Star Wars®: The Cestus Deception

by Steven Barnes

  This was disaster beyond belief. The mission was utterly compromised, had perhaps been from the beginning. His unknown adversary had waited until the worst possible moment to sabotage him.

  Obi-Wan could think of nothing to say.

  “I understand now,” Lady Por’Ten said, “how the Jedi have attained their impressive reputations.”

  G’Mai Duris stood, her secondary arms fidgeting nervously, her golden flesh gone pale with rage. Her immense form trembled as if in the throes of an avalanche. “You will leave. Immediately,” she said.

  His mind had stuttered, searching for a way out of the trap, for some explanation, however ineffectual. “G’Mai—” he began.

  She had drawn herself fully to her most impressive height, her bulk radiating power. “That is Regent Duris.” Her voice cut like an arctic wind. “You Jedi. What you cannot win by diplomacy you seek to gain by fear. And if not that, fraud.” She colored a bit at that last word.

  He shucked all pretense and tried to speak as directly as he could, knowing that all was lost. “If negotiations will not come to a positive conclusion, war will touch your shores.”

  “It already has,” said Duris, wings fluttering with distress. She was in an impossible position, whatever personal gratitude she might feel for him neutralized by his perfidy. “There has already been destruction, and betrayal, and the death of hope. If that is not war, I do not understand the concept.” She was trembling with rage and something more…fear.

  Her next words emerged low and hoarse. “I trusted you. Trusted…” Then Duris collected herself. “Go. While you can.”

  Obi-Wan bowed low, his eyes sweeping the room. His eyes met Quill’s, who didn’t bother to conceal his venomous sense of triumph.

  From what unseen corner had the blow been struck? He left, and after a moment Snoil followed him out. His last image was of G’Mai Duris on her throne. One of the most terrible things in this was not the war that threatened, not even the humiliation. It was the personal damage he had done to a good person, someone who had believed in him. She, more than anyone, understood what was at stake, and that she sat in the midst of a web of deceit. And now he had left her with no one to trust. No one at all.

  44

  Initially Trillot was nervous as Ventress swept into her chambers, but as soon as she saw her visitor’s mood, the X’Ting relaxed. “So. It is ended? The Jedi leaves?”

  Despite her scathingly cold smile, Ventress shook her head. “He’ll try to return. I know him.”

  “I tell you that my spies—”

  “See with their eyes,” she said with contempt. “The Families will make their move now. Quill has informed them that if Kenobi broadcasts his information to Palpatine, Cestus Cybernetics is done. I think we can trust them to be suitably…definitive in response.”

  Murdering a Jedi? What in the brood’s name had Trillot gotten herself into? Too late to complain now…nothing to do but ride it out. Trillot cursed the day she had agreed to help the Confederacy, the day she had betrayed the Jedi. Bantha muck. While she was at it, why not simply curse the day she was hatched? That was, in the final analysis, more to the point.

  45

  No honor guard appeared at the spaceport to see Obi-Wan and Doolb Snoil away. Considering the hash he had made of his attempts at diplomacy, the Jedi was glad to be allowed to leave at all.

  The guards who escorted him to the spaceport said not a word until they actually reached the site. One of them turned as if to speak, then paused, looking down at the ground. He walked away, shaking his head.

  Obi-Wan walked up the landing ramp into the Republic transport ship. Behind him, Snoil shuffled along with only the slightest of slime trails on the track. “Obi-Wan,” he said plaintively. “What happened?”

  “I am not certain, my friend,” he said, and as the door closed behind him, he strapped himself in. His mind was still far away. Something was wrong, had been wrong since his arrival. No. Not then. But things had disintegrated soon after. What had been the trigger? He did not know. Blast! If only he knew the source of the incriminating holo! He turned to the lawyer. “On Coruscant,” he said, “tell all that you know. You performed well. Whatever fault exists is mine—” He paused, the vaguest of suspicions forming in the back of his mind. “Or perhaps—”

  “What?”

  Obi-Wan sighed. “I don’t know, but I felt something. From the beginning, there have been factors beyond my understanding. I have missed something, and that blunder made all the difference.”

  “Oh dear,” Snoil said. “All of that planning and work. I never dreamed things could go so wrong.”

  Obi-Wan shook his head, but said nothing. He had no words to comfort his distraught friend. This was, in every possible way, a complete disaster.

  As soon as Xutoo made the basic preparations, the ship lifted off. As it rose, Obi-Wan turned to Snoil. “I’ve made my decision,” he said. “It is no longer safe for you on Cestus. You will go, but I must stay. My job here isn’t finished. I’m going to join Master Fisto.”

  Snoil’s eyestalks trembled with amazement as the Jedi began a checklist of preparations for jettisoning an escape pod. “But you were told to leave! It was a direct request, and any deviation would be a violation of Code Four-Nine-Seven Point Eight—”

  “I’ve gone a little too far to be worried about such niceties,” he said. “We have other mynocks to slice.” He managed a smile. “Good-bye, Doolb. You’re a good friend. Go home now. There’s no more work for a barrister here.”

  “But…sir!”

  Obi-Wan turned to Xutoo and gripped his shoulder. “Get him home safely.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  And so saying, Obi-Wan pressed a series of switches, and the capsule sealed. It seemed to sink into the wall behind it. A moment later there was a light shoosh sound, and the Jedi was gone.

  The ship had just crested the upper atmosphere, making the transition to vacuum. Ground-based and orbiting scanners tracked every ship exiting or leaving, but at this point, where the two sets of data overlapped, it was easiest to cloak activity.

  A red warning light blinked in front of him, indicating that the emergency system was about to begin its instructional sequence. Obi-Wan disabled it: the computer voice would merely be a distraction. He intended to pilot the craft by skill and instinct. The escape capsule had both manual and automatic settings, and could maneuver its way to a ground beacon, but Obi-Wan dared not allow its repulsors to fire too quickly: their radiation would be too easily detected.

  So he plummeted, counting on the capsule’s heat shielding and primitive aerodynamics, tweaking the glide angle slightly as he headed down toward the Dashta Mountains.

  He had to time this very, very carefully, waiting until he was low enough that his appearance on the scanner wouldn’t be connected with a disgraced diplomat’s transport. Let them think his capsule was merely an unlicensed pleasure craft.

  As Obi-Wan counted off the seconds, the heat became more and more oppressive. Crash foam, doubling as insulation, billowed up shoulder-high in protection. As the temperature of the outermost layer of shielding climbed to thousands of degrees, he was sobered to realize that he was dropping blind, his fate entrusted to the unknown pod technicians. He hated that dependence even more than he disliked flying, far preferring to trust his own profound connection to the Force. But there was no avoiding it. This time, he had to trust.

  It was time. His fingers found the repulsor button and…

  Nothing happened.

  As the ground raced toward him he watched the altimeter, fighting a surge of panic. Something was wrong. His metal tomb hurtled toward the ground at such speed that, if it struck, they wouldn’t retrieve enough midi-chlorians to enlighten a Jedi amoeba.

  Obi-Wan struggled to reach his lightsaber, the mushy thick foam filling the capsule making every effort a struggle. When he finally wrapped his hands around the silver handle, he angled it away from his body and triggered the blade. Foam smoldered. Spark
s and smoke erupted in the narrow, cramped confines. The capsule juddered, wind beginning to peel away the external shielding beginning at the point where the lightsaber beam had damaged its aerodynamics. Critical seconds dragged past as the external layers sloughed away. But he’d achieved the desired effect: the repulsors’ trigger circuits ran through the capsule’s skin, very near his shoulder. If he couldn’t send a signal by pushing a button, the lightsaber’s energy field might power that circuit more directly.

  Nothing happened. All right, then…a few centimeters to the left.

  He tried again, burning a second hole in the capsule. More of the outer shielding peeled away, but luckily, this time the circuit fired.

  One huge jolt, and then another. Blessedly, the damaged external shielding shucked away clean. The capsule parted like two halves of a nut shell, and Obi-Wan was in a thin, transparent, winged capsule. Wind whistled through the lightsaber holes, but the inner life-support capsule, constructed of a nearly indestructible cocooned monofilament, held together better than the external shell.

  After the first few moments, air flowed freely. Watching pieces of metal flipping away around him, Obi-Wan held his breath as the automatic repulsor circuits took the capsule into a smooth glide path. A few rough moments, and then he was sailing in a long, shallow unpowered arc. His descent began to slow. The wind howled against the outside skin. Below him, the desert floor was an endless stretch of brown and dull green spots. Far ahead, visible only as darker wrinkles beneath the cloud cover, lay the Dashta Mountains. In minutes he’d be close enough to see ground detail. Minutes to think, and plan, and allow his disappointment to simmer into pure energy. Obi-Wan watched a chunk of pod skin flipping away around him. Other chunks turned end-over-end, tumbling away from him. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if a blip showed up on a scanner. Not necessarily a bad thing, he thought. If there is someone behind this, and if they damaged my escape pod, then they might be scanning the sky. If they see the metal debris, they might just conclude that their plot worked…

  Whoever they are. And whatever they want.

  Doolb Snoil watched the display as their ship rose, freeing itself of Cestus’s gravitational pull. Once free, it paused as the nav computers plotted their jump to hyperspace. He already missed his friend Obi-Wan, and was formulating an explanation to the Chancellor. What would he say? Was there any way to cast this disaster in a favorable light? He doubted it, but…

  Xutoo’s voice disturbed his reverie. “Ah, sir, we may have a problem.” There was an edge of something Snoil understood all too well in that voice: controlled panic.

  “Problem? Problem? Master Kenobi promised there would be no problem!”

  “I don’t think he took that into consideration, sir.”

  “What?”

  From a point between Cestus’s two moons, a small ship approached them, bearing in like a bird of prey. It was small and black, with an ominously spare design that said it was built for pure practicality. A war drone. A hunter-killer.

  Mind working at fevered overdrive, Snoil managed to rationalize the ship’s presence. Perhaps it’s just visiting Cestus, and has mistakenly aligned its flight path with our departure point—

  Then all such optimistic speculations were revealed as foolish. The new ship fired a probe droid at them. The intelligent weapon spiraled in, locked on target, and began to home in, a spinning ball of death. A salute from the Five Families?

  The consummate professional, Xutoo managed to keep his voice calm at a moment when Snoil wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. “I’ve commenced evasive maneuvers, but I don’t know. Sir, I would suggest that you follow General Kenobi’s example and evacuate.”

  All Snoil could say was: “Aiyee!”

  The ship began to make looping evasive maneuvers. More probe droids must have joined the first, because they rocked and juddered with blasts as Xutoo did his best.

  “Sir,” Xutoo repeated. “I suggest you go.”

  “No. I will stay here with you. Master Kenobi promised I would be safe.”

  “I can’t make you go, sir, but in a moment I’ll jettison the remaining escape pods in an attempt to distract the missile.” Listening to Xutoo’s machinelike calm somehow penetrated Snoil’s defensive mechanisms as even the explosions had not. No escape pods! He broke. “No! No! Wait for me!”

  Pushing himself to emergency speed, Snoil moved as rapidly as a human being might stroll, wedging himself into the escape capsule. He pushed the automatic sequence button, and his eyestalks twined in anguish. Crash foam billowed up around him, and sight was lost. For a moment he could barely breathe. Then his lips found the emergency nozzle and air flowed into his lungs.

  Then things went black as his pod sank back into and through the ship’s walls. He felt a rush, and then a jolt…followed by sudden, deep quiet. Then a sensation of floating.

  Snoil had no control at all—everything was managed by the automatic emergency program. A screen opened up before his eyes, some kind of computerized display showing the exterior of the ship as six other escape pods burst free.

  Two of them attracted probe droids away from Snoil as he plummeted toward the atmosphere, but the screen showed the ship evading one…two…three of the droids, and he began to feel more optimistic.

  Then the screen went very, very bright. When the light dimmed, only smoke and debris remained. Xutoo and the ship were gone, destroyed.

  He stared, horrified but almost incapable of speech, watching as missiles streaked after the remaining pods.

  Snoil was frozen with fear as the pod descended. The pods spun crazily as evasion programs began to kick in. One of the droids rushed past a spinning pod—and headed directly for him.

  He watched as one pod after another was blown completely out of the sky, now beginning to turn blue as they skimmed deeper into the atmosphere. He heard something babbling in the background and became horribly aware that that sound was his own voice, raving out against the moment of expected pain and finality. “I’ll sue! Or my, my heirs will sue! For damages and emotional distress…” A probe passed immediately close to him on the left, in pursuit of one of his capsule’s programmed distractions. The resultant explosion painted the sky yellow and sent his pod juddering to the right, coincidentally forcing another droid to miss its target. “Oh my, that was close, and—” another horrendous explosion, and he made a bubbling, shrieking sound. “And oh my!”

  He turned to look back up—once he managed to determine which direction “up” was—and saw another missile heading directly for him. “No, no, I was joking! I’ll retract that complaint! I’ll file a full admission of guilt or wrongdoing, or…Aiyee!”

  And in the instant before discourse would have become terminally irrelevant, one of the other escape pods swooped back in, intercepting the offending missile.

  As Snoil closed his eyes and offered his soul to the Broodmaster, a new explosion dwarfed all the others in both scope and effect on Snoil, who realized that his shell would certainly need washing after all this.

  Then suddenly, there was nothing but silence from outside. To his wonder, he realized that he had survived the storm. Now there was just the little matter of the landing.

  A red warning light flashed on the control panel, and the capsule requested a series of manual operations, warning him in a calm female voice that certain “explosive impacts have damaged the capsule’s automatic systems. Please do not worry, as the manual backup systems can perform perfectly well. Please perform the following functions in the sequence requested.”

  And one after another he did perform the tasks as requested, while simultaneously watching the ground explode toward him. The altimeter shifted toward zero with nauseating rapidity. “—Now disengage the external shields—” A switch. “—and now please, within five seconds, disengage each of the primary source nodes, routing all of their power to the secondary chamber—” Which switch? The altimeter dizzied him, but he dared not look at it, nor glimpse the ground spinning up at
him like a vast hand rising to swat him from the sky.

  “And now please trigger the main repulsor.”

  Disaster was almost upon him now. Certainly nothing he did would make any difference. Surely this next moment would be his last. Surely—

  A violent whip sideways almost made Snoil’s stomach roll. The capsule bobbed as the repulsors fired, and the air outside flamed pink. Snoil managed to breathe again, his eyestalks ceasing their wild and frantic dance as he drifted toward the ground below.

  Far below him and to the west, Obi-Wan Kenobi rolled his escape pod into shadows and heaped sand and rocks atop it. Instinct made him gaze up at the sky, where streaks of red and white blossomed against the clouds. He frowned, trying to make out the shapes, and then recognized them for what they were: shattered chunks of the ship reentering the atmosphere. His heart was heavy, fearing that his bungled mission had cost the lives of Xutoo and the harmless, brilliant Snoil. How had this happened? What secret forces opposed them here…?

  Then he saw the purple glow of repulsor fire, and relaxed just a bit. Someone had escaped the ship. And Snoil was nothing if not lucky. There was more than a chance that his old friend remained alive.

  And that would be good. If anything on Cestus could be considered certain, it was this: they would need every strong hand and agile mind in the hours ahead.

  46

  Obi-Wan disguised his distress signal with narrow-burst encoded messages. Less than two hours later, Thak Val Zsing and Sirty reached him with a dozen recruits. He sent half of them after Snoil and followed the others back to camp, where he rejoined Kit Fisto and the clone troopers.

  There he was heartened to see all that had been accomplished. They fed him, listened to the short version of his narrow escape, and then settled down for serious conversation. “The least of our problems,” he concluded, “is that negotiations with G’Mai Duris and the leadership of Cestus have failed.”