Star Wars_ I, Jedi - Michael A. Stackpole [108]
“Sorry for the rough spots out there.”
“No problem. Beats swimming.” I coughed lightly. “Besides, a Jedi does not know pain.”
“Need to be more convincing when you say that.” Mara shook her head. “Your arm fracture is dislocated. I should set it—unless you want to do it yourself.”
I stared up at her. “Set my own arm? Only an idiot would set his own broken arm.”
“Some would say only an idiot would go after a Dark Lord of the Sith by himself.”
“Ah, that’s big idiot, thank you.” I held my arm out toward her. “Do what has to be done—which is what I was doing out here myself.”
Mara crouched beside me and grasped my wrist and elbow, “He worked you over pretty solidly. What little I saw wasn’t very pleasant.”
The image of the boy’s face surfaced in my mind again, “If I never go through that again, I’ll be happy.” I looked up at her. “Thanks for intervening. If you hadn’t have come in then …”
“You’d have just broken your other hand.” She shrugged her shoulders, then summoned the Force, pulled on my wrist and twisted the bone into place before I even knew what was happening. “There.”
I slumped down on my back, determined not to scream. “Sithspawn! Don’t ever go into medicine.”
“You’re welcome, Horn.” Mara tucked a strand of red-gold hair behind her right ear. “I found some stuff out about Mirax, which is why I came back here. Details are on a datacard you can review while you’re recovering. Anyway, when I entered the atmosphere I could feel you and Kun tangling. The Force was boiling.”
“And you came anyway?”
“I owed you. We’re even now.”
I leaned my head back and uttered as much of a laugh as I could muster. “If that’s how you repay debts, I’ll catch remote bolts for you any day.”
“But not today.” She reached out and took my left hand. “I’ll slave your ship to mine and we’ll go back to the Great Temple.”
“Right, see if Luke is okay.”
Mara paused for a moment, then nodded. “He is, and they know you’re incoming wounded.”
I rolled myself forward and stood with her help. “They succeeded?”
“They did. Exar Kun is no more.” Mara smiled unguardedly. “The Jedi academy, it seems, has gotten rid of a Dark Lord, and produced itself a crop of Jedi.”
TWENTY-SIX
Exar Kun’s attacks had messed me up more than I knew. My left leg and right arm were broken, as well as my right hand. I’d cracked a half-dozen ribs and had bruises and lacerations on my liver and kidneys. My blood chemistry was all off and the Two-Onebee that looked me over thought I’d ejected from a crashing fighter and never had my parasail open.
In reality I wished I actually felt half that good.
Upon my return I got immediately dunked in the bacta tank that Tycho had shipped out with the medical team for Luke barely a week and a half earlier. I’d been in bacta tanks more than I cared to think about in my life, but this was the first time in one of the emergency ones. Most tanks are vertical tubes, but this one was a horizontal box. I got to lie there being very still because there was no place to go, and the treatment was broken up into six hour stints because the bacta had to be drained, filtered and replaced.
Luke visited me a couple of times, and I read Mara’s datacard while not doing a bacta-soak, but I was pretty well out of it in the beginning. As I started to come around, Kyp Durron was returned to Yavin after Han Solo had gotten him so Luke Skywalker could judge him for his crimes. I was back in the tank when that took place and by the time I got back out, Luke, Kyp and Cilghal had departed Yavin to destroy the Sun Crusher and heal Mon Mothma of a mysterious malady. Tionne did her best to keep me company after that, and fill me in on details of the academy life, but I wasn’t really fit to be around.
The physical damage Exar Kun had done to me had healed on schedule—had I had access to and used Jedi healing techniques I might