Gears of War: Anvil Gate by Karen Traviss

again when you’ve mangled them, then you’ll damn well abide by my medical decisions.”
    “And the next time your emergency room fills up with my Gears, and they end up like Mathieson, you’ll be fine with that, will you?” It was a cheap shot. He knew how much amputations distressed her. He also knew it would work. “Let me do my job, and maybe you won’t have to do so much of
yours.
”
    “You’re a bastard, Hoffman. You really are.”
    Hayman was in her seventies, but age hadn’t mellowed her into a sweet old lady. Hoffman had to think hard to rememberher first name; she was just Doc Hayman, and if he hadn’t seen her records, he would never have known she was called Isabel. She definitely didn’t look like an Isabel.
    “And I’m a bastard who wants an end to this,” he said. “So are they well enough to talk to Trescu?”
    “Depends how he’s going to question them.” Hayman fumbled in the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out a half-smoked cheroot. “You’ve got any number of people capable of interrogating them. Why Trescu?”
    “Prescott’s orders.”
    “Hand-washing, more like. My job still has some ethical demands. I don’t patch people up for others to damage them all over again.”
    “That’s all military medicine is, Doc.”
    “You know damn well what I mean. I expect you to make sure these patients aren’t tortured. You’re not a brute, Hoffman, for all your bluster.”
    Hoffman wasn’t sure if he was a brute or not. He’d done things he regretted, terrible things, some entirely of his own volition. If he made some principled stand and refused to be party to this session, then Trescu would do it anyway, with Prescott’s blessing.
    I went through this over the Hammer of Dawn. Same argument. Same excuse. If I didn’t do it, someone else would. Better to be a man and front up
.
    So the two Stranded would get a good hiding. They’d probably get the same from any of Andresen’s buddies, too. If it meant he never lost another man like Andresen, Hoffman could live with it.
    “Fine, wait until they recover,” he said. “You get a clear conscience. But they get the same end result. Except in the meantime, you might see more patients with their goddamn legs blown off or worse.”
    Hayman stuck the cheroot in her mouth unlit. It didn’t go with the white coat. However bad things got, she always managed to keep that coat bleached to a pristine whiteness. It was shiny with wear in places, and frayed at the cuffs, but by God it was
white
, and Hoffman never knew if it was just an act of professional reassurancefor the patient in a grubby, primitive world, or some kind of manifestation of her need to erase something. But he didn’t have time to analyze all that shit. He had enough invisible stains of his own to worry about.
    “Okay, I’m as bad as Prescott. Salving my conscience. Self-delusion.” Hayman patted her pockets for a light and started walking down the corridor toward the exit. Then she turned. “Oh, and your lady friend—retire the poor bitch or give her a desk job before she gets herself killed. I know these South Islanders are tough native stock, but they die just like the rest of us.”
    “Don’t sugarcoat it, Doc,” Hoffman muttered. “Say what you mean.”
    Hoffman didn’t like the idea of Bernie risking her neck, but forcing her off the front line would break her heart. Worse, in fact; the idea terrified her, like it was the beginning of the end, and he knew it. He asked himself if he’d have retired a man of her age, or even a woman he wasn’t emotionally attached to, and the answer was—shit, he didn’t know. All he knew was that he couldn’t do it to Bernie and that she deserved better from him.
    He waited outside the ward door, reading through the note that one of the medics had left for him. The Stranded bomb makers were Edwin Loris—the one Sam Byrne had given a fractured pelvis, two cracked ribs, and concussion—and Mikail Enador, who was doing