Star Wars - [Medstar 02] - Jedi Healer (by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry)

Star Wars

Medstar

II

Jedi Healer

A Clone Wars Novel

Michael Reaves and Steve Perry

For my son Alexander: "The Force will be with you - always." - M. R.

For Dianne - S. P.

RMSU-7

The jasserak Highlands of Tanlassa,

Near the Qarohan Steppes

Planet Drongar

Year 2 a.b.o.g.

Scan & OCR: by Gilad

upload : 28.XI.2005

1

In the moment, there was little time for thought. No real space to let

the conscious mind judge action and reaction, no time for decisions about

form and flow. The mind was far too slow to defend her in this life-or-death

situation. She had to trust muscle memory, had to let go of any connection

to past or future concerns. She had to be totally and completely in the now,

if she was to survive this battle.

Even these thoughts passed in the space of no more than a heartbeat.

Barriss Offee cut and slashed with her lightsaber, whirling and

twirling it, her movements weaving a shield of luminous energy before her,

stopping blaster bolts, arrows, swords, even a few slung rocks, without

reflecting any directly back toward the attackers. That was of vital

importance, and the hardest part of the battle-don't kill any of them.

Master Kenobi had been adamant on that. Do not lop off arms or legs or

heads; do not thrust through the bodies of their attackers. Not those of the

Borokii, nor those of the Januul.

It was much harder to fight and disarm or wound than to maim or kill.

It was always harder to do the right thing.

Barriss fought-

Next to her, Anakin Skywalker was displaying a fair skill with his

lightsaber, though his technique was still somewhat rough. He had come into

training much later than had most Jedi Padawans, but he was managing quite

well. She sensed through the Force that he wanted to do more, that he wanted

to strike them all down, but he held himself in check. She could feel the

difficulty he was having in doing so, however. And that slight smile on his

face as he wove a defensive energy web before him bothered her just a bit.

He seemed to be enjoying this far too much.

To her left, Master Kenobi's buzzing energy blade stitched an

ozone-scented tapestry of blurred light, knocking blaster bolts into the

ground, blocking incoming arrows, and shattering durasteel blades almost too

fast for the eye to follow. His expression was set, grim.

Moving with that incredibly supple grace that was her hallmark, Master

Unduli danced her defense, deflecting the attacks with ease. Barriss stood

beside her tutor, her blue blade moving in perfect synchronization with the

pale green shimmer of her Master's lightsaber. Separately, each was an

opponent to be reckoned with; together, merged by and in the Force, they

were a fighting unit far stronger and faster than the sum of its two parts.

So thoroughly and completely did they complement each other's feints,

parries, and blocks that many of the wild Ansionian plainsfolk stared in

disbelief even as they pressed their attack.

When the howlpack had first advanced despite her practiced skill,

Barriss had felt a surge of fear; there were so many of them, and to control

without killing was much, much harder. But now, as she leapt and parried and

swung her weapon, the Force guiding her every move, the initial panic was

gone. With the four of them together this way, she had never felt the Force

flow as strongly as it did now. She was with Anakin and Master Kenobi,

nearly as completely as she was with Master Unduli. It was an unbelievably

powerful, heady sensation, intoxicating, overriding, filling her with

confidence: We can do it-we can defeat both armies-/

Rationally, she knew this could not be, but the conviction was a thing

of the heart, not the mind. They were invincible. They batted death from the

air: full-power particle beams, needle-tipped arrows, swords sharp enough to

shave the Ansionians' long manes . . .

It seemed to go on for a long time-hours, at least- but when it was at

last done, Barriss realized that the entire encounter had taken perhaps ten

minutes or less. Dozens of shattered weapons lay at their feet, and the

surprised combatants surrounded them, plainly in awe of the fighting skills

of the Jedi. As well they should be ...

Barriss smiled at the memory of the encounter on An-sion. She had felt

the Force many times, before and since, but never had it been that. . .

compelling. Even when they had demonstrated their "spirit" for the

Alwari-she with her compass dance, Anakin with his singing, Master Obi-Wan

Kenobi with his storytelling, and Master Lumi-nara Unduli with her

Force-sculpture of whirling sand- she had not felt so alive as during the

battle, fighting alongside her Master and the others. Fighting alone was one

thing, but fighting in tandem or in a group? That was much, much more.

But that was the past, and if she had learned nothing else from her

years in the Jedi Temple, she had learned that the past could be revisited,

but not relived. She was no longer on Ansion now, but on Drongar, that humid

hothouse of a world, and even though her mission to find the thief who had

been stealing the valuable bota crop grown here was over, she had yet to

hear from her Master as to the next step in her training.

Even as she felt frustration rising again within her, her desktop comm

unit warbled. She activated it, and a small holoproj image of her teacher

shimmered into view in the warm air. The comm unit was small, and it seemed

to have a slight malfunction; aside from the usual blinking and ghosting

common when communicating across many parsecs, some element in the power

amplifier seemed to be emitting a too-warm-circuit smell, so subtle that she

was uncertain if she was actually sensing it or simply imagining it. It was

a not-unpleasant odor that reminded Barriss of roasted klee-klee nuts.

Master Unduii was lightyears away now, back on Cor-uscant, albeit her

image was close enough to touch. The three-dimensional likeness was

insubstantial, though, and it would be like trying to touch a ghost.

Barriss sighed, feeling tension loosen within her. Here on Drongar she

had felt the separation from her instructor keenly. Just the sight of Master

Unduii, even in a flickering, low-res holocast, was enough to help center

her. And she badly needed centering. What with the Rimsoo's recent forced

relocation, some fifty-odd kilometers to the south to avoid being destroyed

by Separatist battle droids, along with Zan Yant's death and the nonstop

batches of incoming wounded, she felt badly in need of the calming,

centering influence that her teacher always brought with her.

After a mutual greeting, Barriss said, "So, I suppose my mission here

on Drongar is finished."

Master Unduii cocked her head. "And why would you suppose that?"

Barriss regarded the image, suddenly uncertain. "Well ... I was sent

here to find out who was stealing bota. The ones responsible for that, the

Hutt Filba and Admiral Bleyd, are no longer doing so, being dead. The

military has dispatched a new admiral to command Med-Star and the Rimsoo

facilities planetside-he should be here shortly, and I expect he's been

selected for his honesty, given the value of the bota crop."

"That was only part of your mission, Padawan. You are also a healer,

and there are still people there in need of that, are there not?"

Barriss blinked. "Yes, Master, but-"

There was a pause as her teacher regarded her. "But you don't think

that sufficient reason, do you?"

"With all due respect, I seem to be making very little difference here.

It's like trying to move a beach full of sand one grain at a time. I could

be replaced easily by any competent physician."

"And you think that your talents would be better utilized elsewhere."

It was not a question.

"Yes, my Master. I do."

Master Unduii smiled. Even in the flickering projection Barriss could

see those intensely blue eyes twinkle. "Of course you do. You are young, and

your desire to be a shining force for good has blinded you somewhat to

things all around you that still need attention. But I sense that you are

not done there yet, my impatient Padawan. There are still lessons to be

learned. Spirits require healing, too, as much or more than do bodies

sometimes. I will contact you when I think it is time for you to leave

Drongar."

Master Unduli's image winked out. Barriss sat on her cot for a time.

She reached for calmness of spirit and found it difficult to acquire. Her

Master's purpose in keeping her here eluded her. Yes, she was a healer, and

yes, she had saved a few lives, but she could do that anywhere. There seemed

little on this fecund planet that would help her become a fully fledged Jedi

Knight. It seemed to her that her Master should be looking for some place to

properly test her, to challenge all her skills, and not just those of a

healer.

But instead, Master Unduli had decided to leave her on this soggy

dirtball, where battles were fought as they had seldom been fought in the

last thousand years-on the ground, between armies fielded to wage war

cautiously to avoid damaging the valuable bota plant that grew thicker here

than anywhere in the known galaxy. Bota- a miraculous adaptogenic growth

from which a variety of wondrous drugs could be made-was easily prone to

damage, and even a mild concussion from an explosion too close could kill an

entire field of it. Sometimes even the thunder from a nearby lightning

strike-of which there were plenty, this being a young and volatile

world-could damage the fragile plant. Neither the Republic nor the

Confederacy wanted that, so the weapons and tactics of the war here were

primitive in the extreme. Battle droids fought clone troopers mostly within

hand-blaster range, in small numbers, and without much in the way of

artillery or large power beams. When the plant over which both sides battled

for control was worth its weight in precious gems, nobody wanted to shock it

to death or set it on fire-which was all too easy to do in the high-oxygen

environment, despite the swampy territory.

While it was true that both sides had on occasion fielded heavier

weaponry-witness the recent Separatist attack that had required moving the

entire base-for the most part the infantries fought, and bled, for each

precious centimeter of ground, all because of the kid-glove approach that

bota required. Not for the first time Barriss wondered how an indigenous

plant that was so fragile had managed to cling to its ecological niche for

so long on such a tempestuous world.

Such questions did not matter now. All that mattered was that the bota

thief was dead-and yet, Master Unduli still bade her stay. Why? What was the

point?

She shook off the thoughts. Clarity of mind did not come with too much

thinking-quite the opposite, in fact. She needed to empty herself, to allow

the Force to provide the calm and serenity it always did-when she could

reach it.

Some days, it was a lot harder than others.

2

Lying on his bed, Jos Vondar glared at the young man in the

lieutenant's uniform standing in the doorway to his kiosk. Hardly more than

a boy, really; he looked like he was about fourteen standard years old.

"What?"

"Captain Vondar? I'm Lieutenant Kornell Divini."

"That's nice. And you're standing there in the open doorway, letting

the heat into my humble home, because . . . ?"

The boy looked slightly uncomfortable. "I've been assigned here, sir."

"I don't need a houseboy," Jos said.

The boy grinned unexpectedly. "No, sir, I don't expect you do-seeing

how neat and clean your kiosk is."

Jos didn't reply to that. It was true that things had gotten a little .

. . disorganized of late. He glanced around the small living space. His last

two changes of clothes were hanging on the back of a formplast chair, the

drink chiller was dilapidated enough to make even a slythmon-ger think twice

about imbibing, and the mold creeping up the walls was as thick as Kashyyyk

wood-moss. Candidly, Joss had to admit that a marsh pig probably wouldn't

live in a sty as dirty and cluttered as this place.

Of the two of them, Zan had always been neater. He would never have let

it get this out of control. Jos could almost hear the Zabrak's voice: Look,

Vondar, I've seen garbage scows more aseptic than this. What're you trying

to do, max out your immune system?

But Zan wasn't here. Zan was dead.

The boy was speaking again. Jos tuned back in: "... been assigned to

Rimsoo Seven as a surgeon, sir."

Jos sat up on his cot and stared. Was he hearing right? This-this child

was a doctor?

Impossible.

His disbelief must have shown, because the boy said, somewhat stiffly,

"Coruscant Medical, sir. Graduated two years ago, then did a year of

internship and a year of residency at Big Zoo."

That did bring a smile from Jos. Big Zoo was the unofficial name of

Galactic Polysapient, the multi-sentient-species medcenter on Alderaan, at

which he himself had interned. It boasted no fewer than seventy-three

separate environment zones and ORs, and treatment protocols for every known

carbon-based sentient species in the inhabited galaxy, as well as most of

the silicon- and halogen-based forms. If it was alive and reasonably

conscious, sooner or later you'd see it at Big Zoo.

Jos gave the boy a closer, more appraising look. He was human-either

Corellian like Jos or some other close variant-towheaded, with cheeks that

looked like they had yet to experience depil cream. "You should have had

three years of residency before they drafted you," Jos said.

"Yes, sir. Apparently they were running short on doctors in the field."

The vestige of Jos's smile vanished. Zan had been dead only a week. And

this boy was supposed to be his replacement? The Republic was getting

desperate if it was snatching babies from their cradles this way.

Besides, nobody could replace Zan. Nobody. "Look, Lieutenant. . .

Divini, was it?" "Uli."

Jos blinked. "I beg your pardon?" "Everyone calls me Uli, sir. I'm from

Tatooine, near the Dune Sea. It's short for Uli-ah, the word for Sand People

children. How I got the nickname is kind of an interesting-"

"Lieutenant Divini, far be it from me to question the wisdom of the

Republic-I don't think anybody really could, since they don't have any

wisdom to question-so, fine, welcome to the war. You check in with the unit

commander yet?" "Colonel Vaetes, yes, sir. He sent me here." Jos sighed.

"All right, I guess we'd better find you a place to stay." He rose from his

cot.

Young Divini looked uncomfortable. "The colonel said I was to bunk with

you, sir."

"Stop calling me sir. I'm not your father, even though I feel old

enough for that these days. Call me Jos... Vaetes sent you to stay here'?"

"Yes, sir. Uh, I mean, yes, Jos."

Jos felt his bottom teeth settle firmly against his upper jaw. "Stay

right here." "Okay,"

Vaetes was waiting for him when Jos arrived at his office. Before he

could say a word, the colonel said, "That's right, I sent the boy to your

cube. He's been assigned here as a general surgeon and I'm not going to have

the construction droids drop everything and build a new kiosk when you have

an empty bed in yours." He raised a hand to forestall Jos's comments. "This

isn't a debate class, Captain, it's the army. You're the chief surgeon in

this unit. Show him the drill, get him set up. You don't have to like it,

but you have to do it. Dismissed."

Jos stared at Vaetes. "What's the matter with you, D'Arc? Someone split

your head open and drop a regular army brain in? You sound like a character

in a bad holovee. Have you taken a look outside recently? We're not even

totally relocated yet, only one bacta tank's online, and we lost an entire

case of cryogen during the move. Meanwhile, nobody told the enemy we're

having problems, so they just keep shooting our guys and we have to keep

patching them up somehow. I don't have the time to wet-nurse some rimkin

kid!"

Vaetes looked at him mildly, as if they'd been discussing the weather.

"Feel better now? Good. The exit's behind you. Just turn around, take a

couple steps to trip the sensor. And you might want to hurry along,

because-"

"I hear them," Jos said in disgust. At least two medlifters were

approaching. "But we're not done with this, D'Arc."

"Hey, drop by anytime. My door's always open. Well, except when it's

closed. Which you can see to on the way out."

Jos stalked out of the colonel's office into the wet and smothering

Drongaran afternoon.

This is just what I need, he thought. A youngling more naive than a

freshly decanted clone. The kid might think he was ready for fieldwork, but

those were long odds, in Jos's opinion. True, things could get intense in

any big medcenter, but he'd seen hardened veterans with years of experience

in all the myriad ways that sentients could die have to bolt from a Rimsoo

OT to keep from upchucking in their masks.

"Mimn'yet surgery," they called it, after a meat dish of questionable

origin popular with the bloodthirsty rep-tiloids of Barab I. It was a vivid

metaphor, illustrating the fast and furious patchwork pace that they had to

follow. Stop the bleeding, slap a synthflesh patch or spray a splint, and

move on. No time for niceties like regen-stim; if someone wound up with a

livid streak of shiny scar tissue across the face, it didn't really

matter-as long as he or she could still shoot.

There were times when Jos was on his feet twenty hours straight, his

arms coated with red, with barely any time between patients. It was

primitive, it was barbaric, it was brutal. It was war.

And this was the sterile hell into which Vaetes had just plunged a kid

who didn't look old enough to legally pilot a landspeeder.

Jos shook his head. Lieutenant Kornell "UK" Divini was in for a rude

awakening, and Jos did not envy him it. On the other hand, there was one

possible positive aspect to the situation: Tolk would probably love the kid.

Thinking of her did bring a genuine smile to his lips. His relationship with

the Lorrdian nurse was the one good thing that had come out of this war. The

only good thing, as far as Jos was concerned.

Den Dhur was on a mission.

It was a mission that had little to do with the war between the

Confederacy and the Republic, except in rather abstract terms. And, even

though he was a freelance field correspondent, it was not something he was

likely to file a story on. No, this quest was to aid a friend-someone whom

he'd become acquainted with during his stay at Rimsoo Seven, and whom he'd

come to consider a kindred spirit.

Those who knew the hard-bitten Sullustan of old would no doubt find it

hard to believe that Den would profess friendship for any living thing.

Which meant that their opinions of him could remain intact, since the being

Den was undertaking this favor for wasn't a living one- not in the

traditional sense, anyway. Which made it all the more challenging. Den was

sitting with his comrade in the base cantina. He was nursing a particularly

potent concoction of spice-brew, Sullustan gin, and Old Janx Spirit called a

Sonic Servodriver; no one appeared to know why the drink was named that,

and, after the first one or two had been imbibed, very few cared. His

companion, as usual, was drinking nothing. This wasn't surprising, since he

had no mouth or throat, and he'd managed to convince Den earlier that

pouring alcohol into his vocabulator was probably not a good idea.

Den focused his large eyes blearily upon I-5YQ. The droid had an

annoying tendency-exacerbated by the polarized droptac lenses the Sullustan

wore-to separate into multiple images. Other than that, all seemed normal

enough. "We gotta get you drunk," he told I-Five. "And this is such an

imperative because . . . ?" "'S'not fair," Den told him. "Ev'rybody else can

get blasted outta their craniums-

"Which they do with alarming frequency, I've noticed." "Ev'ryone 'cept

you. 'S'no good. Gotta fix that." "Assuming for a moment that intoxication

is a state to which I aspire," the droid said, "I see a number of problems

that must be solved. Not the least of which is, I have no metabolism to

process ethanol."

"Right, right." Den nodded. "Gotta work aroun' that. Don' worry, I'll

think of somethin' . . ." "At this point you'd be hard-pressed to think of

your own name. No offense, but I wouldn't trust you to rewire a mouse

droid's circuits right now. Maybe later, when you've-"

The Sullustan suddenly fluttered his dewflaps in excitement. "Got it!

'S' perfect!" "What?" The droid's tone was wary. Den knocked back the rest

of his drink, then had to hang on to the edge of the table for a moment

until the entire cantina, which had suddenly and unaccountably launched

itself into hyperspace, steadied. "W'do a partial power-down on your core.

Scramble th' sensory inputs a li'l bit, loosen up those logic circuits."

"Sorry. Multiple redundancy backups. They're hardwired-I could no more

voluntarily interfere with them than you could stop breathing."

Den frowned at his empty mug. "Blast." He brightened. "Okay, how 'bout

we realign the circuitry directly? Jus' temporarily, o'course ..."

"That might work-if you had the picodroid engineers needed to do the

realignment. Which are only available at Cybot Galactica repair centers or

their authorized representatives. I believe the nearest one is approximately

twelve parsecs from here."

Den belched and shrugged. "Well, we'll figure som'thin' out. Don'

worry-Den Dhur's no quitter. I'm on it, buddy." His head dropped to the

table with an audible thud, and a moment later he began to snore.

I-Five stared at the unconscious reporter, then sighed. "Something

about this," the droid murmured, "feels so familiar."

3

Jos wouldn't have started the kid off this way, had there been any

choice, but the operating theater was full of wounded clone troopers, the

drone of the medlifters bringing in new injuries seemed as constant as a

heat exchanger as they arrived, and anybody who could lift a vi-broscalpel

was needed. Now.

He didn't have time to watch the kid-he was up to his elbows in the

chest cavity of a clone full of shrapnel. Count Dooku's weapons research

group had come up with a new fragmentation bomb, called a weed-cutter-a

smart bomb that, when launched, arced up and over any and all defensive

grids, came down in the middle of a trooper force, and exploded at thoracic

level above the ground, sleeting tiny, smart, razor-sharp durasteel

flechettes in a circular pattern. The weed-cutter was deadly for two hundred

meters against soft targets, and the clone trooper armor didn't stop much,

if any, of it.

Whoever had designed and produced the clone armor had much to answer

for, in Jos's opinion. The Kaminoans might be geniuses when it came to

designing and sculpting soft tissue, but the armor was, as far as he could

see, practically useless. The nonclone field troops referred to the

full-body suits as "body buckets." It was an aptly descriptive term.

He started to ask for the pressor field to be stepped up I a notch, but

Tolk beat him to it: "Plus six on the field," she said to the 2-1B droid

managing the unit.

Tolk le Trene was a Lorrdian; her kind had an uncanny I ability to read

most species' microexpressions and to somehow sense emotions, to the extent

that it almost I seemed like telepathy. She was also the best surgical nurse

in the Rimsoo. And more, she was beautiful, compassionate, and Jos's

sweetheart, despite her being ek-ster-non-permes, an outsider, not of his

homework! I clan-which meant there wasn't supposed to be any future for

their relationship. The Vandars were enster, and I that meant marriage had

to be with someone from one's I own system, preferably one's homeworld.

There were no I exceptions.

Temporary alliances with eksters were allowed, with a I wink and a nod

Star Wars - [Medstar 02] - Jedi Healer (by Michael Reaves and Steve Perry)

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