“Dr. Ruszel?” A small, pretty blonde woman in a green SSC Terravegan medical uniform popped her head in the door. Bright blue eyes glanced from one officer to the other. They lingered on Holt Stern just a few seconds too long for polite interest. “We’ve got an Altairian diplomat with a nasty cellulitis. Do you want to treat it, or shall I?”
Madeline smiled. Lieutenant (J.G.) Edris Mallory was a sweet woman. She’d actually started out in Cularian medicine on a military scholarship. But just after graduation from medical school, she’d wanted to become a breeder. In fact, she’d come back to the medical unit from a breeder colony after tests had found her ineligible as a host parent. Any slight defect in genetics could disqualify a candidate and Mallory had recessive genes whose inheritable traits—light eyes and hair—were out of fashion the year she applied. She’d been devastated by the rejection. She’d gone back to the military and been assigned to combat training. She’d even agreed to the mental neutering, dangerous in a woman of twenty. But she flunked out of combat school with the lowest score in academy history. After that, she landed in the SSC medical corps. Madeline liked her. She was a hard worker and she never shirked a task, even the unpleasant ones. She was only twenty-two. Ruszel, approaching thirty, found her shy presence comforting, in some odd way. She and Hahnson had conspired to protect Mallory from a Three Strikes provision, a covert and shaming law that could land an offender in stasis, to be used for medical experimentation. Mallory had two strikes already, and they kept a secret that could make it three. She was a sweet, kind woman.
“Go ahead, Edris,” she said. “I’ll be around if you need me.”
She grinned. “Thanks, Dr. Ruszel,” she said. “Hello, Doctor,” she greeted Hahnson warmly. She flushed a little as she glanced at Stern and then quickly away. “Captain.” She darted back through the door.
“She knows I’m a clone, doesn’t she?” Stern asked a little irritably. She’d barely looked at him.
“Oh, it’s not that.” She leaned toward him. “She’s shy. But she thinks you’re hot.”
He frowned. “It’s cool in here.”
“She thinks you’re desirable,” she corrected.
He flushed. “That’s not allowed.”
“She wanted to be a breeder,” she reminded him with a wicked grin. “But her genetics disqualified her to produce a child for the state, so when they expelled her from there, she decided to try combat medicine. She already had her degree in Cularian medicine.”
Stern glared. “How nice for her.”
Madeline shook her head. She knew it was the memory of Mary, his only love, that prompted that response. The original Stern, too, had come out of the neutering basically unaffected. He’d loved a woman named Mary who sacrificed her own life to save the lives of children. He carried a piece of blue velvet ribbon that had been attached to the posthumous medal they’d given her. He and Hahnson and Madeline passed it around between them as an accolade for heroic deeds. It was one of their best-kept secrets.
Hahnson’s wrist unit alarmed at the same time Madeline’s did. They looked at each other and grimaced.
“New medical transports are coming in from the occupied territories,” Madeline explained to Stern. “I guess we’ve got work again, Dr. Hahnson.”
“I guess we have, Dr. Ruszel,” he agreed. “Good thing we’re in port for a few days. Medical is overwhelmed already.”
“Mallory, casualties coming in!” Madeline called to Edris. “Call in all off-duty personnel, if you please.”
“Right away, Dr. Ruszel,” she replied.
“She and I are the only two Cularian specialists on the base until the graduates from the Tri-Fleet Medical Academy arrive,” Madeline commented. “I suppose we’ll do double duty again. Not that we get many wounded Rojok prisoners to treat.”
Stern was somber. “Good thing. Three cadets who were in the last firefight tried to break into sick bay and hang a wounded Rojok when the last medical transports came in.”
“Sadly for them, the commander was here reading me the riot act for another bar brawl when it happened,” Madeline recalled with a faint chuckle. “You never saw cadets run so fast. Pity they bothered. He had all three of them before they made the front door. They were so shaken up that the military police didn’t even have to cuff them.” She shivered with mock fear. “The C.O.’s pretty scary when he loses his temper.”
“To everybody else except you,” Hahnson mused, tongue-in-cheek. “He could space you if he wanted to. But all he ever does is ground you.”
She leaned forward. “He’s not sure that I didn’t sew up a boot or a glass of synthale inside him when I operated on him at Ahkmau,” she said with malicious humor. “He wouldn’t dare space me until he’s positive that I didn’t.”
“He keeps you for a pet,” Hahnson said with a chuckle.
“Eat worms, Hahnson.” Madeline made a face at him before she followed Mallory into sick bay.
SICK BAY WAS FULL. Not only were there combat casualties brought in from all parts of the battlefront, but a new type of influenza was making itself felt among members of the Tri-Galaxy Fleet. There was no vaccination so far, and hardly any treatment that worked.
“I remember Dr. Wainberg, head of the Exobiology Department at the Tri-Fleet Military Academy, lecturing us on viruses,” Madeline said as she and Edris Mallory worked side by side on combat wounds encountered by two Dacerian scouts who’d been ambushed near Terramer.
Edris laughed. “So do I. He and our human anatomy chief, Dr. Camp, gave lab exams that were, to say the least, challenging.”
Madeline grinned. “Challenging to cadets who thought they could pass those courses by dissecting holospecimens instead of the real thing. The medical sector didn’t tolerate slackers. They meant us to be taught proper surgical techniques, and we were.” She frowned. “You know, it’s still fascinating to me that viruses aren’t actually alive. They’re like a construct, an artificial construct.”
“Who knows,” Mallory agreed, “maybe they were originally part of some long forgotten engineered bioweapons tech.”
“Viruses are already dead, Mallory,” Madeline repeated.
Mallory frowned. “But, ma’am, how can they be dead if they were never alive?”
Madeline rolled her eyes. “That controversy still rages. They are alive in one sense, not in another. And I’m not joining that debate,” she added on a laugh. She finished a restructuring job and motioned for one of the medtechs to take the unconscious patient in his ambutube out to the floor. She stripped off her glove films and smiled at the younger woman. “We can debate that over a nice cup of java after lunch.”
The younger woman hesitated. Her blue eyes grew large. “Java? You don’t mean, real coffee?”
Madeline leaned closer. “I have it shipped in illegally from the Altairian colony on Harcourt’s Planet,” she confided. “Then I grind the beans and brew it in my office.”
“Coffee.” Mallory’s mouth was watering. “I dream about it. What passes for coffee in the mess hall is an insult to a delicate palate.”
“I agree.”
She pursed her lips. “Ma’am, are you going to tell me something I won’t want to hear? Is that why I’m being treated to such a luxury?”
“You have a suspicious mind,” her colleague replied. “Hurry up. We don’t have a lot of time. There’s a medical transport coming in from Terramer in about a standard hour and we may have