Filba had evidently prepared for this confrontation by finishing most of a keg of what looked like Alder-aanian ale. His skin folds had that rubbery look that Hutts got when drunk.
Bleyd, on the other hand, was not at all intoxicated, unless anger could be considered an intoxicant. He was speaking in a low, level tone, and seemed—to Den, at least—ready to slice and dice Filba.
Den turned the gain up on the sound enhancers.
“—things are too hot right now,” Bleyd said through his fangs. “I don’t want Black Sun coming back anytime soon. Until this affair with their missing emissary is settled, we have to lie low.”
“Easy for you to say,” the Hutt rumbled. “Your profit margin’s far higher than mine.” He took another mighty swig of the ale; despite his distended gut, he was evidently nowhere near capacity. “I’m taking all the risks, and you’re getting all—”
“There’ll be no profits for either of us if Black Sun moves in, you bloated imbecile! If you’ve a brain buried anywhere in all that blubber you’d understand that.”
“Insults,” Filba sneered, waving his jug about. “All I ever get. I deserve more for my part in this. I deserve—”
Bleyd was suddenly across the room and at the Hutt’s throat. He’d moved so fast that the moon moth had only registered a blur. “You deserve,” the Sakiyan hissed, “to have your innards rearranged, you swamp-sucking—”
He stopped abruptly. Filba’s eyes were even more bulbous and distended than usual. His wide gash of a mouth opened and closed, either questing for air or trying to speak, and apparently not succeeding at either. The small arms were waving about in panic. The jug slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor.
Filba lurched forward, drawing more and more of his bulk upright until it seemed impossible that he could maintain his balance. He swayed, a mottled tower of flab and slime—then toppled, crashing down to the floor. Bleyd had to leap out of the way to avoid being crushed as the Hutt’s considerable mass struck hard enough to shake the building. It nearly vibrated the moon moth off its perch.
Maker’s eyes! He’s fainted! Or worse…
Den, watching, could not believe his eyes—or, rather, the moon moth’s photoreceptors. What was going on? Had the admiral actually scared Filba into having heart failure—or whatever the Hutt equivalent was; hard to believe Filba even had a heart—by appearing to attack him?
Bleyd bent over the motionless form. He touched the Hutt’s back, perhaps feeling for some kind of pulse. Then he turned to the broken ale jug, lifted a shard, and sniffed it.
A peculiar expression spread over his face—equal parts understanding, anger, and bafflement. He stood frozen for a moment, then hurled the fragment to break against the wall.
The entrance chime activated. A muffled pounding was heard, as were concerned shouts. Filba’s collapse had probably been noticed by everyone in the area—Den would have been surprised if the Separatists hadn’t felt it as well.
Bleyd turned to the door. He smoothed his uniform, made sure no medal hung even slightly askew, and then opened it.
Den knew it was time to go. The moon moth was immune to most detection devices, but shortly techs would likely be going over this chamber with gadgets that could hear an electron shifting shells. He made the moon moth fly off the shelf, toward the entrance, which was already filled with confused and shocked faces—
A hand came out of nowhere, moving so fast it just seemed to appear. Den gasped as his point of view shifted violently. And then, suddenly, the moon moth was being held close to Bleyd’s face. The admiral was staring, it seemed, right into Den’s eyes.
A second later the hand closed into a fist. There was a flash as the piezoelectrics shorted out—and then blackness.
Uh-oh…
24
Barriss Offee was just finishing her meditation when she heard the commotion, and felt a simultaneous ripple in the Force. She settled to the floor, unlocked her legs, and stood.
Outside, several people were running back and forth. This in itself wasn’t unusual for the base, but the reverberations she had felt were not the familiar ones of incoming wounded. She followed these new feelings, and the excited crowd, and saw a knot of people animatedly talking outside Filba’s office in the large central adminand-requisition center. Zan Yant was among them. She stepped up alongside him.
“Doctor Yant.”
He smiled at her. “Healer Offee. Looks like we all felt Filba’s passing, one way or another.”
“The Hutt is dead? How?”
“Hard to say for sure. Apparently it was very sudden. I had a word with one of the techs, who sometimes sits in on our card game, and the indication from him was poison.”
A tech emerged from the large cubicle with an antigrav gurney, upon which was a large body sack, sealed shut and obviously filled to capacity. The lifter’s gyros and condenser whined under the load as the tech guided it outside.
“That would be the late, and fairly heavy, Filba, unless I miss my guess. I wonder who’s on medical examiner duty today? Whoever it is has got quite a job ahead of him.”
Jos Vondar arrived just then, and the three of them watched the gurney head for the OT.
“Bad luck,” Jos said. He didn’t look happy.
“Filba was a friend of yours?” Barriss asked.
He looked at her, obviously surprised at the question. “Filba was an obnoxious, officious, tightfisted fatherless squat who would make his own pouch mother sign a requisition for water if she was dying of thirst.”
“You’ve got to learn to be more open with your feelings,” Zan said.
“Why the grief, then?” Barriss asked.
“Because I’m on ME duty,” Jos said dolefully. “Lucky me, I get to do the autopsy. This war’ll be over by the time I’ve cut him up. I’ll dull just about all the vibroscalpels we have in stock. I’m saving the last one for my throat,” he said to Zan in a mock-aside whisper.
“Word is, he was poisoned,” Zan said.
“Won’t help, and you know it. I still have to dice him and weigh each organ, even if he just had a simple cardiac arrest. I’ll need a wrecker droid to help.”
“Oh, well, look on the bright side,” Zan said. “Maybe we can recycle him into lube—it’d be enough to keep all our surgical droids working smoothly for, oh, the next couple hundred years.”
“It’s good to see you two can maintain a sense of humor at the death of a fellow being,” Barriss said, sounding slightly stiffer than she had intended. After all these weeks at Rimsoo Seven she was certainly not unfamiliar with the black humor; even so, it occasionally took her somewhat by surprise.
Jos looked at her and shrugged. “Laugh, cry, get tanked, or go mad—those are the options around here. I’ll leave you to your own choice—me, I have a mountain to carve.” He headed toward the OT, following the gurney.
After he was gone, Zan said, “It gets to you, after a while. You have to develop defenses. I have my music—Jos uses sarcasm. Whatever gets you through the hot nights.”
Barriss didn’t say anything. She knew he was right, but still…
Zan sighed. “You know what I regret?”
“What?”
“I just heard a brand-new Hutt joke, and now I can’t use it to steam Filba.”
She looked at him in surprise, and he grinned at her. After a moment, she smiled back and shook her head.
It was, other than Filba’s demise, a quiet day. There was a lull in the fighting, and no medlifters arrived bearing wounded, a welcome rarity.
The activity around Filba’s death was exciting enough. The plithvine carried rumors everywhere. As Barriss made her medical rounds in the ward, even the patients knew about it. She overheard the Ugnaughts gossiping: Yar, the Hutt drank poison. Suicide, f’sure. He beed a spy—it war Filba who blowed up the bota transport, no lie, blood. They were closin’ in on ’im, ’e sar it comin’…
Hadn’t Admiral Bleyd himself gone to see the Hutt just before Filba had cr
oaked? No doubt it had been to question him about his activities. He was also stealing bota, didn’t you know? That little reporter, Dhur?—he was on the Hutt like sleaks on swamp scum, nosing around, building a case, and Filba was on the verge of being arrested, and he had taken the poison to avoid being court-martialed and executed…and so on.
Barriss didn’t add to the gossip; she just listened as she went about her duties. If the suicide rumor was true, then it might mean she would be leaving Drongar soon. Her mission to find out who had been stealing bota would be over, if it truly had been the Hutt. And from the talk, it seemed it had. How many thieves, after all, were likely to be operating at the same time in a small outfit like this? Filba had been a supply noncom—he would have had the access. And, while Barriss didn’t like to make sweeping speciesist generalizations, it was true that Hutts in general were not known for their honesty and virtue. Filba was a good fit for the crime.
Perhaps too good a fit. She could not be sure, because the Force was not quiescent. Something was still roiling in its invisible folds, and she did not have the skill to determine exactly what the subtle vibrations portended. She only knew that the matter was not yet settled.
She had mixed emotions about it all. This war was indeed a situation that called for heavy emotional response, and she had been on a lot more pleasant worlds, that was for certain. But it was all part of her test, her path to Jedi Knighthood—and if she was called away, then what? What would her own future bring? She was not afraid—her training did not admit many fears—but it was…unsettling.
What would be, would be. It was not up to her.
The day faded into evening, and eventually Barriss was finished with her medical chores. She decided to skip dinner and go to her cubicle. Perhaps another session of quiet meditation and deep breathing would shed some light on whatever it was causing those small, but continuing, disturbances in the Force…
The camp was quiet as night crept over it. Few people were about; shift change was long past, and most were either eating supper, or resting, or doing whatever it was they did when they weren’t working. For the most part, that didn’t include taking in the fetid, hot night air.
As Barriss neared the mouth of the alley that led to her quarters, she felt a presence in the shadows. She saw no one, but the Force’s prompt was clear and unmistakable—almost the psychic equivalent of a hand on her shoulder.
She stopped. Her hand moved slowly toward her lightsaber.
“You won’t need that,” a voice said. “I’m not going to do you any real harm. Just teach you a little lesson in humility. You Jedi are big on that, aren’t you?”
Phow Ji.
She still couldn’t see him, but she knew where he was. Just over there, in the dark shadow of a quiet power generator, a few meters to her right. He was an evil presence, a pulsing obstruction in the Force’s smooth continuum.
Her voice was low and even. “What makes you think you are the person to give lessons in humility?”
Phow Ji glided from the darkness. “Those who can, do. Those who can’t, don’t.”
“Very succinct. What do you want?”
“Like I said—a lesson is required. The last time we chatted, you tripped me. From behind. I owe you a return of the favor. I think a mud bath is only fair. Nothing serious, no broken bones or anything. This is an exercise in reciprocity, nothing more. If your Force can stop me, then by all means”—he held his arms wide in a beckoning gesture—“use it.”
What an egotist he was! So convinced in his own mind that he was unbeatable. And that he was so good he could humiliate her without hurting her—there was a real challenge for a fighter.
She briefly considered touching his mind with a subliminal suggestion that he didn’t really want to do this, that what he wanted was go back to his quarters and take a cold shower—but she could feel the discipline of his thoughts. They were a dense weave, as impenetrable as spin-worm silk. Ji was not weak-minded enough for a Padawan’s ability to sway him easily, if at all.
Ji settled into a stance, legs planted low and wide. He raised his hands, beckoned with one in a flippant gesture. “Come, Jedi. Shall we dance a little?”
I shouldn’t be doing this. I should refuse and walk away. Let him think I’m afraid—what does it matter?
But he should respect the Jedi, even if he didn’t respect her. It sat poorly with her to hear the name of her Order coated with contempt.
She stayed where she was.
She shifted her weight slightly, not moving her feet, just balancing herself so that she could push quickly with either leg, forward or back.
The evening was muggy; everything was damp, even the air. Her perspiration had nowhere to go; it gathered and rolled down her face and neck, soaked into her jumpsuit, threatened to drip into her eyes.
Ji smiled. “Good move. You don’t want to be committed one way or the other when facing a skilled opponent.”
He circled to his right, and Barriss moved away from him, maintaining a wary distance.
The temptation to reach for the Force, to use it to flatten Ji, was almost overwhelming. She had no doubt she could do it. One gesture, and Ji would fly into the nearest tree like a rabid rockbat. No fighter, no matter what his physical strength, could pit muscle against the Force and prevail. Maybe she couldn’t control his mind, but she could control his body. This she knew.
She would win the battle if she did it. But, she knew, she might lose the war. Ji had told her he had no plans to harm her. He wanted to knock her sprawling into the mud, to embarrass her, but that was the extent of it. She sensed no darker, baser purpose than that. Nothing would be greatly damaged, save her dignity—which was, of course, his point. Ji’s driving energy was control, and right now, he wanted, needed, to control her.
To use the Force against an opponent when you were in no real danger was wrong. She had been taught so all her life. The Force was not something to spend like a token in a sweets shop simply because you could. Neither was it solely a weapon.
So what was left? Her own fighting skills. These were not inconsiderable—Jedi were trained in all manner of disciplines, both mental and physical, and the Masters knew there were times when use of the Force was not appropriate. Even without activating her lightsaber, she was someone to be reckoned with.
Of course, her self-defense skills had not been designed to deal with a champion martial artist—what were the odds of ever encountering such a situation? Especially when he didn’t intend to seriously injure or kill her?
She would have smiled at that thought another time. The odds didn’t really matter when the reality stood two steps away, facing you and ready to attack.
There was always the option of using the lightsaber. Ji would, of course, consider it a breach of combat rules. That didn’t matter to her, but she was concerned that the drawing of the energy blade might spur him to attack more viciously. A Jedi Knight or Master would have the skills to stop him without injuring him, but as a Padawan, she was not confident in her ability to do so. She might wind up killing him—and she did not want that on her conscience.
She had already determined that his would be the first move. If Phow Ji was waiting for her to attack him, he’d be waiting for a long—
He leapt, covering the two strides separating them with phenomenal speed. Barriss barely had enough time to dodge, twist to her left, and block, so that his punch glanced off her shoulder, instead of connecting with her solar plexus.
She backed away, keeping her guard up.
“Excellent,” he said. “You have very good reflexes. But you should have counterattacked. Pure defense is a losing strategy.”
By acting as a teacher with a student, she knew, he was trying to show his superiority—as if he needed to demonstrate that.
Ji circled the opposite way, moving his hands up and down and around in an almost hypnotic weave, trying to draw her attention.
His hands didn’t matter. It was his feet she had to watch. To get close e
nough to her to attack successfully, he had to step, had to move in. He could wave his hands around all day as far as she was concerned. When he moved his feet, then she would have to—
He came in again, and this time, instead of moving out of his path, Barriss slid forward to meet him. But she dropped very low, below his center of gravity, firing a hard punch at his belly as his strike sailed over her head. She hit him, but it was like punching a wall—there was no give. His abdominals were like ridged plasteel.
She scooted out of range as fast as she could, but not fast enough. She caught a slap on the left side of her neck as she retreated, hard enough to make her vision flare red for an instant.
She gained two steps away, and he turned to face her again.
“Very good, Padawan! Not the best target, but a clean strike. You’ll need more than one, though. Think combinations—high, low, multiple attacks.”
Her neck stung, but the pain was small, and no damage done. The Force sang within her, and she could barely keep from using its power. The dark side was always there, her Master had told her; always waiting for an opportunity to be set loose. Give in once, it would be twice as powerful the next time. Give in again, and you might be lost forever.
Oh, but she wanted to show him—wanted to knock that gloating smirk from his face and replace it with awe, with amazement, with…
…fear…
Too much thinking, she realized too late. Ji leapt in again and, in a fast series of open-hand techniques, slapped her head, her torso, and her hip. The last hit was coupled with a foot hooked around her ankle. Barriss went down, hard, and the wet ground was only a little forgiving as she slammed into it.
Whatever might have happened next, as she scrambled back up into a defensive stance, was interrupted by the too-familiar drone of lifters arriving. People came boiling out of their quarters, heading for their stations. Those who noticed Ji and Barriss at all spared them little more than a glance.
“I think we’re done,” Ji said. “My point has been made.”
Barriss said nothing—she did not trust herself to. Her rage enveloped her like the mud. She trembled under the weight of it. She could feel the dark side surging within her, whispering to her of how good it would feel, how easy it would be to let her rage fuel it and send it ravening for her enemy, to seize her lightsaber, leap after him and bisect him with a single downward slash of the singing energy blade…
Star War®: MedStar I: Battle Surgeons Page 16
