Star Wars®: The Cestus Deception

by Steven Barnes

  Her heart beat faster, although there was nothing on her painted face to betray it. And she knew that the newcomer would feel her heartbeat, even from a distance.

  She was afraid.

  The woman who entered the room walked like a military officer, but with that same unnatural lightness Duris had noted in Kenobi. It bespoke severe physical and mental training, a sinuous quality simultaneously enviable and somehow terrifying. The Jedi had displayed the same refined motion, the same absolute and intimidating focus, but through it had also projected decency and wisdom, a profound respect for life and spirit.

  Those qualities were missing from this creature. Her dark eyes peered out of her pale, shaven, tattooed skull and saw…what? What deep, cold spaces between the stars did this one call home?

  The woman made the deepest, most arrogant bow Duris had ever seen in her life. “Commander Asajj Ventress, at your service,” she said. “I crave but a single minute of your valuable time.”

  “No more?”

  “No more. I am no politician. My business is with your manufacturing concerns.”

  “The business of Cestus is business,” Duris replied.

  Ventress might not have heard her at all. “I am trade ambassador from Count Dooku and your allies in the Confederacy of Independent Systems.”

  “Allies?” Duris asked with mock surprise. “We have no political aspirations. We do have customers, of course, whom we cherish highly.” She tried to filter the stress from her voice, and was not completely successful.

  Ventress cocked her head slightly sideways, her pale lips curling into a contemptuous smile. “You do not entirely welcome my presence.”

  Duris forced her own lips into her most formal, neutral expression, and her voice to do the same. “Of late, I have had reason to be cautious whom I trust. But I wouldn’t want you to think I number you among the untrustworthy.”

  Ventress’s mouth twisted. Duris sensed that the offworlder had not merely detected the evasion, but actually enjoyed it.

  “I see. Yes.” Ventress lowered her head, and remained silent. At first Duris assumed that Ventress would speak. After a full minute passed the Regent realized that the woman was waiting for her. Whoever spoke next would be in the weaker position, but Duris could see no polite way to avoid it.

  “Tell me, Commander Ventress,” she said carefully. “I understand that you have been here on Cestus for a number of days.”

  “Do you?” she said without raising her eyes.

  “Perhaps you were enjoying our fabled hospitality.”

  Stepping softly, Ventress circled the throne, until she stood behind Duris. “Was I?” The other eyes in the chamber were glued to this woman who walked among them with such authority, such apparent disregard for their protocol. Yet none dared show offense.

  The tattooed woman leaned forward from behind Duris. Her face was just at the Regent’s velvet-padded shoulder. Duris could smell the woman’s breath. It was cloyingly sweet, like cake batter.

  “I fear I have little time for entertainments. There are mighty deeds to be done. The galaxy is in foment.”

  “What brings you here?” Duris asked.

  “I wish merely to ensure that our orders progress smoothly. I understand that the Clandes factory will be shut down for some days.”

  “I assure you we can accelerate the repair process. Perhaps seventy-two hours…”

  “Yes, yes,” Ventress whispered, and then continued to circle. “My Master and I would appreciate that greatly. But there is another matter. You may think that you have information that would cripple Cestus Cybernetics. Some small matter of a two-hundred-year-old contract, obtained under false pretenses. Might this be true?”

  Duris dared not lie. “Perhaps.”

  “Yes. A two-edged sword, that. If you bring this before the Senate, I promise the Supreme Chancellor would use it to shut down the factories as fully as any bombardment. Your hive would suffer, I promise you. And more than that—you, personally, would bear the brunt of Count Dooku’s wrath.”

  Duris nodded silently.

  “I’m certain threats are superfluous,” Ventress continued. “But Lady Duris…if there is anything that I can do to help, please do not hesitate. Count Dooku and General Grievous have powerful resources, and empathize with your struggle against a corrupt, repressive Republic. Together, we can do great things.” She paused. “Great…things.” She smiled. “That is, for now, my only message. With your permission, I leave.”

  Commander Asajj Ventress backed out of the chamber, bowing, her eyes half lidded, almost reptilian.

  When the doors closed behind her, Duris exhaled a long, sour, infinitely relieved breath. Her entire body felt like a coiled spring. The woman made her flesh crawl. Clearly, Asajj Ventress was more lethal than Master Kenobi. Duris was certain deceit had not come naturally to the Jedi. This creature had no such compunctions. No shame, no fear. No mercy, either.

  In fact, as little mercy as the ship that had blown Obi-Wan from the sky.

  With painful clarity Duris could visualize, actually see, five generations of Cestian social progress sliding into oblivion, and there seemed nothing she could do about it.

  Her assistant Shar Shar rolled closer. “The rest of the council is ready to meet, ma’am. Are you…”

  Duris was still lost in her speculations. The timing of this woman’s arrival was no accident. Had Ventress landed before or after Obi-Wan? And were their efforts coordinated or mutually antagonistic? Surely she was aware of Kenobi’s presence, but had he been aware of her…?

  “Ma’am?” asked Shar Shar, her skin purpling in anxiety.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you ready?”

  Duris nodded. In the air around her, a dozen holoscreens blossomed. Smooth-pated marketing and sales executive Llitishi spoke first. “Regent Duris. The fraudulent kidnapping is clear evidence of the Republic’s intention to interfere in Cestus’s sovereign affairs. It is time for us to strike. We must find these rebels and their collaborators, and show the Republic that we will never bend the knee.”

  Duris ached for his naïveté. “And who then will our friends be? Can you imagine that the Confederacy sent its spies to help us only? We stand in the shadows of two giants, each of whom uses honeyed words to attract us. Each of whom would destroy us rather than see us fall into the other camp.”

  Executive Llitishi seemed reluctant to agree. “That is not necessarily true—”

  “Ah,” G’Mai Duris said. “And with which of our sons and daughters are you willing to gamble?”

  And to that question, he had no answer at all.

  The rest of the meeting did not go well, although there were stories of rebels caught, and sabotage averted. But the death toll had now passed thirty. The fires of wrath generally proved easier to ignite than extinguish. Cestus’s security forces would hunt these saboteurs down, but a sinking sensation deep within her bones told Duris that this would hardly be the end of her troubles.

  Too clearly, she remembered her experiences with Obi-Wan Kenobi. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had first opined that there might be no solution to her problems. With every passing hour, she began to believe that she had been more prescient than she could ever have imagined.

  66

  As G’Mai Duris’s court and cabinet were disturbed by the goings-on, both hive and criminal contingent were in similar turmoil. Gambling and drug revenues dried up as ChikatLik, fearing the coming of war, began to hoard resources. All of Trillot’s varied businesses were at risk, and she had begun to feel the pinch.

  But it was more than a pinch that she felt as Ventress returned to her den and presented herself. As always, the offworlder carried herself as if her humanoid form were a mask. This was pure predator in every word and action. This one lived to kill.

  “I am a simple woman,” Trillot said, “who cannot claim to understand all of the meanings and machinations. But it seems to me that no one can truly say how this will end. Begging your pardon, of
course, Commander.”

  “For once, you are correct,” Ventress said. “No one can know how this ends—with one exception.” When she spoke there was an odd passion in her voice that Trillot had not heard before.

  “And who, or what, is that?”

  Ventress narrowed her eyes, and her pale cheeks colored. “Count Dooku foretold it, and I have seen it. Whatever else happens, Obi-Wan Kenobi and I will meet again. On Queyta I promised Kenobi I would kill him. My Master wants him alive. So: he will leave Cestus in bondage, or he will rest beneath its sands.”

  There was a flush in her face that Trillot recognized. It was lust. No mere physical passion, although a nameless, fleshly hunger burned within her. It was like lust turned inside out, and it burned inside this strange woman like a fire she could not extinguish.

  The two strange and powerful offworlders were on a collision course, and she prayed not to be between them. When such giants clashed, small folk such as Trillot could be utterly destroyed.

  On the other hand, however, in times such as this even small people could make large profits…

  67

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Shhh,” Sheeka Tull replied.

  For most of an hour they had trod uneven ground. Jangotat had long since lost track of direction, so many twists and turns had they taken. Two thicknesses of cloth covered his eyes, then a sack was pulled down over his head. Triple protection. Why was a blindfold so critically important? He had been promised a surprise, then told that he could only enjoy it if he allowed himself to be blindfolded. A secret, you see.

  He had accepted the blindfold, then Sheeka and Brother Fate spun him in a circle. When he stopped he felt the wind blowing against his skin and made an educated guess as to the direction he now faced. When they began to lead him up the side of a hill, he had to forget such thoughts and concentrate on not taking a bone-breaking spill.

  After perhaps fifteen minutes of climbing, the air chilled, the ground leveled, and he guessed that they had entered a cave. Even then the blindfold did not come off: they twisted and turned through the cave, over treacherous footing and with strange watery echoes tinkling in the distance.

  For almost another hour they walked over uneven ground. Twice he heard falling water, and cool misty sprays moistened the backs of his hands. Then they began to climb down a series of steps chipped into the stone.

  For a long moment he merely stood there, wondering what it was that she wanted him to do. But she didn’t say anything at all. Finally, feeling a bit frustrated in his solitary darkness, he said “What?,” immediately embarrassed by the single syllable’s inadequacy.

  His hands fumbled at his blindfold.

  “No,” Sheeka said. Her own cool fingers took his, moved them down.

  “Why not?”

  “I don’t want you to use your ordinary senses,” she said. “Your eyes, or your ears.”

  Confusion warred with a powerful and unaccustomed urge to please her. Not so odd, perhaps. She had saved his life and proven a stout comrade.

  “What do you expect me to do?”

  “Use your heart,” she said. “Tell me, what do you feel?”

  He stopped, and thought. Despite the warnings, he concentrated on ambient sound and sensation. He heard the faint shush of rippling water, and the distant sound of falling droplets echoing in the darkness. He felt the uneven ground beneath his feet, and…

  “Air, moving against my skin,” he said.

  Her voice sounded a bit frustrated, but still calm. “No. Deeper. Not your senses. Your heart.”

  “I hear water—”

  “No! Stop using your ears. What do you feel? In here.” She placed her hand over his heart. He sighed deeply, feeling her palm’s warmth as if it seeped into and beneath his ribs.

  Suddenly he had the urge to believe that she was not merely playing some kind of game with him. There was something there, if only he could find it.

  “I feel…warm.”

  “Where?”

  “Inside,” he answered. He tried to follow up with more words, but they wouldn’t form. Then he noticed that the blindfold-induced false midnight was no longer totally black. Inchoate shapes formed within it, as if faces watched him, judging him. He couldn’t quite distinguish them, but they seemed not like pictures, even dimensional pictures. They were more like squirming shapes pushing through a flat elastic surface. Rounded faces, with empty eyes. He had the sense that he knew this form, knew this creature, but couldn’t be certain where he had come to know it, or under what circumstances…

  “It feels like floating on a golden current,” he heard himself say. “I’m half asleep, but totally awake at the same time.”

  “Yes.”

  “I…oh!” He had started to speak again, but then his throat seemed filled with dust. Now speckles of light twinkled in the darkness. They were followed by shadowy forms flowing together, then separating, then together again…

  His legs wavered, buckled. A remnant of his injuries? He went down to his hands and knees, then felt her hands on his shoulders. It took a few moments to catch his breath. Then he stood again and dropped his arms to his sides, fingers flexing and unflexing, breathing shallow and high. Trembling, feeling as if he were about to burst, he raised his hands to the blindfold, then hesitated. “Sheeka?” he asked unsteadily.

  “Yes,” she said. Not a question. The single word was calming. He removed the sack from his head and untied the blindfold.

  The cave roof was low but glowed with warmth and dull orange light. The radiance originated beneath the surface of a water pool that rippled with a steady heartbeat rhythm.

  The ceiling dripped with stalactites, and the walls glowed as if they had been polished by hand. The very ground beneath them pulsed with a soft and persistent radiance, reflected back from waterfalls of frozen stone.

  He coughed, realizing that he had momentarily forgotten to breathe.

  A dozen eels floated at the surface, vast milky eyes studying them. That strange light seemed to come from within them, so that from time to time their skin appeared almost translucent. Jangotat could actually see the bones and organs suspended within.

  Blind.

  “What is this place?” he asked, realizing that some part of him already knew the answer to that question.

  “This is where the eels come to meet us.”

  “The dashta eels?” He knew little of them save the briefings of the Jedi. He knew that they were integral to the JK machines. “The living component of the bio-droids? We thought they came from the Dashta Mountains.”

  “No,” she said quietly. “Both mountains and eels are named for Kilaphor Dashta, the first explorer to map both mountains and the Zantay caves, four centuries ago. They were holy to the X’Ting for thousands of years, but withdrew to the caves when the hive began its conquest of Cestus.”

  “These look larger than the eels we’ve seen,” he protested.

  “Those are the young, prior to sexual differentiation.”

  The water rippled with their gentle wavering. One of them swam in a lazy circle and then returned. Their blind eyes studied him. Why?

  Sheeka was still talking, although she must have realized that his mind had been captured by the sight before him. “Cestus is honeycombed with passages, underwater rivers, and pools. Not even the X’Ting know the location of the dashta eels’ home nest. As far as we know this is the last remaining place where they interact with other species. It was here that they brought us the first fungus spores.”

  “The medicine?”

  “Yes. And the meatless meals.”

  “How can these be dashtas? According to my reseach, they are much too large. They…these creatures are intelligent…” How did he know that? So far they had done nothing but float. But something about those blind eyes. They made gentle sounds, cooing, calling, comforting…

  “Yes,” Sheeka agreed.

  He shook his head. “I’ve read the reports. Dashtas are nonsentient.�
��

  “Not nonsentient. Call it a form of sleep. A gift from the Guides—a lifetime of dreams. Even unconscious, their nervous systems supply the Force sensitivity. I don’t understand all of it. I’m just grateful it works.”

  He paused for a moment, digesting information. “What are you saying?”

  “Female dashtas lay millions of eggs,” Sheeka said to him. “The males fertilize only a few thousand. Unfertilized eggs produce young who never mature.”

  “The eels gave you their children?”

  She nodded. “Those who would have died in competition with their fertilized brothers and sisters. They lived on, and in living gave life to we who befriended them.”

  “Why would they do such a thing?”

  “Long ago,” Sheeka said, “this planet was more fertile, and there were more sentient species. They died out in competition with each other as the sand ate the forest. The struggle for survival was distasteful to the dashtas, who retreated deep into the planet’s core. We’ve been their first new friends in millennia.”

  “You.”

  “Yes. The eels offered us their unfertile eggs, knowing that the JKs would bring Cestus more fully into the community of worlds.”

  “There is conflict in that world, as well.”

  “Yes. As long as there are eaters and eaten, there will be conflict. But the dashtas hold the potential for sentient creatures to meet their needs without slaughtering one another. This is our potential, not our present.”

  Need rarely triggers war, Jangotat thought. Desire is far more deadly. The X’Ting had driven the spiders into the mountains. If the plagues had been no accident, then Cestus Cybernetics had all but destroyed the hive. The Separatists and the Republic might well destroy Cestus Cybernetics…

  An endless chain of domination and destruction. And he was one of its strongest links.

  Jangotat kept his thoughts to himself. There was something more important here than philosophical discourse. He desired understanding more than he yearned for his next two minutes of air. “They have no eyes. Why do they glow?”