The Approaching Storm

Chapter 5

"For a young humanoid female, she weighs more than I would have expected." Kyakhta let out a tired whoosh of air as he and his companion set the sack down on the bed. In response to movement within, Bulgan released the seal at the top. Sitting up, Barriss shuffled the sack off her shoulders. It fell to her waist and, when she stood, to her feet. Her ankles were strapped together and her hands secured behind her back. A quick glance downward, then up at her captors, found her focusing on Kyakhta's smile.

"Looking for this, apprentice?" From a bag slung at his waist, he removed her service belt. It contained all of her personal gear, including her comlink and lightsaber. Shuffling over, Bulgan tentatively fingered the latter.

"Jedi lightsaber. Always want try one."

Kyakhta yanked the belt away, let it slip back into the open bag like a sedated snake. "Don't touch that, you idiot! Don't you remember briefing where Hutt warned about handling such devices? A Jedi lightsaber can be tuned to its owner's personal electrical field. Try activate this one, and you likely blow it to bits. Along with you your dumbself also."

"Ou, that right. Bulgan forget." Turning, he once more con sidered their bound captive. "Not much to look at, is it? I could break it in half easy."

"Only physically." Unable to run or gesture, Barriss sat down on the bed. "You obviously know who I am, what I represent. Are you aware that even as we speak there are three Jedi hunting furiously for me, and that they will not be happy when they find out what has happened?"

Kyakhta laughed while Bulgan chortled gruffly. "Let them look. They not find you here." He indicated the high smooth walls that enclosed them. "This a safe place, and in any case you not stay here long." Remembering, he flicked the switch on his call-in. "Already, others being notified. They come here, take you off our hands. Then we a little rich, and done with you as well."

Choosing not to dispute the claim, she continued quietly. "What do you, or whoever you work for, want with me?"

The two Alwari exchanged a look. "Not our business," Kyakhta finally replied. "Catching you our job. Questions not our job." He turned to leave the room. "Report in success now. I looking forward to it." He straightened. "Bossban don't think we can do it. Be nice surprise for him." His smile widened. "I think I make him wait a little while before I tell him so." He gave his companion a shove. "Watch her close, Bulgan. Beware Jedi tricks."

"No worry, Kyakhta." Hunched over but alert, the other Al wari settled himself on a bench opposite the shackled human. "Bulgan watch carefully."

Barriss stared as the single door closed heavily behind the one who called himself Kyakhta. A loud dick followed his exit. Without her lightsaber, she would not be able to penetrate the barrier, and her limited mastery of the Force was not sufficient to allow her to pierce it mentally. She was trapped until her friends could locate her. That they would do so she did not doubt. Only the time factor troubled her. Would there be enough of it before she was transferred from this place and handed over to whomever had arranged for her abduction? Of one thing she was certain: whoever it was was likely to be both more ruthless and more competent than her two comparatively simple Ansionian captors.

As time passed, she waited for her guard to grow tired, or to leave. He did neither. Nor was she able, try as she might, to influence his mind. That could be, she reflected, because according to every indication there was not much mind there to influence. That might explain why neither she nor her Master had sensed its hostile intentions.

They had used the unconscious shopkeeper to distract her at tention. Upset with herself at falling for the diversion, she repressed the growing irritation. Anger was another kind of distraction, one she could not presently afford.

"Maybe bossban give Kyakhta and Bulgan bonus," her watcher observed aloud. "Jedi lightsaber would be nice. Then Bulgan go home, show to clan. They let Bulgan back in. And those who object," he made a swinging motion with one heavy hand, "Bulgan cut off their heads!"

"You speak fondly of your bossban." She made a conscious effort to appear and sound as helpless and resigned as possible. "Who might that imposing individual be?"

A slow smile spread across her guard's face. "Padawan try fool Bulgan. No Jedi tricks here. Bulgan and Kyakhta little slow, maybe. But that not mean we stupid." Rising and lumbering forward, he loomed over her seated form; a broad- chested, bald-pated, threatening mass of muscle and bone, unusually massive for an Ansionian. "You think Bulgan stupid?"

"I did not say that, nor did I mean it," she responded sooth ingly. The Alwari backed off. "But I do see something else about you that I am sure of."

The hulking native's eyes narrowed dangerously. "What that? Careful be, Padawan human. Bulgan not afraid of you."

"I can see that. What I also see, and can sense in ways you cannot imagine, is that both you and your accomplice are in pain-and probably have been so for a long time."

Bulgan's brown, gold-flecked Ansionian eye bulged even wider than usual. "How-how you know that?"

"In addition to the usual Jedi training, many of us have our own specialties. Areas of learning that we are especially drawn toward. Myself, I am a practicing healer."

"But you human. Not Ansion."

"I know." Her tone was tender, reassuring-compelling. "And I can't fix your poor back, or give you a prosthetic to re place your missing eye. But the pain in your mind is akin to the pain nearly all warm-blood sentients experience. It arises from certain kinds of neural breakdowns and malfunctions. It's as if someone was trying to wire a very complex computer and all the necessary materials and components were laid out before her, but she wasn't quite sure how to link everything together. So she did a job that was a little too hasty. Do you understand anything of what I'm saying, Bulgan?"

The Alwari nodded slowly. "Bulgan not dumb. Bulgan understand. Haja, that just how Bulgan feel most of the time. Not wired right." Tilting his head slightly to one side, he stared at her hard out of his one good eye. "Padawan can fix that?"

"I can't make any promises. But I can try."

"Fix pain in head." Her captor was clearly exerting a consid erable mental effort. "No more pain here." He rubbed his forehead with his open palm. "That be a big thing. Bigger even, maybe, than credits." The effort at extended cogitation having exhausted his limited intellectual resources, he glared at her again. "How know Bulgan can trust you?"

"I give you my word as a Padawan, as a student of the Jedi arts, as one who has dedicated her life to their high ideals- and to mastering the skills of a healer."

Obviously torn, her captor took a deep breath, glanced cir cumspectly at the door, and then turned back to her. "You try fix Bulgan. But if you try trick, I-"

"I've given you my word," she interrupted him, forestalling his threat. "Besides, where could I go? The door is locked and barricaded from the outside. Or haven't you realized that you're locked in here with me?" She did not smile. "Your friend is taking no chances."

"Locked in?" He rubbed his bare skull, his hand passing to either side of where a dark mane would normally be. "Bulgan confused."

Immediately, she jumped on the opening thus offered. "Confusion comes from the pain you've been living with. Let me try to help you, Bulgan. Please. If I fail, it costs you nothing. Even if I succeed, you can still keep me in here because the door is locked from outside."

"That right. Padawan speak truth. Ou, you try."

Meeting his gaze evenly, she gestured toward her bound wrists. "You have to untie me. To do this kind of work, I need my hands."

He was instantly wary. "What for? Jedi trick?"

"No. Please trust me, Bulgan. There are vastly more im portant things at stake here than my life, or the size of your future credit account. Are you familiar with the secessionist movement?"

The Ansionian made a negative gesture. "Only movement Bulgan know is in bowels." He thought a moment longer. "Kya-khta be unhappy," he muttered. Then he reluctantly stepped behind Barriss and passed a desealer across her wrists. The opaque bond that restrained them promptly dissolved, breaking down into cellulose, catalyst, and water. Relieved to have her hands free, she rubbed firmly at her wrists. As the circulation began returning, she beckoned for him to approach.

"Come here, Bulgan," she instructed him gently. He did so with head bowed, shuffling his feet like a child approaching its mother. A very strong, very dangerous child, she reminded herself. She did not have to ask him to lower his head farther. His poor bent spine had already placed it within reach. Extending both hands, palm downward, she tenderly cradled the sides of his skull, careful not to cover the aural openings. His flesh was warm to the touch- the normal Ansionian body temperature being several degrees higher than that of a human. Her eyes closed, and she began to concentrate.

A throbbing ran through her as her focus sharpened. An en during, agonizing ache that through straining and training she made her own. She let herself flow outward toward it, surrounding it with the soothing balm that was her own harmonious inner self. Within the damaged, misfiring neurons that were the source of the native's ongoing hurt, the Force compelled a subtle realignment of tissues, an almost imperceptible but physiologically critical alteration.

She stood holding him like that for several long, silent min utes: healer and patient locked together in that mysterious, inscrutable mutual melding comprehensible only to another master of the Jedi healing arts. Not until all felt normal and natural and well did she finally allow herself to withdraw from the vulnerable state into which she had placed them both.

Opening her eyes, she found herself staring back at her captor. But there was something different about him now: a faint but discernible change of posture, a glint instead of a dullness in his eye. He straightened slightly, as much as his broken, permanently bent back would allow, and looked slowly around the room.

"How do you feel?" she finally prompted him when no words were forthcoming.

"Feel? Bulgan feel-I feel good. Very good." Making fists of both three-fingered hands, he raised them toward the roof. "Really exceptionally remarkably good! Haja, jaha, ou oul" The little dance he proceeded to perform, joyfully throwing his arms repeatedly into the air all the while, lifted her hopes in concert with his spirit.

Then he stopped, lowered his hands, and said to her in a no tably different tone of voice than he had used before, "But you're still my prisoner, Padawan." When she slumped, he grinned, showing fine Ansionian teeth. "For about another minute."

"You mean?…" His intent became clear when he walked over to her with a spring in his step that had been absent previ ously and bent to pass the desealer across her ankle bonds. They dissolved promptly, allowing her to stand. Her feet and legs numb from lack of use, she would have fallen had he not caught her in his strong arms.

At which point the door clicked and Kyakhta entered the room.

To say that the senior Alwari was startled by the sight that greeted his bulging eyes was an understatement worthy of a senior tax collector. The sight of the Jedi Padawan unbound was disquieting enough. The sight of her slumped slightly in his partner's arms was a spectacle that constituted an irresolvable conundrum. If Bulgan did not with his first utterance say exactly the right thing, Kyakhta was ready to bolt back outside and lock them both back in.

Fortunately, the heretofore guileless Bulgan was now in a cerebral position to do so.

"She fixed me," he informed his companion simply and straightforwardly, tapping the side of his head. "Fixed me here. She can fix you, too."

"No promises," Barriss warned them both.

"Fix what?" Kyakhta had already taken a wary step backward. "I not broken. What do you mean, fix me?"

"Up here." Once more, the mentally mended Bulgan touched hand to head. "I have no more pain in my mind. I know you suffer from the same syndrome, my good friend. Let her work her Jedi healing on you."

Another step back. The door was within reach. Easy to dart back out into the hallway, slam the barrier shut, and seal the lock. But-what had happened to Bulgan in his absence? Kyakhta wondered. He hadn't been gone very long. Only a few minutes, and now his good, honest, dumb companion in mutual exile and disgrace was talking like an infernal city councilor! No, he corrected himself. Not like a councilor.

Like a true Alwari nomad: independent, confident, and free.

Three fingers hovered in the vicinity of the door. The Jedi made no move to stop him, though he sensed she might have done so. "What this nonsense about 'Jedi healing'?"

"She worked it on me. Fixed my head, my mind. It doesn't hurt anymore, Kyakhta! I can think clearly again. My thoughts haven't been this free since I was a child and was thrown from that suubatar." His voice lowered. "That was the same throw, the bad dismount, that broke my back and stole my eye-and damaged my mind."

"But I…" Kyakhta was at a loss for words. In the face of the evidence, in the face of his friend's face, he was forced to accept a seemingly inconceivable reality.

There was another reality that would have to be faced, and quickly. Unbound hands outstretched, the Jedi was advancing slowly toward him.

"Let me help you, Kyakhta. I give you the same promise I made to Bulgan. Whether I can help you or not, I am still your prisoner."

That was true, Kyakhta realized. Dissolved bonds notwith standing, he and his friend were still the ones in control here. Only they knew the way out of the building in which the cell was located. Only they could get her past the outer guards and security checkpoints. Of course, a Jedi Knight would probably make short work of such minor obstacles, but a Padawan still in training. .

Unarguably, she had worked a marvel with Bulgan. Could she take away the similar pain that had afflicted him all his adult life; remove the regular, pounding waves of agony that daily stabbed through his brain? Wasn't it worth, if nothing else, a try?

"Go ahead," he told her, adding by way of warning, "if this a trick, the bossban may not receive you undamaged."

Paying no attention to the threat, she reached out and up to put her hands on the sides of his head and draw it toward her. Her fingers were cool against his skull, he realized, and there were too many of them, but otherwise her touch was inoffensive. Calming, even.

Several moments later, he was blinking back at her with the same awed realization that had not long before nearly overcome his companion. Unlike Bulgan, he did not throw his arms wildly in the air and dance small circles. Instead, he bowed. As performed by an Ansionian, it was a particularly graceful and supple gesture.

"I owe you my sanity, Padawan. For had you not interceded, I see surely now that the pain I have been living with would have led all too soon to utter madness, and eventually to death." Turning from her, he embraced his old companion-in- despair, long arms wrapping around Bulgan's broad shoulders, maned and bald head bobbing together in ardent, mutual exultation.

The joyous sight of the two Ansionians she had been able to heal did Barriss's heart good-but it was not getting her out of this place, or restoring her to her friends. "My name is Barriss Offee, my Master is the Jedi Luminara Unduli, and the sooner we find them, the better it will be for me and the safer, I suspect, it will be for you. For surely your employer will not be pleased to learn of the unexpected turn you have done him."

"Bossban Soergg!" Bulgan exclaimed. As soon as the words were out of his mouth, he looked askance at his companion. But Kyakhta was not upset at the unforced revelation.

"It doesn't matter now, Bulgan. I've just finished relaying news of our success to his headquarters. Someone else will have to inform him of this change in plans. We've cast our lot in with this female. Now she is going to have to deliver us from Soergg, instead of us delivering her to him." He eyed the Jedi expectantly. "Can you do that? We throw ourselves under your protection, without which we two who stand now clanless before you will surely be food for marauding shanhs before tomorrow's first light."

"Get me out of here in one piece," she assured them with a grim smile, "and I can promise you the gratitude of two Jedi Knights and a fellow Padawan-in addition to my own personal indebtedness." She started purposefully for the open doorway. "That's enough reassurance for almost anyone in the galaxy."

"Strange," Bulgan murmured as he followed his companion and their former captive toward the exit, "how clear thinking im proves one's outlook on life. For the first time in a long, long while I begin to see myself as a person again, instead of a lowly source of jokes and cruel humor."

"I never saw you that way, my friend," Kyakhta called softly back to him as they quietly mounted the spiral staircase.

"Yes, you did," Bulgan shot back, "but I don't blame you for it. It wasn't your fault. It was all in the mind."

"Most cheap invective is." Feeling slightly naked without her service belt, Barriss followed Kyakhta upward. "Where is my gear?"

"In the storeroom. We'll get it for you before we leave."

There was one guard in the room. The Dorun sat in a deeply indented chair designed to accommodate his commodious back side. In his twinned tentacles, he held an oval reader. Both stalk-mounted oculars swiveled in Kyakhta's direction as the latter emerged from the stairwell.

"How beeth the prisoner?"

Kyakhta shrugged boredly as Bulgan emerged behind him. Barriss kept out of sight farther down in the stairwell. "Quiet. An unusual state of affairs, or so I have been told, for a humanoid female."

"Resignedeth to her fate by now, I wager." The Dorun re turned to his viewing. Neither of his independently swiveling eyes noticed Bulgan picking up an empty chair. Both swiveling oculars dimmed when the powerful Alwari brought it down on the guard's head.

"Quickly now!" Entering a combination into a keypad, Kyakhta reached into the drawer that popped open in response and withdrew Barriss's service belt. Her lightsaber, she was re lieved to note, was still fastened in place. As she was slipping the belt around her middle, she noticed Kyakhta fingering a small device secured at his own waist.

"What's that?"

"We have to call in our position at regular intervals," the Alwari explained dolefully, "or we'll die." He rubbed the back of his neck. "Bossban Soergg had explosive devices placed in our necks to ensure our compliance with his orders."

Barriss made what was, for a Padawan, a rude noise. "Typical of a Hutt. We certainly can't let him track us. Come, let me see."

Obediently, Kyakhta and Bulgan approached. Taking a scanner from her belt, she passed it carefully over the indicated spot on the back of Kyakhta's neck. It wasn't hard to find the inserted device. There was a perceptible bump under the skin just to the right of his mane.

Checking the scanner's reading, she entered a sequence and passed the compact instrument a second time over the Alwari's neck, then repeated the procedure with Bulgan. Satisfied, she headed cautiously for the outer door.

Kyakhta followed, once more rubbing his fingers over the

raised place. "The explosive is still there." Cleansed mind or not, he was still understandably uneasy at its presence.

Barriss studied the street outside. From everything she could see, traffic appeared normal. "I could cut them out, but I'd rather have it done neatly, and I don't have the tools with me. So I just deactivated them. They're harmless now. But we'd do well to move fast. Possibly the process of my deactivating them will result in notification of whoever is monitoring you for your boss-ban that something has gone wrong. I assume a rapid response will be forthcoming."

"Let's go, then." Pushing past her, Bulgan opened the door and stepped unflinchingly out onto the street. Kyakhta and their former prisoner followed.

"Central square, I think. The shop where you found me." Barriss followed Kyakhta's lead. "In looking for me, my companions will split up and begin their search from there." She fondled the closed-band comlink on her belt. "As soon as we're a safe distance away from here, I'll notify them of our destination, course, and that I'm okay." She smiled. "And of your change of heart, as well."

"Better to say change of mind." Everything that was previ ously familiar to him, Bulgan was now seeing out of new eyes. Harmless it might now be, having been rendered so by the Padawan, but the lethal packet embedded in his neck still itched. "Get rid of this as soon as possible."

"We will," Barriss assured him as they turned a corner onto a much busier thoroughfare. The presence of so many sentients around them eased her tension. "Until then, we'll simply tell anyone we meet to be careful what they say to you, because you happen to have an explosive personality."

Prior to her discerning ministrations, Bulgan would have

simply gaped dumbly at this remark. Now, both he and his friend Kyakhta had the pleasure of laughing at the joke.

It was the kind of pleasure that had been all too long de nied them.

Sooner or later, a distraught Ogomoor felt, Bossban Soergg was going to grow tired of listening to his majordomo deliver bad news. When that happened, Ogomoor knew he had better be ready to run-or at least be standing well out of range of the Hutt's massive, powerful tail.

"Gone." Soergg lay on the resting divan in his sleeping quar ters. He had been in the midst of his afternoon nap when Ogo moor, driven by urgency, had felt duty-bound to wake him. "Vanished. And those two morons with her."

"We do not know that they are with her, Great One. Only that she is missing, and so are they. The guard says he was at tacked from behind, in all likelihood by one of them. Why would they suddenly decide to go with her?"

"Who knows?" The Hutt grunted as he slouched his sagging corpus off the divan and onto the floor. Immediately, a pair of tiny geril servants commenced the odious task of grooming the sluglike shape. Soergg ignored them as he scowled down at his subordinate. "I smell the stink of Jedi wiles behind this misfortune."

"The devices that were supposed to ensure the loyalty of the two abductors?…" Ogomoor left the question hanging.

"Pagh! I activated those as soon as you told me what had happened. Either those imbeciles are now headless, or else more Jedi sleight of hand is at work in this." As the gerils clung to his massive body, continuing their grooming without interruption, Soergg lumbered forward. Exhibiting courage he did not feel,

Ogomoor held his ground. His own head, he knew, remained at tached to his shoulders only because of his continuing value to the Hutt.

"Put out the word to every lowlife, criminal, lawbreaker, and felon in Cuipernam. A thousand Republic credits to anyone who brings the accursed Padawan back to me alive, or the head of a dead Jedi. Hurry! We may still have a chance if she can be intercepted before she can rejoin her companions."

"I hear and obey, Bossban." Too relieved at the dismissal to fear a shot in the back, Ogomoor whirled and fled unceremoni ously from the bedroom, his comlink already out and activated.

Behind him, the gerils reflexively sealed their nostrils as their misshapen employer voided his disgust in an exceptionally ghastly and malodorous manner.

What Ogomoor did not know was that his intimidating employer now had to report the failure to one far more important than his Huttish self. Soergg did not fear that individual-but he respected him. Almost as much as he respected the credits being paid into his own local account in the service of furthering the cause of Ansionian secession.

Who was behind the one making the payments? he often wondered. Not that it really mattered. It was the money, the credits, that were important. The Hutts had little interest in politics except insofar as these served their immediate interests. It mattered not at all to Soergg whether Ansion and the worlds to which it was tied via treaties and pacts remained within the Republic or pulled out.

Or even if something else, as yet unseen and unvoiced, arose to take its place.