[Republic Commando] - 03(145)

Darman’s gaze darted between the chrono on his forearm plate and Fi, and the urge to protect him-from what, from a med droid?-was hard to suppress. The minutes flicked by on the display, and the droid was joined by another. The two began attaching sensors to Fi’s scalp, shaving off more small patches of hair-oh, he’d be really mad when he saw what they’d done to his hairstyle-and sticking the discs in place. They seemed to be checking brain activity.

“How long is this going to take?” Niner said. “Shouldn’t he at least be conscious by now?”

But he wasn’t. The senior med droid repositioned the sensors, checked the readout, and then stood back in processing mode for a few moments, the panel on its chest flickering through a sequence.

Then it unhooked the filaments from the breather mask and removed the tube from Fi’s throat. Darman couldn’t work out what was going on at first. But Fi’s chest wasn’t moving, no rise and fall of steady breaths, and that was the point at which Darman started to think in terms of going in there and resuscitating like he’d been taught. The droid seemed to be watching Fi intently. Then it turned away to the trolley full of instruments, slipping items into the steribag for autoclaving.

“That’s it, I’m going to…”

And then Fi took a long gasping breath and coughed. The droid spun around as if it hadn’t been expecting that at all. Fi was breathing on his own again, but he certainly wasn’t conscious.

Darman was a stride from the doors when Niner stepped in his way and pushed through ahead of him.

“Droid,” he said, “you want to tell me what’s going on? What happened there? Is he okay?”

The med droid placed more sensors on Fi, this time on his chest and throat. “He’s breathing unaided, and I wasn’t anticipating that outcome.”

“So why did you take the shabla tube out of him, then?” Darman snapped. He got the picture now, all right. They thought Fi was dead. “What’s that about?”

The droid just followed its protocols. It dealt with a steady stream of wounded and dying men every day, and Fi was no more special to it than the next trooper. It was nothing personal at all. “His brain scan showed insufficient activity.”

“You mean you pulled the plug on him?”

“I assessed him as brain-dead. That’s still my professional opinion. The medical protocol is that we don’t continue life support if a patient is still showing isoelectric scans after forty-eight hours.” The droid paused. “Flatlining, I believe you call it.”

The words hit Darman like a punch in the gut. It wasn’t supposed to be like that. Republic medical care was the best there was: prosthetic limbs, bacta, microsurgery, nanophar-maceuticals, you name it, the stuff of which miraculous recoveries were made. Fi couldn’t end up like this. Darman refused to accept it.

Niner had his fist clenched, held against his leg. For a moment Darman thought his sergeant was going to vibroblade the med droid like he’d done to so many combat tinnies. But Niner could always keep control.

“What happens in a regular medcenter?” he said, voice cracking.

“They have separate medical protocols. The Grand Army operates under different terms.”

And Darman didn’t need to be told what those were. He wanted to take it out on the med droid, but it was just a machine and had no more rights than he did. “You can’t just leave him there. What are you going to do?”

“This has never happened before during my service. I have no instruction to keep a patient on extended life support in these circumstances. This medbay is for emergency and acute care only.”

“I’ll take that as a don’t-know, shall I?” Niner said. “Put him back on life support.”

“He’s breathing unaided.”

“Then keep him hydrated, because if you don’t, that’s basic combat first aid for us. If you don’t put a line in the IV cannula, we will. Got it?”

The droid was genuinely perplexed. It had a very specific specialty, and what it was faced with now wasn’t how to do something clever, but whether to do it at all. Darman didn’t wait and moved in between Fi and the droid. If the tinnie came anywhere near him with anything but a helpful suggestion, he’d use an BMP on the thing. Atin pushed past it and took a big carton of saline sacs, and between them they hooked Fi up to a drip.

“Now either he stays there, or you let us move him to a nice quiet bay where we can keep an eye on him until we get back to Triple Zero,” Niner said patiently, fist relaxing. ”I think a bay would be best. We’ll liberate that repulsor gurney and move him, if that’s okay with you.”