Star Wars: Medstar II: Jedi Healer

by Michael Reaves

  Barriss made a frustrated gesture. No point in theorizing—she had to talk to somebody who knew more about the Force than she did, to pass this along and decide what—if anything—needed to be done about it. She’d tried the unit again, as soon as she’d gotten back to her kiosk, but of course it still wasn’t working.

  There was another way, however, an elegantly simple way: take another blast of the bota. She was almost certain that she could figure out just about anything, once she returned to that ineffable state in which she had been before, if this time she was expecting it and prepared for it. The experience held within it all manner of knowledge; she could still feel the truth of that. Once she understood the parameters of the event, Barriss could present the Jedi Council with something of incalculable value. She couldn’t even imagine the miracles that a true Jedi Master could perform while suffused with such power. Why, even the small handful of the Order remaining could turn the course of the war, could easily defeat Dooku’s forces and restore galactic peace, did they but have access to the kind of power Barriss had experienced. She knew this to be true; she had felt as if she could accomplish all that by herself, so she knew that, with such mystical strength in the hands of Luminara or Obi-Wan or Yoda, anything would be possible.

  But—could she prepare herself sufficiently to ride that massive and all-powerful wave again? It seemed entirely possible that the next time it might roll over her, and she wouldn’t be able to struggle free. Maybe it would claim her for itself, and never let her go, transform her somehow into something totally outside the experience of her or anyone else…

  Barriss sighed. This was beyond her skill, her talents, her ability. She needed help, but there wasn’t anyone here capable of providing it. It seemed that, until she could talk to Master Unduli, she would be better off doing nothing.

  But that wasn’t as easy as it sounded, by any means. The memory of the power, frightening as it was, nevertheless cried out to her. Its call was so tempting. Even though she was afraid, she longed to try it again.

  It would be easy. There were several skinpoppers filled with the distillate literally within arm’s reach. It would be but a second’s work to take one, push it against her flesh, trigger it…

  So easy…

  Barriss wrapped her arms around herself and shivered, feeling a cold that had nothing to do with the snow outside.

  20

  Jos, my friend. How are you feeling?”

  Jos looked at the minder. “Well, if truth be known, I’ve had better days. Better months. Decades.”

  “Oh?”

  Jos squirmed uncomfortably—a difficult task in the formchair that fought to match his every move and make the position comfortable. “You, uh, know about me and Tolk.”

  The Equani steepled his fingers. “Fortunately, I have not gone blind or deaf recently.”

  “Yeah, well…I thought we were flying like a landspeeder with custom harmonics. Only lately she’s… cooled.”

  “How so?”

  Jos sighed. Everything about Klo and his office was designed to be calming—his manner, the decor, the patient’s formchair—but Jos had yet to be able to relax when he came here. It wasn’t that he felt distrustful of Klo, or of the whole minder process, the way many of his family did. Even though he came from a long line of medics, many of his immediate ancestors looked askance upon the concept of healing through mental therapy. Though his father would never come right out and admit it, Jos knew that the senior Vandar was much more comfortable curing depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and the like with adjustments of dopamine, serotonin, and somatostatin levels, rather than by empathetic feedback. Jos told himself he didn’t share this bias, but even so, he was always tense in Merit’s office.

  He wasn’t sure why he had come this time. He hadn’t had an appointment, he’d just taken advantage of Merit’s free time. He needed to bounce this problem off somebody, and his kiosk mate was not as old as some of Jos’s boots.

  “Tolk and I were doing fine…then she went up to take a CME class on MedStar. She was there when the decks blew—and since she’s gotten back, she’s been frostier than the snow outside your window.”

  Merit nodded. “Why do you think that is?”

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be here, now would I?”

  “Did you two argue about anything?”

  “No.”

  Merit nodded, and leaned back in his own formchair, which adjusted to match his new balance and contours. “Well, the accident was distressing to a lot of people.”

  “The way I heard it,” Jos said, “it wasn’t an accident.”

  Merit shrugged. “I’ve heard those rumors as well. Of course, the powers-that-be might want people to think that way—after all, if it was sabotage, that lets Security off the hook. The Republic is not immune to watching-your-backside disease.”

  Jos knew that. He shrugged. “Barriss says it was deliberate. I believe her.”

  “Well, it doesn’t really matter for the purposes of our discussion. Whether the blowout was an accident or on purpose, it seems that the trauma of it may have hit Tolk harder than she’s letting on.”

  “I’ve thought of that. But I don’t see how. We have more people die in this Rimsoo in any given month—in a week, sometimes—than died in the MedStar blast. Tolk is often working on them when they go, looking them right in the eyes. Why wouldn’t that bother her more than a bunch of people she didn’t know, and didn’t have to deal with?”

  “I can’t say.” Klo paused, as if considering something.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I’m not a face reader, a Jedi, or a minder, Klo, but I didn’t just fall off the melbulb freighter, either. What?”

  “How well do you know Tolk? I mean, yes, you’ve worked with her during your tour here, and you have established a relationship that, I assume, is physical?”

  “You can assume that.”

  “But—what do you know of her background? Her people, her politics, her social development?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Perhaps she has reasons to be upset that you can’t see. Perhaps there’s something in her background she hasn’t revealed to you.”

  “I don’t think I like the way this conversation is going.”

  The minder raised a pacifying hand. “I meant no insult to Tolk,” he said. “I’m merely suggesting that, as you point out, there would seem no ostensible reason for her to be more upset about an explosion on the MedStar than she’d be in the day-to-day goings-on here in the Rimsoo. Therefore, there could be another reason.”

  Jos blinked at him. “Are you suggesting that she had something to do with it?”

  “Of course not, Jos. Only that there is apparently something going on with Tolk about which you seem to be in the dark. If you had any idea what that might be, maybe you could resolve this. At the very least, you’d have more tools to work with.”

  Jos brooded. “So far, I haven’t been able to get her to talk to me about anything of substance.”

  “And therefore you lack enough information to make even an educated guess. You might see if you can find out more. It could be nothing serious—some past trauma connected to her family or friends that triggered old memories, for example. But until you gather more data, all you have is speculation,” Klo said. “There’s no future in that.”

  Jos nodded. Klo was right. He needed to talk to Tolk about this, find out what was really bothering her. They could deal with it together, whatever it was.

  Unless, of course, Tolk had had something to do with the bombing…

  Jos shook his head. No way. He wasn’t sure of much these days, but he was sure that Tolk could never have anything to do with such a horrendous crime, no matter what. What healer could? Their job was to save lives, not take them.

  “Thanks, Klo. I won’t take any more of your time.”

  “They’re still playing cards in the cantina. I-Five was winning. Cleaned me to my daily limit,”
Klo said with a smile, “which is why I’m back here.”

  Jos stood. “Maybe I’ll go have a drink and play a few hands.”

  “Why not?”

  Jos smiled and left.

  He didn’t make it as far as the cantina.

  When he was halfway there, crossing the open area referred to as the Quad, he and several others braving the cold stopped in their tracks, momentarily paralyzed by an ear-smiting crack of something very much like thunder. What the—?

  A moment later, the temperature began to rise. It was easy to tell the difference because it was happening so quickly.

  Jos knew very little about how weather worked, but he knew that when warm air collided with cold air, things happened. And things were definitely happening now. A thick mist formed almost immediately, making it impossible to see more than a few meters ahead. He was buffeted by microbursts of wind from different directions, some hot, some cold, that whipped up flurries of melting, spore-tinged snow. Hard spatters of rain hit the ground in staccato bursts. Through the mist he could see eerie flickers of light—electrical discharges that he’d heard referred to in the past as Jedi’s Fire. It glimmered on the tips of his fingers. He stood still. The voltage required to break through the air was high, obviously, but his capacity to store a charge was relatively small. He was in no danger. He hoped…

  The mist began to clear after a few moments. Jos felt the air becoming charged with moisture as the temperature continued to rise. He began to sweat, and started doffing layers of clothing: coat, vest, his outer pair of pants. Mud squished under his shoes.

  “Looks like Teedle’s sacrifice wasn’t in vain,” Den Dhur’s voice said. Jos looked about, and saw the diminutive Sullustan slowly materialize as the fog thinned.

  “Winter seems to be going away at a good clip.”

  Jos nodded. For better or worse, the malfunctioning force-dome had apparently been repaired. And already he was missing the cold.

  Another humanoid form took shape a few paces ahead. It was I-Five. The droid was looking up. Jos followed his gaze. For the first time in weeks the relentless glare of Drongar Prime was visible.

  “Guess things are back to normal,” he said to I-Five.

  “Indeed.”

  Jos looked about the base. Icicles were dripping and disintegrating, the mud was getting deeper, and the ripe and fecund smells of the Jasserak Highlands were back with a rancid vengeance. All that was needed was the sound of incoming medlifters to provide the finishing touch.

  Even as the thought crossed his mind, the heavy air began to pulse with the distant throb of repulsors.

  “They’re playing our song,” he said to the droid as he turned back toward the OT. He felt unaccountably content. For better or worse, things seemed to be back to normal. No more surprises for a while, perhaps. Was that too much to ask?

  Probably…

  I-Five hadn’t moved. “Come on,” Jos called to him. “We’ve got jobs to do, remember?”

  The droid turned and looked at Jos. The subtle light shadings of his photoreceptors gave his metallic face a look of wonder. “I remember,” he said.

  Jos stopped. “You remember what?”

  “I remember everything.”

  21

  On Kaird’s payroll was the human in charge of the xenobotanists monitoring the bota. Kaird, always thinking ahead, his identity always hidden within his Kubaz disguise, had been paying the man handsomely for information regarding the state of the crop.

  Kaird met the man in a refresher, the door blocked against unwanted company. The air scrubbers were, like so much of the Rimsoo’s equipment, only intermittently functional, and so the place smelled very bad.

  The news, however, smelled worse.

  “It’s not unprecedented,” the xenobotanist said. “Have you ever heard of the ironwithe plants of Bogden?”

  “No.”

  “Quite fascinating. Nearly as hard as durasteel, and very popular as an export for rooftop gardens on Coruscant and other Core worlds. Its shoots are the major part of the giant renda bear’s diet, and—”

  “Fascinating. Is there a point?”

  “Sorry. Well, every few decades there’s a planetwide die-off of ironwithe. No one’s sure why. It’s like there’s some sort of plant telepathy that triggers a near-extinction event. The really amazing thing is that it even affects the ironwithe growth parsecs away, on other worlds. The theory is that there’s some kind of quantum entanglement reaction in the DNA that—”

  “Just tell me exactly what it means regarding the bota,” Kaird said, resisting the urge to strangle the man.

  “The plant life here is constantly mutating, and that includes bota. There is a new mutation, and from all appearances, it’s planetwide. We don’t know why; it could have been triggered by anything. The change seems to be altering the bota’s adaptogenic properties.”

  “Which means …?”

  “If it continues in this direction—and there seems to be no reason why it won’t—within another generation, bota will be, for all intents and purposes, inert. Useless.”

  Silently, inside his mask, Kaird cursed. How was he supposed to explain this to his vigo? It was not his fault, he could hardly control what had happened, but vigos had been known to blast messengers bearing bad news before.

  “Who else knows of this?”

  “Well, except for you and me, nobody yet. I haven’t made my report to the military. I thought you would want to know first.”

  “Good. Can you delay this report?”

  “Not for long. Botanical stations around the continent run periodic tests. These reports are funneled through my office, and I might be able to sit on them for a week or two, but no more. A few weak batches are not unusual, but something like this will get out.” The human shrugged. “People talk.”

  For a moment, Kaird considered killing the botanist. It seemed the easiest way to keep this under wraps as long as possible. But—no. Killing him would only guarantee that he would be replaced, and the replacement might not be as venal. Better to have the man in charge working for him. Knowledge was, as always, power. Much could be accomplished in a short time with millions, maybe even billions, of credits at stake.

  “All right,” Kaird said. “There will be a large bonus for you. Keep this information quiet as long as you can.”

  The human fidgeted nervously. “They’ll fire me if they find out.”

  “I’ll get you a better job, making three times as much.”

  The botanist stared at him.

  “Trust me. I have many useful contacts.” Kaird pulled a credit cube from his pouch and tossed it to the man. The botanist triggered it. The amount appeared as a red number in the air in front of him. It was equal to his salary for two years.

  “Whoa!”

  “That, and that much more if you keep the lid on this for two weeks.”

  The man nodded. Greed shone from his face. “All right.”

  The man left, and Kaird lost no time in vacating the close, ill-smelling building as well.

  As he tromped through the mud back to his quarters— too bad the lovely weather of the past couple of weeks had vanished with the dome’s repair—Kaird thought about the situation. Bota had always been fragile, of course, and it wasn’t surprising that the past few weeks of severe local climate change had resulted in a loss of the nearby crop. They’d planned on compensating for this by increasing production from the other fields. Much of the harvest on the Tanlassa continent was shipped through Rimsoo Seven, and with Thula and Squa Tront doctoring the manifests, Black Sun’s take would not have been affected much. This could still be accomplished to a degree, and it might help keep the problem quiet for a few extra days.

  But that was merely a stopgap solution. The only way to salvage this situation was to get as much of the bota encased in carbonite as quickly as possible, and on its way to Black Sun. If the plant shifted from a miracle drug to a useless weed, then however much of it was still potent would become that mu
ch more valuable.

  When he’d been a youngling, he’d learned from a favorite aunt a trader’s story: if you have the only case of a rare, vintage rimble-wine worth a thousand credits a bottle, and you want to maximize your profit, drink all but one of them, and put the last bottle in a secure vault. There were many rich people who would pay a fortune for something that was unique, but who wouldn’t bother if there were a dozen, or even fewer, just like it in the whole galaxy. The single bottle would be worth more than the case.

  Bota, because of its properties, was already one of the most valuable of drugs. If the possibility of obtaining fresh supplies was gone, what was left would appreciate in value faster than a ship going lightspeed. A rich and seriously ill person would pay a lot to stave off death. How many credits you had didn’t mean anything when they stuck your corpse in the recycler.

  Kaird considered his options: he could steal a large amount of the bota and try to smuggle it offworld on a military or commercial vessel…

  No. Too risky. Too many elements he could not control.

  He could contact Black Sun—assuming he could get his communicator working. He had been unable to make a connection the last few days, and while that might change, it was also a risk. Once the mutation became known, the military would triple the guards on it, and that would make things worse.

  Taking it by force would be impossible, of course. Black Sun was a formidable criminal empire, but its ways were those of the poisoned chalice and the hidden dagger, not the blaster and the lightsaber. All of Black Sun’s firepower couldn’t match even that of the Republic’s clone army on Drongar alone.