Star Wars_ MedStar 01_ Battle Surgeons - Michael Reaves [98]
"You are a murderer," she interrupted him, her voice quiet but with an edge that stopped his tirade. "And I will see that you murder no more."
Ji smiled and shrugged slightly, recovering his aplomb. He shifted his feet, settling into a stance. "Come ahead, then-Jedi."
After it was all over, Barriss spent many a sleepless night wondering what she would have done. Would she have given in, accepted his challenge, and used the Force to destroy him?
Or risen above her baser im-pulses and used only enough power to render him help-less? In short, would she have succumbed to the dark side or not?
She never got the chance to find out.
Phow Ji suddenly staggered, his eyes snapping wide in astonishment. Barriss realized he’d been hit from be-hind by something. He turned, and she saw the vanes and stubby tail of a hypo dart protruding from be-tween his shoulder blades. Another Separatist soldier, shooting from the cover of the nearby swamp, had nailed him. For all his vaunted strength, skill, and speed, there was no way Ji could have dodged some-thing he hadn’t seen coming.
Barriss expanded a bubble of awareness outward, with herself at the center, realizing even as she did so that, had she not been blinded with rage at Ji, she might have sensed the intended attack in time to warn the mar-tial artist. But now it was too late. He had fallen to his knees, and, as she watched, he toppled heavily into the wet sand. He lay quite still, save for slight, rhythmic twitches of his fingers.
She could detect no further danger-evidently the shooter had not stayed to see the results of his ambush. Which meant she was safe for the moment as well, al-though that could change at any time. She kept her ex-panded awareness in operation while she knelt beside Ji, examining him.
His hands and fingers were cold, and the twitching had not abated. Paresthesia, most likely, she decided. She pinched back an eyelid, saw that the pupil was con-tracted. His breathing was rapid and shallow-it seemed obvious that Phow Ji had been hit with a potent neurotoxin of some sort-Paraleptin, perhaps, or Titroxinate. The Separatists had been known to use such biochems, and worse. If something was not done quickly, he would die.
There was no time to call for an evac, even if there was an available medlifter, which was problematic. But there was another way to treat him.
The Force.
Without even stopping to reflect on the irony of it, Barriss knelt beside Ji. She pulled the dart out, then rolled him over and put her hands on his chest. It oc-curred to her that it would be quite easy to just let the paralysis of his central nervous system do the job that, only a few minutes before, she had been all too willing to take on herself. But that temptation had passed. She was a Jedi healer. Here before her was a life in need of healing.
There was no need to make it any more complicated than that.
Barriss Offee closed her eyes and opened her heart and mind to the power of the Force.
The droid approached Den Dhur as the latter headed toward his quarters. It was one of the standard harvest-ing units, a little weather-worn and dented, but moving well enough.
"You are Den Dhur, sir?" the droid said.
"Who wants to know?"
If it was possible for a droid to look confused, then this one surely did. "I have a delivery for you, sir."
"And who caused this delivery to be sent to me?"
"Lieutenant Phow Ji."
Uh-oh. Den looked at the package, then at the droid. "It isn’t going to blow up, is it?"
"Unlikely, sir. The item in question is a holoproj recording. There are no explosives contained in it."
Den nodded. "All right." The droid extruded a carry drawer from its chest and removed the device, which, Den noticed with relief, did look like a standard holocron cube and not a bomb.
As he took it, Den said, "Ji gave this to you?"
"No, sir, he did not give it to me. He did, however, ask that I witness his activity and record