Star Wars_ MedStar 02_ Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves [73]
Master Unduli …
Barriss found herself sitting on her bed, blinking as if she had just come out of a deep sleep. She didn’t need to check the room’s chrono to know that time had passed. She had taken the bota injection at midday. She now sat in the dark.
She stood, walked to the window, cleared it, and looked out. The faint glimmer of the force-dome was not enough to hide the stars in the clear night sky above. The constellations were halfway through their nightly dance; it was around midnight. She had been… gone …for twelve hours, at least.
Gone to a place where she had never been. Where, she suspected, few, if any, had ever been.
She turned away from the window. She felt refreshed, as if she had slept soundly. She was not hungry, or thirsty; nor did she feel the need for the ’fresher. She smiled. The memory of the experience was still potent, pinwheeling in her mind in a glory of light and sound and smells and tastes and touch…
This was what her relationship with the Force could be. This was how it should be, all the time…
She frowned, feeling a tiny tug at her memory. The flaw. The coming disaster to the camp. In the cosmic totality of what she had just experienced, it was nothing, utterly insignificant when compared to the warp and woof of the whole; still, it was there, along with the uncountable other flaws. And she knew that, while they were somehow necessary in their total number, and they couldn’t all be eliminated, in some cases individual ones could be—and should be—repaired.
The camp was in deadly danger. She had been shown this for a reason—this she knew. Just as she knew she had to do something about it.
27
The cantina was about as full as Den had ever seen it. After a moment, he realized why: the HNE troupe members were about to dust, as spacer lingo had it—they were on the morrow leaving Drongar to finish the remnants of their tour, and they were partying the night away.
As Den and I-Five entered, the reporter nearly staggered back, as though struck a physical blow. The sweet scent of spicestick and gum, the tang of various alcoholic beverages, and—most of all—the combined odors of a dozen or more species, all mixed into the heavy, wet air, produced a miasma as thick and strong as Gungan bouillabaisse. He glanced at I-Five. “You’re sure you want to go through with this?”
“It seems the perfect atmosphere to me.”
“To me it seems more like the kind of atmosphere you’d find twenty klicks or so down under the clouds on Bespin.”
Den eyed the place askance. Many of the performers were dancing—or attempting to—egged on by the Modal Nodes doing a variety of favorites loud enough for the high notes to injure ears on MedStar. Den had been in a great many loud, crowded, and unruly bars over the course of his career, and he felt safe in ranking this one right down there among the worst.
I-Five seemed undisturbed. “Tradition, remember?” he said to Den. Then he squeezed between two dancing Ortolans and vanished.
Den sighed. I’d better keep an eye on him, before someone or something decides to use him for a toothpick.
How he was going to manage this was a good question: Sullustans were among the more height-challenged sentients in the civilized galaxy. Nonetheless, he pushed ahead, weaving and dodging legs, spurs, tentacles, and various other supporting limbs. He saw no sign of I-Five. Concerned about his own safety—at least as far as the issue of mashed toes went—Den finally climbed up on a table, next to a clone trooper who had passed out.
This action put him about at eye level with those who were of average height. Several species who were taller were mixed into the group as well, most notably a Wookiee member of the troupe he’d noticed at the first and only show. That one stood head and shoulders over just about everyone else. He seemed to be enjoying his ale very much, and was perfectly willing