mammary glands exuded a cheesy substance called kista that
helped offworlders cope with the toxins and microorganisms in Cestus's
soil.
They sang to him a tune he had heard before:
One, one, chitliks basking in the sun.
Two, two, chitlik kista in the stew.
Three, three, leave a little bit for me.
Four, four, can I have a little more?
Five, five, set the traps to catch alive.
Six, six...
So the children could augment the community by capturing and
"milking" the creatures of kista, then releasing them again—usually
without damage.
Set the traps to catch alive...
He'd seen few dead animals since arriving. No furs, no curing meat.
All he had eaten was the satisfying, hearty fungus. These folk "hunted"
without harm.
Who were they, and what had made them that way?
Jangotat watched the children as they checked the slat-walled
deadfalls. The chitliks hissed from behind the barriers, but struggled
less than he would have expected as they were milked, almost as
if playing a game of some kind with their captors. The creatures
seemed aware that the humans meant them no harm. Later, he found
himself helping the kids design traps and snares based on his own
survival training—although of course they needed to be modified to
ensure that chitliks were caught alive.
He rolled over on his back on the grass, looking up at the sun and
relishing the simplicity of his present life. Soon enough he would be
back in combat, but for right now, the most important thing was the
capture of a few small, furry creatures that would provide vital antitoxins
for the village meals, with enough surplus to supplement trade
in fungi.
The children were fascinated by his nimble fingers, and he amused
them with simple skills he had been taught in his own "childhood":
knife juggling, rope escapes, silent stalking, sign reading, a dozen
other tricks that he had learned as normal children learned counting
games or skipping rope.
And although there was laughter in his eyes as they came down together
from the mountains into the hills, Jangotat's heart was heavy.
And that night at the collective meals . . . so similar, yet so different
from the communal meals he had enjoyed with his brethren on
Kamino, he thought...
This is not my world.
And then: But it could have been.
T.. o Obi-Wan Kenobi s way of thinking, what could be done had
been done. Every mistake that could possibly have been anticipated
had been corrected. This time, only a fraction of the surviving recruits
knew exactly where the central headquarters lay. The fortyeight
survivors were organized into cells of five or six, with only the
other members of the cells knowing their names. The outlying farms
and mines had suffered a wave of arrests. Many who had been unwise
enough to indulge in a bit of tavern-boasting about their recent exploits
were now languishing in prisons—or had been slain trying to
escape.
Who knew where the captives had been taken? There was little
those captured by the JKs in the mines could tell, but together with
the holovid they could make a convincing case for Jedi perfidy, perhaps
sufficient to induce more planets to leave the Republic.
In the last days Obi-Wan and Kit had set up camp in an abandoned
tricopper mine, one with an entrance through a sheltered
overhang that could not be seen by flybys or drone satellites. One
known to none of the captured recruits. One free of cave spider nests,
with multiple exits that could be taken at a moment's notice. Obi-
Wan was determined that the previous slaughter would not happen
again. They could not afford another such catastophe.
Forry approached. "Jangotat is still unaccounted for," he said.
Skot OnSon, their youngest recruit, had been brought blindfolded
to the new cave, and now stood at what he considered attention.
"Some of our guys tried to get him out," he said. "We found their
bodies, but—"
"So you don't really know what happened to him," Obi-Wan said.
"No, General Kenobi."
Obi-Wan hunched over his hands, trying to make sense of the
data. "We may have been betrayed," he said quietly.
There was utter silence in the cave. Then Sirty spoke up. "You suggest
that Jangotat has broken Code?" He said that with the air of a
man informed that gravity has abruptly ceased to work.
Seefor looked at Obi-Wan with something close to anger. "It has
never happened."
Obi-Wan was angry with himself that he had allowed such a
speculation to creep into his mind. The troopers were as loyal as mortal
flesh could be. Seefor had rightfully found his implication offensive.
"I do not mean to insult you. I merely state a fact: Jangotat was
behaving oddly before the attack."
Kit Fisto chose this moment to speak. "I believe that he was killed.
An energy blast could have fried his comlink. Tons of rock were dislodged.
He may be buried."
Another pause. The clone troopers did not like this idea, but
greatly preferred it to the alternative. "There's another possibility. We
haven't been able to raise Sheeka Tull by comlink. It's possible that
he's with her . . . they were seen together."
Kit clapped his hands. "From now on, security is watertight," he
said. "No messages out of our camp. This cannot happen again."
"Agreed, sir."
"Then we have to move to step three," Obi-Wan said harshly. "Intensified
sabotage. Kit?"
Kit examined the floating hologram, and then spoke. "It might be
possible to determine the most critical parts of the fabrication and
distribution system, and halt or slow production without damage to
the physical plant itself."
"And this selectiveness is important because . . . ?"
"Cestus cannot survive without a cash stream. To disrupt it other
than temporarily would kill thousands."
"So?"
"So I have a plan . . . "
strictly speaking, the thousand-square-kilometer sprawl of Clandes
Industrial's complex was not a city at all. It would most accurately
be considered a starburst-shaped collection of manufacturing facilities
located three hundred kilometers south of ChikatLik, seventy-five
kilometers southeast of the Dashta Mountains. Clandes's twentyfour
underground levels bristled with employee barracks and support
structures for the merchants, cantinas, personal service corps, and the
transportation agents who enabled them. Much of the complex was
based on the hive cluster that had once occupied the location. Once,
before the plagues.
As the surviving X'Ting moved out, offworlders of a dozen species
moved in. In time barracks had sprung up, and then support systems
for those dormitories, transport pads, and the other jobs that accompanied
them. Eventually what had grown here would dwarf all of the
outlying farming and mining settlements, and become its own entity.
But the heart of it was the manufacturi
ng complex that still accounted
for 60 percent of Cestus's economy. And in this very special
case, was responsible for something else as well:
TheJKdroids. j
Obi-Wan and his anarchists had spent all of a long and stressful
night analyzing the various routes into and out of Clandes, all the
trade that went in, and all the resources that it controlled... and controlled
it. It took hours to find a single line that seemed to be the
most critical.
Every day millions of liters of water were used for agriculture and
machining, for drinking and recreation. Cestus's water was perfect
for its native life-forms, but the microorganisms were lethal for offworlders,
and demanded thorough processing before even ordinary
industrial uses, let alone consumption. Whereas most of the water for
ChikatLik was piped in from northern glaciers, water for Clandes
flowed from two sources: snowmelt from the Dashta Mountains and
the Clandes aquifer, a geological formation holding water deep in
layers of underground rock and sand, under sufficient pressure to discharge
to the surface with minimal effort.
The nerve center was the main plant processing the aquifer water
for consumption in the city. If it could be destroyed, the plant would
have to be repaired, or within days Clandes's residents would be
drinking their own sweat. That shutdown would cause a serious
reshifting of priorities as the plant was repaired, and once again the
Five Families might be coerced to the bargaining table.
Obi-Wan thought about it from every angle. Out of the dozen or
so possibilities, it was probably the best. There was an additional advantage:
whoever planned the counterassault against Desert Wind
had clearly authorized the use of deadly force. Was it Regent Duris?
He had to assume so, and to assume that she would expect a similar
level of lethal escalation. Attacking the aquifer station, on the other
hand, was more roundabout, and respectful of life—the kind of attack
unlikely to be made by a desperate enemy with limited resources.
And therefore less easy to anticipate.
Obi-Wan had other concerns as well: it had been four days since
his ship had been blown from the sky, and with it their only longrange
communications gear. Four days since any sort of message had
been sent back to the Supreme Chancellor and the Jedi Council.
Soon Coruscant would assume that the mission had failed. That
meant naval bombardment. And bombardment meant disaster.
Clandes attracted merchants of all kinds, from interstellar cargo
barges to aboriginal caravans crossing the deserts at night seeking
Clandes's gates and landing pads.
And that day the guards at the gates studied the flow more carefully
than usual. Although the guards had to expect additional assaults,
there was little they could do to prepare for one.
The attack had to operate in two different sites and with two different
intents. The locations: the pumping station at the foot of the
Dashta Mountains, and the purification plant in the town itself. Disabling
both simultaneously might confuse the security force, giving
their people time to slip away. If the attempt to sabotage the stations
failed, Desert Wind forces would plant targeting beacons to guide
the inevitable bombardment. With such pinpoint targeting, even if
disaster struck, the bombing fatalities might be limited to dozens
rather than thousands.
So while Obi-Wan Kenobi and half the forces entered the city in
a variety of guises, Kit and his followers approached the aquifer station
from the mountains, landing five kilometers away and then
moving over and through rough broken terrain to approach the station
from shadow.
"Alarms?" Seefor asked soberly.
Kit examined the flat hand-size viewscreen. It displayed the outline
of the physical plant, plus shadowy, floating images representing
the security fields around the plant. "They're there, as of a week ago."
"I'll be surprised if they haven't been enhanced," Seefor said.
"So we have to wait." But not for long. He felt exposed here. Since
things had started souring, he had the uneasy sense that every move
he made was anticipated. Kit hated to admit it, but he and Obi-Wan
were running out of moves. The first time they repeated themselves,
they were all as dead as the hopes for a diplomatic solution.
Timing was everything. Obi-Wan Kenobi shuffled along with the
caravan Thak Val Zsing had arranged for them, bringing a variety of
luxury items to the tent-city open market on the surface above Clandes.
They carried a dozen types of dried and shredded mushrooms,
perfumes and toys, rare spices from the desert caves, scented oils for
bath or bedchamber, carvings made from the petrified bones of longdead
creatures that had walked Cestus's deserts when the soil had
been fertile and moist.
The bearded, pale-skinned human guard examined the offerings
and laughed. "Not much market for this nonsense today. Everyone's
on alert right now. Maybe you'd better turn around, come back later."
A ridiculous notion. The guards knew quite well that the caravan
would have traversed a hundred kilometers to reach the tent city's
gated entrance. They would lack water, and food, and would long for
rest beneath a sheltering roof. He wondered if the guard was weakminded
as well as venal? It might be worth a try to—
But before he could implement his planned bit of mind control,
Resta stepped forward." 'Cuse me," she said." 'Fore we go, sell goods
otherwhere, we want give you first look. You, me, done business
afore." And here Resta's red-ringed secondary hands raised her robes
to show a series of copper bands on her belt, each one representing
another journey into Clandes. The belt dangled with them. "We
make credit, you make credit. Business better wit' friends. What
say?"
The guard watched them both. One of his pale shaggy eyebrows
raised as he extended his hand. Resta placed a small jangling bag into
it, and the guard peered within. A smile split the fleshy expanse beneath
his unkempt yellow beard, and he stepped aside.
The caravan entered, and Obi-Wan was immediately glad that his
face and form were mostly concealed: a probe droid floated by them,
imaging the group, no doubt relaying it to live or computerized security
databases. This was the ground-level open market entrance, and
the entire area was filled with booths, selling thousands of different
wares to Clandes residents who ventured to the storm-swept surface
in search of bargains and exotica.
After half an hour helping his companions erect their own booth,
Obi-Wan pretended to sort carvings before he caught a nod from
Resta, and was forced to pay a bit more attention to the next customer,
a yellowish Glymphid whose long, slender head matched his
skinny body.
"Have you a carved bantha?" the Glymphid asked. "I long for
home,"
Those were the appointed code words, and after a brisk bit of bargaining,
Obi-Wan sold him a carved walking stick. "This is just
fine," the creature from Ploo II said. "I might be willing to have some
more of this work. Custom work. Would you be interested?" Obi-
Wan nodded.
The Glymphid turned and led Obi-Wan and Resta toward the
duracrete dome marking a city entrance. The guard paid minimal
attention, and they descended a turbolift tube into the heart of
Clandes.
Obi-Wan had expected Clandes to resemble the capital. He was
both right and wrong. At ChikatLik the hive had made a home in a
cavern created by natural water erosion. Here the walls glistened,
fused to glass, and he realized that the entire cavern had been formed
by some kind of underground volcanic activity: they'd probably
moved in a million years after the molten bubble had cooled. Its new
offworlder masters had built on top of the X'Ting architecture.
Resta had not spoken since they entered, but now she whispered
under her breath, "See low rocky building behind spire?"
Obi-Wan nodded.
"That power station. Cut my farm off, so sell power to some Five
Fam' place. See building next to it?" A three-story brownish rectangle.
The purification plant.
"That where you go. Resta no take you farther. Unnerstan'?"
Obi-Wan nodded again. "I thank you for everything."
Resta snorted, anger reddening her face and bristling the slits
at the sides of her neck. She gestured at the bustling pedestrians.
"Think Resta risk life for you?" She spit on the ground. "Resta no
care 'bout her life. Her people almost gone. Just want to take as many
wit' Resta as can." And without shaking hands or giving any other
sign, the golden-carapaced woman turned and left.
The city bustled like a nest of sea-prigs. About a third of the citizens
wore uniforms in orange-and-gold cloth. Obi-Wan knew these
to be the factory's corporate colors, and was sobered to realize the extent
of the damage he was about to create.
The streets had been laid out along the original hive structure, with
the mathematical precision of a computer-generated maze. Therefore
it was easy for Obi-Wan to find his way through the color-coded
labyrinth until he found himself three stories deeper down at the
outskirts of the three-story brown building.
He slipped into an alley, examining the building from the side. He
had seen the schematic, but given any opportunity preferred to trust
The Cestus Deception Page 32
