Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [17]
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 relationships-something he had no data on, one way or the other-it 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-tion-one 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"-the 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 color-it 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 kid-ney or a heart." He started to gesture to the droid, but Barriss stopped him.
"Let me try something first," she said. Zan blinked in surprise, but stepped back, indicating the patient was hers.
She stepped closer, hoping that her nervousness would not show. She extended her hands through the field and placed both palms on the clone trooper’s chest.
Then she closed her eyes and opened herself to the Force.
It seemed to her that the Force had been with her, always, from her earliest memories of childhood. One of those was particularly vivid, and for some reason it often came to mind when she