The Cestus Deception (11 page)

For hours the clone troopers had busied themselves in the cool, deep shadows of the Dashta Mountains. They glued, fitted, and welded, joining together hundreds of preformed durasteel sections, melding them with native materials to create the nucleus of a fine command center.

“So where’s our first strike?” Forry asked Nate as they worked.

He shrugged in response. “Give me a spot-weld, right here.” Their astromech unit extended a soldering probe. “First of all,” he said, shielding his eyes against a bright, sharp shower of sparks, “there’s reason to think we might not get used at all. General Kenobi’s supposed to
protect
the entrenched political and economic forces.”

“Yeah, right,” Sirty said.

“But if it does go down?”

Nate grunted. “Then I’d guess we’ll hit Cestus Cybernetics.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

Their comlink bleeped; a tone said that they’d be expecting friendly visitors in a little under a minute, and they were not to respond with force. That beacon triggered long before they heard the distant but distinct
swoosh
of air. A few seconds later General Fisto’s speeder bike appeared.

Nate wandered out to the pad, feeling loose, dangerous, and satisfied. In a matter of hours they had turned this mountain hole into a reasonable headquarters.

He watched the Nautolan’s speeder glide over the smooth and jagged rock surfaces, heading north. Nate followed on foot, arriving in time to watch a cargo ship arrive on the open spot they’d chosen as their secondary landing zone.

The door opened, and the walkway extended. A dark-skinned human female exited, following Kit back up toward the cave. Nate saluted as Kit passed. The woman glanced at him with little curiosity as she and Kit entered the cave. The Jedi received salutations from the other clones. He briefly evaluated the work that they had already performed, then took the woman to a scanner and showed her some material. They conferred briefly, and Kit said: “Captain, Forry, I wish you to accompany us.”

“Yes, sir,” they said simultaneously.

Spindragon
was a suborbital YT-1200 medium freighter. She was old, melded with parts from other similar models, with a rounded hull and an elongated, tubular cockpit. Nate spent a few minutes examining the welds. Although it was obvious that a dozen different soldering mixtures had been used, as well as a bit of Corellian epoxy, they seemed strong enough to stand up to high-g turns, and he gave his approval.

The interior was barely more than functional: little bits of decoration suggested an attempt at aesthetics, but nothing frilly enough to decrease utility.

The woman cocked her head sideways at the ARC trooper, trying to peer through his helmet. “I didn’t catch your name,” she said.

“Trooper A-Nine-Eight.”

She snorted. “Is there a short version of that?”

“Call me Nate,” he said. Curiosity flickered in her dark eyes, and her lips pursed as if Sheeka Tull was tempted to ask a question. She didn’t surrender to temptation, but he guessed that she hadn’t shuffled him into the
nonbeing
category to which most citizens automatically relegated clones.

Within minutes they were all strapped in and ready to go. She rose from their landing pad and spiraled up into the sky, flying southeast for about fifteen minutes, then north for another ten.

A small manufacturing complex lay before them. Nate made a quick tactical assessment: several mine dropshaft shacks, living quarters, a small refinery, some shipping docks, landing docks, water filtration equipment, and communications towers. Next to a series of condensation coils nestled a blue bubble that he figured was a polarizing hothouse, using shielded plastics to change their sun’s spectral range so that a wider variety of plants could be grown. Typical settlement. Fragile. Easy to destroy.

But he remained silent. A major part of his job was just being visually impressive. Most citizens had never seen clone troopers, although they had doubtless heard tales.

He and Forry were first down the ramp when it extended, followed by Sheeka Tull and the Jedi.

The community seemed to have turned out for them, but he noticed that there were precious few X’Ting in the crowd. Most were humans, a few were Wookiees, and there was a smattering of other species. No doubt many of them were descendants of the original prisoners.

The farmers and miners relaxed noticeably when Sheeka appeared, and she waved to them. She was known here. Good. That would make things far simpler than if they had to establish either trust or dominance.

“Greetings to all of you,” she said to them. “I’m glad you showed up, though I can’t say I’m sure what this is about. But these are the people I told you to expect. I won’t vouch for them. Keep your ears and eyes open, and make up your own minds.”

They nodded, and Nate had to respect her speech: Tull might be willing to bring them here, but even whatever leverage the Republic had upon her could not force her to sell her honor by pretending friendship. Good. He liked her more all the time.

General Fisto stood at the bottom of the ramp and raised his hands. His tentacles curled and coiled hypnotically.

“Miners!” he called. “You harvest ore from the soil. You transport, refine, and manufacture. You are this world’s heart.”

The faces were doubtful, but intrigued. Nate noted that several of the younger ones looked at him as well, studying him as if wishing his helmet were transparent.

“You stir the tides of commerce,” the general went on. “It is your hands that hold the materials, skills, equipment, and raw material to build their luxuries.”

When several of them nodded, he knew General Fisto was speaking their language. The only question was whether or not they truly cared to hear his words.

“But despite this fact, how often have you been included in their decisions?”

“Never,” someone muttered.

“How often have you shared in their harvest? Do you grasp that their droids are among the galaxy’s most prized possessions? There is nothing wrong with growing wealthy, but the wealth should be shared with those who do the dirtiest, most dangerous work.” As he proceeded, the emotion in his voice grew more and more pronounced. “Your ancestors came here in chains. For all the power you wield, you may as well wear them still.”

He had their interest now, but he would need far more to make this gambit successful.

“Even now, your masters court war with the Republic.”

This triggered a series of gasps and ugly murmurs. A few of them might have had no love for the Republic—the kind who might automatically side with Cestus against the strength of a thousand-ship fleet. Others felt no such bravado, and shifted nervously from foot to foot, as if fearing they stood in a bantha trap with closing jaws.

“Why are they doin’ that?” an older woman asked. The wind stirred the tips of her gray-streaked hair.

“They sell these deadly droids to the Confederacy. They will be modified and used against the Republic.” At this, Nate stood just a hair taller, and noticed that his brother Forry did as well. Eyes focused upon them. What thoughts flitted through their minds? Did they regard the troopers as potential enemies? Imagine them dying? Or killing? Studying them as potential allies? Wondering what it might be like to fight at the side of an ARC trooper? Certainly, some here had blood hot enough to crave such an adventure, such a test.

“In fact, we have information suggesting that they plan to mass-market these droids offplanet, once the secret is secured.”

“What? It couldn’t happen. The Guides—” a female miner began, but then the farmer to Nate’s right gave her ribs a painful elbow thump, and she fell silent.

Interesting.

“Yes,” Kit continued, as if he could read both Nate’s mind and that of the woman who had just spoken. “You have been told that it is impossible for more than a few hundred of them to be produced, because of the dashta eels.”

The group was even more uncomfortable now, but Nate intuited that the problem was multifaceted. Some were afraid, a few outraged, and in one… two pairs of eyes he saw a skepticism so deep that he knew automatically:
These know something.

“But they are willing to gamble with your survival in order to make their fortunes.”

“How do you know that?” one young blond-haired man asked. “The Five Families live here. You can’t sink half a sand-wagon, Nautolan.”

“Yes. They live here, but are not
trapped
here. Wealth makes many things possible. Those owning the designs will grow fat. You must ask yourself—would those who already restrict you to a subsistence living hesitate to beggar you completely?” An ugly murmur rumbled through the crowd. “You tell me: over the last years and decades, have they treated you as if your lives, your families, your needs and wants are of concern to them?”

And now there was a wider range of nodding and agreement.

One X’Ting female, a tuft of red fur vibrant between thorax and chin, her body broad with internal egg sac, stepped forward. This was rare. Where once millions had swarmed the hives, no more than fifty thousand X’Ting remained on the entire planet. She was larger than most of the human males, who gave her a wide berth. “What you want from us?” Her clumsy speech marked her as a low-caste. Her dusky face reddened with emotion, and her secondary arms fidgeted. “No more pretty-pretty talk. Heard them before. What you offer us, and what you want from us?”

“I offer you nothing save what every planet in the Republic has been promised: a fair voice in the Senate, access to the shared resources of a thousand star systems, and our support in forcing your government to share the wealth with those who produce it. What I ask in return is this: if I prove my point to you, if we can prove that your leaders are prepared to sell your birthright, to betray the Republic, to leave you drowning in the ash of a war-torn planet while they escape to the stars with your children’s heritage—if I can prove these things to you—”

General Fisto’s unblinking black eyes fixed on several of the young males in the group, and a few young females as well. To Nate’s pleasure, he noted that they drew their shoulders back. They rocked back and forth, glancing at each other, as if tempted to step forward even now.

At this cue Nate and Forry doffed their helmets and stood more rigidly. Their identical faces always caused a stir: some thought them twins; others had heard of the clone army, and just needed to put a face to the mental image.

Sheeka Tull’s eyes snapped wide. She stepped backward as if she’d been slapped. She looked from Nate to Forry and back again three times, and then retreated until he couldn’t see her.

“—that you allow your best and brightest to join us if they so choose,” the general concluded.

“That all?” the X’Ting woman asked.

“That is enough. Do not reject my words out of hand. Let us find whatever support there is to be found. We wish nothing that you do not want to give.”

The people chattered among themselves, then ventured new questions. Nate guessed that the most important issue was whether or not they had an actual choice in this matter. And he silently congratulated the general for deliberately—or instinctively—choosing the right tactic to appeal to these disenfranchised people. He noted that their young men and women were listening most closely, measuring General Fisto’s words as if they were handfuls of gravel with gems possibly hidden in the mix.

The general promised to keep the farmers posted as to progress, and they continued on to the next group. As they returned to the ship, Sheeka Tull took the Jedi aside and spoke to him urgently, gesticulating at the two clone troopers. Nate couldn’t hear the conversation, but when it was done she looked a bit shell-shocked. She walked past Nate and Forry without looking at them, and took the pilot’s seat without another word.

For the rest of the day they followed the same routine. The dark-skinned woman would introduce them, and General Fisto went into his spiel while Nate and Forry stood tall. The general made no direct reference to the clone troopers, but he knew they had to be wondering if these were the troopers they had heard so much of—and was there, possibly, a role for them in the planetary militias currently being organized in every corner of the galaxy?

Nate knew the answer to that question, the same answer that generals and conquerors had known since the beginning of civilization: there is always room for another willing warrior.

After the third talk, the Nautolan was engaged by a group of miners who seemed entranced by this exotic visitor from the galactic center. The general interacted with the group privately, with the result that four of them were invited to sup with the hosts and their families. A rumbling belly told Nate he’d placed his physical needs on hold for too long. Both from habit and because it added to their mystique, he and Forry ate apart from the others. A group of the miners’ children pointed at them and giggled.

To his surprise Sheeka Tull chose to sit beside him. Nate ate quietly for several minutes before he found himself studying the play of the dark skin of her neck against the red-and-white stripes of her pilot’s jacket, and found himself intrigued.

He decided to try a conversational gambit. “Good meat,” he said. “What is it?”

“Not meat,” she said. “It’s a mushroom bred by the X’Ting, adapted for human stomachs. They can make it taste like anything they like.”

He stared at his sandwich. The fungus had striations like meat. Tasted like meat. He bet it had a perfect amino acid profile, too. He chewed experimentally, and then just relaxed and enjoyed. “Why are you here?” he asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You weren’t born here,” he said.

“And how do you know that?” She seemed genuinely curious.

“Your pronunciation is different. You learned Basic
after
your native tongue.”

She laughed, but it was a long, low laugh, without derision. A good laugh, he decided. “Where’d you learn to think like that?”

“Intelligence training. There’s more to soldiering than just pulling triggers.”

“Now now, don’t be so touchy.” She grinned.

He took a deep and satisfying bite of his sandwich. The mushroom was spicy and hot, juicy as a Kaminoan fanteel steak. Too often, ARC field rations were a flavorless gruel or lump, as if lack of genetic diversity justified a lack of savory variation in the mess tent. “So… how about my answer? How’d you end up here?”

She leaned her head back against the tree. Her hair was full-bodied, but did not fall to her shoulders. It was worn in a short puff, almost like a hedge growing from her scalp. “Sometimes I feel like I’ve been everywhere, and done everything,” she said.

There was silence for a minute, and Forry went to fill his mug a second time. Nate caught Sheeka looking at him with what he supposed was approval, but still as if she had some sort of secret. She studied his face almost as if…

As if…

He managed to focus his thoughts. “Where’s your family?” Why in space had he asked
that
? It was none of his business, and worse, it opened the door to potentially embarrassing personal questions.

“My birth parents?”

“You’re not a clone, are you?” He meant it as a joke.

Her face hardened. “Yes. I had parents.”

“You lost them.” It wasn’t a question. Looking down the hill, he could see the elders gathered around General Fisto, whose gestures were simultaneously measured and sweeping.

For more than a minute she said nothing, and he hoped his words hadn’t offended. Then finally, speaking so softly that at first he mistook her words for a trick of the wind, she began to speak. “A range war on Atrivis-Seven,” she said. “It was a bad time.” She stared down at the dirt. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to know war was coming, to feel it raging all around, and not have the skills to lift arms and join the fray. He hoped he never found out.

She went on. “Maybe I was attracted to Ord Cestus because it was so… isolated. So far from the hub. I guess it wasn’t isolated enough. I met someone.”

Something in her voice caught his interest, made him look at her more carefully. “A man?”

She shrugged. “It happens,” she said. “A miner named Yander.”

“You fell in love?” he asked.

Her mood lightened. “That’s what they call it. You understand love?”

He frowned. What kind of question was
that
? “Of course,” he said, and then reconsidered. It was possible, of course, that she meant something that he did not include among his own definitions.

“It wasn’t just him,” she continued, now locked in her own private world of memories. “It was his three children, too. Tarl, Tonoté, and Mithail. His whole community.” She glanced away from him for a second, then back again. “I fell in love with all of them. We married. Yander and I had four good years together. More than a lot of people get.”

Something caught in her voice, and he cursed himself for invading her privacy. Then in the next thought he wondered why she had allowed herself to be questioned if the questions so obviously triggered pain. Finally, he managed the simple words “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.” Sheeka Tull sighed. “So, anyway, I’m raising his kids. Never had a lot of family… I want to raise the one I have now. That’s why I’m willing to take the chance to help you guys. Clean up my record.”

“What leverage do they have on you?”

She shook her head. “Maybe when we know each other better.”

When?
Not
if
? Interesting.

“Does your new family live near here?”

Again she shifted evasively, and he sensed that he had touched on a sensitive topic. “No. Not here. With their aunt and uncle. A fungus-farming community. It’s just scratch, but we like it.”

“Scratch?”

“They make enough to feed themselves, and a little to barter, but not enough to sell.”

So. She worked to care for her adopted family, who lived with the miner’s brother and sister. She was reticent to discuss… the children? Or their location? Hard to say. Interesting.

As he came out of his thoughts, again he had the sense that she was staring at him, and this time he felt uncomfortable. “Why do you look at me that way?”

She shook her head. Then, as if she thought herself the biggest fool in the galaxy, she shook with peals of deep, rich laughter. “I suppose I keep expecting you to remember me. That’s crazy, of course.” She laughed again, and Nate just felt more confused. “You have to pardon me.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I suppose I should have told you before. I knew Jango Fett.”

He didn’t quite believe what he’d heard. Worse, he wasn’t sure how to react. “You did?”

She nodded. “Yes, twenty years ago, in quite another life. Seeing you was kind of a shock. When you took those helmets off—wow!” Her laugh was throaty and vibrant. “It’s him, all right, and just about the age he was when we first met.”

Nate’s head spun. “I should have expected that, I suppose. Certainly some of my brothers have also encountered people who had known him… I’ve just never spoken to one.”

“Wow.” She scratched in the dirt with her toe, drawing another of the little symbols, and then scratching it out again. “Well, wonders never cease. How’d this happen? And the other troopers… they’re all little Jangos?” He bristled, and she laid her hand on his arm. “Just a joke. You know, joke?”

Finally he nodded, sensing that she meant no real harm. “The Republic called for a clone army,” he said, and recited the words that he had heard and said a thousand times before. “They needed a perfect role model for a fighting man. In all the galaxy they found only one, Jango Fett.”

“Oh, he wasn’t perfect, but he was a serious chunk.” Her smile grew more mischievous. “And he’s now the father of a whole army of bouncing baby clones. What does he think of that?”

“He’s dead.”

The pause that followed might have swallowed a decent-size star cruiser.

“How did it happen?” she whispered. “I supposed I always knew that Jango was too intense to last forever. And yet…” Her voice trailed away.

“And yet what?” Nate asked.

“He always seemed invulnerable, like nothing could get to him.” She shook her head. “Stupid. My heart didn’t want to believe what my head already knew.”

The happy music of children singing and playing wafted to them.

One, one, chitliks basking in the sun.
Two, two, chitlik kista in the stew.
Three, three, leave a little bit for me…

An odd song. Of course, young clones sang on Kamino. They sang mnemonic tunes, imprinting the subconscious with recipes for explosives, ordnance manuals, equations for lines of sight and windage, and anatomical vulnerabilities for a hundred major species. Of course there were songs, and games. But these rhymes seemed merely concerned with the day, and the sun, and the world about them without specific instructions on the art of survival or death. He had never heard a ditty like that, and it intrigued him.

“How much do you know about him?” Sheeka asked.

He straightened his posture a bit, and again spoke words that had crossed his lips a hundred times. “He was the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy, a great warrior, an honorable man. He accepted a contract and stuck with it to the end.”

“But how
exactly
did he die?”

Nate cleared his throat, surprised to find it more constricted than he thought. “One of his clients was a traitor. Jango Fett didn’t know this when he accepted the contract, and once he had given his word, there was no other choice. It took a dozen Jedi to kill him.” At least, that was what Nate had always heard. Pride surged through his veins. There was no shame in what Jango had done. In fact, in the current decadent world, where most promises weren’t worth bantha spit, he was proud to be the offshoot of so deadly and honorable a fighter.

He looked at her sharply, expecting her to challenge his words.

“So Jango was killed by the Jedi.” She jerked a thumb at Kit Fisto. “And there they strut. Bother you?”

He shook his head slowly. “No,” he said. “No. We are under contract as well, a contract made with our blood. We were born to serve, and in that service find life’s greatest gift: a meaningful existence.”

She shook her head, but there was no mockery in her expression. “He’d howl,” she said. “Jango wasn’t the philosophical type.”

Curiosity overwhelmed him. True, he had met Jango, been educationally bruised and battered at his hands. But no trooper had much idea what he was like as… well, as a
man.
Mightn’t such knowledge make Nate a better trooper? “Tell me more,” he said.

Sheeka Tull cocked her head sideways, evaluating him, mischief alight in her eyes. “Maybe later,” she said. “If you’re good.”

“I’m the best of the best,” he answered.

“That,” she said, dark face speculative, “remains to be seen.”