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

by Steven Barnes

  “Please.” Obi-Wan locked eyes with her. “Try me.”

  “I’d rather that honor be mine,” Kit said.

  “Ohhh,” she breathed. “Oh, yes, you and I. It will happen, Obi-Wan Kenobi. But I must remember that the operation is more important than my individual satisfaction or advancement. Surely you can understand this.”

  She looked up at the craggy ceiling above him. “The Supreme Chancellor will humble Cestus as an example to other breakaway planets. The fate of this one small planet will push hundreds of star systems into the Confederacy’s arms. Mission accomplished.”

  “What of the biodroids? Don’t you want them?”

  She smiled. “It would be good, but volume production will require cloning, and our efforts to clone the dashta tissue will require another year, at least. For the time being, that is a dead end. A bluff.”

  She smiled and came closer, so close that her face almost touched the wall of shimmering energy. “Those beacons you planted in Clandes. Very nice. You could not enter the actual plant, so you triangulated three external signals. A good plan. But one easily countered. What a shame that the coordinates have been recalibrated,” she said.

  “What are you talking about?” Obi-Wan said, fearing that he understood her meaning precisely.

  “You planned to destroy the filtration and power plants with minimal loss of life.” She tsked. I’m afraid that that won’t do. Our plans require a more … dramatic event.”

  “What have you done?” he whispered.

  “No … better you should ask what is it you have done,” she said. “And why would you have a cruiser deliberately strike a cave fault, destroying the entire industrial complex and its’millions? Yes, I think that a slaughter like that will polarize the galaxy, don’t you?”

  His head spun. And Count Dooku had no way of cloning or mass-producing dashta tissue for at least a year? “Then your droid order was a sham?”

  “Intended to frighten Palpatine and your precious Jedi Council into an overreaction. I would say our plan worked, wouldn’t you?” Her laughter was as warm as dry ice. “The resulting slaughter will tip the galaxy in our favor. Then once we do clone the tissues, who needs Cestus?”

  “You’re a monster,” Kit said, voice calm as a dead sea.

  At that moment the vast energies within Obi-Wan swirled and stilled. As hopeless as the situation seemed, he believed to his core that this was not over. Somewhere, Ventress had made a mistake. And when that single mistake manifested, he would be ready to take advantage …

  75

  Still under direct order, the four surviving clone troopers remained confined to base. They were fully aware of the forces struggling around them, and also of the nightmare about to descend on Ord Cestus.

  Jangotat’s mind swam with visions and possibilities. He more than anyone knew the ARC mission mandate. It was engraved on his brain like his own number. Stop the production of JKs. Preserve the social order.

  Preserve the order? But the order was corrupt! The Five Families were willing to murder countless civilians to make a profit. If that was not the very definition of betrayal, what was? Even worse, only a fool couldn’t see that they had already allied themselves with the Separatists, and the Jedi were no fools, that much was certain.

  They, then, were caught in events, controlled by their programming. Just like a clone, he thought.

  The Nexu hovered in orbit above them. Any minute now a message might come from General Kenobi to begin bombing. If not, within a few hours the ship would take out the beacon-marked targets without additional authorization.

  These people were going to die. Ordinary citizens with roots couldn’t just throw their homes in a rucksack and ship off when danger came. They railed against the darkness, they fought on for their loved ones, they prayed in silence.

  The troopers waited, but the longed-for communication with the generals did not come. Dead? Captured? Time was running out. In a few hours the bombardment would begin, and that was all to the good, wasn’t it?

  Jangotat stalked the camp’s perimeters, chewing on a nerve-stick while acid boiled his gut. Something is wrong.

  When he circled back around to the others, Seefor was talking. “What do we do now?”

  Forry shrugged. “If he doesn’t come back, it didn’t work. Then the bombardment begins, we call in transport, and we go home. Nothing to do but wait.”

  Jangotat wandered away, mind racing, hoping against hope that their Jedi commanders would call in, that the word would come that the line was shut down without the vast damage of an orbiting strike.

  He was a bit surprised when old Thak Val Zsing and the X’Ting woman Resta approached him. Val Zsing had seemed broken, but now there was something alive and almost aflame about him. “I know things,” he said. “Please. Listen to me.”

  Jangotat, remembering what he had learned in the cave, opened his senses. He saw the man’s wounds as well as his strength. He believed that this miserable wretch needed, deserved, one chance to redeem himself.

  We are more than our actions. More than our deeds, or programming.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “No one talk to Resta. No one talk to Thak Val Zsing,” she said. “So we two talk. Talk about the old days. What Gramps say ’bout the prisons, how Resta’s hive forced to dig in them. I remember things about them.” She tapped her finger against her temple. “I see I know things about ’Secutive ‘resort.’ ” She snorted. “You know, the one they rip away power away to build? The one that kill my man?”

  The X’Ting leaned closer, her thick red eyebrows arched and erect. “I look at ’puter map.”

  “Our computers?”

  Thak Val Zsing nodded. The old man’s eyes were piercingly hot. “Same routing map you used to get through the tunnels, when the Jedi put on their little show, remember, star-boy?”

  Jangotat agreed that he did, still not seeing the point.

  “That program charts energy usage, utilty bills, all kindsa real-time routing information on the major systems.” Val Zsing’s voice hushed to an excited whisper. “And we saw something. Oh, brother, did I ever see something.”

  “In last five hours, since big ship pull into orbit, ‘resort’ light glow.” Resta leaned forward, so excited she could barely contain herself. “That where Five Families hide!”

  “I want to discuss a possibility with you,” Jangotat said to his brothers. He struggled to conceal his excitement.

  “Possibility?” Seefor asked. “What kind of possibility?”

  “The Families may have made a critical mistake. If this intel is good, for the first time we know where they are. They’ve powered up their resort facilty, which we believe to be a shelter. Considering the present emergency, I’d say there’s a high level of confidence that they’ll be there. If we grab them, we can force them to make a deal. If they capitulate, we can end this and stop the bombing.”

  For a long moment no one spoke. Sirty was the first to break the silence, and was shocked. “But you’d be countermanding direct orders!”

  Jangotat slammed his fist on the table. “We could win the day!”

  “Brother,” Seefor said, “under the Kamino Accords I am compelled to warn you that your suggestion is not to Code.”

  Forry glared. “You don’t do this,” he said. “Besides—” He gave an ugly laugh. “—the old man’s a coward. Probably a liar, too.”

  Against Code? Seefor’s accusation struck Jangotat like a physical blow, but he didn’t allow himself to cower. Even the idea filled him with physical nausea. No clone had ever broken Code or disobeyed an instruction of any kind. He felt an energy wall slam down in his mind, and his every muscle trembled as he even contemplated the forbidden. “I believe him,” he said, and had to grit his teeth for a moment to stop them from clattering. “Ask yourselves: if you’d lost your honor, wouldn’t you do anything to regain it? Wouldn’t you want someone to give you that chance?” He knew that he had scored with that one: a clone comman
do had nothing if not his reputation. Seefor flinched in sympathetic pain at the very concept.

  And yet at the same moment that he mentioned such a thing, he realized that he had drawn a line between himself and the others. There was something different about him, and they could feel it, but had yet to comment. By mentioning the unmentionable, however, he had given a focus to their instincts.

  He was no longer completely one of them. He was something else, and his brothers were on guard.

  “It is not Code, Jangotat,” Seefor said, and stared at him. He knew he could take it no farther.

  Jangotat returned to his bedroll. He knew what he contemplated, and why. He knew it was forbidden but he believed, believed with everything inside him, that if the generals knew what he knew, they would approve of his actions.

  And yet …

  He would be breaking Code.

  His chest muscles constricted, and he felt a cold sweat dampen his armpits. What was right? What was truly Code? Was it the letter, or was it doing what he believed his commanders would do if they had his information?

  Jangotat wrestled with that for hours before he made up his mind and slipped out of his bedroll. He had almost made it back out to the open when Forty caught up with him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “You know I have to do this,” Jangotat said.

  Forry nodded. “And you know I can’t let you.”

  “Then stop me if you can,” Jangotat replied. All things being equal, Jangotat and Forry should have been roughly equivalent fighters.

  But things were no longer equal. Jangotat was fighting for everything Forry fought for, plus just a little bit more.

  Sheeka. Tonoté. Mithail. Tarl.

  The Guides.

  It’s not what a man fights with. It’s what he fights for.

  The two moved toward each other, paused for an instant just as they reached critical distance, judging. In the next instant there followed an eye-baffling flurry of punches and kicks. Forry was stronger and faster …

  But it didn’t make a difference. Jangotat saw more clearly now, more than he ever had in his life, as if the entire moment were frozen in invisible ice. He saw Forry’s patterned responses, the programmed blows and chops. Jangotat felt outside this somehow, watching the motion without being involved in it. Forry might as well have sat down and detailed his every intended motion in advance. Moving slowly, with greater calm than he had ever experienced in combat, Jangotat simply slid between Forry’s movements. As he strove to keep the balance between them he contracted his stance, and Jangotat’s natural flinch response moved his elbow into perfect position to clip his brother’s jaw.

  Forry slid to the ground, and was still. Jangotat stood there for a moment, shocked. Was that what it felt like to be a Jedi? Was that even a fraction of how it felt?

  Or was this just how it felt to be free? He didn’t know what door had been opened in his head, what training and … and …

  And love had done for him.

  He felt a deep excitement. He might be heading into death, but he was more alive than he had ever been, than any of his kind had ever been.

  He could, he would, succeed. There was no other option.

  He met with Thak Val Zsing and Resta by the speeder bikes. It took them only a few minutes to sabotage the other speeders—it would take his brothers an hour to fix them, by which time he would be long gone.

  For fifty minutes they rode to the northwest. The air riffled his hair, and the new sun flared to his left as dawn breached the darkness. He enjoyed the solitude, the sense of being beyond it all. Of knowing, for the first time in his life, that he had chosen his fate.

  A new, precious day. Perhaps his last.

  He grinned ferociously. Best not waste a moment of it.

  * * *

  Fifteen kilometers north of Resta’s farm a lava tube gaped in the middle of a mud plain. That is where they entered, carrying with them knapsacks filled with ordnance. For ninety minutes they crawled through darkness, bruising and slicing their knees on the glassy surface. Thak Val Zsing led the way, and from time to time he called back to them. “The prison was to the east now, and we’re in one of the escape tunnels.” He laughed with self-mockery. “Escape tunnels. What a joke: the whole planet was a prison—there was nowhere to escape to. But the central computers say that the Five Family resort was built in one of the wings of the old prison after it was abandoned.”

  They reached a larger section, crawling out into a cave tall enough for them to stand. More than tall enough: this was part of an old mine, with smaller shafts twisting off in all directions.

  “This is as far as I know,” the old man said. “This is where my grandfather escaped.” Cestus Penitentiary’s deepest pits were now bunkers for the Five Families. A savage irony, that.

  “Let’s go,” Rcsta said, and tried to shoulder her way ahead.

  Jangotat stood in her path. “You must live,” he said.

  “Got nothing live for. Lost mate. Lost farm.”

  Jangotat shook his head. “What happened here, to your people, shouldn’t have happened. What you have done here will not go unnoticed. When this is over, file a report using the phrase A-Nine-Eight tac code twelve.” He held her eyes. “That means that you performed extraordinary service for me during official business. You are a friend of the Republic, and the Republic looks after its own.”

  She glared at him, unwilling to believe. To trust that there was any way for her save revenge and death. “No. Go with you.”

  “Someone must sing your hive’s song,” Jangotat said. “Find a new mate. Make strong children. Never stop fighting.”

  She was so astonished that she didn’t react when Jangotat spun her and placed her in a sleeper hold. Resta struggled to free herself, and she was strong—stronger than most human males. But he had the right angle and position. No matter how she struggled, he hung on. She ran him back against a wall, but he hung on. A hundred different alien physiologies flashed through his mind, then he remembered the Geonosians. They were also insectile, and air strangles were considered worthless. But there were nerve clusters—

  There, at the base of the skull. He disengaged one of his arms and leaned in with his elbow, pressing from both sides, gambling everything. Impact could prove fatal, but pressure alone …

  Resta went limp and rolled over, unconscious.

  Jangotat stared down at her, panting. What a fighter! What had it taken to sap the will of these people? “What are their men like?” he whispered to Thak Val Zsing.

  “You don’t want to know,” Val Zsing replied.

  Jangotat took a few moments to calm himself. Then Thak Val Zsing pointed out the last tunnel, and together they descended into darkness.

  76

  Another hour’s crawling brought him to the wall of the outer chamber. A swift scan revealed that the wall was only one-centimeter durasteel, and Jangotat knew that he could handle it. The armor-piercing mines were designed for use against battle droids, but they would work here as well. Pulling out two of the round, flat disks, Jangotat attached them to the wall with their adhesive bands and set the timer. He and Thak Val Zsing had barely had time to retreat back around the bend when the sharply focused blast detonated with a clap that knocked both men onto their backs.

  Dazed, Jangotat grabbed his rifle and rushed into the next room as red and yellow lights flashed warning. Through the smoke he glimpsed a bank of communications equipment and stacks of food supplies. He swiveled in time to glimpse a human and a Wroonian rushing into a dome-shaped dura-steel bunker, slamming the door.

  He got there too late, banging against the door with the butt of his rifle. The door was at least five centimeters thick. Nothing in his sack would get them through that.

  The shelter hummed, vibrated, then settled down as the doors sealed shut.

  “What now, star-boy?” Thak Val Zsing asked, coming up behind him.

  “Let’s check the room out,” Jangotat said. “There might be
something.”

  The room was an atrium, a hothouse designed to fit in with the rest of the shelter. It was as dense as a rain forest, unlike any terrain Jangotat had seen on Cestus. They moved through it slowly, watching for any movement.

  He turned to see the Jedi Killer coming for them. He did not think, he acted.

  He remembered the JKs all too well. Their speed, power, and versatility were beyond intimidating. There was no time to think, little even to move. He managed to step backward as its tentacles reached for him, and barely heard Thak Val Zsing scream “Look out!” as the floor beneath him rippled. A disguised tentacle, reaching, changing colors for camouflage as it did!

  Amazing. One of the tentacles touched him, and he felt the shock for but an instant as he leapt back. One instant was long enough to send the hair exploding away from his scalp, but he was able to trigger a rifle blast at close range, severing the tentaclc.

  Thak Val Zsing was firing from the side, but the energy bolts glanced harmlessly off the JK’s golden casing.

  Val Zsing scrambled back screaming, just in time to avoid another tentacle. Jangotat threw himself to the rear, firing as he did, riding it out and rolling backward, coming to his feet in a single smooth motion, turning in the same motion, switching his rifle to maximal energy pulses.

  Too fast!

  The JK was a marvel, zigging this way and that, its narrow treads blurring far too quickly to track. Three shots, four. The rifle’s barrel pulsed white as its blasts furrowed walls and floor, always missing the skittering machine. The rifle’s power core was overheating, about to shut down. Jangotat gave ground, leaping back the way they had come.

  Thak Val Zsing was already crouching there in the shadows, trembling and silent. The JK moved a meter toward them, then stopped and floated backward. Clearly, it wasn’t going to be lured out of position.

  “We can’t stop it!” Thak Val Zsing said, shaking.