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

by Steven Barnes

  “G’Mai, I am in your hands,” Obi-Wan said quietly. The elders had carried themselves well, but the Regent was the only X’Ting he could claim to know. If anyone here could be relied upon for full disclosure, it was she. “Is there anything else that I should know before setting out on this mission?”

  “Jedi,” Duris said. “I know only the whispered rumors about the visit of a Jedi Master. I’d never heard of the royal eggs before this day.”

  The council members turned as the small male councilor returned. Behind him, in a gray tunic with a diagonal red stripe, marched a larger male bristling with red thoracic fur. His red, faceted eyes took in the entire room at a glance, scanning Obi-Wan and making an instant, positive threat assessment. The newcomer’s primary and secondary arms bore numerous pale scars: this was an experienced warrior, probably a member of some elite hive security unit. A triple-sectioned staff hewn of some clear material lay diagonally across his back.

  The newcomer put the palms of his primary and secondary hands together, then spoke in a series of clicks and pops.

  Kosta raised her left primary hand. “It is requested that you speak in Basic when in this human’s presence.”

  The X’Ting soldier turned to regard Obi-Wan. His first scan had taken a fraction of a second. The second took longer, long enough for Obi-Wan to sense the intense disdain in the X’Ting’s eyes. “My pardon to our honored guest. My words were: ‘First Rank Jesson is present and ready for duty.’ ”

  “I should go with you,” Duris offered. “This is my job, my planet. If we fail, and Quill betrays us, we are all undone.”

  “But you are your people’s leader,” Obi-Wan said. “You are needed here.”

  Duris protested, but the other council members voted her down. She seemed as distressed as Obi-Wan had ever seen. “You came here as a friend, and helped me more than words can say,” she said, taking his two hands in her four. “I hope that I have not brought you to your death.”

  “Jedi are not so easily killed,” he said.

  “If you are half the warrior Master Yoda is said to be, you will prevail,” she said.

  Jesson’s eyes narrowed at that. If Obi-Wan had felt more confident in reading X’Ting facial expressions, he would have said the soldier’s dominating mood was one of contempt.

  “Well, let us begin.” Obi-Wan turned to his guide. “We descend into the bowels of the planet together,” he said. “Will you tell me your full name?”

  “First Rank Jesson Di Blinth,” the other said, and bowed formally. “Of the volcano Di Blinths.”

  “Well met, Jesson,” the Jedi replied. “Obi-Wan Kenobi, of Coruscant. Are we ready to leave?”

  Jesson conferred swiftly with the other members of the council. Two members touched scent glands at the sides of their necks, and with damp fingers made a series of dots on the table before them. Jesson made moist markings of his own in a similar fashion.

  Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow, and Duris explained: “Much of our information is stored in scents.”

  “These contain most of what we currently know or remember about the path,” Kosta said. “No one has taken it in so long …”

  “I thought you said that four of. your number tried, and were slain in the process,” Obi-Wan said.

  “Not completely accurate,” Jesson said, studying the tabletop. “The first attempt was through the direct opening to the egg chamber, which buttresses a lava tube. My brother never returned, and we know that defensive mechanisms were triggered. A backup entrance was tried next. My second brother never returned, and the door was jammed.”

  “Did you attempt to open it?”

  Jesson regarded him with scorn. “Whatever happened there cost the life of a brave warrior. We will not disrespect him by assuming we can succeed where he failed.”

  “What, then?”

  “There is another way down, through the old tunnels.”

  The mention of that word quieted the room for a long moment, and again G’Mai Duris raised an objection. “I should go. Obi-Wan risks his life because of me.”

  “Later, perhaps, when you have shifted back to male,” Kosta said, her emerald eyes flashing with compassion. “But now you are not as strong and light as you will be. We cannot risk you. You are our face with the offworlders.”

  Duris took Obi-Wan’s hands in hers. “Then go with luck,” she said.

  Obi-Wan nodded. “The Force is what we will need.” He turned to Jesson. “Well, if it is to be done, it is best done swiftly.”

  And together they left the chamber.

  2

  Above them stood Ord Cestus’s capital city of ChikatLik, a metropolis of six million citizens built into a natural lava bubble modified by the hive. The bubble’s natural gray glaze was a rainbow of reflected colors from the city lights and holoboards. ChikatLik boasted the architecture of a hundred cultures, was a forest of twisting spires and elevated tramways, airways filled with droid shuttles, taxis, personal transportation and trams of all kinds. The bubble walls concealed a network of transport systems within the ground itself: sub-ways and magrails and lev tracks, technological wonders ferrying workers, executives, ore, and equipment.

  But down here, far below ChikatLik’s streets, there was only the hive. Generations of hive builders had chewed and burrowed through the ground. The texture of the walls had a chewed duracrete appearance that Obi-Wan had noted elsewhere in ChikatLik, clear evidence of X’Ting construction.

  Down in the lowest tunnels the walls were coated with rectangular patches of manicured white fungus that emitted a steady bluish glow. “Is this your form of illumination?” Obi-Wan asked.

  Jesson nodded. “The fungus is well maintained here, fed and trimmed. Farther back it grows wild, and the fungus eats into the walls, slowly widening the tunnels.”

  The fungus had etched the rock until it seemed like the surface of some ancient sculpture. Obi-Wan ran his fingers over it as they walked, felt that he was reading an ancient book of X’Ting secret history. “How many outsiders have been here?” he asked.

  “You are the first,” Jesson told him.

  Obi-Wan sighed. Jesson’s tone had been flat and cold. He and the X’Ting would have to come to an understanding, but he hoped to delay it until they had spent a bit more time together. “Where does this come out?”

  Jesson turned to him, sneering. “Listen, Jedi. I will follow my orders and take you along with me, but I don’t have to like it. You offworlders ruined our planet. You cheated and brainwashed us and corrupted our leaders—”

  “If you’re thinking of Quill, I believe he’s been removed from the council.”

  “And replaced with Duris,” Jesson said. “I doubt she’s much better.”

  “If you think so little of your leaders, why do you obey them?”

  Jesson drew himself up to full height. “I obey my training, and the rules of my clan. I am loyal to the hive, not merely the council. And now the council wishes the return of the royals. This I will help them do.” His wings fluttered a bit. In the glow of the fungus they seemed like sheets of pale blue ice. “Make no mistake, Jedi. I will take you with me. But fantasies about your great powers won’t save you in the deep hive. Maybe Duris believes that some sorcerer from Coruscant once saved the poor ignorant X’Ting, but I am no mewling grub, to believe such tales.”

  “Fair enough,” Obi-Wan said as they continued down the tunnel. “I’d never heard of it myself, so I’m not asking you to believe.”

  Jesson shrugged, although he seemed satisfied that Obi-Wan was not trying to convince him. “It is typical for a colonized people to identify with their oppressors. This yearning for an alien rescuer is pitiable. It is hive-hatred.”

  Obi-Wan was about to speak when Jesson raised his primary arms. “Be very quiet.” The X’Ting brushed past a curtain of hanging moss. Curiously, once on the other side Obi-Wan heard a steady droning sound. The moss seemed to have functioned as some kind of damper.

  Then Obi-Wan gasped. He felt he h
ad walked into a fantasy realm, where gravity itself was suspended.

  Hanging from the ceiling was a series of swollen blue spheres attached as if by an invisible adhesive. No legs or arms or anything resembling faces were visible. He reckoned that these creatures were the same species as Regent Duris’s assistant Shar Shar, but much larger. They were vaguely translucent, with thin blue veins. By the dim fungal light he could see organs pulsing slowly, as well as some kind of distended stomach or bladder.

  “What are these creatures?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “Their species are Zeetsa. We feed them, and they produce a food called Lifemilk. Once our people depended upon them, and we lived together. But over time they developed more mind and will. Those who wish to join our society are allowed to do so, while those who choose a more peaceful, quiet existence can have that, as well.”

  He sighed, and for a moment seemed to forget his antipathy toward Obi-Wan. “Lifemilk is a great delicacy.” He turned to the Jedi. “As an offworlder, you can afford it more readily than most X’Ting.”

  The bluish surfaces of the Lifemilk creatures gave off a calming, peaceful radiance, but even had Jesson been more sanguine, Obi-Wan would not have chosen to sample at this time. One never knew the effects of alien foods, even benign, and he had to rely upon all of his senses in the coming hours.

  The room was warm, almost uncomfortably so, and Obi-Wan swiftly determined that the heat emanated from the many bodies crowded together.

  As he watched, the smooth surface of one of the globes began to roil. A bulge recognizable as a nose appeared, followed by two eyeholes, emerging from the surface almost like a creature floating up through a pool of oil. Obi-Wan blinked, startled, as similar faces grew on two of the other spheres. Generalized faces, something between an X’Ting and a human, almost as if the Zeetsa had no real form of its own, instead borrowing appearance from its neighbors.

  The three spheres with faces pivoted to watch the intruders who had awakened them from their long, productive slumber.

  He heard something gurgle in the room, and thought that it was the Zeetsa version of speech. They were speaking to each other, wondering, perhaps, who this offworlder was …

  No … not who, but what. If Jesson was accurate, no other offworlder had ever come this way, and that meant that in all probability they had never seen a human being at all.

  The room was the size of a star cruiser docking bay: immense, and silent save for that constant murmuring. Obi-Wan had the feeling he was walking through a room of sleeping children, except for the disquieting faces that appeared on the smooth surface of the dangling, gravity-defying bulbs. One of them formed lips and a recognizable mouth, and he stopped for a moment, transfixed. As he watched, his own face appeared, complete with beard, etched into the surface of the blue sphere.

  And then the corners of the mouth lifted. “It’s trying to communicate,” he whispered, astonished.

  “It is dreaming,” Jesson said. “And you are a part of the dream.”

  The bulb pivoted to follow them as they reached the far side of the cavern. The tunnel there was darker than the Lifemilk creatures’ place of resting, and Obi-Wan took that final image, the smile of a sleeping, mindless creature, with him into the darkness.

  3

  The tunnel leading away from the Zeetsa chamber was narrower. If he had wished, Obi-Wan could have scooped blue-white fungus off both walls with his elbows as they walked. The mold here grew in wild patches, some of them slippery splotches underfoot, slick enough to make an unwary explorer turn an ankle. The wild moss gave a fainter light here, and from time to time Jesson used a glowlight to lead the way. The air itself felt musty and close. Obi-Wan guessed no one had been here for years.

  “Where are we now?” he asked.

  “Beyond where I have gone,” Jesson replied. “But I know what lies ahead.”

  “And that is?”

  “The Hall of Heroes,” Jesson said. “This is where the greatest leaders of our people were honored, iong ago, before the clans split after the plague. In that world, every warrior strove to perform great service for the hive, that his image might one day appear in the hall.”

  “And what of the people who remained down there?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “They are the true X’Ting,” he said, a hint of pride entering his voice for the first time. “Perhaps when this is over, I will stay with them. It is said they believe we ‘surface’ X’Ting have forgotten the old ways. This is truth.”

  “Will they try to stop us?”

  “I think not. They, even more than those on the surface, have awaited the return of the royals. In fact,” he added, “once we have opened the vault, I can think of no safer hands in which to place the eggs.”

  Obi-Wan stopped. “The eggs are to be taken to the council, Jesson.”

  The X’Ting’s eyes sparked. “Yes. Of course.”

  Obi-Wan didn’t trust that answer. Might Jesson turn the eggs over to the X’Ting who lurked in the lower hive? And if he did, how should he, Obi-Wan, respond?

  One step at a time, he thought. They had much to overcome before that became an issue.

  The tunnel came to an end at a massive metal door, bolted and barred, and so rusted that it seemed almost a part of the natural wall.

  Jesson traced his hands over its surface. “This is the back way into the vault. We must go through the Hall of Heroes, where the old X’Ting still live. Many years ago they erected this door to seal out the plague. To seal us out of their lives.” He looked back at Obi-Wan. “We will have to open the door.”

  “This I can do,” Obi-Wan said. He drew his lightsaber and triggered its emerald beam. Then he took a deep breath and slowly began to press his blade into the door. The hissing sound filled the darkness. Liquid metal sizzled into steam. Within a few moments he’d burned a fist-size hole in the door. Obi-Wan stopped and peered through. Nothing but darkness beyond. He listened. Nothing.

  No. Not nothing. Something scuttled on the other side of the door. But it was something distant. Claws on metal and stone. Other than that, silence.

  The fingers of Jesson’s secondary arms twined with tension.

  “Is there anything you’re not telling me?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “There are stories,” Jesson admitted. “Five years ago when we tried to free the eggs, one of my brothers went through another opening. I know he made it as far as the Hall of Heroes. But after that …” He shrugged. “We lost communication.”

  “I see.” Obi-Wan didn’t like the sound of that: It could imply entirely too many things.

  He widened the hole, then waited for the metal to cool so that they could wiggle through. “I’ll go first,” he said. The mold in the next chamber was just barely bright enough to reveal a large empty space with a rock floor. The room was perhaps twenty meters across, with gently convex walls. “Looks clear,” he said, and then slipped through, instantly alert.

  By the glow of his lightsaber he saw that the floor of the roughly spherical chamber was of level stone. In the center was a descending stone stairway. Obi-Wan supposed that it led to another chamber below them.

  Jesson crawled through the burned hole nimbly and stood, holding up his glowlight.

  “You’ve never been in here?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “Never. And neither has any living member of the upper hive,” he said. “I believe we are now inside the largest statue in the X’Ting Hall of Heroes.”

  They began down the stairs, turning in a spiral as they descended around a single rock column in the midst of a chamber hewn from stone. Hewn? Chewed, Obi-Wan thought.

  “Something is wrong,” Jesson said. Caution had crept into the X’Ting warrior’s voice.

  “What?”

  “I smell much death,” he said.

  The silence itself was so oppressive that it was impossible for Obi-Wan not to agree with him. Something was wrong—he could sense it as well. Halfway down the stairs, Jesson aimed his light at the floor below them.

 
For a moment Obi-Wan couldn’t believe what he was seeing. The entire floor of the chamber was covered with empty, shattered carapaces. Countless heaps of them, scattered about like bones in some large predator’s lair.

  “What happened here?” Jesson whispered.

  “What would you think?”

  The exoskeleton fragments, the skulls and legs and chest-pieces, seemed to stare back at them, simultaneously mocking and warning. “Either they crawled into here by the thousands and died, or …”

  “Or what?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “Or something dragged them in here.”

  Obi-Wan crouched, running his fingers along the broken edges of a carapace. There was no moisture in the remaining flesh at all. This had happened years ago.

  He rose and led the way to the descending stone stairway in the room’s center. The twisting exit had no guardrails, and it would be a nasty spill if taken unexpectedly. The dusty smell of old, forgotten death rose up to enfold them.

  When they reached the bottom, his foot crunched on a leg carapace. “Light,” he said simply, and took it from Jesson’s hand.

  The carapaces had been cracked open. No withered flesh remained to be seen. Devoured? Everywhere he looked, there was nothing but the cracked, violated exoskeletons of dead X’Ting.

  Jesson went to his knees behind Obi-Wan, examining the remains. “I … I don’t understand,” he said as Obi-Wan returned the glowlight.

  Something in his voice chilled the Jedi. “What is it?” Obi-Wan asked.

  “Look at these bite marks.”

  Obi-Wan inspected. The carapaces had indeed been chewed open, not pried apart with tools. “Yes. Savage.”

  “You don’t understand,” Jesson said. “These are X’Ting tooth marks.”

  And suddenly the horror that had gripped Jesson brushed against Obi-Wan’s spine. Here in the depths, where X’Ting had tried to maintain the old ways, something had happened. Clan turning against clan? War? However it had begun, what was clear was the way it had ended: