Star Wars_ MedStar 02_ Jedi Healer - Michael Reaves [99]
After a few minutes, she was sweaty, but doing something she had not been able to do of late—she was not thinking, only doing.
Her spirit calmed. The Force was there. Not the boundless power she had felt before, but the familiar, comfortable beacon in the darkness, the presence that had been with her since she’d been a child. An old friend with hand outstretched, offering what Barriss sorely needed:
Peace.
And with that peace came a clarity. Not forged of durasteel, not announced by the clarion shouts of trumpets, as it had been when she’d been tossed in the tumultuous current of the Force, but rather a still, quiet confidence: she could do this. She could do what she needed to do.
Barriss switched the lightsaber off and hung it at her belt.
These people had become part of her responsibility. She had the tools to protect them, she knew, even without the bota. She was a Jedi. Maybe still only a Padawan, but she still had abilities most people did not.
There was a spy in the camp, of that she was sure. Who was it? If she could puzzle out him or her, or it, she could likely find out what the coming danger was.
She had been here on Drongar long enough, and her use of the Force was certainly developed sufficiently that she could eliminate some people as suspects. She was a healer, and that gave her a connection to others that even Jedi more senior than her, who were not healers, sometimes did not have. She had been in close proximity with many of the medical staff, and their essences—their thoughts and feelings—were apparent to one with her training.
There were too many people in this Rimsoo for her to personally speak to them all and use the Force to try to read them. But she could eliminate some here by common sense: the spy, whoever it was, wouldn’t be a trooper, was unlikely to be a droid, and had to be somebody in a position wherein he or she could access valuable information. Somebody in authority.
And here in Rimsoo Seven, that meant it was very probably somebody she knew.
Barriss started toward her kiosk. She did not know who the spy was, but perhaps, by the process of elimination, she could determine who it wasn’t.
First, it had to be somebody who had been in place here before she had arrived on this planet, because suspicious actions had already happened. Certainly the explosion of the bota transport had taken some time to arrange.
So that immediately removed Uli from the pool, since he had arrived only recently.
Jos? No. She had been with him long enough to know it wasn’t in him to be a murderer.
Zan was dead, and his heart had been too pure in any event.
Colonel Vaetes? He was in a position to gather intelligence, better than anyone else here, perhaps, but—no. He had no thoughtshield, and she sensed no great malice in him.
Who did that leave? Den Dhur? The reporter posed as a cynic, but clearly was not; nor did Barriss feel he was evil enough to kill people.
So. Of the people that Barriss had contact with, who would be in a position to gather the most useful information? Who could coldly murder people with whom he— or she—worked?
Nobody she had touched via the Force was capable of that. These were doctors, nurses, medical techs—all of them people dedicated to saving lives. She had felt that imperative strongly within each of them, and the Force didn’t lie.
Wait. It was true that the Force didn’t lie—but it didn’t always reveal everything, either. There were two people here whom she knew, but could not scan deeper than the surface: Tolk le Trene, the Lorrdian, who could read a face like a child’s textbook, but who kept a tight cover over her own thoughts and emotions; and Klo Merit, the Equani minder, who also had, by dint of assiduous training, a thoughtshield that protected his thoughts and feelings, hiding them behind his smile.
Tolk was a lieutenant, a nurse, but it wasn’t impossible for her to gain access to privileged intelligence, especially given