Star Wars®: The Cestus Deception

by Steven Barnes

  “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 had 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, long 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 chambe
r 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:

  Cannibalism. These X’Ting had eaten their own. There was no lower behavior, no more loathsome foe. The fear of being slain by an opponent was always present, a natural part of a warrior’s life. But the idea of being killed and then devoured…that was something different.

  “I suggest we keep moving,” he said.

  “I agree,” Jesson said, biting at the words. And they continued across the room.

  Something moved. Obi-Wan couldn’t see it, or hear it—he felt it, a displacement of the air around them, a perturbation in the Force.

  “I don’t think we’re alone,” he said.

  Jesson reached for the three-sectioned staff slung across his back. The sections were of clear crystal or acrylic, connected by short lengths of chain. A club and a flail in one, Obi-Wan thought. He hoped the X’Ting used it superbly.

  “That door,” Jesson said, indicating an opening on the far side of the room. This room, like the one above it, had a concave wall, but less sharply angled.

  “Let us make our way there,” Obi-Wan said. “Swiftly. But I suspect that that is where our company awaits.”

  Jesson’s lips pulled back from his teeth, displaying small, sharp, multiple rows. Obi-Wan would not care to have his arm caught in those jaws. “Let them come,” the X’Ting said.

  Step by step they progressed across the floor. They were almost to the doorway when the air’s scent changed. Just a bit, a nose-wrinkling aroma drifting to them on the weakest of breezes. Something that dried tongue and throat, an acid tang reminiscent of stomach gases. Before he could consciously identify the smell, the first glowing eyes appeared. Glittering. Faceted, blinking at them from the darkness.

  Then they were under attack.

  Jesson dropped his lamp almost at once, and although it didn’t extinguish on hitting the ground, the light it gave was slanted and partial. The sparkle of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber was more brilliant, increasing with the hum and flash when he met an opponent’s weapon or body.

  These were X’Ting—the Jedi was sure of that—but X’Ting of a different variety than those he had seen until now. These were not specialized for combat: they were diggers, workers. The oversize jaws implied that they might have been the ones who produced the chewed substance that characterized the hive.

  Most of them carried hefty metal pry bars. Weapons? Tools? For whatever purpose they had originally been intended, the bars would crack any bone they struck.

  There was no more time for thought. The song of Obi-Wan’s lightsaber was long and sour. X’Ting diggers fell before him like scythed grain. They hissed and came on, howling.

  Obi-Wan measured his response, allowing them to come to him, then taking the aggressive posture when advantageous. Ferociously fast, the cannibal X’Ting attacked in a frightening wave, simply wading in swinging their metal bars, trusting in numbers to carry the day.

  Against a Jedi, that was not enough.

  The air around Obi-Wan hissed as his lightsaber swooped and twisted. After the first few moments he had adjusted to the pace and style of attack, and was able to determine a bit more about their adversaries. The first thing he realized was that they were nearly blind from years of groping in darkness, doubtless hunting by smell or hearing. His lightsaber’s flare frightened some of them, freezing them in place, making some hesitant to attack. Those who did not hesitate died hissing their hatred and fear.

  Between strokes, between breaths, Obi-Wan spared fragments of attention to see how Jesson was faring.

  The X’Ting warrior needed no assistance. He performed with a fearless, aggressive, almost weightless agility, kicking and punching in all directions with all six limbs. His weapon whirled like a propeller, almost invisibly fast. He held the three-sectioned staff first by one end, then by the middle, then by the other, swinging it and twisting it into defensive and attacking positions, and every time he moved, one of his enemies fell to rise no more.

  He crouched, sweeping the feet of several creatures from underneath them, and when he came up, Jesson coiled into a ferocious attack position that mimicked a spider stalking the strands of its web.

  Their attackers circled them, hissing and coiling as Obi-Wan and Jesson put their backs together and surveyed the horde.

  “We can’t kill them all,” Jesson said.

  “No,” Obi-Wan agreed. “But we don’t have to. Follow me!”

  Without another word the Jedi plunged into the mass of cannibals, plowing toward the door. He struggled not to think about what would happen to them—or to Jesson, at least—if they were overwhelmed. It was better to stay in the realm of Form III, the lightsaber combat he had practiced for so long. It was better, and no less effective, for one who understood that
defense and attack were two sides of the same coin.

  Left, right, left—he deflected blows, shattered weapons, and severed limbs in a blinding, dazzling display that singed blazing lines in the darkness. Their enemies, though ferocious, were hampered by their near blindness; only an unnatural hunger drove them forward.

  They seemed to be awakening in waves, crawling out of whatever dark holes they had entered. Had these things scavenged in the darkness, on the waste and garbage that every great city produces? Even Coruscant had its ghouls, gangsters, and homeless creatures who had abandoned the light to live in the fissures between social tissues. But the creatures swarming them now matched the worst that great world-city could offer.

  “Run!” Jesson called, and they sprinted toward the doorway. The passage narrowed, and it was a bit harder for the cannibals to reach them, making defense that much easier. He could see the stairway now, only a dozen meters farther away.

  Obi-Wan whirled 360 degrees; he glimpsed Jesson as he deflected and attacked, his three-sectioned staff cracking heads and sending their enemies scurrying for safety.

  But then a mass of wriggling bodies threw themselves at Jesson all at once, and the warrior went down. Obi-Wan arrived just in time to stop a jagged spear from descending into his guide; his lightsaber flashed, leaving the attacker howling with a missing limb. Using the Force to hurl another aside, the Jedi Knight bent swiftly, helping Jesson up from the ground.

  He did not know what fear looked like on the face of an X’Ting, but he was fairly certain that that was the dominant

  emotion in those faceted red eyes. Fear and certainty of death, and perhaps something else.

  Obi-Wan released his grip and Jesson ran at the enemy, leaving his triple staff behind. At first Obi-Wan’s heart sank; then, as the Jedi watched, the X’Ting warrior disarmed the first cannibal who struck at him, wrenching a spear from the creature’s hands. Jesson whirled the javelin until it was nothing but a lethal blur, sending cannibals howling and scrambling into the shadows. He kicked and punched, feinted with his stinger, and then broke heads with his spear. Soon he had broken free and he and Obi-Wan were heading down a ladder, down a long narrow tube, into darkness.