfect chamber, pulling off the skin-gloves as he went. He had learned long ago to cope with
whatever was wrong now and not worry about future problems until he had to. It was the mental equivalent
of triage, he had told Klo Merit, the Equani physician who was also Rimsoo Seven's resident empath. Merit
had blinked his large, brown eyes, their depths so strangely calming, and said that Jos's attitude was
healthyтАФup to a degree.
"There is a point at which defense becomes denial," Merit had said. "For each of us, that point is
positioned differently. A large part of mental hygiene lies simply in knowing when you are no longer being
truthful with yourself."
Jos came out of his momentary reverie when he real-ized that Zan had spoken to him. "What?"
"I said this one has a lacerated liver; I'll be done in a few more minutes."
"Need any help?"
Zan grinned. "What am I, a first-year intern at Cor-uscant Med? No problem. Sewn one, sewn 'em all."
He started humming again as he worked on the trooper's innards.
Jos nodded. True enough; the Fett clones were all identical, which meant that, in addition to no rejection
syndrome concerns, the surgeons didn't have to worry about where or how the plumbing went. Even in
indi-viduals of the same species there was often considerable diversity of physiological structure and
functionality; human hearts all worked the same way, for example, but the valves could vary in size, the
aortal connection might be higher in one than in another ... there were a million and one ways for individual
anatomies to differ. It was the biggest reason why surgery, even under the best of conditions, was never
100 percent safe.
But with the clones, it was differentтАФor, rather, it wasn't. They had all been culled from the same
genetic source: a human male bounty hunter named Jango Fett. All of them were even more identical than
monozygotic twins. See one, do one, teach one, had been the mantra back on Coruscant, during Jos's
training. The instruc-tors used to joke that you could cut a clone blindfolded once you knew the layout, and
that was almost true. Ordinarily Jos wouldn't be working on line troops, but with two of the surgical droids
down for repairs, the only option was to let the injured triage up out in the mobile unit's hall and die. And,
clones or not, he couldn't let that happen. He'd become a doctor to save lives, not to judge who lived and
who didn't.
The lights abruptly blinked off, then back on. Every-one in the chamber froze momentarily.
"Sweet Sookie," Jos said. "Now what?"
In the distance, explosions echoed. It could have been thunder, Jos thought nervously. He hoped it had
been thunder. It rained here pretty much every day, and most
nights, for that matter; big, tropical storms that tore through with howling winds and lightning strikes that
lanced at trees, buildings, and people. Sometimes the shield generators went down, and then the only things
protecting the camp were the arrestors. More than a few troopers had been cooked where they stood,
burned black in a heartbeat by the powerful voltages. Once, after a bad storm, Jos had seen a pair of boots
standing with smoke rising from the hard plastoid, five body-lengths away from the blackened form of the
trooper who had been wearing them. Everything in the camp worth saving had arrestors grounded deep in
the swampy soil, but sometimes those weren't enough.
Even as these thoughts went through his head, he heard the staccato drumming of rain on the OT roof
begin.
Jos Vondar had been born and raised in a small farm town on Corellia, in a temperate zone where the
weather was pleasant most of the year, and even during the rainy season it was mild. When he was twenty
he'd gone from there to Coruscant, the planetary capital of the Republic, a city-world where the weather
was care-fully calibrated and orchestrated. He always knew when it would rain, how much, and for how
long. Nothing in his life up to now had prepared him for the apocalyptic storms and the almost vile fecundity
of Drongar's native life-forms. It was said that there were places in the Great Jasserak Swamp where, if
you were foolish enough to lie down and sleep, the fungal growth would cover you with a second skin
before you could wake up. Jos didn't know if it was true, but it wasn't hard to believe.
"Blast!" Zan said.