“And…”
“And now,” she said, “defend yourselves, Jedi.”
The young X’Ting thugs moved in. Obi-Wan groaned. He couldn’t simply cut them down. Young and foolish, they believed they were acting for the good of the hive.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Ventress grinned. “You wish you could talk to them. A pity you don’t speak X’Ting.”
“Obi-Wan?” Kit asked.
“Well, we can’t just slaughter them.”
No . . ? Kit seemed to want to ask. “They’re hardly innocent.” The Nautolan radiated urgency, the pull of Form I strong as he prepared for battle. Ventress was the key. They had to stop her. And if these idiots put themselves between them and Dooku’s minion, the woman who might be the salvation of millions, that was their misfortune.
But…it would be a massacre. Obi-Wan searched his conscience, and made a hard decision. “We must do this without our lightsabers.”
Kit seemed to struggle with the idea, and then finally sighed. “A bit of exercise, then,” he said, and reluctantly extinguished his blade.
Obi-Wan dampened his as well, and as if on cue, Ventress’s foolish young X’Ting allies attacked from every angle. Obi-Wan leaned away from the swipe of a durasteel crowbar, the edge of his foot cracking the X’Ting’s knee as he did. A second youth jumped on him from behind. Obi-Wan gripped a primary right hand, a secondary left hand, and torqued: The X’Ting corkscrewed through the air and shattered a pile of boxes.
Kit Fisto snarled, surrendering to the pull of Form I’s unarmed techniques. His attack was absolute fluidity, one motion flowing into the next without a wasted effort. Heads cracked, limbs twisted against their joints, and X’Ting flipped howling into the lake.
Ventress stood back, her eyes watching, and Obi-Wan knew she was waiting, learning about her opponents.
The cavern was awash with whirling bodies. These were lackeys, and Ventress would sacrifice every one of them to learn what she wished to know. She knew the Jedi wouldn’t just cut them down. She was watching, and studying, and saving the moment for herself. The Jedi’s unarmed tactics would reveal their lightsaber technique: there was nothing they could do to prevent it.
Obi-Wan’s opponents had enthusiasm, but little technique. The Force blossomed within him, and time perception distended, slowing reality to a crawl. He had all the time he needed to slide out of the way of the blows, retaliating with perfect economy.
From the corner of his eye he saw that Kit had made his way almost to Ventress, and what he saw as the Nautolan increased his efforts almost broke Obi-Wan’s concentration. His companion was a living, martial hurricane, his body moving in two and three directions at once, joints flexing, unlimited by human vertebral restraints.
Who he touched went down. And those who went down, stayed down. Ventress might have gathered a rabble, but the youthful X’Ting were fearless, and fought as if for their lives.
Such an onslaught left no time for thought or planning, no room for pretty moves. There was only attack and defense, and precious little time for defense.
Obi-Wan himself could only attack and attack, taking the battle to them, creating his own timing and distancing, smashing his way toward Ventress.
Stingers bared, the young X’Ting came at them in waves. Obi-Wan calmed himself, using them as shields against each other, moving continuously and ferociously as he went.
Now…a blow from the upper left quadrant. Obi-Wan was just a hair slow defending there, and a wicked knife slit his cloak. Again and again, he narrowly skirted disaster. She’s watching? Obi-Wan thought. Let her.
Obi-Wan missed the moment, but Kit finally won his way through to Ventress. She raised her hand, and the X’Ting who had harried the Nautolan turned to attack Obi-Wan, leaving her to face Kit alone.
Now, finally, Kit drew his lightsaber. Ventress drew a pair of blazing, red blades. She inclined her head, breathing more quickly, lips curling into a smile.
“Finally,” she said.
“Your pleasure,” Kit hissed, and went at her. He was like fire, Ventress like smoke. The dance had substance but not form, a blur of light that seemed impossibly fast, unbelievably deadly. The two leapt and swerved, collided and bounced away. Single against double lightblades. Hands, knees, feet, all in a mind-numbing blur.
Obi-Wan would have given his right hand to join. Or even to watch such a display. But he had his own worries, his own battle to fight.
He struggled with the urge to simply draw his lightsaber and slaughter the X’Ting. His enemies came on and on, struck quickly but clumsily, got in each other’s way. Obi-Wan was direct in attack, and as elusive as a breeze.
He’d missed the engagement, but suddenly—Kit was down! Wounded and groggy from a kick in the jaw, for the first time Ventress had pierced his guard. Her left-hand saber sliced his arm but as sparks flew he dove away from her left blade, leaning into a glancing blow from her right.
Obi-Wan heard the scream but couldn’t see the wound’s severity. Kit rolled as Ventress came at him, splashing down into the lake. Ventress stood on the dock smiling hugely, arms and legs spread in triumph, laughing in that arctic voice.
The Jedi tore his way through the X’Ting, breaking arms and legs as he went, then drew his lightsaber.
“This is between me and Ventress,” he screamed. Enough of this play! “Anyone who stands between us, dies. Translate it, Ventress!”
“Why?” She snarled.
“What?” he said scornfully. “Haven’t you learned what you wanted to learn? Seen what you wanted to see? What is the point in sending these children to their death? They only die because they trust you. Is there nothing left inside you? If not goodness, then loyalty?”
Her eyes flickered for a moment, and he knew that something he’d said had struck a nerve. She nodded. “Tell them to leave,” she said, and the protocol droid spat out its translation.
He covered the distance between them with a single somersaulting leap. Asajj Ventress was extraordinarily quick, but her very ferocity gave Obi-Wan a hairline opening, a moment when he had the better leverage. He blocked Ventress’s lightsabers, and managed to pin her blades down.
Ventress was surprised, but in the next moment disengaged her right-hand blade and slashed at his neck, attempting to behead him.
There was no time for conscious thought, no time for anything but response as Obi-Wan ducked and spun back. Ventress drew his attention to the left and leapt into the air in a spinning kick that slammed Obi-Wan down into the dock. Once down, he never had a chance to get up again, found himself fighting from his back, wiggling and edging backwards, movement so limited that he knew the confrontation might be over within seconds. The first touch of desperation wormed its way through his emotional shields.
Obi-Wan bared his teeth. As Master Yoda had often said these days, The dark side has clouded the Galaxy. Difficult to see, the future is.
Floating below the dock, Kit Fisto could still hardly move. He had barely evaded death from a lightsaber wound to the head, and his senses still were far away. But some deep instinct had warned him that his compatriot Obi-Wan was in trouble, fighting to protect both their lives. He woke up enough to reach for his lightsaber.
He triggered it, and sliced the pilings supporting the dock. Ventress howled in surprise as she and Obi-Wan tumbled into the water. Kit wanted desperately to help, but had exhausted his supply of strength. Surrendering to his wounds, he lost consciousness.
Obi-Wan had but a moment to snatch his rebreather and jam it into his mouth, and in the next instant realized that Ventress couldn’t! She clutched a lightsaber in each of her lethal hands!
He went at her savagely, never giving her a moment to sheathe one lightsaber, to slip in her own rebreather.
The Jedi Knight could move in three dimensions, attacking from under the water and from all angles, and Ventress’s desperate defense forced her to gulp air when her head cleared the water.
Nearing panic, Ventress dropped
one of her lightsabers, and lunged at Obi-Wan, surprising him. She flipped back away, taking that moment to don her own rebreather.
Then, eyes burning with hatred, she came at him.
The two circled each other like some kind of aquatic predators, but both were out of their elements. The question was which would adapt most swiftly.
Lure her. Leave an opening for a stroke in the upper left. I will block more slowly, as she expects. Then I will flinch, as I did with the X’Ting, and she will think she’s aggravated an injury, and that I will back up. She saw me do it twice.
The water was murky, and he realized that he was wrong to trust his eyes. Stop. Defocus. Feel the water pressure as she makes her moves. Trust the Force.
Obi-Wan felt the water surge at him, and he let that surge carry him in its natural arc. His lightsaber flashed in, and for the first time, he cut her.
The wound was low on the ribs on her right side, and her eyes widened in pain and sudden fear.
Instead of moving back, Obi-Wan moved in. She butted him in the mouth, ripping out his rebreather. But the movement stunned her, and he tore hers out in the same instant.
So. There they were, the two of them, beneath the water. The first to bolt for the surface would be exposed and vulnerable. The first one to break loses.
Well, then, Ventress. Which of us can hold our breath longer?
This would be as good a place as any to die. If this was his end, how better than to take a creature like Ventress with him?
And she saw his face. Yes. Like Duris. I’m ready to die here and now, and for these reasons. I’m willing to die to kill you. Can you say the same?
In the same instant, Obi-Wan threw caution to the winds, and went at her. His blade was here, there, at all angles, and her wound slowed her…
She wielded her single remaining blade, eyes wide and staring.
Then something broke inside Ventress. She shrieked a mouthful of bubbles, and triggered something at her belt. The water around her churned into an expanding onyx cloud, as if she had emptied an ink-sack into it.
And in a flurry of bubbles and blackness, Asajj Ventress was gone.
78
Dripping and limping, Obi-Wan and Kit helped each other from the lake.
“Are you all right?” Obi-Wan asked.
“I will be soon enough,” the Nautolan replied. “She may have underestimated me.”
Obi-Wan remembered the severing of the dock, and shook his head in delighted disbelief. “I would say so, my friend. Come.”
They followed a stairway cut into the rock, climbing up almost twenty stories before reaching the hives’ surface, some two kilometers south of ChikatLik. Obi-Wan and Kit watched as, on the southern horizon, lightning seemed to flash. The distant thunder of massive bombardment wafted to them.
“The destruction has begun,” Obi-Wan said. “We have failed.”
“Strange.”
“What?”
“I would have expected the attack more to the southwest.”
“You’re right,” Obi-Wan murmured. “It seems to be near Kibo.”
He took out a pair of range-finding macrobinoculars and focused in.
Through the closer view a column of smoke and fire spiraled into the air. There were dark shapes raining from the clouds, as well as energy beams. A lethal, blazing conflagration.
“Well?” Kit asked.
Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Strange indeed. Come.”
When they finally reached their ship, a blinking control light attracted their attention.
“A message,” Obi-Wan said.
“We should claim it.”
“I should get you medical attention.”
“I will survive,” Kit insisted. “Take the message.”
Obi-Wan manipulated the keypad, and the hologram image of an ARC officer appeared.
“Jangotat,” Kit murmured.
The strong brown face had been battered, his left eye closed, but the trooper was smiling slightly. “Greetings to General Kenobi, General Fisto. This is A-Nine-Eight, he whom you have been kind enough to call Jangotat. If you receive this message, then at least one of you is still alive. In all likelihood, I’m using a stepladder to pick sunblossoms.” Beat. “Contrary to Code, I disobeyed your direct commands, and take full responsibility for all that may have happened as a result. Not my brothers, who did everything they could to stop me. I went to the Five Families’bunker at Kibo, with the intention of capturing them. You were limited in your actions, and because of that, thousands of innocent people were going to die. Things didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, but there was an answer, and as you probably know by now, the Five Families are dead—”
Kit whispered, “They…what?”
“—I used a priority signal to reset the bombardment coordinates to the Five Families’ bomb shelter. Not long now.”
So…the smoke…
“What does this mean?” the Nautolan said.
“That depends on the kind of woman G’Mai Duris is,” Obi-Wan said.
He closed his eyes. “Duris is Regent and head of the hive council. With the Families in chaos, she is the most powerful woman on the planet…and I believe we can negotiate with her. Call Admiral Baraka.”
“Thousands?” Kit asked in disbelief. “Jangotat saved millions.”
“But he didn’t know. He had no idea that Ventress had changed the targeting codes. He had no idea just how important his choice was.”
Obi-Wan and Kit shared a moment of silence. Then Obi-Wan reached out and put in the call to the Nexu.
The following day in the Zantay Hills, as Jangotat had requested in this, his last will and testament, the Jedi showed the message to Sheeka Tull.
“Don’t worry about the JK droids,” Jangotat continued. “They’d never have functioned on a battlefield. Anyone who has ever met a dashta would know they are healers, not killers. When Thak Val Zsing died violently in its arms, the dashta inside the JK went insane. I know, I’m no tech guy. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. Nonlethal security application? That’s one thing. Killing thinking people was just beyond them. Even a sleeping Guide was driven crazy. The Guides are simple, good creatures. They brought the X’Ting and the offworlders together. The X’Ting brought fungi to farmers dying of poor soil. They brought back some of the old ways.
“I believe the Five Families knew the truth, and lied to Count Dooku. Perhaps they planned to take the first payment, then disappear before the Confederacy mounted the JKs in combat, leaving Cestus to pay the price if the Republic fell.”
Obi-Wan and Kit stared at each other, dumbfounded. Had anyone in this entire matter told the truth? Astounding! Nothing but lies, top to bottom.
“I will not be returning, which grieves me, because I wished to. For the first time in my life I actually dreamed of a future.” Jangotat paused, lost for a moment in a private thought. Then he went on. “This is hard for me. I am not a person of words. Until I met you, I was not certain I was a man at all. I was the vows, the uniform, the rank. No. You showed me I was more than that, more than one of a million soldiers stamped out of a murderer like pieces on an assembly line. There is value in knowing your place in the universe, but there is also something else, and you helped me discover that.”
The three regarded each other uneasily.
“There is something that you need to know: if I had lived through this, if I had returned with my duty done, I would still have returned to the GAR. As hard as it might be for you to understand, it is still a great and good thing to fight for what you believe is right. Sheeka, if I were another man, I could think of no greater joy than to stay with you. If and when my days as a trooper were done, I would have wanted to come to you, if you would have me. I am sorry I’m not the man you once knew—”
She had known Jango? Quite a bit made sense now.
“—I’m sorry that you and I had neither past, nor future.”
Sheeka made no sound, but her lowered eyes spoke volumes.
“Know that more than anything else in the world, I was a soldier. And that you, and no one else in all the galaxy, held this soldier’s heart in your hands.”
Save for Sheeka’s gentle weeping against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, there was no sound in that room for a long, long time.
79
ChikatLik swarmed beneath them. It was now easier for Obi-Wan to detect the original architecture, and see where offworlders had made their mark. The hive still lived. It could grow and change, like any living thing. It had been ground almost into the dust, but the hive lived.
He, Kit, and G’Mai Duris stood on a bridge, peering down as the city seethed beneath them. Synthetic air currents rippled her gown.
“Strange how they go about their lives as if nothing has happened,” she said.
“Has it?”
“Debbikin, the Por’Tens, my cousin Quill, half the Llitishi clan. Wiped out. What remains of the Families is in chaos, fighting over scraps. As they fight, the hive council has taken power. The surviving officers of Cestus Cybernetics will have to deal with us fairly now. The rule of three hundred years just ended,” she said, “and no one seems to know it. No one seems to care, to feel, to grasp that they are free.”
“Are they?” Kit asked.
“Yes, Master Fisto. As free as they have the strength to be.”
“A different thing.” Obi-Wan paused. “But they have a leader worthy of admiration. In this whole sordid affair, you are the only one who told the truth, even to your enemies. You, G’Mai Duris, are an extraordinary woman.”
She lowered her eyes shyly. “You are too kind. Well, Master Kenobi, I suppose that you win here after all. You are generous to allow us the Supreme Chancellor’s initial terms. I am surprised you are not harsher. We are hardly in a bargaining position.”
“Nor am I a bargainer,” Obi-Wan said. “This role is not comfortable for me, and I will be glad to put it down. Regent, I regret that my duty bound me to deceive you.”
Star Wars®: The Cestus Deception Page 35
