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

by Steven Barnes

  They moved the disk down to the dirt floor. With the help of the antigrav unit, the carbonite disk virtually floated across the cavern. The rock walls seemed so huge and majestic now. Obi-Wan hadn’t been able to appreciate it, but as artificial lights switched on in the ceiling, the sight of cascading stalactites and vast arched walls took his breath away.

  What sort of celebratory scene had the builders pictured for this moment? Were thousands of X’Ting expected to be gathered now, cheering this ceremony as a new queen and king entered the world?

  How strangely and sorrowfully it had all worked out.

  There would be such celebration eventually, of course, but not now. Now there was silence and shadows.

  The egg cask slid easily through the pentagonal openings on the far side of the cavern. Jesson seemed drained but exultant, a different being from the cocky young warrior who had accompanied Obi-Wan from the council chamber less than two hours before.

  Truly, Obi-Wan thought, transformation was not a matter of time. It happened in a blink, or not at all.

  They crawled through the darkness, pulling the precious cargo between them. Jesson found his way through the labyrinth more easily this time, and their steady shuffling was not really laborious—it was filled with a sense of purpose.

  “You know, Jedi,” Jesson said back over his shoulder, “I may have been wrong about you.”

  “It’s possible,” Obi-Wan said, smiling.

  A few moments passed, during which they proceeded in darkness, Jesson scenting his way and perhaps organizing his thoughts.

  “I’ve seen what you can do, and who and what you are.” He paused. “It is even possible that Duris wasn’t lying about that Jedi Master. Maybe he really did visit, and maybe he really did do something worth remembering.”

  Obi-Wan chuckled. He himself might never know. At least, not until he returned to Coruscant. Then he might make polite inquiries, just to satisfy his curiosity.

  On the other hand, some of the greatest Jedi were notoriously reticent to speak of their deeds. His questions might well be carefully deflected, his curiosity never satisfied.

  They reached the next chamber, the hall of statues where they had first entered. Jesson climbed out and down onto the ledge. Obi-Wan gently pushed the egg cask out. Suspended by its antigrav unit, it floated down to Jesson as gently as a chunk of tilewood settling through water.

  Obi-Wan jumped down lightly. There was a choice to make: to go back the way they had come, to reenter that first hollow statue and brave the cannibals again, or …

  “I’m in no mood for an unnecessary battle,” the Jedi said. “Let’s climb the rocks and see if the door up on the far side will open.”

  “Agreed,” Jesson said. Fatigue blurred his voice. The last hours had to have been the most taxing of the X’Ting warrior’s life. A frantic battle, a climb through darkness, pursuit by carnivorous cave worms, dooming and then saving his species’ royal heirs …

  Obi-Wan wondered: would an X’Ting deal with this stress by celebrating, or by hibernating?

  When they were both safely on the stone ledge, they guided the egg cask up the incline toward what Jesson said was a door.

  It took several nerve-racking minutes to get the egg cask over the rockfall. On the far side they found something ghastly: the corpse of another of Jesson’s broodmates, his lower body jutting from beneath a boulder. His withered secondary arm still clutched a lamp.

  So much death, in service to their hive. Any species that produced both a G’Mai Duris and a Jesson Di Blinth was formidable indeed.

  Obi-Wan picked up the lamp. It was of industrial design, heavier and more powerful than the GAR-surplus model Jesson had brought down into the labyrinth. When he triggered it, an eye-searing beam splayed out against the wall.

  Pity it hadn’t helped Jesson’s brother.

  Just a few meters up the ramp was the door that would take them back to the main hive. A droid mechanism had barred the door. In all probability, the same booby trap had triggered the deadfall.

  “I think my question is answered,” Jesson said behind Obi-Wan, voice deep and respectful.

  “What question is that?” Obi-Wan asked, triggering his lightsaber’s energy beam. He examined the door more closely, judging the best angle for the initial cut.

  “Look. Please,” Jesson said.

  Obi-Wan turned around, allowing his eyes to follow Jesson’s beam of light. It played out along the cavern, illuminating in turn image after gigantic image of the kings and queens of the X’Ting, their greatest leaders in colossal array. Rendered in chewed stone was a veritable forest of noble, insectoid titans. Some male, some female, some tall and young, some stooped and old, their four hands variously held in postures of beseeching, imploring, protecting, comforting, teaching, healing.

  A hall of hemes, indeed, Obi-Wan thought. “What is it?”

  “There,” Jesson replied. “Where we first came in.” And he focused the beam on the largest statue.

  Now Obi-Wan could see the stooped, aged figure far more clearly. The narrow ladder tube they had descended had been a cane. The chamber in which they had fought so desperately against the cannibal X’Ting was, from without, seen to be a muscularly rounded torso. Their point of initial entry, the very first chamber, was a head with flared, triangular ears. The statue stood at least seventy meters high, taller than any other in the X’Ting Hall of Heroes.

  Indeed, many questions were answered, but more remained, questions that Obi-Wan might never satisfy. For there, robed arm outstretched in greeting, gigantic and benevolent in the lamplight of a valiant, long-dead X’Ting soldier, loomed the hollow, chewed-stone statue of a smiling Master Yoda.

  For my new son, Jason Kai Due-Barnes.

  Welcome to life, sweetheart.

  About the Author

  STEVEN BARNES is an author, lecturer and personal consultant who has lectured on creativity and human performance technologies at locations from UCLA, USC, and the Pasadena Jet Propulsion Lab to the Smithsonian Institute.

  In the field of fiction writing, Barnes has published twenty novels and more than two million words of science fiction and fantasy. He’s been nominated for Hugo, Nebula and Cable Ace awards. His “A Stitch in Time” episode of The Outer Limits won the Emmy Award, and his alternate history novel Lion’s Blood won the 2003 Endeavor.

  In the realm of mental and physical development, Barnes holds instructor certificates in Ericksonian Hypnosis and Circular Strength Training, and created the Lifewriting seminars utilizing Joseph Campbell’s model of the Hero’s Journey to help individuals and organizations grasp the flow of individual and team effort enabling peak performance. Second-place winner at the 1972 National Korean Karate championships, he holds black belts in Judo and Kempo Karate, has taught Tai Chi for twenty years, and is one of only a dozen people in the country certified in Softwork, an evolution of martial arts and yoga based on a century of Soviet research.

  He lives in Los Angeles with his wife, daughter Nicki and son Jason.

  Also by Steven Barnes

  Dream Park

  with Larry Niven

  The Descent of Anansi

  with Larry Niven

  Streetlethal

  The Kundalini Equation

  The Legacy of Heorot

  with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

  The Barsoom Project

  Gorgon Child

  Achilles’ Choice

  with Larry Niven

  The California Voodoo Game

  with Larry Niven

  Firedance

  Beowulf’s Children

  with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle

  Blood Brothers

  Iron Shadows

  Far Beyond the Stars

  Saturn’s Race

  with Larry Niven

  Charisma

  Lion’s Blood

  Zulu Heart

  Star Wars: The Cestus Deception

  STAR WARS—The Expanded Universe

  You
saw the movies. You watched the cartoon series, or maybe played some of the video games. But did you know …

  In The Empire Strikes Back, Princess Leia Organa said to Han Solo, “I love you.” Han said, “I know.” But did you know that they actually got married? And had three Jedi children: the twins, Jacen and Jaina, and a younger son, Anakin?

  Luke Skywalker was trained as a Jedi by Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda. But did you know that, years later, he went on to revive the Jedi Order and its commitment to defending the galaxy from evil and injustice?

  Obi-Wan said to Luke, “For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times. Before the Empire.” Did you know that over those millennia, legendary Jedi and infamous Sith Lords were adding their names to the annals of Republic history?

  Yoda explained that the dreaded Sith tend to come in twos: “Always two, there are. No more, no less. A Master, and an apprentice.” But did you know that the Sith didn’t always exist in pairs? That at one time in the ancient Republic there were as many Sith as Jedi, until a Sith Lord named Darth Bane was the lone survivor of a great Sith war and created the “Rule of Two”?

  All this and much, much more is brought to life in the many novels and comics of the Star Wars expanded universe. You’ve seen the movies and watched the cartoon. Now venture out into the wider worlds of Star Wars!

  Turn the page or jump to the timeline of Star Wars novels to learn more.

  RMSU-7

  The Jasserak Lowlands of Tanlassa, Near the Kondrus Sea

  Planet Drongar

  Year 2 A.B.O.G.

  1

  Blood geysered, looking almost black in the antisepsis field’s glow. It splattered hot against Jos’s skin-gloved hand. He cursed.

  “Hey, here’s an idea—would somebody with nothing better to do mind putting a pressor field on that bleeder?”

  “Pressor generator is broken again, Doc.”

  Republic battle surgeon Jos Vondar looked away from the bloody operating field that was the clone trooper’s open chest, at Tolk, his scrub nurse. “Of course it is,” he said. “What, is our mech droid on vacation? How am I supposed to patch up these rankweed suckers without working medical gear?”

  Tolk le Trene, a Lorrdian who could read his mood as easily as most sentients could read a chart, said nothing aloud, but her pointed look was plain enough: Hey, I didn’t break it.

  With an effort, Jos throttled back his temper. “All right. Put a clamp on it. We still have hemostats, don’t we?”

  But she was ahead of him, already locking the steel pincer on the torn blood vessel and using a hemosponge to soak and clear the field. The troopers of this unit had been too close to a grenade when it exploded, and this one’s chest had been peppered full of shrapnel. The recent battle in the Poptree Forest had been a bad one—the medlifters would surely be hauling in more wounded before nightfall to go with those they already had.

  “Is it just me, or is it hot in here?”

  One of the circulating nurses wiped Jos’s forehead to keep the sweat from running into his eyes. “Air cooler’s malfunctioning again,” she said. Jos didn’t reply. On a civilized world, he would have sprayed sweat-stop on his face before he scrubbed, but that, like everything else—including tempers—was in short supply here on Drongar. The temperature outside, even now, near midnight, was that of human body heat; tomorrow it would be hotter than a H’nemthe in love. The air would be wetter. And smellier. This was a nasty, nasty world at the best of times; it was far worse with a war going on. Jos wondered, not for the first time, what high-ranking Republic official had casually decided to ruin his life by cutting orders shipping him to a planet that seemed to be all mold and mildew and mushroomlike vegetation as far as the eye could see.

  “Is everything broken around here?” he demanded of the room at large.

  “Everything except your mouth, sounds like,” Zan said pleasantly, without looking up from the trooper he was working on.

  Jos used a healy gripper to dig a piece of metal the size of his thumb from his patient’s left lung. He dropped the sharp metal bit into a pan. It clanked. “Put a glue stat on that.”

  The nurse expertly laid the dissolvable patch onto the wounded lung. The stat, created of cloned tissue and a type of adhesive made from a Talusian mussel, immediately sealed the laceration. At least they still had plenty of those, Jos told himself; otherwise, he’d have to use staples or sutures, like the medical droids usually did, and wouldn’t that be fun and time-consuming?

  He looked down at the patient, spotted another gleam of shrapnel under the bright OT lights, and grabbed it gently, wiggling it slowly out. It had just missed the aorta. “There’s enough scrap metal in this guy to build two battle droids,” he muttered, “and still have some left over for spare parts.” He dropped the metal into the steel bowl, with another clink. “I don’t know why they even bother putting armor on ’em.”

  “Got that right,” Zan said. “Stuff won’t stop anything stronger than a kid’s pellet gun.”

  Jos put two more fragments of the grenade into the pan, then straightened, feeling his lower back muscles protest the position he’d been locked into all day. “Scope ’im,” he said.

  Tolk ran a handheld bioscanner over the clone. “He’s clean,” she said. “I think you got it all.”

  “We’ll know if he starts clanking when he walks.” An orderly began wheeling the gurney over to the two FX-7 medical droids that were doing the patching up. “Next!” Jos said wearily. He yawned behind his face mask, and before he’d finished there was another trooper supine in front of him.

  “Sucking chest wound,” Tolk said. “Might need a new lung.”

  “He’s lucky; we’re having a special on them.” Jos made the initial incision with the laser scalpel. Operating on clone troopers—or, as the staff of Rimsoo Seven tended to call it, working the “assembly line”—was easier in a lot of ways than doing slice and stitch on individuals. And, since they were all the same genome, their organs were literally interchangeable, with no worry about rejection syndrome.

  He glanced over at one of the four other organic doctors working in the cramped operating chamber. Zan Yant, a Zabrak surgeon, was two tables away, humming a classical tune as he sliced. Jos knew Zan would much rather be back in the cubicle the two of them shared, playing his quetarra, tuning it just right so that it would produce the plangent notes of some Zabrak native skirl. The music Zan was into lately sounded like two krayt dragons mating, as far as Jos was concerned, but to a Zabrak—and to many other sentient species in the galaxy—it was uplifting and enriching. Zan had the soul and the hands of a musician, but he was also a decent surgeon, because the Republic needed medics more than entertainers these days. Certainly on this world.

  The remaining six surgeons in the theater were droids, and there should have been ten of them. Two of the other four were out for repairs, and two had been requisitioned but never received. Every so often Jos went through the useless ritual of filing another 22K97(MD) requisition form, which would then promptly disappear forever into a vortex of computerized filing systems and bureaucracy.

  He quickly determined that the sergeant—the remnants of his armor had the green markings that denoted his rank—indeed needed a new lung. Tolk brought a freshly cloned organ from the nutrient tanks while Jos began the pneumonectomy. In less than an hour he had finished resecting, and the lung, grown from cultured stem cells along with dozens of other identical organs and kept in cryogenic stasis for emergencies such as this, was nestled in the sergeant’s pleural cavity. The patient was wheeled over for suturing as Jos stretched, feeling vertebrae unkink and joints pop.

  “That’s the last of them,” he said, “for now.”

  “Don’t get too comfortable,” said Leemoth, a Duros surgeon who specialized in amphibious and semiaquatic species. He looked up from his current patient—an Otolla Gungan observer from Naboo, who had had his buccal cavity severel
y varicosed by a sonic pistol blast the day before. “Word from the front is, another couple of medlifters will be here in the next three hours, if not sooner.”

  “Time enough to have a drink and file another pathetic plea for a transfer,” Jos said as he moved toward the disinfect chamber, pulling off the skin-gloves as he went. He had learned long ago to cope with whatever was wrong now and not worry about future problems until he had to. It was the mental equivalent of triage, he had told Klo Merit, the Equani physician who was also Rimsoo Seven’s resident empath. Merit had blinked his large, brown eyes, their depths so strangely calming, and said that Jos’s attitude was healthy—up to a degree.

  “There is a point at which defense becomes denial,” Merit had said. “For each of us, that point is positioned differently. A large part of mental hygiene lies simply in knowing when you are no longer being truthful with yourself.”

  Jos came out of his momentary reverie when he realized that Zan had spoken to him. “What?”

  “I said this one has a lacerated liver; I’ll be done in a few more minutes.”

  “Need any help?”

  Zan grinned. “What am I, a first-year intern at Coruscant Med? No problem. Sewn one, sewn ’em all.” He started humming again as he worked on the trooper’s innards.

  Jos nodded. True enough; the Fett clones were all identical, which meant that, in addition to no rejection syndrome concerns, the surgeons didn’t have to worry about where or how the plumbing went. Even in individuals of the same species there was often considerable diversity of physiological structure and functionality; human hearts all worked the same way, for example, but the valves could vary in size, the aortal connection might be higher in one than in another … there were a million and one ways for individual anatomies to differ. It was the biggest reason why surgery, even under the best of conditions, was never 100 percent safe.