Read Star Wars - Lost Tribe of the Sith 06 - Sentinel for Free Online Page A

motion with her hands. “Out.”
    Grudgingly, the older Horns withdrew. They’d be joining the others in the waiting area.
    From a cabinet, Cilghal took a pair of self-heating blankets. She approached the gurneys and spread one blanket over each patient. “Tekli and I need to make some log entries about your recovery. Josat will be here in a moment—ah.” As if on cue, and it was indeed on cue, a teenage Jedi apprentice, cheerful and maddeningly energetic, entered the chamber. Red-haired, lean with a teen’s overactive metabolism, he offered Cilghal and Tekli a minimally acceptable respectful nod and immediately moved over to the nurse’s station monitor to familiarize himself with his two charges.
    Cilghal finished adjusting Jysella’s blanket. “If you need anything, Josat can provide it, and if he is not here, say ‘Nurse’ and the comm router will put you in contact with the floor nurse.”
    Jysella glanced over at her brother. “I have just been tucked in by a large fish.”
    He smiled, and when he spoke, there was amusement in his voice. “Maybe you’re hallucinating.”
    The waiting room was a long chamber decorated with plants from a dozen worlds and a wall-side fountain shaped to simulate a waterfall on the planet Alderaan,destroyed so long ago. The air here was fresher than that in the infirmary chambers, smelling of oxygen from the plants, mist from the waterfall—
    Fresher in most ways, fouler in others. Leia turned to Allana and crossed her arms. “Sweetie …”
    “I know, I know.” The child did not sound at all childlike, but she hugged her pet nexu to her with what looked like a need for reassurance. “We smell bad.”
    “What did you get into?”
    Allana’s shrug was uncommunicative. “I don’t know.”
    Leia glanced at Barv, but the Ramoan Jedi Knight, big and green with ferocious tusks, avoided her eye.
    Well, of course he didn’t want to explain. He’d been entrusted with watching over Allana, and he’d failed to keep her out of mischief. This was the sort of humbling experience young Jedi needed to have from time to time.
    Han leaned into the conversation, but his attention was on his wife, not his granddaughter. “Garbage Compactor Three Two Six Three Eight Two Seven.”
    Leia scowled at him. “Oh, shut up.”
    Han grinned and there was a bit of mockery in the expression. He switched his attention to Allana. “Sweetie, I can remember when your grandma smelled just like that. And unlike you, she was rude and ungrateful, too.”
    “Han—”
    “Go get cleaned up, and sanisteam Anji if you can, while your grandma and I discuss the impossibility of keeping children—or teenage princesses—clean.”
    “Yes, Grandpa.” Allana scurried while the scurrying was good. She didn’t have to look back to detect the glare Leia was visiting on Han.
    Cilghal and Tekli walked toward an office at the far end of the hall from the Horns’ chamber, just short of the waiting room.
    Cilghal had Josat’s script timed and running in her head. He would now be moving around the Horns’ chamber, humming to himself, cautioning Valin and Jysella not to move or talk—the monitors needed stillness to do this evaluation—but
he
could talk, fortunately, for it was impossible for him to keep quiet, or so his family said …
    Tekli interrupted the holodrama in Cilghal’s head. “So, what
did
cause the pod monitor to fail?”
    “Maybe what I said. And maybe it was a spike of the ability Valin manifested when he went mad.”
    “The one that blanked out the encephaloscan?”
    “Yes. He was probably using the technique when he was frozen. The monitor failure would have been the last bit of that usage.”
    “Hmm.” Tekli didn’t comment. She didn’t need to: Cilghal knew what she was thinking. Retention of that scanner-blanking ability was not an indication that Valin retained the madness, as well, but neither physician liked mysteries.
    When the two of them entered their office, the main monitor