the cost of his own flesh. She dragged him down over the rocks. Jangotat
was semiconscious now. He shuddered with pain for a few
minutes, and then fumbled with something at his belt. Almost immediately,
his body relaxed. She panicked as he became a deadweight,
but when he began to struggle to his feet she figured he had
self-administered some kind of painkiller that left him dreamy but
still able to walk.
She supported his shoulder, trying not to touch any of the spots
seared by the droid's blast. He stumbled along beside her, knees
buckling and ankles turning. Then he began to carry some of his own
weight, and for that she was grateful.
They stumbled down the side of the defile. There, hidden in a
maze of shadows, was Spindragon. Although by now the muscles in
her legs and back screamed for release, Sheeka ignored them and
hauled Jangotat toward the ship, and safety.
"Leave . . . me . . . , " she heard him whisper, and it alarmed her that
some part of her silently agreed, wanted to give up. But Sheevis Tull,
the same man who had taught her to fly, had taught her to ignore the
weak and traitorous voices in her head. She disregarded them and
bent to the task at hand. Breathe, pull, rest. Breathe, pull, rest...
She lost count of the cycles of pulling and breathing, but a moment
came when Spindragon's autopilot sensed her proximity and automatically
extended the ramp, a sensible, albeit costly modification.
She climbed up the incline, Jangotat gripping at her with a weakening
hand. With every minor jolt, he grunted as if the pain stripped
his nerves raw.
A few more staggering steps brought them into the ship's interior.
Sheeka loaded Jangotat into a crash seat, and initiated the ship's
warm-up sequence.
"Don't worry," she called back to him. "We're getting out of here."
He seemed to smile at her weakly, and made a closed-fist gesture
she had seen him make to other clones. She thought that it meant
"good to go." Gritting her teeth, Sheeka turned back to her controls.
She would have to deal with him, of course, but the first task was to
get out of the mountains in one piece.
Her scanners indicated that a quartet of enemy ships was sweeping
toward her from the north. Time to move.
All systems flushed and ready, Sheeka started her engines and
lifted Spindragon from the ground, whirling her in place as the first of
the pursuit ships appeared over the broken stone horizon.
Their intentions were announced with the first bolt that sizzled in
her direction, striking sparks and splashing slag from the rocks.
Her face tightened in a fighting snarl: the daughter of Sheevis Tull
was not so easily killed. She had made low-altitude runs through the
mountain passes more times than she wanted to remember, every one
of them wickedly dangerous. Always in the past she had risked arrest,
imprisonment, revocation of her flying privileges. This was different.
This time, it was life and death.
Without further delay, Sheeka accelerated her ship toward the
south, scrambling her transponder beacon so that it would broadcast
no identifying signals. Now the only thing she had to worry about
was being shot down in a blazing fireball.
Of course, that was a pretty big only.
If only she had armament! But Spindragon went in and out of cities
too frequently, was scanned on a weekly basis. The Five Families
were terrified of another uprising, and forbade suborbital craft from
carrying mounted weapons.
The pursuit craft were two-person security units, built for longrange
recon and pursuit of... well, of suborbital ships like hers. All
muscle and brain. But it just might be possible to meet their challenge
. . .
Unlike her pursuers, Sheeka Tull knew the mines.
She rose up, flipped, and dived into an opening that was little more
than an angry gash in the desert floor. With stomach-wrenching
speed she dropped straight down. At the last moment she straightened
out, making a sharp right turn.
The security ships were only seconds behind her. Her task was to
get far enough ahead of them to break visual contact. The heavy mineral
deposits would reduce scanner efficiency. Given that, there was
an excellent chance they'd be confused by the tunnels, and confusion
shifted the odds in her favor.
But first—
A flash bright enough to stun the eye washed the tunnel from wall
to wall. Sheeka screamed and threw a hand in front of her face in a
reflexive motion that almost cost her her pitch and yawl control. She
spun Spindragon sideways to slip between two enormous underground
pillars, then zipped around a corner and sank to the cave floor
swiftly, killing all lights.
She could hear them, but they could not hear her. Distant searchlights
splashed around the broken rock walls as they slowed to a
crawl.
"Where . . . are we?" Jangotat gasped.
Sheeka slipped out of her captain's chair and walked quietly to
him. "Shhh," she said. "They can find us with sound."
"That may be a problem," he gasped.
"Why?"
"Because I think I'm going to scream." Despite the pain his lips
curled in a bitter, self-mocking smile. "I'm out of pain meds."
She wanted to hug him. Instead she said: "I think we'll make it.
Hold on."
Sheeka had a few tricks up her sleeve, and one of them was specifically
designed to misdirect scanners: a trick that would blind her
and the pursuing security ships as well.
The difference was that she had been down here before, and they
had not.
She hoped.
"I'm going to try something," she said. "If it doesn't work, then—"
"Try it," he said, and closed his eyes against another fit of shakes.
"For luck," she said. She bent and, wiping the blood from his chin,
kissed him firmly on the lips. His eyes widened in pleased surprise,
then she gave a crooked grin and went back to her captain's chair.
No way to prevent this next part from being dangerous. She could
see a searchlight off in the distance, reflected between a pair of
stalactites, and figured that this would be her best chance. Sheeka enriched
the fuel mixture absurdly, until the unburned hydrocarbons
gushed from Spindragon's rear as dense, black smoke.
Within seconds the lights had turned in her direction, and she
struggled against a surge of panic. Then she calmed her breathing
and lifted off from the ground a meter or two—much more was impossible
because of the low ceiling. But she moved. Yes . . . even without
her running lights, the reflected illumination revealed a turn up
ahead. It was just as she remembered. If only the rest of it conformed
to memory as well...
She turned the corner just in time: a sizzling energy bolt slagged
the wall just behind her. The passageway churned with dense, oily
smoke. The pursuing ship slid past them, right through the murk,
and collided with the wall in a flame-blossom that temporarily
turned a
smoky night into day.
Just as she thought: the ships were maneuverable and fast, but not
well armored, and with no crash shields. The entire cavern glowed
fiercely as the ship exploded.
Her chance. Spewing more smoke, Sheeka took the opportunity to
cruise low, knowing that the other ships would home in on the destruction.
And there came one now, prowling like some kind of predator.
Smoke belched from Spindragon's rear as the engine labored on its
absurdly rich mix, but she knew that the cloud was large enough to
conceal her.
The approaching ship had twin beacons in the fore, so that it
looked like some kind of lurking predator. An energy bolt ripped
through the smoke and slammed against the wall, causing a rock
slide she could hear and feel but not see. She tensed as another bolt
sizzled by, but didn't move. The search ship was just questing about.
It didn't know where she was.
But Sheeka did. Just barely, but she did. She lifted up and pivoted
her ship about. She knew where another exit lay, and if she was careful,
she just might make it.
Both front and rear viewscreens showed nothing as she crept away.
Occasionally she caught the barest glimmer of a headlight, but then
as she turned the corner once and then twice she left that behind and
moved as quickly as she could toward the exit, trying not to think of
the deadly search behind her, or wonder what had become of the Jedi
and their proud plans.
58
0bi-Wan surveyed the small group of stragglers who had survived
the cave slaughter. They huddled in a rocky defile, invisible to any
ship overhead, but of course also invisible to other survivors or potential
allies. If there were any who had not fled into the desert.
All in all, he estimated that half their force had been killed or captured,
and most of the rest scattered. He did not look forward to
making his next report to the Supreme Chancellor.
That, of course, assumed there would be another report.
He climbed back up to the top of the ridge without exposing himself
to enemy fire, looking down to where they had left their new
transport, a cargo craft purchased from a small farming community
southwest of the capital.
The ship was now a smoking crater. Much of the communications
gear, and their astromech unit. . . gone. Doolb Snoil. . . slain while
heroically saving Obi-Wan's life. At least two clones had made it
out—he did not know if there was a third. He had seen one ARC go
down protecting the woman Tull, but no more than that.
Unless something changed drastically, this mission was shaping
into the greatest disaster of his career.
Kit Fisto came up behind him. Although it was not in Kit's way to
offer a comforting gesture, Obi-Wan knew his companions hearts.
Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, but none of it had
been the Nautolan's fault. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was not his fault,
either. G'Mai Duris had warned him that sinister forces were at
work. That they were never meant to succeed . . . could that be true?
And if so, what did it mean?
"I do not understand." Kit said. "Each individual move we have
made has been without stain."
Obi-Wan rotated those words in his mind, seeking to put the lie to
them. To his sad relief, he could not. They had done everything right.
"And yet we've been outmaneuvered at every turn," he said, finishing
his thought aloud. "Almost as if we've been playing the wrong game
all along."
All along. Obi-Wan remembered the moment in the throne room
when he had pretended to locate the car by sensing its influence on
the rest of the system. Well, he had only thought of that because of
similar, less complex exercises taught long ago by Qui-Gon Jinn.
He'd felt that same part of himself triggering, rising as from slumber.
He needed to see something. To notice something. Look at all the
pieces. Which ones have been disturbed'? What do you not see, as well as
see? Not sense, as well as sense? Where should there have been a ripple
where there was not? If something has caused each of your plans to disrupt
... if someone attempted to kill you... was that Duris's way? And do
any of the Five Families have the power to cause such catastrophe? And if
they do not, then what possibility does that leave?
"Obi-Wan?" Kit asked, and suddenly Obi-Wan realized that he
had been staring trancelike into the distance. Kit was studying him,
and worry creased the Nautolan's normally impassive face.
He whispered his reply. "There is another player. Another major
participant in this tragedy, and has been from the beginning. Somewhere
in all of this."
"But where?"
Obi-Wan shook his head. "I don't know. But I fear that before this
is complete, we will know the answer to that question. And will wish
we didn't."
One of the clones approached from behind him. He cursed his
self-pity. If he was confused, how much more so were these poor
creatures, raised since before birth to operate within an immutable
chain of command? He had to shake off this malaise, be worthy of
their trust.
"Your orders, sir?" Sirty asked.
"Collect the equipment," he said. "Round up the survivors. We're
moving to the secondary location. I don't know who betrayed us. But
this time, we keep the loop closed."
Sirty nodded tightly. "Very good, sir."
"Casualties?"
"Sixteen dead or captured that we know of, sir."
Obi-Wan noticed that a few more stragglers had joined them
without attracting the hunters. Good. Where there was discipline,
courage, and creativity, hope still remained. "Casualties?"
"Captain A-Nine-Eight, Nate, is missing and presumed dead."
That hit Obi-Wan hard. Strange. Hundreds of thousands of clones,
all cut from the same cloth. And yet hearing about that particular
trooper caused him a special pain, and he wasn't entirely certain why.
59
sheeka Tull made very, very certain her pursuers were thrown off
the track before continuing. She traveled south to the commercial air
corridors, and then slipped along those, changing directions several
times to be absolutely sure that Spindragon was not followed.
Once certain, she zigzagged 200 kilometers into a stretch of rolling
brown mounds 180 klicks east of the Dashta Mountains. A river
channeled snowmelt from the Yal-Noy's whitecapped peak to their
north, so the hills were greener than much of Cestus's surface, pleasing
to the eye even from a distance. Still, the water supply was adequate
rather than generous, so the population remained relatively
low.
Most called them the Zantay Hills. Sheeka Tull called them home.
Sheeka went into a landing pattern, and breathed a sigh of relief as
the engines slowed and stopped.
At first there was no sign of habitation. Then an X'Ting cloaked
in a brown robe emerged from one of the metal buildings. As Sheeka
Tull walked Jangotat down the ramp, he hailed her, the customary
smile of greeting gone thin and tight.
"Brother Fate," she said.
"Sheeka," he said. His faceted eyes peered more carefully at the
burned uniform, and the unhappy expression deepened. "Bringing
this soldier here is dangerous."
Sheeka tightened her grip around Jangotat's waist. "He was injured
in our cause. Help him, Brother Fate. Please."
The old gray-tufted X'Ting examined the wound, rubbing the
singed cloth between his fingers. "Blaster?"
"What difference does that make?" she said urgently. "Help him!"
Brother Fate let out a long, slow sigh. His faceted emerald eyes
were filled with pity. "For you, my child," he said, and then raised his
voice to the others. Slowly, a few other people, and then a stream,
emerged from their shelters and, smiling, approached.
Three children emerged, came running toward her crying, "Nana!"
and hugging her leather skirts.
"Tarl!" she cried, hugging the boy child. "Tonote," the girl. "Where
is Mithail?" One youngster hung back a bit, but then she gathered
him into her arms and kissed his mop of unruly red hair. "How have
you all been?" she asked. As she distributed hugs and kisses to them
she watched from the corner of her eye while Jangotat was carted
away by several X'Tings in dark cloaks.
"Who is the man?" Mithail, the youngest, asked.
"A friend," she replied, and then ruffled their hair. "A friend. Now.
Tell me everything that's happened in the last week."
60
Groaning with pain, Jangotat pulled himself into wakefulness.
Everything inside him hurt, which he found alarming. Was this how
it felt to die?
He tried to open his eyes. He felt his lids slide up, but was still unable
to see. Global pain combined with blindness triggered an unexpected
and quite unwelcome panic response. He sat up, as he did so
experiencing a tearing sensation in the skin along his waist. Agony
forced an oath from his lips, and he thrashed his arms about, trying
to discover the extent of his . . .
Prison?
"Now, now, calm down." A pleasant male X'Ting voice. "Everything
is all right. It is imperative that you rest."
Absolutely nothing in that voice triggered any sense of threat, but
Jangotat couldn't dampen his reaction. Danger flared over his entire
nervous system, as if his every sense had triggered simultaneously.
And y e t . . .
And y e t . . .
The Cestus Deception Page 30
