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

"What?"
"Got a chunk of shrapnel intersecting the portal artery. If I pull it loose, it's gonna get ugly in here."
"Thought you said you had this one signed, sealed, and transported." Jos nodded to Zan's circulating
nurse, who opened a fresh pack of skins for Jos to slip his hands into. He wiggled his fingers, then stepped
in alongside his friend. "Move over, horn head, and let a real doctor work."
Zan looked around. "A real doctor? Where? You know one?"
Jos looked down at the patient, whose interior work-ings were brightly illuminated by the overheads and
the sterile field. He lowered his hands into the field, feeling the slight tingling that always accompanied the
move. Zan pointed with the healy grippers at the offending chunk of jagged metal. Sure enough, it was
angled into the portal vessel, blocking it. Jos shook his head. "How come they never showed us stuff like
this in school?"
"When you get to be chief of surgery at Coruscant Med, you can make sure the next batch of dewy-eyed
would-be surgeons has a better education. Old Doc Vondar, nattering on about the Great Clone Wars and
how easy these kids today have it."
"I'll remember that when they bring you in as a teach-ing case, Zan."
"Not me. I'll dance at your memorial, Corellian scum. Maybe even play you a nice Selonian etude,
per-haps one of the Vissencant Variations."
"Please," Jos said as he gingerly spread tissue apart to get a better look. "At least play something worth
hear-ing. Some leap-jump or heavy isotope."
Zan shook his head sadly. "A tone-deaf Gungan has better taste."
"I know what I like."
"Yeah, well, I like keeping these guys alive, so stop embarrassing yourself in public and help me get this
liver working."
"Guess I'd better." Jos reached for a set of healys and a sponge. "Looks like it's the only way he'll have a
fighting chance, with you as his surgeon." He grinned behind his mask at his friend.
Working together, they managed to extricate the shrapnel from the artery with minimal damage. When
they were done, Jos looked around with a sigh of relief.
"Well, kids, looks like a perfect record. Didn't lose a single trooper. Drinks are on me at the cantina."
The others grinned tiredlyтАФand then froze, listening. Rising over the steady pounding of the rain on the
foamcast roof was another sound, one they knew very well: the rising whine of incoming medlifters.
The break was over, as most of them were, before it had begun.




2

The drop from orbit to the planet was faster than nor-mal, the pilot explained to her, because of the
multitude of spores.
"Dey gum up everyt'ing," he said, in thickly accented Basic. He was a Kubaz, gray-green and
pointy-headed, a member of the long-snouted species whose enemies referred to them derisively as
"bug-eating spies." As a Jedi Padawan and a healer, Barriss Offee had learned early not to be judgmental
of a species because of its looks, but she knew that many in the galaxy were less open-minded.
" 'Specially d'ventilators," he went on. "D'rot'll eat t'rough d'best filters we got in a hour, mebbe less; y'got
to change 'em every flightтАФyou don't, d'Spore Sickness get into d'ship and get into you. Not a good way to
go, b'lieve it, coughin' up blood 'n' cooking in y'own juices."
Barriss blinked at the graphic scenario. She looked out of the small shuttle craft's nearest viewport; the
spores were visible only as various tints of red, green, and other hues in the air, and an occasional spatter of
minute particles against the transparisteel, gone before she could see them clearly. She probed a bit with
 the Force, getting nothing like a sentient response, of course,