Star Wars: Medstar II: Jedi Healer

by Michael Reaves

  Kaird reached his kiosk, sealed the entrance, and gratefully stripped off the stifling disguise. He was still reviewing options. He had his agents in place, so the theft itself was doable. But for the escape and transport, he needed a ship—one that was fast enough to outrun pursuit if they discovered the theft before he had enough of a lead.

  He’d have to steal one, along with the security codes that would allow it to escape.

  His vigo would be unhappy about the situation, Kaird knew. But he also knew that fifty kilograms of still-potent and ever-more-valuable bota would go a long way toward calming him.

  He exhaled in relief. Yes. Now that he had a general plan, the specifics would be easier. He could make it happen. People who stood in the path of Kaird of the Nediji never stayed there for long.

  He would contact the Falleen and the Umbaran and set up the theft. Then he would find a suitable ship and set that operation in motion as well.

  It felt good to be doing something more active after just standing around as one of The Silent for so long. Kaird was always better in motion than when he was still.

  When Den awoke, his head was—not to any great surprise—throbbing like a Benwabulan gong. He’d completely forgotten to take a dose of hangover-stop before he fell asleep. Seemed he was forgetting a lot of things lately. Next thing you knew, he’d be losing his sense of direction—

  “Good morn,” came a bright female voice.

  Den rubbed sleep from his eyes and saw Eyar Marath, standing in his ’fresher, drying off with a towel.

  Good morn, indeed…

  “Your sonic shower is broken,” she said, smiling at him. “I had to use the water spray. Might take a little while for the heater to warm it up again, if you want to use it.”

  Den smiled. So it hadn’t been a dream, after all.

  Eyar came back into the main room of the kiosk and sat on the edge of the bed. “I really enjoyed being with you, Den-la,” she said, adding the familiar-suffix to his name.

  “Yes, indeed,” he managed, sitting up to watch her. “Me, too.”

  “You have wives?” she asked.

  “Never had time to get any,” he said, waving one hand as if to encompass the war, his job, everything. “What about you? Husbands?”

  “No. I’m still probably a year away from Ready.”

  They both smiled as she pulled on her boots. “Revoc says we’ll be here until the military unlocks the security quarantine. Perhaps we can see each other again?”

  “I’d like that.”

  That they had just met officially yesterday and moved immediately into a relationship was, of course, perfectly normal for Sullustans. The old joke was that Sullustans seldom got lost, and they could always find the nearest bedroom…

  Eyar stood, did a quick dewflap wipe, and smiled broadly at Den. “How do I look?”

  “Best-looking fem for fifty parsecs,” he said.

  “Probably the only one,” she said, “but I’ll take it.”

  She started to leave. It was about as perfect as it could get, as far as Den was concerned. Nice to know he still had the moves.

  Eyar paused at the door, looked back, and smiled. “You remind me of my grandfather—he was such a sweet masc.”

  Then she was gone, and Den was left with his mouth gaping and his dewflaps sagging. Her grandfather! Could have gone all month without hearing that …

  22

  Barriss tried to practice her lightsaber drills, but she just couldn’t seem to narrow her focus. Her timing was off, her balance, her breathing—everything. Even the simplest sequences felt as if she were encased in a tight-fitting metal shell, barely able to move.

  She had found a dry patch of ground, so at least she wasn’t standing ankle-deep in mud, but that didn’t help much. She relit the blade and started a basic centerline parrying sequence. The ozone smell and power hum of the lightsaber were familiar, but not comforting.

  Someone was approaching.

  Though no one could walk without making noise in the mud and dead vegetation, the buzzing of the energy blade made it difficult to hear snapping twigs, squishing mud, and other quiet warnings. Fortunately, she didn’t need such aids. Barriss shut off the lightsaber, hooked it to her belt, and turned to face Uli.

  He grinned at her. “Boo.”

  She grinned back. “We have to stop meeting this way. Out collecting flare-wings for your mother again?”

  “Trying to…the cold seems to have wiped out all those inside the dome. No luck today. Y’know, even though it was a pain in the posterior, I kinda miss the snow.”

  Barriss nodded. She felt the same way. Though it wasn’t even midmorning yet, the tropical sun had already laid its hot hands on the camp. Even the osmotic weave of her robe wasn’t enough to keep her cool.

  “So, what’s with your practicing? You seem…”

  “Stiff? Tight? Unattuned?”

  He nodded. “I was gonna go with off your game, but those’ll do. It’s not your foot, is it?”

  “No. That’s healed.”

  He nodded. “Good. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Offering me a massage, Uli?”

  He blushed. She found that charming. Then, abruptly, she decided to talk to him about her problem—in general terms, at least. He was a doctor, and good-hearted. Besides, she had about come to the conclusion that any help now would be better than none. And the boy might have something constructive to say. Out of the mouths of children, and all that…

  She said, “How much do you know about the Force?”

  He looked somewhat surprised. “Almost nothing,” he said. “The few Jedi I’ve run into haven’t talked about it. I mean, I know the medical theories about midi-chlorians being the organelles that somehow generate the connection and all, and I’ve heard the usual wild stories about it, but as to how it actually works and what it really is—” He shrugged.

  She nodded. “Actually, the Force may create midi-chlorians, sort of as its conduits into our continuum, rather than the other way around. They’re isomorphic on every world that has life. The Force, it appears, truly pervades the galaxy, if not the entire universe.

  “But, when all is said and done, the Jedi don’t really know how it actually works and what it really is, either. We know how to connect to it, how to channel it, but in a lot of ways we’re like primitives standing on the bank of a rushing river. We can put our hands in it, even wade in and try to swim, but we don’t know where it comes from—only that it exists, and that it is bound to life and consciousness more deeply than the quantum level.”

  He nodded slowly, waiting for her to continue.

  She was lecturing, she knew, as she might to a class of nine-year-olds, but he did seem interested, and it was a roundabout way to approach her problem, even if she didn’t make it that far.

  “Part of becoming a Jedi Knight is learning how to become better connected to the Force. Jedi Masters are the best at it—coupled with their wisdom and experience, they are able to do things that Padawans, let alone those with no knowledge of the Force, find miraculous. It augments our strength, oxygenates our tissues, decreases reaction lag. Once, in Coruscant Park, I saw Master Yoda lift a rock as big as a family-sized electric cart, with what looked like nothing but a simple hand gesture. The results can be great and wonderful.”

  “But it isn’t all good, is it?” he said. “We’ve talked about that before.”

  Young, but sharp, Uli was. “It’s not all good. Count Dooku was a Jedi who turned to the dark side of the Force. Since the beginning of time there have been others who were tempted by and who gave into the desire for power. Four thousand years ago, Exar Kun, a Sith Lord, somehow destroyed an entire stellar system with his misuse of the Force. One has to constantly be aware of the temptation, and guard against it.”

  “But you’re not the sort of person who would do that,” Uli said. “I mean—I would think someone who knew it was wrong and went for it anyway—”

  “Ah,” Barriss said, “but t
hat’s the insidious part. Those who embrace the dark side don’t see themselves as evil. They believe that they are doing the right thing for the right reasons. The dark side warps their thinking, and they come to believe that the end justifies the means, no matter how awful those means might be.”

  Uli examined a thumbnail. “You’re not, uh, by any chance, thinking of going over to this dark side, are you?”

  A year ago, a month ago—even a week ago—she would have laughed at this suggestion. Now she just shook her head. “I hope not. But it isn’t a path with a sign that says this way lie monsters. It’s more like a steep, slippery slope, where a misstep might turn into an un-stoppable fall.”

  There was another pause; then Uli said, “The Jedi have a moral code, right? You’re taught the difference between right and wrong?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “It’s been my experience—such as it is—that on some level, one usually knows the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes you pretend to yourself that you don’t, so you can choose to eat that cream-fat puff-pie you ought to skip, but deep down, you know you shouldn’t. I think you have to trust that part of yourself, when it comes to the big stuff.”

  “Yes, of course. But with the big stuff, you have to be sure,” Barriss said. “Gorging on a rich dessert isn’t exactly high up there on the list of galactic-scale evildoing.”

  “Depends on the dessert,” he said, smiling. There was a soft cheep, and he glanced at his chrono. “Oops, look at the time. My shift starts in a few minutes. See you later, Barriss.”

  “Yes,” she said. Uli waved and headed back toward the base.

  After he was gone, she thought about their conversation. She hadn’t spoken of her personal trial, nor had she really intended to, but the dialogue with Uli had sharpened her thoughts a little. Barriss considered going back to her kiosk to explore these thoughts further, but decided that, however sluggish and stupid she felt, she needed to do her lightsaber forms. Sometimes she just had to push through, no matter how much she felt like quitting.

  The larger question was still there. Was taking more of the bota a good idea, or a bad one? Would that path lead to a glorious swim in the rushing river that was the Force, or would it lead to the dank pool of quicksand that was the dark side? Uli couldn’t tell her that.

  In truth, she didn’t think anybody could tell her; as far as she knew, no Jedi had ever been faced with this particular choice before. Any help, from her Master or any other, would be theoretical. Do—or not do, as Master Yoda would say.

  She had a feeling, small but nagging, that this choice was supposed to be up to her. Even choosing to wait and decide later might send her in the wrong direction.

  She lit her lightsaber again. Leave it for now. Do the dance you know you can do. The dilemma will still be there when you are done.

  Unfortunately …

  Kaird was feeling much better now that he had a plan of action in place. In a different and new disguise, that of a corpulent human male, he met with his agents.

  They sat together in the crowded chow hall during the midday meal. It was noisy and smelly—a lot of different species eating extremely varied dishes. Nobody was paying any attention to Kaird, Thula, and Squa Tront.

  Sometimes the best place to hide was in the middle of a mob.

  His thoughtshield solidly in place against mental prying, Kaird explained his desire, quietly and to the point.

  As he expected, Thula and Squa Tront had some reservations.

  “This will kill the operation here,” Thula said. She nibbled on a greenish blue vegetable cutlet, made a face at the taste. “Gah. What a waste of good spigage. The cook should be boiled in his own pot.”

  “Which is exactly what would have happened to him, had his cuisine displeased the tetrarch of Anarak Four,” Squa Tront said. “But he’s not subject to quite such drastic repercussions here as on his homeworld.”

  “Lucky for him,” Thula said, shoving her plate aside.

  Kaird broke in on the banter. “That the operation will end has crossed my mind,” he said in response to Squa. “We’ve decided that cutting an artery and filling our bucket is better than bleeding a few drops at a time. War is uncertain. Somebody on one side or the other might get stupid and accidentally wipe this planet out, and then nobody makes any profit.”

  This was technically true, if it had nothing to do with his reasons. The we in this case was more properly I, since Black Sun knew nothing of his plan.

  “True,” the Umbaran replied. “But you would get more the droplet way, in the long run, if things stay the same.”

  “Are you going to eat that?” Thula asked Kaird.

  Kaird looked at the splatters of viscous brown, green, and white lumps on his plate. He had no idea what it was—some kind of human cuisine, served to him due to his disguise. In Kaird’s opinion it smelled like a stopped-up recycler in an overcrowded spacer bar. “It’s yours,” he said, pushing the swill to the Falleen. He turned back to Squa. “In the long run, we are all dust funneling into a singularity,” he said. “It’s my job to give Black Sun what it wants, and your jobs to give me what I want. Is this a problem?”

  Thula and Squa Tront looked quickly at each other, then back at him. They shook their heads. “Nope,” they said in chorus.

  The human mask smiled. “Good. You’ll make enough of a bonus that it will be worth the heat if they come after you.”

  They glanced at each other again. “Well, the thing is,” Squa said, “we’ll need to be spacing the lanes before anybody realizes the stuff is gone. After all, we’re among the first people they’ll come looking for. I trust you have a way offplanet?”

  “Sorry. You’ll have to make your own arrangements,” Kaird said.

  The fake flesh he wore itched. He was boiling in this thing! He’d worn it because it had a filtration system that kept those pesky Falleen pheromones from affecting him. That, at least, was working, but the fine skein of heat-exchanging tubules and cavities in the material wasn’t. There was always something in these elaborate disguises that caused problems. The Silent robe was about as good as it got.

  Thula swallowed and said, “In that case, timing will be critical. We either have to ship out on civilian transportation at least a couple of days before the offal hits the oscillator, or sneak onto a military transport and be well toward a nexus station when things get leggy here.”

  “You two aren’t hatchlings just out of the egg,” Kaird said. “You can work something out.”

  “Credits talk,” Squa said. “I can see somebody being bribed in our future.”

  “True. And you will have enough credits to drown out a stadium full of politicians.”

  The Umbaran nodded. “When, then, and how much?”

  “I’ll need fifty or sixty kilos, in carbonite, and within a week. Something shaped like a big personal effects case, with a handle on it.”

  Thula looked at him. “We’re talking another twenty kilos minimum for the carbonite shell. Can you haul seventy or eighty kilos around without rupturing something?”

  “I’m stronger than I appear,” Kaird said. “And you can put wheels or a small repulsor on it.”

  Thula looked at her companion. He nodded. “All right,” she said. “We’ll need two days’ head start from the time you think the alarm will go off.”

  “Done. You have five days in which to set it up. That leaves you two days to track vac before I take off.” He pulled a credit cube from his pocket and slid it across the table toward the Umbaran. Squa smiled at it. Thula reached over and took the cube. Squa said, “Thula handles all the money. I’m a terrible accountant.”

  “My, my,” the Falleen said, looking at the projection of the cube’s contents inside the palms of her cupped hands. “Black Sun is being more than generous.”

  The human shoulders shrugged. “Share the wealth,” Kaird said. “It makes for good business. Everybody goes away happy.”

  All three of them smiled at each other.
Rictuses all around, Kaird thought. Humanoids are always baring their teeth and pretending it means friendship.

  Kaird made his way out of the dining area and to a cleaning closet with an inside lock. He went in as a fat human, and came out robed as one of The Silent, the artificial flesh having been dissolved in the ultrasonic compactor, as it had been designed to do once it was triggered. He had plenty more where that came from.

  He wasn’t worried about the Falleen and the Umbaran. Small-time winders, thieves, and con artists were nothing if not pragmatic. The Nediji from Black Sun wants it and is willing to pay handsomely for it? No problem, boss. How many, how big, and how soon?

  The next part, however, was going to be a little more tricky. For this, Kaird needed to select a ship fast enough, and with enough range, that he could escape in it with his stolen cargo. It didn’t need any kind of big capacity—at the most, he would get away with fifty, maybe sixty kilos of bota. Even encased in a carbonite block, it wouldn’t be so large that he could not belt it into a copilot’s chair if he had to. He could, of course, attach a repulsor to a block weighing a metric ton or two and move it as easily as pushing a balloon, but something that big would be much more apt to be noticed, and stealth was a major part of his plan. Even the fastest ship likely to be found on this backrocket planet couldn’t outrun a heavy charged-particle cannon’s beam, and he wanted to be well out of ground battery range and beyond orbital picket ships before anybody even started thinking about shooting.

  Greed had been the downfall of more than a few thieves, and Kaird had no intention of joining them. Fifty kilos of bota worth thousands of credits a gram, secured in Black Sun’s Coruscant vaults, was worth a lot more than a ton of the same blasted to atoms by some razor-eyed dead-shot Republic gunner—not to mention the ship and pilot that would burn with it. Kaird had not become one of Black Sun’s best operatives, an assassin who had taken out scores of the organization’s enemies without ever once being arrested or even suspected, by being greedy or stupid. You made a plan. Then you made a backup plan. Then you made a backup plan for the backup plan. He already had a ship in mind, and if he could manage it, it would be the perfect vessel. He would begin scouting it as soon as possible. He’d have to make the lift to MedStar, but the alert status had been dialed down somewhat by now, and as a member of a religious order he wouldn’t have any problem getting in the air lock.