She sighed. “You and me both, Jones.” She got to her feet. “I’ll have one of the air techs fly me over to the source of that signal. Darn, it’s gone again. No matter, I saved the coordinates. If it’s Mekashe, I’ll send up a flare. You be watching, okay?”
“That’s an affirmative, Ma’am. Please be careful.”
She grinned. “You do the same.”
* * *
A FEW MINUTES LATER, Edris wished she hadn’t ordered the scout to leave her in the clearing. She’d been certain from the readings that a medical emergency loomed nearby—most likely one of their Cehn-Tahr crew who’d gotten separated from the rest of the landing party. It might be Mekashe who was missing. The sensor reading indicated a wounded person, a wounded Cularian person, in this vicinity. The sensors had suddenly fallen prey to an electromagnetic interference of unknown origin, however, so it was impossible to use a robot probe to find the victim. She’d started to follow the sensor trail when her unit began malfunctioning. It was almost, she puzzled, as if the signal had been wiped out by some sort of jamming device. It was quite possible that the renegade Rojok unit could still be camped near the refugees. They would certainly have jamming devices.
She checked her wrist sensor again. It was almost useless. At least the drug banks would work if she found an incapacitated soldier here. She only wished she’d taken more time and refilled the med banks first. As usual, she’d jumped in too quickly, without enough preparation. It was a fault she’d tried to correct over the years. Her head injury from years ago was still causing problems, even now.
Well, it would mean some walking, to use her eyes and ears to search for a patient. But if it was Mekashe lying there injured, it would be worth the effort.
A sudden, sharp sound made her turn her head. She heard a voice speaking an ancient dialect of Rojok, which only a few outworlders, including Edris, could even understand.
“Holconcom!” it rasped. “Shoot!”
She felt a sudden burning pain in her lower rib cage. “Stop! Medic, not soldier...!” she called back, in the same dialect, just before she hit the ground.
There was a scramble of feet and suddenly she was surrounded by Rojok soldiers of some elite group, all wearing black uniforms. The leader, who could be recognized by his long blond hair, stood over her with narrowed eyes. At that, he couldn’t be the ranking officer, his hair only came to his shoulders, too short for even a company commander.
“Edris Mallory,” she said, quickly using a light dose of her precious few meds to alleviate the pain. There was no time to diagnose the damage. “Dr. Mallory.”
“Holconcom,” the officer returned.
“Medic...not Holconcom soldier,” she corrected. “I was searching for a wounded person. Our sensors...” She couldn’t mention that they didn’t work; this party of Rojoks was certainly one of the rebellious splinter groups that didn’t honor Chacon’s cease-fire with the Tri-Galaxy Fleet. “Our sensors weren’t specific,” she added.
“Our leader was wounded in a firefight with one of the refugees in a camp near here,” the Rojok said. “You speak our dialect. This is unprecedented.”
“I have an affinity for languages,” she replied. “May I see your leader? I am a specialist in Cularian medicine.”
He looked even more surprised. He glanced at the others, who were uneasy and coaxed him to let her try.
He sighed and signaled his men to holster their weapons. “Yes. We will take you to him.”
It was hard to get up, even harder to walk. There was some internal damage, but not immediately life-threatening. Perhaps a slightly damaged lower lung. It was difficult to breathe normally, so it was probably the lung. The lower lobe was expendable, if necessary. Thank goodness the shot hadn’t been better aimed. She’d already used a mild sedative, just enough to get her through the worst of the pain. She got to her feet.
She followed them to a speeder, got inside, and was whisked to their base camp. It was small. There were only about ten of them. They looked shocked when their comrades came into camp with a small blonde human female wearing the uniform of their enemy, the Holconcom, but they recovered quickly when the ranking officer explained why they’d brought her to camp.
He took her to a molded plexifab hut, inside which was a tall Rojok officer, middle-aged, lying unconscious on a pallet.
Edris went to him at once and prayed that her scanner would work long enough to diagnose, and that the electromagnetic field wouldn’t interfere with the operation of her drug banks.
She grimaced, because the scanner wasn’t working properly. “There’s interference with my sensors here...” she began worriedly.
The ranking officer snapped something to a soldier, who saluted and left. Only a couple of minutes later, the sensors were working again. A jamming device. That made sense.
“Thanks,” Edris said with a glance at him. “I’m afraid we’ve lost the ability to do examinations without our tech these days. Medicine, like weaponry, is dependent on it.”
He nodded. He didn’t speak. He stood, grim-faced, while she diagnosed the condition of their leader.
She sighed and smiled. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” she promised him. She went to work. It was a penetrating wound which had done damage to several internal organs and nicked his colon. She set about using her tools to do the necessary repairs.
Halfway through, he came around and groaned.
“Sorry,” she said in the dialect, and used the last of her drugs to inject a powerful painkiller. “Better?” she asked.
He looked up at her, blinked and managed a rough laugh. “Better. A Holconcom? And you haven’t killed me?”
“No, sir,” she said, with a painful smile. Her own injury was uncomfortable. “We take an oath to treat any patient, regardless of political affiliation. Besides that, I know Chacon,” she added softly.
He was impressed. “How?”
“My best friend is married to the son of the Cehn-Tahr emperor,” she said easily. “His sister is the mate of Chacon. I attended the bonding ceremony on Memcache.”
“We revere Chacon,” he said heavily. “It grieves me that he joined the Empire with that of the Cehn-Tahr.” He did not add that Chacon was a relative of his. It had saddened him to oppose the field marshal on this issue.
“It was to prevent the war from spreading,” she said simply, “and claiming even more lives on both sides of the conflict. He sits in council now with the Tri-Galaxy and has a powerful voice in making policy. He will see to it that planets in the New Territory are shared equally between all worlds, including Enmehkmehk, your own homeworld.”
He touched his stomach. “I feel the mending,” he said, surprised.
She smiled. “We have powerful medicines, and even more powerful instruments.” She closed her wrist scanner. Its drug banks were empty now.
The commander of the small unit got to his feet with a little effort, stood erect, towering over Edris, and managed a smile. “Thank you.”
She smiled back. “Saving lives is an obligation, not a kindness,” she said, quoting Dtimun, the emperor’s son who had led the Holconcom for many years.
They moved outside, and suddenly the entire camp was on alert. A red blur materialized beside Edris with his big hand around the throat of the Rojok commander. Rhemun!
“No!” She jumped between them, pushing at Rhemun’s broad chest. She grimaced at the pain. Rhemun, shocked, let go of the Rojok. Edris moved between the two aliens, to