Ch 9: Source

Obi-Wan stood in the yard at 2 in the morning, lightsaber ignited, running through Katas.

Obi-Wan knew from Komari that the Jedi Order turned a very blind eye to intimate relations between Jedi Knights, so long as said Knights did not allow it to interfere with their duties in any way and gave no outward sign that they were anything but good friends, to the extent that their Padawans, if they had such, assumed them to be good friends.

The policy being that, so long as the Jedi Order came first, second and third, the council didn't ask and you didn't tell.

Komari also said that the Jedi Order did not turn a blind eye to intimate relations between Padawans. Especially not when one of the Padawans was 13. And the Jedi didn't do flings. Or drama. Or dating. Not even unofficially. Either you were committed to a lifelong clandestine relationship which would forever damage your standing in the eyes of those who knew of but did not acknowledge it, or you weren't.

Then again, he wasn't a Padawan. And the Medical Service wasn't really part of the Jedi Order. Or it was, but not in the same way as the Knights. And Andi was very beautiful, and only two and a half years older. She was a Zeltron. She had pheromones. And she was physically affectionate, like all Zeltrons. And Zeltrons were famous for their high libidos. It was probably causing her stress.

Puberty had hit harder than Obi-Wan had expected, and Andi's presence doubled the impact. He wished she'd stop slinging her arm around him so casually, but not as much as he wished she'd do it more.

When such thoughts kept him up at 2 in the morning, he found somewhere to do Katas. In the yard, since they'd moved to their current location.

He finished his warm-up and activated the remotes. Four of them, rising through the air, turned to their highest setting, shooting blaster bolts so low powered they hardly stung.

The goal was to not be stung at all.

Obi-Wan did it with his eyes closed, lightsaber whirring, deflecting more than dodging, moved only by the guidance of the Force.

Katas and blaster deflection were all he could work on lightsaber wise, so work on them he did. He didn't have as much time for them as he'd had at the Temple, but he thought he was improving at them. Everything else that had to do with a lightsaber though... hopefully he wasn't backsliding too much.

He wished he had a fifth remote.

After ten minutes, he got his first sting, and he called the remotes off, breathing heavily. Ten minutes of constant movement at near full speed was a lot, even for a Jedi.

He sat on the back porch, listening to bugs and passing speeders, staring at the stars; Galidraan was lightly populated, and even in the Capital the light pollution was not so very bad.

A dim shape passed high overhead, nearly invisible against the night-sky. He wouldn't have seen it if he hadn't sensed it.

A ship with all lights off.

He jumped on the roof of the house they were staying in, ran across a few more one story houses, to a two story house, then to the three story civic building that was the highest building on the block.

He extended his right arm, straight as he could make it, pointing at the distant ship.

The ship continued on, and his arm lowered, lowered, at first because the ship was traveling across the dome of the sky, marked at a lower point on the dome without losing any height, but finally it began to descend.

The ship disappeared into the inscrutable blackness of the unlit planet.

His arm pointed where it had landed, his stiff body a human protractor. He knew the angle between his shoulder and where the ship had landed within a few degrees. It was a right triangle, so that gave him all three angles. And he had the length of one side-the height of his shoulder plus the height of the building plus the elevation it was built on, and those last two could be checked on a city map.

A bit of math and he'd know how far from where he was to the landing. The city map would also give him his location. And the stars told him what direction he faced. So he knew where the triangle pointed.

He ran into back to their house, looked up the needed factoids on the holonet, did a bit of math, referred to a topographical map, looking up the radius of Galidraan, taking the planet's curvature into account, and had himself a rough estimate of where the dark ship had landed.

The dark ship had landed in the boonies. Hick country. Where the colonist who'd been invited in order to make Galidraan a little less sparsely populated lived. A result that was not disproved by the distance to horizon.

Smuggling, most likely.

This was also going in his report.

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"Obi. Obi. Wake up. What time did you go to bed last night?"

A mass hit his side. Hard enough to be uncomfortable, but not hard enough to hurt. Obi-Wan guessed she'd kicked him.

Obi-Wan said, "You'll be pleased to know that you're currently reminding me overwhelmingly of an 11 year-old girl."

"I'm young at heart. Get up."

"Thanks for waking me Andi. I'll get up as soon as you leave the room. I can't guarantee my state of decency under the sheets."
"Fine. But if you're not out of this room in ten minutes I'm coming in here with a spray bottle."

Obi-Wan was out in two. There was caf in the kitchen, and maybe he preferred the taste of tea, but on a morning like this the strong kick of a caf was enough to make one contemplate the concept of divine beings.

True, he could bind his own adenosine receptors to receive the same stimulating effect, but he'd need half an hour of meditation to manage it and would give himself a headache by messing up on his first try.

Master Dorla could manage that stuff easy as blinking, but that was why she was a Master Healer and he was a trainee healer. But even Master Dorla drank caf sometimes, if only for the taste.

"Pancakes?" said Obi-Wan.

Andi said, "Not today. There's bread in the pantry."
He started the caf and got out eggs.

"You don't have time for that," said Andi.

"They'll cook quickly. Master Dorla's meditating?" He started eggs and toast as he spoke.

"Beneath the flowering tree. We've got hospital rounds again today. Cancer, exotic flus, whatever they're having trouble with."

"Delightful."
"It's the job. Stop pining for the Temple."

"Just because I use Katas and deflection practice to stay in shape doesn't mean I'm pining for the Temple."

"You don't do it because you imagine yourself being in a battle one day?"

"The non-trivial chance that it'll one day save my life is worth thinking about, but I'm quite happy to be here."

"Then what's wrong with hospital rounds?"

Obi-Wan said, "I like wounds. Wounds are fine. Very clean, just blood mostly. Cancer's alright. But flus? No. I don't like the puss-filled sores flu, do you think it'll be pus filled sores flu again?"

"Csillian Flu. Probably. Toast's up."

He buttered his toast, poured his caf, and flipped his eggs.

Obi-Wan had imagined the Medical Corp traveling around in large groups to disaster areas. He'd imagined he'd get very used to setting up the field hospital. From what Master Healer Dorla said, that happened. But it wasn't the best place to start a newbie. Most ailments could be solved by traditional medicine, with the Force only quickening it slightly. But some were impossible with conventional techniques, but easily accomplished with the Force. Medical Corp Jedi were scattered across the galaxy to see to such maladies. And to help wherever they could.

On Galidraan, it was Master Dorla and her two proteges.

Obi-wan scarfed his breakfast, made his ablutions in the bathroom, and Master Dorla met them at the speeder.

At the hospital, Master Dorla handed Obi-Wan and Andi off to Doctor Synth, who led them to a familiar ward, one they had to put special booties and masks on to enter. The Csillian Flu ward. The outbreak had peaked, but there were still plenty who had it, and while it wasn't an especially contagious disease, it was important to be careful.

The sores especially were dangerous.

Obi-Wan sat next to a dark-skinned human male on the far side of middle age, black hair turning silver. He was unconscious, lost in a fever dream, a red and white sore swollen on his forearm.

Obi-Wan put his fingers to it, very lightly, deadening the man's pain. With a patient before him, all childish thoughts of disgust were vanished. He began to meditate.

He found the virus particles. He did not destroy them-Master Dorla could do it that way, but Obi-Wan couldn't destroy them as quickly as they made new ones and he'd damage nearby cells in the process.

Instead, he helped the immune system recognize the infected cells and identify the appropriate antibodies for the virus. Then he juiced the immune system with sheer energy, helping the appropriate cells replicate faster. He improved vital signs, and helped clear out the liver, which was very important with Csillian Flu.

He did the same with the next patient, and the next, as he did so, working with Andi to do something much harder to define than mere cellular manipulation.

They turned the ward into a place of a healing. A place where life would flourish, but not viruses or harmful bacteria of fungi. Only wholesome life.

And how could you scientifically define 'wholesome?' It was seen, mostly, in the smiles of the who were conscious, and the peaceful rest of those who weren't.

After four hours of that, their shift ended, and they meditated as they went through the hospital's decontamination protocol, and decided on lunch in the hospital's cafe, which was surprisingly okay so long as you don't care about eating healthy.

Halfway through lunch, Andi's comm beeped.

Obi-Wan said, "What is it?"

"I've got a two hour personal with Master Dorla. You're on free time, then we switch."

"Free time," said Obi-Wan, knowing what that meant. He could do whatever he wanted, so long as what he wanted was to work on his correspondence class.

Andi jammed a couple fritts in her mouth and took off, leaving Obi-Wan to continue devouring the fried goods in more desultory fashion.

As he ate, he listened.

Sports. Patients. Absent Doctors. Politics, briefly, the election approaching. A man saying he wouldn't vote because his vote didn't matter.

"Every vote counts," said another.

When Obi-Wan turned 20, assuming he was still a member of the Jedi Order, he'd able to start voting in Coruscanti elections. He was looking forward to it, though whether Jedi should vote was an old debate. Certainly, if they did vote, it was agreed that they should keep how they'd voted to themselves.

The naysayer said, "I'm in District 7, so my vote literally doesn't count."

The other frowned, and took a moment for the implication to percolate through Obi-Wan's mind. When it had, he turned, facing the two, and called out. "Excuse me. Yes, you, excuse me. Does Galidraan do winner take all?"

The naysayer said, "Yeah. Whoever wins a district gets all the votes."

"Huh." He assumed Yoda could look up Galidraan's laws just fine from the comfort of Coruscant, but perhaps he should take an interest anyway.

"You should still vote. It's not like it takes long," said the positive one.

"Not long? I waited in line for five hours last time I voted."

The surprised the other one, and they marveled a little that wait times were so different at different precincts, and it wasn't till the political portion of the conversation had ended that Obi-Wan left the cafe.

Instead of going to his spot in the lobby, Obi-Wan found a console and looked up Galidraan's laws.

Or tried to.

All laws were publicly available. But in order to view them, you had to sign in with your citizen ID. Public life ought to be kept public, went the reasoning.

Reading between the lines in news reports, (delivered by only two major services) a picture started to emerge.

Increasingly onerous voter registration laws. More and more crimes that could result in a loss of voting rights, New laws against 'incitement to riot,' an overstressed court system with a high conviction rate, and a police force with little transparency and many blasters.

Voters were divided into districts, and districts into precincts. The Governor controlled the committees that controlled the drawing of both. The Governor controlled the committees that handled staffing for the precinct polls, thereby controlling how long the lines were in different precincts, giving him a handle on turnout.

The people voted, and the votes were counted, and no fraudulent ballots were added. But calling it 'democracy' was a joke.

What a jokester, Governor Sindar was. A real comedian. Making the joke funnier with every law.

Andi touched his shoulder. "Obi. Obi. It's your turn with Master Dorla. Didn't you check your comm? She's in room 303."

He smiled, thanked her, and walked quickly toward room 303.

This was also going in his report.