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

by Steven Barnes

  Baraka heartily supported the notion of experienced, professional tacticians and strategists supplementing Kamino’s more theoretical training. After all, when it came down to it the Kaminoans were cloners, not warriors. Baraka had won scars in a hundred battles. Should all that hard-won knowledge die because the Chancellor wanted more of the power collected in his hands? Never! In a soldier, focus and experience reigned supreme: The tide will slacken, the whirlpool will shrink, the krakana will cower. Such is the power of a focused individual. Mon Calamari philosopher Toklar had penned those words a thousand years ago, and they still rang true.

  So beings like Admiral Baraka came to Vandor-3, the second inhabitable planet in Coruscant’s star system, one of many underpopulated worlds where clone training operations were commonly conducted. Clone troopers shipped out to work side by side with native troops on a hundred different systems. They weren’t bad soldiers—in fact, he admired their tolerance for pain and ravenous appetite for training.

  Destined to be a professional soldier from birth as had his father and grandfather before him, Baraka feared that the birth of the clone army was the death of a tradition that had lasted for a dozen generations.

  His sergeant and pilot were both clone troopers, just two more broad-shouldered, tan-skinned human males. Beneath their blast helmets, they had the same flat, broad faces as those crawling from the surf below. “We estimate one point seven percent mortality during these drills,” the sergeant said.

  “Excellent,” Admiral Baraka replied. Clones are cheaper to grow than to train. Even he was appalled by the coldness of that thought, but was unable to generate a smidgen of guilt. All along the beach, he saw nothing save hundreds and ultimately thousands of troopers crawling from the waves, their wet, ragged tracks like those of crippled crustaceans. They were an officer’s dream: an absolutely consistent product that made it possible to plan campaigns with mathematical precision. No commander in history had ever known exactly how his troops would react. Until now.

  Yet still … still … there was a part of Baraka that felt uncomfortable. Was it just the idea of being rendered obsolete? Or was it something else, something even more disturbing that resisted labels?

  He couldn’t decide. Admiral Baraka had a distant sense that his lack of respect for the clones’ dignity and worth had decreased his own, but couldn’t help himself.

  “Keep moving! Keep moving!” he squalled into his microphone. “This exercise has not concluded. I repeat, has not concluded until the objective has been taken …”

  He flew on, quietly noticing his pilot’s and sergeant’s helmets turning toward each other. If they hadn’t been trained so exactingly, his disdain would probably make them hate him. Considering the killing pressure he placed them under, lesser troopers would have gladly roasted him alive.

  But not clone troopers, of course.

  As laser cannon fodder went, they were the very best.

  5

  His day of drills thankfully completed, Nate lay back against the transport’s waffled floor as it flew him and fifty of his brothers back to the barracks. Vandor-3 was the severest training exercise he’d yet endured. According to rumor, the mortality rate had edged close to the maximum 2 percent. He did not resent that statistic, however. Nate understood full well that ancient axiom: The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat.

  He and the other troopers were wounded and weary. Some still trembled with the aftereffects of adrenaline dump. A few chewed nervesticks; one or two sat cross-legged and eyes closed. Some slept, and a few chatted in low tones, mulling over the day’s events.

  To outsiders, they were all the same, but clones saw all of the differences: the scars, the tanning, the difference in body language due to various trainings, vocal intonation variations due to different service stations, changes in scent due to diet. It didn’t matter that they’d all begun life in identical artificial wombs. In millions of tiny ways, their conditioning and experiences were different, and that created differences in both performance and personality.

  He peered out of one of the side viewports, down on one of the towns at the outskirts of Vandor-3’s capital city. This was a small industrial burg, a petroleum-cracking plant of some kind, surrounded by square kilometers of barren, unused land. This was where the barracks had been built, a temporary city built purely for housing and training fifty thousand troopers.

  The barracks was modular, built for quick breakdown or construction, and he had been camped there for the last week, waiting his turn to go through the training drop.

  Clone troopers who had already suffered through the drop gave no clue as to the rigors ahead. He’d seen their suction-cup wounds, of course, but the troopers who had already survived the selenome quieted when a trooper lacking a Vandor-3 drop ribbon approached. Early warning of any kind would inevitably degrade the experience. To an outsider such a warning might seem a courtesy, but troopers knew that prior knowledge reduced the severity and emotional stress of the exercise, and therefore decreased a brother’s future chances of survival.

  The transport dropped them off in front of a huge gray prefab building, housing perhaps three of the troop city’s fifty thousand.

  Floating on a haze of fatigue, Nate dragged his gear from the transport and through the hallways, nodding sardonically to the troopers already sporting the drop ribbons as they applauded, thumbs-upped, or saluted him, acknowledging what he had just endured.

  They had known, he had not. Now he did.

  That was all.

  He caught a turbolift up to the third level, counting down the ranks of bunks until reaching his own. Nate dropped his gear onto the floor beside his bed, stripped off his clothes, and trudged to the shower.

  Nate glimpsed himself in mirrored surfaces as he passed. He had no vanity as ordinary men considered such things, but was intimately aware of his body as a machine, always on the alert for signs that something was wrong, out of place, compromised, damaged. Always aware that the slightest imperfection might negatively affect performance, endangering a mission or a brother’s life.

  Nate’s body was a perfect meld of muscle and sinew, balanced ideally along every plane, optimally muscled, with perfect joint stability and an aerobic capacity that would have humbled a champion chin-bretier. His skin sported recently acquired bruises and abrasions, new wounds to be patched or healed, but such trauma was inevitable.

  A-98 entered the refresher station, moving along to the steaming tile-floored confines of the shower room. He leaned against the gushing water, gasping as it struck his new abrasions. After emerging from the ocean onto the bloody beach they had spent another six hours struggling up a hill to capture a stun-gun-protected flag, working against captured or simulated battle droids. A full day of glorious, grueling torture.

  The soap squirted out of one of his brothers’ hands, and Nate caught it. Then, to the amusement of those around him, he tossed the slippery bar from one hand to another like a carnival performer.

  That action triggered a brief wave of spontaneous silliness and dazzling jugglery as the troopers flipped the bars of soap back and forth to each other almost without watching, as if they were linked by a single enormous nervous system.

  It went on for several hilarious minutes, then died down due to shared exhaustion. They soaped themselves, wincing as astringent foam flowed into cuts and bruises.

  This was his life, and Nate could imagine no other.

  Kamino’s master cloners had ensured that the troopers were no mere ordinary rank-and-file infantry. Ordinary sentient soldiers the galaxy over could be trained from ignorance to basic skill in six to twelve weeks. Standard clone troopers went from infant to fully trained trooper in about nine years, but in waves numbering in tens of thousands. Clone Commandos were a specialized breed, trained for special operations, recruitment of indigenous troops, and training. The Advanced Recon Commandos were a level higher still.

  Ablutions completed, Nate left the shower room and returned
to his bunk. Troopers were quite economical in terms of space: they slept in pods when there was no room for individual quarters. They were simultaneously a multitude and a singularity, thousands of identical human units cloned from a single physical and mental combat paragon, a bounty hunter whose name had been Jango Fett.

  Their lives were simple. They trained, ate, traveled, fought, and rested. Occasionally they were allowed special stress relief, leading to interaction with ordinary sentient beings, but their training had prepared them for the simplest, most direct experience of life imaginable. They were soldiers. They had known nothing else. They dreamed of nothing else.

  Nate found his bunk capsule, kicked his gear into the slot beneath it, and tumbled in, covering his nakedness with the thermal sheet. It automatically assumed seventeen degrees Celsius, the perfect body temperature to provide comfort and optimal healing: one of a trooper’s few luxuries in life.

  Almost immediately, crushing fatigue bore him down into darkness. As it did, where other men might have released into sleep or tossed and turned, mulling trivial matters, Nate closed his eyes and entered rest mode, rapidly dropping toward dream time. Sleep would come quickly when he decided to let it: another valuable part of his training. No tossing and turning for a trooper. One never knew when an opportunity for sleep would come again. When necessary, Nate could sleep on the march.

  But before slumber he was trained to use the thin edge of consciousness, the place between sleeping and waking, to organize information. His subconscious resurrected the day’s events, everything from his ascent to the Nexu to the initial mission briefing, the drop, and the battle with the selenome, struggling onto the beach, and storming the hill afterward.

  Recalled information flowed into preselected mental patterns for storage, contributing to the overall chances of survival and, even more important, of successfully completing assignments.

  He remained in this state for fifty minutes, as the tug of the day’s fatigue grew more insistent. He could stave off that fatigue for unnaturally long periods of time, but saw no reason to do so. He had performed well, and deserved his rest. And anyway: his dreams would continue to evaluate and organize, even if mostly in symbolic form. That was good enough.

  A-98 surrendered consciousness and allowed his body to heal itself. After all, tomorrow was another day.

  Best be prepared.

  6

  In the Jedi Temple’s Archives, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Kit Fisto studied their assignment, the industrial powerhouse known as Ord Cestus.

  Obi-Wan found Cestus an interesting study, a relatively barren rock rich in certain ores, but miserable for most agricultural farming. Much of its surface was desert. The native life-forms included a hive-based insectile people known as the X’Ting, and a variety of large, deadly, and reputedly nonsentient cave spiders.

  The current population stood in the millions, with several advanced cities unsustainable without imported resources: fertilizers and soil nutrients, medications, and spices used to modify the water supply for non-natives.

  “Dangerous,” Kit said, studying at his side. “A simple rationing drove them into Count Dooku’s arms. That could never have happened to a self-sufficient people.”

  This was simple truth. In war, secure supply lines were as crucial as trained soldiers.

  Three hundred standard years before, the relatively primitive X’Ting—a single colony with multiple hives spread around the planet—had contracted with Coruscant, offering land for a galactic prison facility.

  At some point Cestus Penitentiary began a program designed to train and utilize prisoner skills. This became really interesting when a series of financial scandals and an industrial tragedy on Etti IV sent a dozen minor officers of Cybot Galactica, the Republic’s second largest manufacturer, to prison for twenty standard years. The twelve hadn’t been on Cestus for two years before cutting a deal with prison officials to begin research and fabrication of a line of droid products. Access to vast amounts of raw material and virtually free labor released a flood of wealth.

  The twelve were quickly and quietly work-furloughed into opulent homes. Select guards and officials became wealthier still, and a corrupt dynastic conglomerate was born: Cestus Cybernetics, producing an excellent line of personal security droids. The next events were difficult to sort out. Large tracts of land were purchased from the hive at fire-sale prices. Then, following terrible plagues among the X’Ting, Cestus Cybernetics gained almost complete control of the planet.

  Still, life, even for the average offworlder, had been rough before Cestus Cybernetics subcontracted to the fabulously wealthy and successful Baktoid Armor Workshops. It retooled completely, tapping into an interstellar market in high-end military hardware. The economy expanded, and then crashed when the Trade Federation cut ties after the Naboo fiasco …

  Boom. Then, crash. Cycles of growth and decay followed one another with numbing regularity.

  Obi-Wan scanned the roster of current leaders. Following last century’s plagues, after the near destruction of the entire hive, the office of planetary Regent was still held by one of royal X’Ting lineage, one G’Mai Duris. Was this office elective? Hereditary? Was Duris a figurehead, or a genuine power?

  Another reference an hour later caught Obi-Wan’s eye: mention of a group of guerrilla fighters called Desert Wind. Most of the surface farmers were poor, descended from the rank-and-file prisoners after their parole. Protesting a century of oppression, Desert Wind had sprung up twenty years back and tried to force Cestus’s industrial rulers, a cabal of wealthy industrialists called the Five Families, to the bargaining table.

  Desert Wind had been crushed in the past year, but there were said to be a few left, still mounting raids on company caravans.

  The more deeply Obi-Wan and Kit peered, the more the truth of power on Cestus, and its delicate relationship with Coruscant, evaded them.

  “It’s like digging through a sponge reef,” the Nautolan snarled after eight hours of study. “We’d need a wizard to sort through this nonsense.”

  “I don’t know many wizards,” Obi-Wan replied, “but I think a good barrister would be invaluable, and I know just the one.”

  “Excellent,” Kit said. “And another concern. If negotiations go poorly, we may wish to … pressure this Duris person.”

  Obi-Wan flinched. The Nautolan was correct, but Obi-Wan preferred caution. “Have you a suggestion?”

  “Yes. You and the barrister deal with the politicians. We have—” He searched his screen for the information. “—two contacts on Cestus, a human female named Sheeka Tull and an X’Ting named Trillot. Between them, we should find the necessary leverage.”

  “If they are trustworthy,” Obi-Wan offered.

  Kit laughed. “Are you suggesting we can’t trust our own people?”

  That question hung in the air, tension increasing every moment. Then Obi-Wan laughed. “Of course not.”

  “Good,” the Nautolan said. “As I was saying, I’ll take an ARC and a few commandos and recruit native troops for emergency use.”

  Obi-Wan grasped the logic instantly. If they brought Desert Wind back to life, the regent and these Five Families would be more nervous, less secure, possibly more receptive to Republic overtures. It wouldn’t do to have a trooper’s body captured: its genetic signature would be evidence of Coruscant’s manipulations.

  For hours the two friends pored over the files, discussing possibilities and strategies, until they were satisfied that every action and counteraction had been considered.

  The rest would have to wait for actual arrival on Cestus.

  7

  Ten hours later A-98 reawakened, his recovery cycle complete. Nate glanced at his sleep capsule’s heads-up screen, which reminded him to report to the op center for orders.

  Thirty seconds was spent in a quick mental survey of his body. Another half minute was invested in his morning mental ritual, completing the shift from deep sleep to full waking. True enough, in an emergency he or
any trooper could make that shift in seconds, but he enjoyed more leisurely transitions as well.

  Self-inspection complete, he threw off his blanket and swung his feet down to the floor. After visiting the ’fresher, washing his face and brushing his teeth at the communal sink, he packed his few belongings into a duffel. According to Code an ARC trooper must be ready to go anywhere, do anything, at the beck of the commanding Jedi or Supreme Chancellor. One hundred percent of Nate’s self-image was invested in being that perfect trooper.

  There was no other choice, no other existence. A-98 was ready. He had a few small mementos of previous military actions in his rucksack, his equipment, and three days’ rations of food and water.

  Nate had been raised on Kamino, of course, one of a simultaneously decanted cohort of a thousand clone troopers. A dozen had been designated as Advance Recon Commandos. They had been trained together, taught together, and suffered their first missions together. Half had been chosen for personal training by Jango Fett himself, and had returned to their brothers bruised but steeped in lethal wisdom. ARC clusters were encouraged to develop their own traditions and identity, which was useful during competitions with other cohorts. Although they had initially shipped out together, over time that original cohort had broken, as most ARC troopers worked alone.

  He found himself seeking identification on the troopers he encountered, helmet or neck chips that told the time and place of decanting. A cohort brother could be relied upon to remember certain ceremonies and shared perils, always good for a bit of extra companionship. Family within family, a touch of home on a distant, hostile world.

  He fondly remembered twenty-kilometer training runs with his cohort, tried not to remember how many brothers he had watched die during his two extended campaigns and dozen smaller actions. In most instances ARC tactics were a blend of lightning attacks and applications of overwhelming force, with punishing combinations of aerial bombardment and devastating ground engagement.