The Cestus Deception

by Steven Barnes

  available only to the unliving. "I must inform you that the entire car

  is surrounded by some kind of interference field."

  "Well I never!" Lady Por'Ten said and pulled out her personal

  comlink. After a bit of fiddling, she looked up; all the color had

  drained from her narrow face, her customary haughty manner muted.

  "He's correct."

  "Where are they taking us?" Debbikin asked.

  The droid paused for a moment before answering. "We have taken

  one of the obsolete tunnel systems and are currently being shunted

  onto a mine track. I project that our probable destination, based upon

  information dealing with other kidnap/murder scenarios—"

  "Murder?" she shrieked.

  Ignoring her distress, the droid continued. "I regret to inform

  you that there is approximately a thirteen percent chance that the intent

  of this action is, ultimately, the death of every person in this

  car."

  The Five Family executives glanced around at each other, mouths

  quivering in shock.

  The car went a bit farther, made a sharp right turn. It stopped, and

  then slowly, inexorably, they felt it sink beneath them.

  "Yes, as I anticipated, one of the mining tracks. This is not good, as

  it is not a part of the central system, and therefore may not show up

  on the maps. If the beacon has been disabled, which is probable, I

  project our chance of being rescued as approximately one in twelve."

  "One in . . . twelve?"

  "Yes. Unless you would like the chance of us both being rescued

  and of all of you being recovered alive. In which case the chance is

  closer to one in six hundred fifty, based upon kidnap and homicide

  statistics—"

  "Shut up!" Lord Por'Ten roared, and stood. The car had finally

  come to a stop. Now they could hear footsteps on the roof, their eyes

  following them as one portentous thud at a time, they moved back to

  the rear, and then stopped.

  They glanced at each other, and Quill had opened his mouth to

  speak when a figure with thick ropes of tentacle wriggling from his

  head swung lightly down and smashed through the roof's plastine

  partition. Jagged shards scattered as he landed without a sound, in

  marked contrast to the heavier tread heard up on the roof.

  A Nautolan! But what did he want?

  His eyes were huge and black, with no apparent irises, but with a

  filmy coating that seemed to shift in opacity from moment to moment

  depending on the angle of light. He was empty-handed, but

  there was a handle tucked into his belt, and Debbikin knew instantly

  that it represented a threat of some kind.

  "Who are you?" Quill spluttered.

  "My name is Nemonus. Greetings from Count Dooku," the Nautolan

  said.

  "Wha-what do you want?"

  "You seek to change a bargain," the intruder said.

  "What? What are you talking about?"

  The intruder turned, so slowly that he seemed like a machine in

  low gear, a disturbing contrast to the terrifying speed with which he

  had smashed through the roof. "You must learn that there is no place

  you can hide. A deal was struck. Those who renegotiate price may

  find other matters transformed as well."

  Although ordinarily the most imperious of men, Por'Ten completely

  melted before the intruder's molten gaze. "Wha-what are you

  talking about?"

  The intruder came closer. His lips thinned. The tentacles about his

  head curled slowly, insinuatingly, as he spoke, twitching with their

  own crazed energy. He whispered, yet in some odd way the whisper

  was louder than a shout. "My master promised to keep you out of the

  war. That you would not be involved. That can change, my friends.

  That can all change."

  Young Debbikin glanced at the others, nearing panic now. "No!

  We have kept our pledges to you. All of them."

  The intruder sneered. "Then why have you raised your prices,

  threatened to withhold shipment without further credits?"

  There was a moment of relief as they glanced at each other. For a

  moment, they had feared that he knew of the negotiations with the

  Jedi Kenobi! No, this was something completely different, Cestus

  Cybernetics' demand for a 10 percent surcharge. Llitishi of sales and

  marketing had sworn that Count Dooku would agree if they but held

  firm.

  "It is the war, the war!" Debbikin leaned closer, trying to establish

  a sense of intimacy. "Supply lines have been cut..."

  The intruder was unimpressed. "We have made other arrangements

  for you."

  "Yes, but the timing is off, and we have to buy additional products

  so that all of the equipment matches. We are proceeding, but everything

  is taking longer, and therefore more expensive—"

  The intruder raised his palm. Although he hadn't so much as

  touched them, the force of his personality drove them backward into

  their seats. "You cannot be trusted."

  Quill was using his secondary hands to reach stealthily for the little

  hold-out blaster always attached to his wallet. They knew that he

  was descended from an assassin clan, and that those skills had been

  passed from one generation to the next for half a millennium. If their

  kidnapper made but a single mistake, the blaster would be out, the

  Nautolan would be dead, and they had a chance to regain control of

  the car. And Quill, incidentally, would have redeemed himself.

  "How can you say that! Our dealings with you have placed Cestus

  in jeopardy with the Republic. We would not betray you. If we did,

  we would have no one!" The intruder's back was to Quill. The blaster

  was almost in hand . . .

  Tension crackled in the air. Debbikin kept his eyes on the intruder,

  striving not to reveal by eye movement or the slightest tremor of

  voice that anything was amiss.

  For the first time the intruder seemed to change expressions. The

  film over his black eyes swirled. "Your Families need a lesson. The

  best I can imagine is one written in blood—"

  Quill's blaster was out and moving to the level, its tiny gleaming

  barrel rising to sight at the intruder's back. But without turning, the

  intruder's hand flickered. The gleaming handle at his belt blurred.

  Something that looked like a coil of glowing wire suddenly flexed,

  lashing backward toward Quill's blaster. Three meters long it was, and

  thin as a thread, wrapping around the barrel. With the slightest twist

  of the intruder's wrist, the blaster was sliced in half, the grip suddenly

  glowing white-hot. Quill dropped the blaster, howling from singed

  fingers, and thrust them into his mouth, sucking and nursing them.

  "Now then." Kit Fisto smiled grimly. "Shall we negotiate?"

  37

  By the time Obi-Wan arrived at the palace, the halls were in an

  uproar. He was hustled into G'Mai Duris's presence to see the regal

  X'Ting hunched in her seat listening to the words of a round, shortlegged

  Zeetsa with a very worried expression.

  "—Regent Duris," the leathery blue creature said in conclusion.

  Her stubby arms pointed at a glowing map hovering in the air. Her

  eyes
traced the map with concern.

  "Excuse me, Shar Shar," Obi-Wan said as softly as he could. "If

  there are concerns with the transportation grid that necessitate the

  postponement of the day's negotiations, perhaps I should return at

  another—"

  Duris glanced up, an expression of surprise and then tears of gratitude

  overflowing her faceted eyes. "Master Jedi!" she said. "Obi-

  Wan. I am afraid we have an emergency. Thank goodness you are

  here!"

  "Indeed?" he asked. "How can I be of assistance?"

  "The Five Families should have been here an hour ago. Their private

  car seems to have disappeared."

  "Disappeared?" Obi-Wan managed to conceal the pleasure in his

  voice. "How is that possible?"

  "The entire planet is honeycombed with tunnels. Many of them

  are unmapped. We can only assume that someone, for their own

  purposes, shunted the car off its route into one of these secondary

  pathways."

  "And as yet you have received no communication?"

  "None," she said.

  Obi-Wan studied the entire map, his face set sternly. "May I assume

  that the other cars traveling along the map have sensors to

  avoid collision?"

  "My engineer can answer that question," Duris said.

  The engineer was a small, graying human who looked as if the current

  stress might cost him his few remaining sprigs of hair. "Yes, the

  sensors are excellent."

  "Tell me," Obi-Wan asked Duris, "what is known of the situation

  at this time?"

  "A group of Five Family executives were kidnapped."

  "This Desert Wind group we've heard of?"

  "We do not know," she replied. "We've heard little from them in

  the past year, and considered their threat broken. Frankly, it doesn't

  seem like their style."

  Obi-Wan closed his eyes and counted to five, and then opened

  them again, retaining his most serious expression. "Can you holomap

  the entire system?"

  The engineer nodded. "Well, of course, but why?"

  "In order to do something like this, to make the car disappear, they

  have to have removed it from the grid. The individual magcars

  should react to the absence of a moving object, slowing and speeding

  themselves in compensation. The degree of disruption will increase

  the closer we get to the point of departure."

  "But they have clearly affected our computers. They left no

  trace—"

  "They left no direct data trace. But can the phantom car influence

  proximity sensors on other system vehicles?"

  "Well...," the engineer's mouth suddenly widened as he grasped

  Obi-Wan's implication. "No. The safety system is off the main grid,

  a backup system to prevent a single mistake in central command

  from causing a systemwide catastrophe."

  "Good," Obi-Wan said, as the complete system sprang to life in a

  floating web of glowing silver threads. "Now I want you to filter for

  proximity feedback from the cars themselves, showing their actual

  positions and their projected positions according to schedule."

  The engineer blanched. "But . . . we are not on Coruscant, sir.

  We have no computer fast enough to find the original point of

  departure—"

  Obi-Wan raised his hand. "I am not searching for a thing. I need

  to sense something that is not there. Where computers falter, the

  Force may prevail. Please. Give me the images."

  The engineer gawped at Obi-Wan. Then Duris nodded her head

  and waved her primary hands, and he performed as requested. Soon

  every image on the grid was doubled. "Make the projected images

  red, and the actual ones blue," Obi-Wan said, his voice dropping low.

  Duris remembered stories of these mystic warriors, and fought to

  repress a tremor of almost supernatural awe. She nodded to the engineer,

  and a series of ghostly overlay images began to form. Impossibly

  complex, all of it, because as each car accelerated or decelerated to

  compensate for the missing car, they began to interfere with other

  cars on the tracks, causing them to slow or speed in a widening ripple

  effect.

  Obi-Wan stood in the middle of the vast rippling maze, his eyes

  half lidded, arms outstretched as if actually feeling the entire web of

  motion. Then, slowly, he turned and pointed to a stretch of tunnel

  between one of the outer rings of luxury apartments and the central

  city. "This," he said, "is where the phantom car originated. It is therefore

  here that the real car went offline."

  Duris glanced at the engineer, who hunched his shoulders. Perhaps.

  The Jedi traced a line along a branching tunnel. "And it went

  here . . . " The tunnel branched again. He traced his finger along one

  of the paths, and then backtracked and took the other. "And then

  here, where it slowed and changed levels . . . "

  The throne room was blindingly silent. The quiet heightened the

  impact of each word almost unendurably. "And then it began moving

  again, until..."

  He cocked his head sideways. "This is strange. There is no track

  indicated here. Should there be?"

  The engineer cleared his throat. In fact, he looked a little frightened,

  regarding their guest with something halfway between dread

  and awe. "Well..." He consulted a holo rotating above his briefcase,

  and raised his head again a moment later, that tense crease of his lips

  deepened. "There is a utility corridor that was taken off the map because

  it was in bad repair, and not up to recent safety standards."

  Obi-Wan's eyes were still closed. "But?"

  "But in fact, if it is still up to the former specifications, it could take

  the load safely."

  Again, silence. Obi-Wan nodded. "Here you will find your missing

  car.

  The engineer swallowed hard. "Regent Duris," he said. "There remains

  the problem of reaching it. If we assume that the kidnappers

  are tied into the central network, they'll see anything we do to

  reroute a car. That reduces our options to acting off the grid. It will

  take hours to position a strike squad. Have we that much time?"

  Obi-Wan looked at her. Duris chewed at her chitinous lower lip.

  If this was Desert Wind, then there was little fear for the lives of the

  Five Families. Desert Wind kidnapped, but had never killed in cold

  blood. Not their style. But they had doubtlessly made arrangements

  for their captives to be spirited to some more secretive place—and

  from there, no one could predict what might happen.

  Of course, it was always possible that it was not Desert Wind. On

  Cestus, misinformation was simply a fact of life . . .

  Glancing back at Obi-Wan, she realized that she had not, for even

  a moment, doubted that this amazing man had done what all of Cestus's

  computers could not. That by power of his mind and the mysterious

  Force, Obi-Wan Kenobi had found their missing Family

  members. With all that had happened in the last day she felt dazed

  and confused as she had not in all her time on the throne, as if suffering

  from a mild form of shock.

  "You might be right," she said. "We may have no time, and the

 
usual means will not serve. Master Jedi—have you a plan?" Somehow,

  she knew he would.

  "Tell your security people not to shoot until they've made an identification,"

  Obi—Wan murmured.

  "What are you going to do?"

  Obi-Wan paused for dramatic effect, and then replied: "Something

  drastic."

  0re cars, equipment shuttles, passenger vehicles, mining machines,

  and repair droids all flowed through the same labyrinth of

  magrails and lev tracks, zipping past and moving around each other

  as if they were living, breathing things, individual tissue structures

  within a larger organism, cells in the body Cestus, drones in the technological

  hive.

  And atop one of those cars, clinging to the surface with nerves and

  muscles honed by decades of training, crouched Jedi Knight Obi-

  Wan Kenobi. He compensated for impossibly swift and sharp turns,

  accelerations, and decelerations with a profound understanding of

  the rhythms of the universe and its invisible currents.

  Sequestered in his rooms, Obi-Wan had privately absorbed the

  shuttle system patterns over the course of a long, sleepless night. In

  G'Mai's presence he'd spent no more than a few minutes updating

  that research. Even if they had watched him spend hours immersed

  in study, what he was about to attempt would still have been impressive

  to them. With the secret practice and knowledge, his next

  actions would appear miraculous, putting his hosts—especially the

  volatile Quill—off-balance emotionally.

  But first he had to actually do it, knowing as he did that sensors on

  the various vehicles observed his every move.

  The vehicle began to slow and veer to the left. Following instincts

  far beyond the level of conscious thought, he jumped even before he

  saw the next car.

  For a moment Obi-Wan clung to the tunnel's wall, then felt a blast

  of air as the next magcar barreled toward him. For a moment its

  transparisteel walls resembled the great glowing eyes of some subterranean

  creature. He glimpsed commuters who had been absorbed in

  their datapads or conversations suddenly stare at the man hanging

  upside down from the top of the tunnel, and they gasped as he

  dropped toward them. A yellow-skinned Xexto flailed her four arms

  in shock, screaming that the poor human was attempting some kind

  of bizarre suicide.

  Sorry, Obi-Wan mouthed, then clutched the front of the car,