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panting and furious, and when she launched herself at me again, I grabbed her by one braid and slapped her as hard as I could. By that time the launch bay crew had rushed over to us. “Somebody take her and signal Medical for me!”
    She held a hand to her face and muttered vile things in Navajo as one of the engineers led her away.
    I went back to work on Dhreen. In the background, I heard a voice say, “Medical, emergency, central launch bay. Pilot Dhreen has been wounded.”
    One of the other pilots knelt beside me. “How serious are his injuries, Healer? Shall we transport him to Medical for you?”
    “Really bad, but wait for the team.” I pressed my ear to his chest. Judging from the gurgling breath sounds and the irregular cardiac rhythm, whatever had blasted the hole in his chest had also punctured the Oenrallian’s lung/heart on the right side. I kept one hand jammed down on the wound as I rolled him onto his side. From the size of the exit wound, it must have nailed the right hepatic lobe, too. “Signal Medical again. Tell them to prep a cardiothoracic team.”
    “You’re not operating on him,” Ilona hissed from several feet away. “You did this to him!”
    “Someone had better, and soon, or he’s not going to make it.”
    The Senior Healer and a medevac team got to the launch bay at about the same time I’d slowed the bleeding with makeshift pressure dressings on either side of the wound.
    Squilyp bent down to help me transfer Dhreen onto the gurney. “Gods, Cherijo. How did this happen?”
    “Something hit him with a point-blank pulse blast to the lower lateral chest with a thirty degree up angle. Massive cardiopulmonary trauma and liver damage. Scan him.” Beneath the fingers I had pressed to his throat, I felt Dhreen’s pulse fading. “He’s flagging. Move it, people!”
    Ilona abruptly went nuts, and flung herself at me again. “You’ve killed him!”
    One of the engineers dragged her away. Then the Omorr and I pushed Dhreen’s gurney out into the corridor. On the way to Medical, I initiated the infuser line as Squilyp continuously scanned his vitals.
    “Extensive residual pressure damage in the soft tissue and viscera of the upper torso,” Squilyp said, and handed me a syrinpress. I injected Dhreen with adrenalisine to help his traumatized lung/heart keep pumping. “What was he working on?”
    “Some emitter thing under a shuttle, but I was handing him a laser tool when the ship rocked. It may have accidentally gone off.” We guided the gurney around a corner and through the main entrance panel to Medical. “Surgical team prepped?”
    “Scrubbed and waiting for you.”
    “Us. I can’t patch up this many holes by myself.” Sweat stung my eyes. “We’ve got to work fast, too.”
    “Go scrub.” Squilyp nudged me toward the cleansing unit. “I’ll get started in surgical and trans him to the machine.” He paused. “Put your cortgear on. We need to make a record of this.”
    “Your students can read a text.”
    “It’s not for my students,” he said, then hopped away.
    As I passed my hands under the sterilizer port, I was shocked to see them trembling.
    I thought of OverSeer FurreVa, the Hsktskt guard who had become my friend during my days as a slave doctor on Catopsa. I’d lost her to the same kind of injury, after she’d taken a blast meant for me.
    No way was I letting Dhreen go that way.
    I remembered the cortgear and clamped the unit over my head as I rushed into the surgical suite, where the team had the Oenrallian on the procedure table. Squilyp was transitioning Dhreen’s body from his own lung/heart to the machine which would perform the same functions for him while I repaired the damage.
    He looked so damn young, lying there. Like a little boy. And I could smell him-that not-quite pineapple mixed with chocolate smell filled my head. I clenched my hands into fists for a moment, then gloved. “Report.”
    “Hypoperfused but prominent jugular venous