The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

Оглавление

Diana Palmer. The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit

Отрывок из книги

Diana Palmer’s second installment in her thrilling space epic is a vast panorama of far-flung civilizations, interplanetary conflict and galaxy-spanning passion…

THE MORCAI BATTALION: THE RECRUIT

.....

“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.

.....