This woman wasn’t a danger to him directly, even though her connection to the Force granted her considerable mind-probing abilities. His thoughtshield techniques were far above average, however—his training had been the finest his vigo could afford. A mere Padawan, even a healer, would sense nothing about him that he did not allow to be sensed. Still, it was worrisome. Whomever he wound up installing as the supply agent would need to be able to avoid giving her- or himself away with an errant thought or feeling. It would not do to have the Jedi woman nose out the new agent—then Black Sun would have to start all over again, and that would be…troublesome.
Perhaps he should kill her. He allowed it some thought. It would be easy enough, and the immediate worry would be assuaged. Perhaps …?
No. Few things were certain in this galaxy, but one of them was: kill a Jedi somewhere, anywhere, and other Jedi always came to investigate. He could take out this Padawan easily, but the next one might be a Jedi Knight or even a Master, and thus more trouble to deal with. Better the d’javl you knew than the d’javl you didn’t, as the old saying went.
The Padawan finished her healing ritual. The trooper’s eyelids flickered. Through the cowl’s mesh, Kaird could see the man’s chest rising and falling regularly and gently, and his eyes moving beneath their lids in healing, dream-filled sleep. Whatever she had done, it had been effective.
As she passed him, she nodded—a gesture of respect and gratitude from one healer to another. Kaird nodded back, keeping his thoughts blank until he judged that she had left the building. Then he smiled.
For now, he decided, it made the most sense for him to concentrate his energy on finding and developing a new partner for Black Sun. Then, once the flow of bota began anew, he could deal with whatever other problems might arise. Black Sun was, after all, nothing if not adaptable.
4
Being a spy in an enemy encampment was not easy. There was nothing particularly original or surprising in this observation—the truth seldom has those attributes. But that didn’t make it any less difficult. To work undercover in an enemy military base, one had to have more eyes than a Gran and be as vigilant as a male H’nemthe. One had to be ever mindful of the fact that a spy was an outsider, an interloper; one could never relax one’s guard, even for a second.
Not that anyone had reason to suspect the spy—less so, now that the Hutt and the former admiral had been shown to be something other than they had appeared, not to mention both of them dying. But this was war, and spies were summarily executed when caught. And they were caught—many of them—in places far less likely than a Rimsoo on some lonely planet way out on the tail end of the galaxy.
Complicating matters further was the fact that there had been deaths. Deaths for which the spy, who served two masters under two aliases—Column to Count Dooku’s Separatist forces and Lens to Black Sun—had been at least partly responsible. Did it matter to the dead that the one known as Column or Lens was responsible? No. Did it matter to one of the two sub rosa personas if the other was found out and executed? That was worth a rueful smile.
Column—the first sobriquet was the one with which the spy tended to identify, having been recruited by the Separatists before Black Sun—liked many of these people. The recent death of one of the doctors had been surprisingly painful, though it was not the result of an undercover operation. Column had thought often about the perils of living submerged amid the enemy. Even if one dwelled among a tribe of murderers, one could develop certain attachments to some of them. And none of the doctors and nurses and staff here were killers—they were healers, all, and if an enemy fell and was brought before them, they tended to the wounded with the same skill and dedication as one of their own. It was their duty to save lives, not to judge them.
That made it hard, too, when, as either Column or Lens, the spy had to offer them harm, as had sometimes become necessary. It was true that the long-anticipated end would come from righteous justification—still painful after decades—but sometimes the goal seemed impossibly far off, hidden in a fog as thick as the vapors that wafted from the endless swamps, and the little details of day-to-day life—as well as friendships, concerns, alliances—tended to get in the way.
Column sighed. One could not build wooden houses without chopping down trees, but that didn’t make it any more pleasant when a giant bluewood fell on those who considered one a friend and colleague. Yet there was no avoiding it—as painful as it was sometimes, it was duty, and it had to be done. There was no help for that part of it. None.
Column stood before the window of the cubicle, looking out at the base. Rimsoo Seven had been mostly rebuilt by now; the move from the lowlands to the highlands had been accomplished with relatively few problems. The admin center, supply buildings, and, most importantly, the medical and surgical structures had been put up by the construction droids in less than two of the local day cycles, a Drongarian day being just over twenty-three standard hours. The cantina and the chow hall had been completed before nightfall of the third day. On the surface, at least, things seemed to be back to normal.
But not without cost.
The move, made under heavy Separatist fire, had incurred the loss of three patients—all from trauma associated with relocation—the wounding of fifteen, and the death of one doctor: Zan Yant.
A great pity, that. Yant had been not only an excellent doctor, but also a superlative musician, at times holding the entire base spellbound through the magic of his quetarra. He could make that instrument sing, truly; melodies so hauntingly beautiful that they seemed capable of calling dying troopers back from the threshold of eternity.
But there were no compositions, no fugues, no rhapsodies, that could call Zan Yant back.
Column turned away from the window, toward the desk that took up most of one wall. The Separatists were waiting to hear the latest, and it was necessary to work up one of the complex coded messages and send it to Dooku’s forces. The process was unwieldy and complicated: once the cumbersome code had been used to encrypt the message, the security protocol required transmitting it via sublight waves through a hyperspace wormhole connection rather than the usual subspatial carrier pulse. A complex and boring exercise, all in all, but necessary—failure to decode such messages in a timely matter might be fatal. The warning of the attack that had killed Dr. Yant had been carried in just such a message, and, had Column decoded it quicker, Yant’s life might have been prolonged for a short while longer. That was a lesson to remember. However laborious and time-consuming the process might be, Column needed Dooku’s resources and help to defeat the Republic, and some things had to be suffered for that.
Best get to it, then. It wasn’t going to get any easier…
Den had to hand it to Klo Merit—the Equani therapist had not so much as twitched a whisker in surprise when the reporter had shown up in place of Jos Vondar. In fact, of the two, the counselor was probably much more comfortable with the situation than was Den, this being the first time he had ever so much as set foot inside a minder’s office.
It had been a last-minute decision, he told Merit nervously. He didn’t feel that he needed to unburden his troubles, not on the Equani’s broad shoulders or on anyone else’s—at least, not until a few high-octane Bantha Blasters had loosened his frontal lobes enough to set him talking. Den was firmly of the opinion that pubtenders made the best therapists, and he told Merit so.
Merit nodded and said, “Sometimes they do. Believe it or not, some of my best sessions—impromptu, but memorable nonetheless—have taken place in similar circumstances. And, by the way, I usually frown on patient substitutions, particularly last-minute ones. But I’m letting that slide this time.” He leaned forward. “So—what brings Den Dhur to my inner sanctum?”
Den chewed his bulbous lower lip. Blast, but this was a lot harder than it had looked to be. He’d never thought he’d be this uncomfortable just talking…
“Jos said I should take his time,” he said finally. “He’s up to his hairline
in wounded troops currently.”
Merit made no response to this at first. Then he leaned back and said, “And…?”
Den could already tell this was going to be no fun at all. “Uh, well …he said I needed it more than him.”
Merit looked slightly surprised. “Did he? Well, it being against the tenets of my profession to reveal anything about a patient’s private sessions, I’ll just say that that’s a surprising statement, coming from Doctor Vondar.”
“I know,” Den said, relieved at being able to discuss Jos’s woes instead of his own, if only for a moment. “Doctor Yant’s death really hit him hard. I mean, he deals with death all the time in the OT, but this is different—Zan was his friend. And it was pointless. So pointless…but what death in a war isn’t?”
Merit nodded. Den realized he was feeling much more relaxed already—maybe it had something to do with the Equani’s empathic abilities. Whatever it was, it made the minder very easy to talk to. On the whole, however, Den still preferred alcohol.
“And how did his death hit you?” Merit asked.
“Hard,” Den admitted, “but not as hard as it hit Jos. I don’t think it hit anyone as hard as it hit Jos. I mean, I really didn’t know Zan all that well …he’d show up for the sabacc games, and he played a mean quetarra, but…”
Merit leaned back in his chair. “But it’s not his death you want to talk about, is it?”
Den stared at the minder in surprise. “Oh, you’re good,” he said. “You’re very good.”
“That’s why I make the big credits.”
Den squirmed in the formchair, despite how comfortable it was. “Well, it’s just that—recently I came across some more intel about the men that Phow Ji killed—you remember, he died in his one-man assault.”
Merit didn’t move, but something about him warmly invited the reporter to continue. “The twirl pundits managed to sell him as a hero—no one wanted to touch my story with a ten-meter force pike. Ji was a killer, cold as vacuum, when he was alive. Now he’s a milking hero.
“Thing is, he just might really be one.”
“How do you mean?”
Den fluttered his dewflaps. “He took out a whole contingent of Salissian mercs and a super battle droid. Never seen anything like it. Padawan Offee said he just went berserk—killing mindlessly. But he knew he was going to do it—he had himself holoed, and sent the ’cron to me.
“And, according to my source, he didn’t pick those mercs at random. They were an elite combat team on a training mission, sent here because of the extreme conditions. Supposedly, they were a strike force being prepared for a major covert attack.”
“So you’re led to what you feel is an inescapable conclusion: that Phow Ji, instead of just indulging in an orgy of mindless murder, gave his life in a heroic action that may have had large-scale benefits for the Republic.”
“I’m not entirely dismissing the mindless-murder-orgy element,” Den said. “But basically—yeah.” He paused. “When I heard this, I was stunned. Stunned. I felt like Ji himself had kicked me in the gut. I thought I had his number: he was crazy as a dyslexic Givin, and he couldn’t stand being humiliated—so he thought—by a Jedi Padawan. He defeated a Jedi Knight in a match once, you know. So he heads for the front lines and goes out in a blaze of glory. Simple.”
“Indeed. And it lets you feel a satisfying righteous outrage when he’s painted as a champion.”
Den sighed. “I’m nearly twenty standard years a reporter, Doc, and if anyone knows the galaxy isn’t black and white, it’s me. But now I feel like some wet-between-the-dewflaps cublet who’s just learned his system’s Senator takes graft. I feel …betrayed.” He snorted, shook his head, and looked at Merit. “Why?”
“I have a theory. So do you. Let’s hear yours first.”
Den looked skeptical. “Why not yours first?”
“It’s my office.”
Merit smiled slightly, and Den couldn’t help grinning back. A minder, a Jedi, and a Silent in the same camp, he thought. No wonder the psychic energy around here’s thicker than swamp gas.
He pursed his lips, then shrugged. “Padawan Offee told me I had the ‘aura’ of a hero,” he said.
“You certainly proved that when you rescued Zan’s quetarra for him.”
“Lotta good it did him. Nobody to play it at his funeral. Look, I don’t want to be a hero, Doc. Heroes may get medals, but mostly they get dead, in my experience.”
“No one’s insisting you be a hero, Den.”
“Good, ’cause they’ll be disappointed. But I don’t want some rabid nexu idolized as one, either. I just want people to know the truth.”
“Your truth,” Merit said. “Your version of events. And you want them to do more than know—you want them to believe.”
Den frowned at him. “You sound disapproving.”
“I neither approve nor disapprove. This is just the view from here. But,” Merit added, “in all modesty, it’s a view that’s backed by considerable expertise in reading people.”
Den was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable. He didn’t want to hear Merit’s theory; he wasn’t interested in spacing down the lane the minder was going. He stood and turned toward the door. “Look, I gotta go. It’s nearly dark and I haven’t had one drink yet. Don’t want to fall behind.”
“You can hide from this behind a mug for a while, Den,” Klo Merit said. “If you do, two things can happen. One: the mug will have to get bigger and bigger, to keep shielding you from whatever it is you don’t want to look at. Eventually, you’ll fall in.”
“And the other thing?”
Merit shrugged. “You look. And you deal with what you see.”
“Terrific,” Den said. He activated the portal and stepped out into the glare of the setting sun. “You’d make a lousy pubtender, Doc.”
5
Drongar’s tropical twilight had begun when Jos finally left the OT. He saw Uli sitting on a bench under a broadleaf tree. The kid had dumped his gown into the recycler and was wearing a Republic army one-piece that looked too large for him. A small cloud of fire gnats buzzed about him, but he was evidently too tired to even wave them away.
Jos ambled over. He pulled a chunk of spicetack from a pocket and held it out. “Here. You look like you could use this.”
The kid hesitated. “Go ahead,” Jos told him. “It’s safe enough. A mild rejuvenant. You’ll still feel like you’ve been dragged through a thorn-needle bush—just not backward.”
Uli took the spicetack and wadded it into his mouth. “Are you kidding?” he asked around his chewing. “I lived on this stuff during my residency. Like everyone else I knew.”
Jos sat down. “Yep. I remember it well,” he said with a sigh. “Stimcaf and spicetack—the diet of champions.” He nodded toward the OT. “You handled yourself pretty well in there. Better than I thought you would, frankly.”
Uli rubbed his eyes. Jos noticed that his hands were trembling slightly. “Is it always like this? And please don’t say, No, usually it’s worse.”
“Okay. But it is.”
The youth glanced at him with eyes far too old for so young a face. “The first one I worked on had been hit by an agonizer.”
Jos nodded grimly. The agonizer was new, an experimental hand weapon that targeted the limbic system with a high-collimation microsonic beam that somehow stimulated runaway prostaglandin formation. The result was intense pain without any physical trauma. It couldn’t be blocked by somaprin or other heavy soporifics, and it was often so intense that the patient died from sensory overload. The only way to override it was to sever the nociceptor synapses in the thalamic cortex. This required a delicate neurolaser procedure—just the sort of operation ill suited for quick-and-dirty mimn’yet surgery.
“I think I did pretty well, all things considered,” Uli said, his voice hollow. “Stopped the pain. Of course, he’ll have severe dyskinesia and motor ataxia for the rest of his life…”
Jos grimaced in sympathy. Neither
spoke for a moment. Then Uli said, “I heard about what happened to Doctor Yant. I’m sorry, Jos. I can see how you wouldn’t want a new kiosk mate just now.”
Jos said, “Sometimes I feel like finding whoever started this rankweed war and performing a pneumonectomy with my bare hands.”
“Really.”
“For starters, yeah.”
Uli chuckled. He glanced at Jos, and Jos, after a moment, grinned. Then, suddenly, they were both laughing, hard gusts and whoops that were not about mirth so much as about anger, loss, frustration…
After a minute they subsided—although neither was really laughing anymore.
“I know how you feel,” Uli said, wiping his eyes. “I lost a good friend, nearly two years ago, in Mos Espa on Tatooine. There was some battle going on between a couple of bounty hunters and she was too close to it.” He hesitated. “It never goes away, does it?”
“No,” Jos said. “No, it doesn’t. But it does get easier to bear.”
“I can’t do anything about it,” Uli said.
“That’s right. And you need to understand that you can’t. Blaming yourself because you couldn’t save your friend, or stop this war, is a waste of effort and energy. It isn’t your fault, Uli. None of it is your fault.”
Jos stopped, realizing that he was speaking more to himself than to the boy. He shook his head again. Easy to say that. Harder to believe.
But maybe, just maybe, easier with time.
Kaird was again uncomfortable. The robes disguising him as a Silent had been bad enough in this weather, but this new masquerade was worse, since he was now wearing a flex-mask as well. Such precautions were necessary, however. One of the reasons he was successful as a Black Sun operative, despite being someone who tended to stand out in a crowd, was his skill at camouflage. He had hidden his distinctive features and form behind a number of different identities in his years of service, all to good degrees of success. He had even worn a “Hutt suit” once, a plastoid frame with synthflesh skin and face. By the Egg, that had been a chore. Compared to that, this Kubaz flex-mask and robes weren’t all that bad.
Star Wars®: MedStar II: Jedi Healer Page 3
