The Cestus Deception: Star Wars (Clone Wars): A Clone Wars Novel

by Steven Barnes

  “We must act,” Ventress said, turning to them.

  “What have you in mind?” Lady Por’Ten asked.

  Ventress stalked the chamber almost as if she were oblivious to the others. “I have in mind a test for your JK droids.”

  The members of the Five Families glanced at each other nervously. “They are not lethal until their Gabonna crystals are replaced, ma’am.”

  “No matter. Captives can be profitably questioned. But one other thing is necessary: months ago Count Dooku designed and ordered special infiltration droids. According to your reports these droids are complete, and ready for testing.”

  “Yes, that is correct,” one of the technicians agreed.

  “Then they, and the JKs together, will follow my commands,” Ventress said, and she smiled. And that smile was so unfeeling that it made a snarl look warm and welcoming in comparison.

  52

  They were not alive, but they crawled through the darkness. They had no minds, but dreamed of death. They had no bodily needs, yet were ravenously hungry.

  At the moment the four droids in the lead were little more than clear sacs of jelly. Dull lights embedded in their semisolid bodies revealed clumps of metallic shapes suspended within.

  Those in the rear were more solid, golden, hourglass-shaped droids. Their small, pointed legs crawled easily along the path blazed by their larger brothers. JKs.

  The four infiltration droids used their indeterminate shape to squeeze through the smallest passageways, finding purchase wherever they could, then taking whatever shape best served their needs. Laser nodes along their surfaces scalded the rock, melting it and grinding it to widen the passageway.

  For kilometers they traveled like this, becoming more solid when they needed to push an obstruction aside, more fluid when they needed to explore, making the way for the JKs.

  The lethal procession whispered beneath the ground, below every sensor, beneath any potential observer. And they traveled in near silence. When they met an obstacle they burrowed or burned through it.

  One meter at a time, they simply approached their prey. Without fatigue or trepidation, without mercy or living intent they moved forward, motivated by nothing save a programmed appetite.

  One that would shortly be satisfied.

  53

  For hundreds of years the Dashta Mountains’ deep shadows had provided protection for smugglers, runaways, thieves, political malcontents, and young sweethearts. No one knew all the paths that led into the chambers, and likely enough no one ever would. Therefore it was the depths of the caves themselves that were selected as the best place for a celebration.

  After all, the initial strategy may have gone awry, but their secondary plans had gone swimmingly. If the Jedi regretted the loss of life, the rejuvenated forces of Desert Wind felt that they had finally struck a telling blow against the Five Families.

  After six of those raids, Sirty’s communications skills combined with Doolb Snoil’s phenomenal mind for research, tapping into ChikatLik’s holovid network to extract a vital and telling piece of data: droid production had dropped by more than 30 percent. If they could but maintain the current pace of action, the Five Families and the government would be forced to the bargaining table, where all desires could be met.

  And while Obi-Wan wasn’t nearly so certain that their current course would indeed take them to the desired land of plenty, there had been much violent action, many hairbreadth escapes, and three lost comrades to honor. Tensions were building to a killing point, and a bit of celebration would do them good.

  So the revel had been building for hours, guards posted at the cave mouth. While alert status remained high, Desert Wind’s heightened appetites were simultaneously slaked with Food, drink, games, bragging and boasting, and dancing.

  Resta Shug Hai spent most of her time by herself, sipping mead, a drink that had similar effects on human and Cestian. Since the very first days of training she had been an outsider, the lone X’Ting among human recruits. The barrier had gone both ways: after a lifetime of fighting for her land and identity, there was little love lost for the offworlders. Even as the troops began to enjoy victories, and the normal camaraderie bound them all together more tightly, she had remained somewhat apart. But she finally stepped forward, swaying slightly as if her tongue had been loosened by the mead. “I sing song,” she said.

  Doolb Snoil happily clapped his chubby hands together, cheering her on.

  “X’Ting songs like Thak Val Zsing’s history lessons,” she explained. “Every clan have own song. Tell people’s story. When song die, people die. Resta last to know her clan song.”

  And she sang it. Obi-Wan didn’t speak the language, but he didn’t need to. He understood the emotions behind the alien words. And if emotion held true, the song spoke of courage, and toil, of love and hope and dreams.

  What struck Obi-Wan most was her evident pride and courage. If Resta and G’ Mai Duris were typical of their people, the X’Ting were incredibly strong folk. Despite the plagues, despite their lands being stolen from under them, despite no external evidence at all, they dreamed on.

  When she finished, the rock walls rang with applause.

  Jangotat made his rounds of the outer caves, taking a few moments to speak to each of his brothers, all of whom declined intoxicants. Then he checked in with the recruits who were taking guard positions among the rocks or monitoring the scanners. No matter how well hidden they believed themselves to be, it was inevitable that eventually their lair would be discovered. Still, considering that the mountains themselves could shield them from enemy bombardment, it would take hours for enemy troops to ascend the slopes under fire, and all rear exits were either well guarded or sealed off.

  In the world of field operations, this was about as secure as life could get.

  Making his third rounds, a sense of ease descended over Jangotat. General Kenobi’s initial plot had failed, but this new operation seemed to be working fine: breaking energy lines, crippling water plants, and looting payrolls for their growing war chest. The local troops had performed well under pressure.

  Unknown enemies had doomed their initial ruse. Jangotat now considered the entire world of diplomatic subterfuge unfit for a soldier, or, he now believed, those strange and fascinating creatures called Jedi. Odd. He thought of the Jedi not merely with respect, but with the sort of fraternalism ordinarily reserved for members of the GAR. In the unchanging order of things they were high above him, but were fighters, leaders extraordinaire. The most recent adventure proved that perfection eluded them, as it did all beings. Even diving into the scalding water had been only a temporary, if intense, pain. A liberal application of synthflesh from their first-aid kits had covered wounds and reduced redness and swelling in a few hours.

  Most important, they had won.

  Jangotat found himself entering a state of contentment rarely experienced by one of his station. He was fulfilling his primary function, enjoying an opportunity to learn from two superlative teachers. There were other … interesting factors as well.

  He cast about, hoping to find Sheeka Tull, but did not. Doubtless she was ferrying in another load of supplies. The thought gave him a warm feeling.

  In the last moments before he lost his honor, old Thak Val Zsing was thankful and content. For years he had struggled to bring advantage to his people, and those hard times had taken their toll even before the last few disastrous years, when betrayals and murderously ruthless security reprisals had reduced Desert Wind to a shadow of its former strength.

  But despite his early reservations, it looked as if the Jedi were actually the answer to his prayers; perhaps his grandchildren would not have to eat the dust for as many long, painful years as had Val Zsing before them.

  He had watched the revelry, noted with sober approval that the two Jedi maintained a slight and leaderly aloofness from the proceedings, polite but not intrusive.

  These Jedi were responsible and respectful. Strange, all of ’em. The h
uman, the clones, the Nautolan … and that Vippit was the strangest. All fluttery fear when the retrieval team found his capsule, but as soon as they’d brought the mollusk into camp, he’d instantly found work coordinating intelligence. Sharp as a laser scalpel, that one.

  In the final analysis, Thak Val Zsing had lost leadership of Desert Wind, but was winning the war. Not a bad trade. Not a bad final chapter in the long, strange life of a murderer’s great-grandson, a history teacher turned miner and anarchist leader.

  So Thak Val Zsing found himself a fine bottle of Chandrilan brandy and wandered back to one of the rear caves to enjoy it—a taste of a homeworld he might never see again. There were only two things that Thak Val Zsing enjoyed: fighting and drinking.

  The bottle was three-quarters empty when he momentarily blacked out, leaning back against the cave wall to watch the stalactites spin. And spin they did, in a happy blur that made him cry out in pleasure as he finished the bottle. He was down to the dregs, sliding down a warm dark tunnel toward blissful slumber, when he heard a cracking sound. Another. Then the ground beneath him began to heave.

  He looked at it curiously, finding it amusing. Distantly, the tinkle and burr of dance music echoed through the caves. Although he could not hear the happy voices, Val Zsing knew that they were there. He could feel it: after an uncertain start, with the Jedi attempting to pull off some kind of elaborate con operation, the plan was back on track, with the program of harassment and sabotage that Desert Wind had begun so long ago. And now it would succeed.

  He was basking in that thought when the cracking sound came again. Thak Val Zsing rolled over onto his hard round belly so that the cave was right-side up again, and blinked his bleary eyes.

  A rock rolled to the side, revealing a fissure in the ground. Perhaps it was one of the myriad micro-tunnels running through every bit of these mountains. Most were too small for a human, so there was no need to be concerned about the safety. What was this, then, some kind of volcanic activity? Perhaps a burrowing male chitlik …?

  And then the first shadowed, amorphous shape emerged.

  The four plastidroids and their JK companions had traveled a hundred kilometers at an average rate of just under ten kilometers per hour. It had taken them half a day to reach their target. Tirelessly they crawled through the dusty tunnels, edging toward their prey. The droids did not always travel in a straight line: when tunnels branched, some of them took alternate paths, either burrowing or climbing back to maintain a rough sense of direction. When they reached an obstacle that they could not easily push or burrow through, they backed up and went around. When the sensors at their surface detected the sounds of music, they began to converge, all of the fractally mapped alternative pathways canceled. Machines could not sigh with relief, but one prone to fancy might have attributed a certain eagerness to the manner in which they seemed to accelerate as they emerged from the cave floor.

  The plastoid infiltration droid pushed its way through, melting and crushing rock as it went. Then a second, third, and fourth followed it.

  After them appeared the JKs, until all hunched quivering in that empty cave—empty save for a single intoxicated human who watched dazedly, assuming that the drink that dulled his pain had also clouded his sight with hallucinations.

  The four plastidroids looked like gigantic protozoans, studded with shadowy mechanical puzzle pieces in place of nuclei or organelles. Once reaching the desired destination, magnetically encoded pieces suspended within each bag wormed their way toward each other and began snapping together. Slowly, as the lengths of metal and plastine found each other, the newly formed limbs created nightmarish silhouettes beneath the transluscent skins, stretching them.

  The JKs seemed to watch as the four bags of plastine and metal heaved and quivered. In turn, each was distorted by the assembling metallic pieces within it, until there stood not four amorphous shapes but four fully formed infiltrator droids, treaded monstrosities as tall as three humans with heavy armored bodies and long, flexible necks.

  Thak Val Zsing watched, not understanding what he was seeing, laughing at the hallucination’s oddness. Intoxication had caused stranger visions in the past, but not many. It was all terribly amusing. He continued to chuckle until the first infiltrator machine was almost completely formed. Its outline, suddenly and horribly familiar, began to resemble that of a killer droid that had shattered a mining union strike five years earlier.

  That outline burned its way through the chemical fog, the realization that death had just, impossibly, oozed up from the very ground below him. He stood and staggered back against the wall. Then a moment came when he realized that he was wrong, that what he saw was no hallucination at all, but something real and appalling.

  There are defining moments in a being’s life, moments when actions are taken—or not taken. Once done, certain things cannot be undone. Thak Val Zsing was drunk, so perhaps he could be excused. He was also old, and the veteran of more Desert Wind raids than he could count. Perhaps life gave every person a specific allotment of nerve, and when that allotment was expended, there was simply no more.

  Until the end of his days, Thak Val Zsing struggled to explain, to himself if not others, why he did nothing except crawl back beneath a shelf of rock. And there he trembled, sobbing his fear and misery.

  And did not raise the alarm that would have turned the murder machines’ attention to him.

  It is a choice no one should have to make: to save life, at the cost of the soul.

  As the JKs waited patiently, lubricant drained from the plastine skins still tightly stretched over the now fully assembled bodies of the infiltrators. One at a time, the skins stretched around the metal frames, then ruptured, like birth membranes rupturing around metal infants.

  The JKs sniffed the air like living things, as if hungry to fulfill their function.

  And in their mechanical way, perhaps they were.

  54

  Kit Fisto leaned back against the uneven rock wall, his tentacles twitching in sympathetic rhythm with the music. Although his face did not change, he was amused to find himself responding to these primitive melodies. Like most Jedi, Kit had been raised not on his homeworld, but in the halls of the Temple. However, to amuse himself, he had made a study of Glee Anselm’s customs, becoming especially fond of its music. On Glee Anselm, no one would be gauche enough to play songs with less than three different rhythms, and far more complex melodies than this. Still, there was something attractive about it, and he finally raised a hand and said: “Hold! I would join you.”

  The musicians paused, surprised that the normally taciturn Nautolan had spoken, let alone that he wished to participate. Nervously, they offered the various instruments at their disposal. Kit scanned them before choosing one that combined string and wind. “This will suffice.”

  He noted that Obi-Wan and Doolb Snoil were watching and decided to make a special effort. Obi-Wan had proven himself one of the ablest warriors of Kit Fisto’s experience. And while some might have considered it an unworthy urge, he wished to impress his companion with his native music.

  So, taking the instrument in hand, he began to blow and strum simultaneously, each action reinforcing the other. It took him a few moments to find his way, and despite his extreme dexterity there were notes that he could not hit, chords that he could not play. It mattered not. As had his forebears, Kit had mastered the art of performing music underwater, and although he was comfortable in the air, sound took on a different character when transmitted through the thinner medium. Adjustments had to be made, and his nimble mind and fingers made them within moments. As his tones grew smoother and more pleasuring, the other musicians began to accompany him on string and wind instruments. Then voices crooned in wordless song, in a fashion that almost made him homesick. Despite the aridity of their world, these Cestians were a good lot.

  Then came the ultimate compliment: some of the more daring attendees rose and actually began to dance. At first they had difficulty finding the
beat and rhythm. With Nautolan music it was more important to listen to the pauses between notes than to the notes themselves, which were sustained in irregular bits. They seemed to find their groove, and were beginning to really enjoy themselves. Snoil’s long, fleshy neck traced the beat in the air, his eyestalks keeping counterpoint.

  Then Kit stiffened, his dark eyes narrowing before his conscious mind comprehended the threat.

  The rough cavern floor trembled, as if sections of the mountain had wrenched their way free and now crawled toward them in the darkness.

  A bearded miner from the Clandes region sprinted out of the back caves. “We’re invaded!” came a scream. Then a light flashed, and the miner hit the ground like a bag of smoking rags, no longer screaming at all.

  “What in space is that?” Skot OnSon yelled, shoulder-length blond hair flagging.

  “This shouldn’t be possible,” Fisto said, surprise momentarily fixing him in his tracks.

  Something appeared in the passageway leading to the back caves. Its neck was serpentine but mechanical, supporting a head that was both weapon and sensory probe. The body it was attached to was as tall as two humans at the shoulder, but composed of more individual pieces than he would have thought possible for something of its size, almost as if it were constructed from baubles found in a child’s toy chest. It rolled on treads. A thin sheaf of plastine was stretched about the frame, and his mind searched frantically, some part of him sure he already knew what this thing was.

  Whirring around its feet were one … two … three … four of the golden JK droids.

  “Run!” Skot cried. That single word accomplished what the appearance of horror had not: spurred them into action.