As always, she was momentarily confused upon awakening—then she recognized the sound of the approaching lifters. Hastily donning her jumpsuit, she started for the OT.
She caught a glimpse, through the spore clouds, of the lifters hanging low in the eastern sky, just above the bloated oblate sphere that was Drongar Prime. Other Rimsoo personnel were already running from their cubicles and quarters, some still pulling on clothing. She saw Zan Yant and Jos Vondar heading toward the landing area.
Then, suddenly, she stopped.
Something—someone—had called to her.
It had been a cry for help, nonverbal, but no less strong. She had heard it echo in her mind as if its author had been standing right behind her. A cry of rage and despair.
A death cry.
She knew where it had come from—the edge of the Kondrus Sea—and, though she didn’t know who was dying, she knew why. For one unmistakable and mercifully brief moment, she could see, as clearly as with her own eyes, the killer’s face as he loomed over his victim.
Phow Ji.
Without a moment’s hesitation Barriss turned and ran away from the lifters, away from the Rimsoo, and into the lowlands that sloped toward the sea.
It did not even occur to her to wonder until she was deep in the fetid marshes why she had made the decision to abandon her duty—to turn her back on dozens of Republic soldiers wounded in battle and go seeking out one unknown casualty instead. There could only be one reason, and she was loath to admit it, because it flew in the face of everything Master Unduli had taught her about working for the greater good, not to mention the Jedi Code. She had let her emotions take over, had let herself be swayed by anger and, yes, a desire to punish.
But even knowing this, even fearing that she was running toward the dark side, she did not stop.
She emerged from the swamp vegetation, pushing through a last clinging cluster of snarlvines, and saw Ji—the only one still standing amid the carnage. Seven men, all wearing Separatist uniforms, lay dead about him. He had a shallow vibroblade wound on his right forearm, and a blistered left cheekbone where a laser beam had narrowly missed. Other than that, he was unmarked.
He was waiting for her, that sardonic smile she had come to despise on his lips. “A drunken t’landa Til makes less noise than you do,” he said. “Nevertheless, it’s always a pleasure to see you, Padawan Offee. To what do I owe the honor of this visit? Have you come to congratulate me on my latest victory for the Republic?” He gestured mockingly at the bodies strewn about his feet.
Her rage threatened to overwhelm her. She felt the desire and the will to destroy him. In that moment, Barriss Offee knew exactly what Master Unduli had meant when she had spoken of the dark side’s seductive power. She wanted nothing more than to turn him into a pile of ashes, and, worse yet, she knew that she could. The dark power lived and shouted within her. It wouldn’t even require an effort—all she had to do was release it.
Phow Ji must have seen the truth of this in her face, because his eyes widened in slight surprise. “Do you seriously think you can stand against me? I am a master of teras kasi, of Hapan, echani, tae-jitsu, and a dozen other deadly styles. I am—”
“You are a murderer,” she interrupted him, her voice quiet but with an edge that stopped his tirade. “And I will see that you murder no more.”
Ji smiled and shrugged slightly, recovering his aplomb. He shifted his feet, settling into a stance. “Come ahead, then—Jedi.”
After it was all over, Barriss spent many a sleepless night wondering what she would have done. Would she have given in, accepted his challenge, and used the Force to destroy him? Or risen above her baser impulses and used only enough power to render him helpless? In short, would she have succumbed to the dark side or not?
She never got the chance to find out.
Phow Ji suddenly staggered, his eyes snapping wide in astonishment. Barriss realized he’d been hit from behind by something. He turned, and she saw the vanes and stubby tail of a hypo dart protruding from between his shoulder blades. Another Separatist soldier, shooting from the cover of the nearby swamp, had nailed him. For all his vaunted strength, skill, and speed, there was no way Ji could have dodged something he hadn’t seen coming.
Barriss expanded a bubble of awareness outward, with herself at the center, realizing even as she did so that, had she not been blinded with rage at Ji, she might have sensed the intended attack in time to warn the martial artist. But now it was too late. He had fallen to his knees, and, as she watched, he toppled heavily into the wet sand. He lay quite still, save for slight, rhythmic twitches of his fingers.
She could detect no further danger—evidently the shooter had not stayed to see the results of his ambush. Which meant she was safe for the moment as well, although that could change at any time. She kept her expanded awareness in operation while she knelt beside Ji, examining him.
His hands and fingers were cold, and the twitching had not abated. Paresthesia, most likely, she decided. She pinched back an eyelid, saw that the pupil was contracted. His breathing was rapid and shallow—it seemed obvious that Phow Ji had been hit with a potent neurotoxin of some sort—Paraleptin, perhaps, or Titroxinate. The Separatists had been known to use such biochems, and worse. If something was not done quickly, he would die.
There was no time to call for an evac, even if there was an available medlifter, which was problematic. But there was another way to treat him.
The Force.
Without even stopping to reflect on the irony of it, Barriss knelt beside Ji. She pulled the dart out, then rolled him over and put her hands on his chest. It occurred to her that it would be quite easy to just let the paralysis of his central nervous system do the job that, only a few minutes before, she had been all too willing to take on herself. But that temptation had passed. She was a Jedi healer. Here before her was a life in need of healing.
There was no need to make it any more complicated than that.
Barriss Offee closed her eyes and opened her heart and mind to the power of the Force.
The droid approached Den Dhur as the latter headed toward his quarters. It was one of the standard harvesting units, a little weather-worn and dented, but moving well enough.
“You are Den Dhur, sir?” the droid said.
“Who wants to know?”
If it was possible for a droid to look confused, then this one surely did. “I have a delivery for you, sir.”
“And who caused this delivery to be sent to me?”
“Lieutenant Phow Ji.”
Uh-oh. Den looked at the package, then at the droid. “It isn’t going to blow up, is it?”
“Unlikely, sir. The item in question is a holoproj recording. There are no explosives contained in it.”
Den nodded. “All right.” The droid extruded a carry drawer from its chest and removed the device, which, Den noticed with relief, did look like a standard holocron cube and not a bomb.
As he took it, Den said, “Ji gave this to you?”
“No, sir, he did not give it to me. He did, however, ask that I witness his activity and record it. This is the result, which I was to deliver to you.”
Den was still trying to wrap his mind around the concept of a gift from Phow Ji. “He specified me by name?”
“Not by name, sir. His exact words were, ‘Give it to that pop-eyed little womp rat who thinks he’s the galaxy’s gift to news media.’” The droid added, “This required some extrapolation on my part.”
“Now I believe you. All right. Thank him for me.”
“I am afraid that will be quite impossible, sir. Phow Ji is no longer among the living.”
A herd of curlnoses couldn’t have kept Den from hurrying into his cubicle to view the recording. He darkened the chamber, inserted the cube, and activated the projection unit. The three-dimensional image flowered in front of him.
The scene was of a small clearing in a jungle. As Den watched, a Separatist combat droid scout eased into the clearing,
did a quick 360 scan, then started across.
Phow Ji stepped into view in the foreground, his back to the cam. He wore a pair of blasters in low-slung holsters on his hips. The droid didn’t appear to see or hear him, but this changed when Ji yelled, “Hey, mechanical! Over here!”
As the droid turned toward him, Ji snatched the blasters from their holsters so fast that the action was a blur, and fired. The twin bolts caught the droid’s visual sensor array, instantly blinding it.
Ji ran to his right, five or six fast steps, and dropped prone. The droid fired his laser cannon at the spot where Ji had been standing a moment before.
Ji rolled up to his knees and shot the droid again, and the bolts—there must have been at least six or seven hits—lanced into the chink under its control box. This was, Den knew, a weak spot on this model’s armor, but so small that it was seldom a problem in battle.
It was a problem this time. Blue smoke erupted from the droid’s casing, the thing listed to one side, then ground to a halt, critically damaged.
Ji leapt up and ran, again to his right.
A trio of Salissian mercenaries came out of the woods, blaster rifles working. Streaks of incandescent plasma scorched the air.
Ji dodged, dodged left, then right, then stutter-stepped as enemy bolts fell short or to the sides. He also shot as he ran, once, twice, thrice—and all three mercenaries were hit with fatal body strikes. They went down.
A heavily armored super battle droid emerged from the woods, followed by two more mercenaries, but Ji was on top of them almost before they realized it. He bodyslammed into one of the mercenaries, shot the other, and fired three times more at the droid, which erupted in fire and smoke as had the one before. Den watched in astonishment. Mother’s milk, but this was incredible shooting, extremely accurate for sidearm fire, especially from a man running full out over uneven terrain and using both hands.
Ji holstered his blasters, straddled the remaining merc, who was still alive and trying to get up. He grabbed the man’s head from behind and jerked it powerfully to one side. Den could clearly hear the Salissian’s neck snap.
He’d thought his capacity to be astonished had reached its limit. But then his jaw dropped as two more mercs emerged from the woods, and Ji drew both blasters and shot the guns out of their hands!
Den had never seen anything like this, not even in entertainment holodramas.
The small 3-D image of Ji holstered his weapons again and ran to engage the surprised Salissians in hand-to-hand combat. The first man went down from a hammer fist to the temple; the second caught an elbow to the throat. Then Ji drew his weapons again, so fast that they seemed to just appear in his hands, and fired into the woods at unseen targets. He shot until the blasters depleted their charges, turning this way and that as he spied new targets. When the charge chambers were empty he tossed the useless weapons away, and charged into the forest out of sight.
A moment passed—then a mercenary pinwheeled into the clearing and hit a patch of rocky ground headfirst. Again, the snap of cracking vertebrae was audible.
Another mercenary staggered into view and collapsed, clutching a blackened, smoking wound in his midriff.
Ji backed into the clearing from the woods, a blaster rifle now in hand. He was firing on full auto, hosing more hidden enemies.
More Salissians emerged from the forest, shooting rifles and blasters of various makes. A pellet from a slugthrower hit Ji a glancing blow high on the right leg, ripping open the cloth and the flesh. Blood oozed, soaking his pants. He spun toward the man who’d shot him and blasted him squarely in the face.
Another discharge took Ji low on the right side, vaporizing cloth and punching through his body. Not fatal, because the beam’s intense heat instantly cauterized the wound, but serious nonetheless. Ji turned calmly and shot his attacker in the chest.
Then things got really interesting.
A large shadow obscured the light. Ji looked up, and the angle of the recording cam tilted as well, to frame a large drop ship hovering about fifty meters overhead. A dozen Separatist soldiers, using repulsor packs, settled down into the clearing, firing as they did so.
Ji shot eight of them, leaping, dodging, and rolling as plasma bursts peppered the ground all around him. It was a Jedi-like display of acrobatic skill, but finally the Separatists found the range. Phow Ji went down in a hail of sizzling blaster bolts.
He lay on the ground, obviously mortally wounded. The remaining soldiers approached him cautiously.
As they reached the dying man, he pulled a thermal grenade from his pocket and held it up. He smiled as he triggered it.
They tried to run, but there was no escape. The grenade blasted the clearing into a blaze of heat and light that, even with the cam’s automatic dampers, whited out the 3-D image. When the glare cleared, all that was left of Phow Ji and his enemies was a smoking crater in the damp ground.
Den realized he was sweating, even in the relatively cool environment of his cubicle. He reached out an unsteady hand and switched the unit off.
Then he realized he wasn’t alone.
He spun about with a gasp—then relaxed as he recognized the figure behind him. “Did—did you see the whole thing?” he asked.
“Yes,” the Padawan replied. “Phow Ji made sure I received a recording as well.”
“What—why did he—” Den couldn’t finish the question. He’d been on a lot of planets and had seen a lot of violence, but he had never seen anything like this.
Barriss Offee was quiet for so long that Den thought she hadn’t heard him. Then she sighed and said, “I saved his life. Earlier today. He’d been hit by a poison dart, and I brought him back through the power of the Force.”
Den nodded slowly. “I’m guessing he was less than grateful.”
“He was furious. I thought he was going to attack me right there. I don’t know why he didn’t. Instead, he just turned and walked away.
“I went back to the base to do what I could for the wounded. Soon after we got the last man stabilized, a droid handed me a copy of this recording.”
Den pulled the cube from its slot and looked at it. It would be worth a small fortune, given Ji’s newfound heroic reputation. Had the Bunduki known this—had he wanted Den to profit from it, given that it had been the reporter who had, albeit unintentionally, caused that reputation? Had Phow Ji, in his own twisted way, been trying to repay Den?
“It still doesn’t explain why he did it. One man, purposely starting a firefight against a whole platoon? That’s crazy.”
“He was m’nuush,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?”
“That’s what the Wookiees of Kashyyyk call it. To Trandoshans it’s davjaan inyameet—the ‘burning in the blood.’ Humans call it ‘going berserk.’ It’s a state of suicidal rage and fury, a point where one’s life no longer matters, and the only important question becomes, How many can I take with me?”
“I’ve heard of it. So you think Ji committed a kind of ritual suicide?”
“I suppose that’s one way to look at it. With a considerable amount of genocide mixed in.”
Den sighed. He slipped the holocron back into its case and put it on a wall shelf.
“What will you do with it?” Barriss asked him.
“I’m not sure. I could make some serious creds off it, no doubt about that. But I’d also be helping to twirl Ji as a war hero.”
“And you have no use for heroes.”
“I never said that,” Den replied. “Properly indoctrinated, they’re great at drawing fire away from those of us who are smart enough to know we’re cowards and cynics.”
Barriss smiled as she turned to go. “Rest assured I’ll keep this knowledge to myself, Den, but just so you know as well—your aura is not the aura of a cynic’s, nor a coward’s. It has definite glimmerings of hero, in fact.”
So saying, she left the cramped chamber. Den stared after her.
“Oh, no,” he murmured. “Say it isn’t so.
”
37
Even aside from the almost daily thunderstorms and mortar shell explosions that seemed a little closer than usual, the OT was particularly noisy. Jos was in the middle of a nasty bowel resection—the trooper on the table had apparently eaten a large meal a few hours before he had been hit by a chain-gun round that had perforated the small intestine—when the public address system came on. An excited voice, going too fast, said, “Attention, all personnel. Republic Medical Surgical Unit Seven will be relocating, commencing at eighteen hundred hours! This is not a drill! Repeat, this is not a drill!”
Jos said, “Put a stat on that, please.”
Tolk hurriedly glued the incision closed, almost dropping the patch in her haste.
“Relax, Tolk. You have an appointment you’re late for?”
“You heard that announcement?”
“Yeah—so?”
“Look at the chrono—it is now seventeen forty-five. In fifteen minutes, you’re going to be standing in the middle of an empty swamp in the rain with war machines trying to zap your inattentive butt if you don’t close this up stat.”
“You think?”
Before she could answer, there came a boom! that shook the OT. The operating table vibrated enough so the patient jittered toward one edge.
“Blast!” Jos said. “What was that?”
Vaetes stuck his head into the room and said, “We just took a direct hit on the shield from a particle weapon. Main generator’s out; we’re on backup power. We don’t know where they came from, but there’s a battle droid force more than eight hundred strong less than ten thousand meters from here, coming across the Jack-hack Slough at a goodly speed. The ground’s too wet for the troopers to set up a defensive line. That’ll also slow the droids down some, but it’s still best you close up any and all open patients and get them ready to move, people. This mobile unit is about to live up to its name.”
Star Wars: Medstar I: Battle Surgeons Page 23