4
Hand over hand, Obi-Wan and Jesson climbed down a hollow stone tube barely as wide as their shoulders. As he gripped each rung of the ladder in turn, Obi-Wan wondered: what would they do if the bottom was sealed? Or blocked? In such a terribly constricted space, there was no room to maneuver. The cannibals could simply drop rocks down on them until—
Then his foot touched the ground. Jesson reached the bottom a moment later, and they were out in a large rocky chamber.
Using his captured spear as a staff, Jesson led Obi-Wan away from the ladder, across a chamber as broad as a Chin-Bret playing field. Dim wreaths of mold illuminated some of the walls: immense statues lined the room, images of gigantic, regal X’Ting in various imperious poses, each of them at least thirty meters in height, some twice that size. He could just barely make out the insectoid features. Most were built into one of the walls in apparently endless array. A few were freestanding.
Despite the spear, Jesson was limping, the Jedi noticed, and seemed winded. “We can rest, if you need to,” Obi-Wan said.
“No,” Jesson gasped. “I want to get as far away from the entrance as possible.”
Obi-Wan looked back. “They don’t seemed to be following us,” he said.
Jesson stopped, his brow furrowed. “You’re right. I wonder why?”
Obi-Wan considered the possibilities, and didn’t like what came to mind. Under what circumstances did predators fail to pursue fresh meat into the open? “Are these other statues hollow?”
“Perhaps.” Jesson paused. “I think I have heard of this, yes.”
“Perhaps they live there. They could be watching us now.”
“But why don’t they pursue us?”
“Fear. Of us, or…” Suddenly, the cavern’s open floor seemed far too exposed and vulnerable for Obi-Wan’s taste. “Let’s keep moving, shall we?”
Jesson nodded agreement and led the way across the wide-open space between the ladder and their destination, a cavern wall some hundreds of meters distant. The ground beneath their feet was spongy, more like farm loam than rocky cave soil.
“This way,” Jesson said, and when they had crossed the cavern, he leaned against the wall, gasping for air.
As they took a breather, Obi-Wan looked back the way they had come. The vast statues were so shrouded in darkness that he could barely make them out. What a sight this chamber must be with full illumination! The one statue that had led them down into the chamber was largest of all, its outline fading into shadow. Was this an image of some great leader or warrior, perhaps the last, great queen who had swallowed her pride to bring her people into the Republic’s arms…?
Jesson paused, taking a sip from a small flask of water. He shook his head, and drops of water flicked from the tuft of fur at his thorax.
“Are you all right?” Obi-Wan asked.
“No,” Jesson replied. He paused, then added, “Thank you for saving me.” He said it grudgingly, as if the words hurt his mouth.
“We are companions,” Obi-Wan replied simply. “Which way, now?”
“Well…the other entrance, the one that became sealed after a failed attempt, would be through these tunnels.” He pushed himself away from the wall, and they walked along the cavern’s far edge. Obi-Wan’s feet sank into the flaky soil with each step, a not entirely pleasant sensation. The soil grew harder, and suddenly they were on a meter-wide strip of rock climbing along the wall.
Obi-Wan was happy to be away from the soft cave floor. Something about it disturbed him. What exactly had happened here? His puzzle-solving mind worried at the problem from varied directions as the ground beneath them began to tilt up into a steeper incline.
They climbed along the ascending path for several minutes, finally reaching a tumble of rocks that buried the footpath. There was no way around it. Obi-Wan peered over the side: they were now so far above the ground that his glow rod’s beam simply dissolved into darkness. Jesson poked and prodded at the rocks with the spear. “My brother must have tripped a deadfall here,” he said. A miniature avalanche, designed to protect the secret path. Jesson’s brother had followed a faulty map, or perhaps just made a mistake. Obi-Wan and the X’Ting scrambled up over the rocks and gazed down the other side. Jesson pointed up along the path. “That’s where the other door is. From here, everything looks all right.”
“I hope so,” Obi-Wan said soberly. “I don’t relish the idea of going back up through the statue.”
“Nor do I. All right. Good. We have our path of retreat secure…I think. Let’s follow the map.”
They went back down over the rock tumble, and then farther down the ramp. Gleaming in the lamplight were more statues of various X’Ting in heroic poses. Jesson studied them carefully.
“This is what we need,” he said. Then he began muttering to himself in his people’s clicking, popping speech.
Several of the engraved images depicted X’Ting with primary and secondary arms crossed, legs spread. Some were in male mode, and some in female. Around the heads of these full-size images were clusters of miniature engravings of similar design.
Suddenly Obi-Wan realized what he was looking at: hieroglyphs, images extracted from pictographs of X’Ting and Cestian environments. This was very old, the beginnings of written language. Jesson was reading the wall.
“Sounds and smells,” Jesson said. “Our culture is based on both. There is a code at work here, and if I can only remember my Old X’Tingian will we be able to find the next passage.”
He sniffed along the wall, studied, backed up almost to the edge of the ramp. Obi-Wan looked down into an inky void. They were fifty meters from the ground below. A bad fall.
“Shine the light higher,” Jesson whispered.
Obi-Wan did. There was another level of images up above the lower, and Jesson smiled. “Do you see these images? This says: We are not individuals, but of the hive. We are not to struggle alone, but shoulder to shoulder, and upon the shoulders of past hive heroes.”
Obi-Wan nodded. A fine sentiment.
“Please. Elevate me,” Jesson asked, setting his spear aside.
For a moment Obi-Wan assumed that this was a request for enlightenment, but then realized Jesson was being quite literal. He cupped his hands, and the X’Ting climbed up, balancing himself with all four hands spread against the wall, feeling around. Then his fingers found their objectives, and Obi-Wan heard a sharp clicking sound.
The wall slid back, and an opening appeared. Jesson boosted himself up and disappeared into the hole. For a moment Obi-Wan was worried; then Jesson’s head reappeared. “It’s all clear. A passage between chambers.” He held an arm down, and Obi-Wan passed him the spear. Jesson gripped its shaft as Obi-Wan gathered the Force around him and leaped up to the opening. Then the X’Ting disappeared into the hole.
The hole was less than a meter wide, just large enough for crawling, but not much more. Darkness swallowed them completely, but Jesson shuffled ahead of him, and Obi-Wan had no option but to follow.
They were deep in the hive. The walls and ceiling were all of chewed stone. The roughly pentagonal tube branched off into numerous side tunnels. Again and again Jesson sniffed the path and found an old scent marker telling the way.
The roughness of the chewed surface threatened to abrade Obi-Wan’s hands, and the strain of staying up on his toes as they crawled was slowly burning the muscles in his calves and shoulders. The rasp of his breathing echoed in the tube, making the close spaces seem closer still.
Then Jesson sighed, a long, low sound. The X’Ting warrior was outlined by a dim radiance coming from somewhere ahead of them. He made a contented click-pop mutter, and dropped from sight.
5
Cautiously, Obi-Wan crawled forward until he reached the end of the tube, and looked out.
“Come down,” Jesson whispered.
There was no need to whisper. Nothing lived in this chamber. Its walls were crowded floor to ceiling with empty little pentagonal chambers, each just under a
meter in diameter. An X’Ting larva hatchery? Obi-Wan crawled out and jumped down to another inclined ledge.
Jesson’s faceted eyes shimmered with tears. “This is one of the old breeding chambers,” he said. “We changed in so many ways after the Republic came. The hive was never the same. But this is as it used to be.”
Here the luminescent fungus was bright enough to give a misty view of the floor twenty meters beneath them. It was covered with broken chrysalis shells, some of which might have lain there for a thousand standard years. Had this place ever known brightness or the shining of a star? As Obi-Wan’s eyes adjusted to the light, he could see spires of rock that rose up irregularly through the soil beneath the cast-off X’Ting shells. Stalactites descended from the cavern’s roof.
“Is this the chamber?” Obi-Wan asked.
“The other side,” Jesson said, pointing across the way. “Through the next wall.”
Astounding. Clearly, only an X’Ting could find his way through this labyrinth. The royal eggs had indeed found safe haven.
The chamber was similar to that of the Hall of Heroes: created by water erosion rather than by machines or the flow of lava. Despite its origin, the cubicles chewed in the rock walls implied that it had been modified by countless eons of hive activity, countless millions of willing workers. A thin, milky fog wreathed the floor, but through it he saw vast heaps and furrows of plowed dirt.
“How was the soil deposited here?” he asked. Usually soil was the result of plant and animal action degrading rock over time. Obi-Wan was surprised to find so much of it underground, away from a nurturing sun.
“Remember,” Jesson said, pointing at the walls with his spear, “thousands of generations of us lived down here. Just as we had builders, and warriors, and leaders, there were also those who chewed rock, their digestive systems creating soil in which we could grow our crops. For eons we lived here, and the interior of Cestus was kinder to us than the surface.”
Thousands of generations. A planet whose surface was sand and chewed rock, its interior rich soil.
Truly, the galaxy was beyond imagination in its variety.
They descended along this second ramp, and Obi-Wan found himself lost in thoughts of what all of this might have been like, back before the time of the Republic. He imagined the hive swarming with life, the royal pair presiding over…
Then Obi-Wan’s skin tingled, and he became instantly alert. A ripple in the Force, warning him. “On your guard,” he whispered.
Jesson’s primary and secondary right hands gripped his spear fiercely. “What is it?”
Obi-Wan held up his right hand, demanding quiet. He felt something, a tremor in the soft soil beneath their feet.
Soft. As it had been in the previous chamber.
Soft. As if it were constantly plowed up.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” Jesson said.
“Let’s go on to the other side,” Obi-Wan said.
“I don’t think we’ll make it.”
The ground trembled. A quake? “What is it?” the Jedi asked.
“Worms,” Jesson said, his shoulders quivering, his four hands knotting into fists. “I should have known. They were thought to have retreated deep into the ground since the time of…” He seemed reluctant to speak. “Well, that supposed Jedi, at least.”
“Was that the service this Jedi Master performed for your royals?” Obi-Wan asked, drawing his lightsaber. The soil beneath them continued to heave.
“I don’t know,” Jesson said, then added, “Perhaps. No offense, Master Jedi. You are indeed a mighty warrior, but if I know politicians, nothing much actually happened—he was just honored for being from Coruscant.”
Despite their danger, Obi-Wan had to chuckle. “My opinion of politicians is much like yours,” he confessed. “But I must say that G’Mai Duris seems better than most.”
An abrupt tingle in the Force—and Obi-Wan grabbed Jesson and jumped back just in time. The soil beneath them burst, and the mouth of the first worm appeared. It was dark brown, its skin covered with countless small spikes, every three or four meters marked off with a segmented ring. If the proportions were similar to other such beasts that Obi-Wan had seen, then it was thirty meters long at the least.
And the worm was not alone. Two more burst from the ground, their mouths gaping hungrily. It was too late for Obi-Wan and Jesson to run back to the ledge, and too far make it all the way to their destination. All they could do was find a place to make their stand.
Obi-Wan spotted the first of several limestone spurs poking up through the soil. “Get to the rocks!” he shouted, and they dashed for the only visible safety. One of the worms humped along right behind them, moving almost as fast as a human could run.
Obi-Wan took the rear guard, letting his companion reach safety. The Jedi scrambled up the rock with barely a moment to spare. One of the worms tried to crawl up after them, but now Obi-Wan turned and fought. His lightsaber flashed, and the worm screamed. He couldn’t actually hear the sound, but he felt it clearly through the Force.
Jesson’s grip slipped. The spear rattled to the dirt, and Jesson slid down the rock toward the worm’s cilia-ringed mouth hole. Its razor teeth clamped down on the X’Ting’s right leg, sawing. Obi-Wan was there in an instant, and sliced the creature’s head off. Severed, the head flopped back to the sand…the remaining body still alive and writhing.
Jesson scrambled up, leg lacerated but still functional.
“Thank you, Master Jedi,” he said, shivering. Obi-Wan inspected the wound: the chitinous shell was splintered, exposing the tender pink muscle beneath. He bound it as best he could, and to his credit Jesson made not a single sound of pain, although it had to be brutal. When he was done, Obi-Wan looked down below them. Four worms crawled atop and beneath the soil now, and they showed no signs of abandoning pursuit.
So. This was what had happened to the “true” X’Ting, those who had remained behind. The soil they had built up over ages to grow their crops—burying their dead, fertilizing with their wastes—had finally become deep enough to conceal predators. The X’Ting in that first cavern had been caught unawares, driven into the hollow statues. And once there, they had been unable to open the sealed metal doors. There in the darkness, they had become desperate enough to resort to cannibalism. There they had been trapped.
As Obi-Wan and Jesson were trapped, here on one of the few rock spurs on the floor of this second cavern. Obi-Wan felt the first tiny whisper of despair and bared his teeth. He would not fail. Not die. Not here in the dark. He had a job to do; he would find a way to do it.
The worms hissed at them, their cilia wavering back and forth with a chilling, unnatural appetite.
Jesson grimaced and climbed a little higher as another worm tried to ascend the spur. Obi-Wan seared it with the lightsaber, and it retreated without a sound. Again Obi-Wan could sense its shriek through the Force.
The soil humped up in furrows. From both far ends of the cave additional worms appeared, plowing up the ground and gnashing at them. There had to be ten or fifteen in all by now. Some larger, some smaller, all deadly.
“Maybe they smell us. Or hear us. Or they’re calling each other to dinner.” He shone his light up above them. “What’s that? There’s something up there.”
Favoring his injured foot, Jesson climbed higher on the spur, shining his light as he did.
There was indeed something clinging atop the spur. No, Obi-Wan realized as they climbed. Not something. Someone. And not clinging.
Strapped to the rock by a length of rope was the desiccated corpse of an X’Ting male. Little was left but carapace and dried flesh.
“What happened here?” Jesson whispered. “This was my broodmate Tesser. He made it this far, and no farther.” He climbed higher to touch his own forehead to his dead brother’s withered brow. “He climbed up here to escape the worms. Strapped himself so that he wouldn’t slide back down if he lost consciousness. If he became weak. And here he died.” So. Now
they knew what had happened to two of those who had tried to reach the egg chamber.
“We will die,” Jesson said, his voice flat and drained of emotion.
“That’s defeatist thinking,” Obi-Wan said. “After all, Tesser made it farther than the other. Perhaps we can make it farther still.”
Something like hope blossomed in Jesson’s eyes. “You have a plan, Jedi?”
“Not yet, but I will.”
What distance to the far wall? Obi-Wan measured it with his eyes: sixty meters. Too far to run. The worms would overwhelm the wounded Jesson, and perhaps Obi-Wan, as well. And there was no point in reaching the egg chamber without his X’Ting companion. Without Jesson’s specialized knowledge, he had no chance at all of accessing the vault.
“What equipment do you have?”
“My spear is gone. I have the glowlight, and a grapnel line.”
A grapnel line? That might come in useful. “Let me see it,” Obi-Wan said.
Jesson showed him the gun. It was about the size of a hand blaster, with a filament reel nestled beneath. Fairly standard GAR surplus.
“How much line?” Obi-Wan asked.
“Twenty meters?”
So. They had twenty meters of grapnel cable as standard equipment, but that wasn’t enough to get them over…
To their left jutted another rock spur, this one about fifteen meters from their destination: the far wall. The spur was about thirty meters away. Could they make it that far? No, not with Jesson’s wounded leg.
All right. What, then?
Obi-Wan looked up above their heads and noted a ten-meter stalactite above them, halfway between their current position and that rock spur. A plan began to evolve. It would depend on the strength of that stalactite, but it might just work.
“I’m going to try something,” Obi-Wan said. “If you trust me, we might make it through this.”
“All right, Jedi,” Jesson said. “I have no choice. Let’s hear your idea.”
“You’ll see,” Obi-Wan said, and climbed higher up the spur. The worms humped around the base. From time to time one or two tried to crawl up, but they couldn’t get good purchase on the rock and slipped back down.
Star Wars®: The Cestus Deception Page 39