Star Wars_ MedStar 02_ Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves [40]
He raised a hand, signaled Teedle. Maybe he did need another shot. At least these shots you can walk away from. Well, up to a point …
Barriss entered, brushing snow from her robe, and saw Den sitting alone at a table, staring into his empty mug. She moved toward him. “Mind some company?”
He smiled tipsily at her, waved at the chair across from him. “What’s your pleasure, Jedi? I’m buying.”
“Thanks, but no.” She sat. “I have to get back to the OT soon. What’s the latest?”
He told her, and Barriss nodded. When it had happened, she hadn’t felt a disturbance in the Force, and that bothered her immensely. There were days when, during battles on the planet’s surface, she had read the swirling ethereal currents with uncanny detail. Master Yoda was said to be able to sense major disturbances parsecs away—even, sometimes, of things yet to happen, though Barriss wasn’t sure if she believed that part. But of the explosion on the orbiting frigate, she had not gotten even a glimmer. She was but a Padawan, true, but still she counted her insensitivity as a personal failing. She felt certain that Obi-Wan Kenobi or Anakin Skywalker would have sensed it immediately. She had lived with the Force as long as she could remember—certainly longer than Anakin. How could she not have felt the event?
“You okay?” Den asked.
She nodded. No reason to burden him—there was nothing he could do to help. The little Sullustan shook his head, as if he knew better, but said nothing.
Then, perhaps because she was not expecting it, the Force abruptly rose swirling in her, and imparted to Barriss a sudden knowledge that stunned her: The explosion on MedStar had not been an accident.
The reporter must have seen her reaction in her face. “What?”
Barriss breathed deeply, trying to regain her center. The absolute certainty of the insight had left her shaken, unable for a moment to speak.
She had to do something with this knowledge. She had to tell somebody. Not Den, not a reporter, but somebody. Someone who was in a position to do something about it.
It was the same conviction she had felt when the transport had blown up months ago, before the relocation. They had never found out who had been responsible for that. She had reported her feelings to Colonel Vaetes, who had been polite but dismissive, obviously preferring to rely on more solid evidence than what he considered mysticism. Perhaps he would be bit more open-minded this time. This act of sabotage was a thousand times worse than the last one. Something had to be done.
15
Jos, exhausted but still too worried about Tolk to rest, wandered through the medical ward. The surgical patients in recovery were all as stable as they were going to get, and the operating tables were empty, for the time being. The thought of going back to his kiosk, of being by himself in the cold silence, was anathema. He needed something to do.
Ahead, one of The Silent stood impassively near one wall, a faint cloud of breath-fog issuing from within the cowl at slow and regular intervals. It was cooler here than in the OT, but at least they had enough blankets and heat-paks to keep the patients warm. The Silent seemed unaffected by the cold.
Barriss stood next to the bed of a trooper who had some new kind of infection. One of the local microbes had apparently undergone a mutagenic shift and become deadly, a cause of considerable concern. What could afflict one trooper could afflict them all.
“Hey,” Jos said.
Barriss looked away from the sick trooper, who was either asleep or in a coma. “Hello,” she said.
“How is he?”
“No change. None of our antibiotics, antivirals, or antimycotics seems to be working.”