The Cestus Deception (14 page)

As Kit Fisto walked back up to the cave, Nate ran up next to him and spoke in a low voice. “What did you feel in the basket?” he asked. “Some kind of rock viper?”

“I do not know,” Kit said, barely moving his lips. “It did not try to harm me. But I felt… something. A presence I have sensed before.” When Kit said no more, Nate accepted that and rejoined his brothers.

Thak Val Zsing shook his head as they walked toward the cave. “I wouldn’t have believed it,” he said. His eyes burned with challenge. “I’m not the one who’s trusting you, Jedi. Remember that.”

“I will,” Kit promised.

“Well,” he said, scratching his head. “A promise is a promise.”

“It is good that you are a being of your word.”

“Sometimes,” said Thak Val Zsing, his shoulders slumping, “his word is all a man has.”

“You bring more than words,” Kit replied. “Eat with us?”

Thak Val Zsing and his people jostled to find seats at their rude table. As steaming platters heaped with fresh meat, mushrooms, and hot bread were placed before them, he turned to Kit again. “We haven’t had a good meal in a week. Can you…?”

“All you can eat,” Kit said.

Thak Val Zsing and his people attacked their plates ferociously, bolting down their food like starving Hutts. Finally they slowed, belching and laughing, and it became possible to speak with them.

“I have read the files,” Kit said, “but I’d like to know your views. What happened on Cestus?”

“The story’s an old one,” Thak Val Zsing said. “I probably look like a miner, by now. Truth is, I was a history professor. Lost my job when the government cut social programs and utilities to the outlying areas.”

“The elected government? The regent G’Mai Duris?”

He snorted. “She’s not the real power here, star-boy. Better play catch-up. Anyway, I went to work in the mines. The rest, as they say, is history.” He grinned. “Look. Old story. You have oppressors and the oppressed. That was true before the Republic ever found these people: the X’Ting drove the spiders into the mountains, and probably exterminated some others who were gone before we ever arrived. We came, bought land from them for a few trunks of worthless synthstones, and a couple of hundred years later some mysterious ‘plagues’killed about ninety percent of ’em. Convenient, eh?”

“Extremely. You think these plagues no accident?”

Val Zsing snorted. “There’s no evidence you could trouble your precious Chancellor with. Any prison cramming together species from around the galaxy is a forcing ground for exotic disease. Let’s just say that the Five Families weren’t heartbroken.”

Thak Val Zsing tore a great chunk out of a roasted bird and chewed as juice ran down through his beard and onto his shirt. “Maybe my great-grandfather laughed about it, but it’s not funny now. The Five Families own everything. Those of us at the bottom barely have enough bread. Our babies cry in the night.”

“I thought Cestus Cybernetics was wealthy,” Kit said.

“Yes. But precious few of those credits make their way to the bottom.”

“We’re gonna change that,” Skot OnSon said. “Overthrow the government, take back our world.”

Our world,
Kit thought. And just whose world was it? The Five Families? The immigrants? The X’Ting hive? What about those wretched spiders the troopers had driven into the dark? He was sorry to have taken their cave now, but happy to have restrained the troopers from pursuit.

Obi-Wan and Barrister Snoil hadn’t left their apartment since returning from the throne room. The attendants seemed to hover around them, hoping for tips, bringing them food and rather clumsily trying to overhear their conversations. Finally Obi-Wan had to ask the hotel’s management to solve the problem.

Snoil had an unquenchable appetite for work. The Vippit rarely ate and never slept. He pored over documents, consulted with Cestian legal minds, relayed communications through their cruiser to Coruscant for second and third opinions.

Through it all, Obi-Wan sensed not desperation but a kind of joy at having an opportunity to discharge his old debt through excellent performance. If he could just find a way through this legal warren, understand the path that might lead to peaceful resolution, they might all leave Cestus happy.

Obi-Wan helped where he could, offered advice, tried to take some of the burden from Snoil’s shell, but in the end he felt almost useless. Their next meeting with G’Mai Duris was in no more than eighteen hours, and as of yet they had no ammunition to turn the tide.

But something would come up. Something always did…

Three hundred kilometers northeast of the command base stood the saw-toothed expanse of the Tolmea mountain range. Its tallest peak, Tolmeatek, rose thirty-two thousand meters from the valley floor, its snowcapped summit a gleaming beacon for the adventurous. Only within the last hundred years had any non-native managed the climb without re-breathing apparatus. The very word
tolmeatek
meant “untravelable” in X’Ting. The lesser mountains were of the same inhospitable disposition, stark inclines and flash storms making the entire region too dangerous for casual travel.

And ideal for clandestine activities. Within the shadow of mighty Tolmeatek nestled another landing pad, also hidden from chance observation.

A three-X’Ting delegation gazed up into the stars until one of the orbs began to change position. Oddly, it appeared tiny until the last possible moment, when it seemed as if the minuscule object suddenly expanded with impossible speed.

The greeters waited at their places, unmoving. Two wore shadowy robes, one a recently acquired offworlder style cut for an insectile X’Ting. A narrow landing ramp descended from the shining ship. A female humanoid appeared in the doorway. She wore a floor-length cloak and was clearly visible only in silhouette, but what they could see made them hold their breath.

The cabin behind her was dark. Her profile was clean-shaven, with a skull both symmetrical and large enough to suggest formidable intellect. The pale skin covering it was so clear and flawless as to be almost translucent. Six knife-shaped tattoos were arrayed on each side of her head, daggers pointing at her ears. She seemed to sparkle a bit, as if with some inner radiance. Doubtless, a trick of the light.

As she descended, they saw that her eyes were a flat and expressionless blue, briefly examining Fizzik without any comment or judgment. He was so far beneath her notice that he barely registered at all, neither threat nor ally. For all the change in her expression he might have been an astromech droid.

Fizzik was afraid of this woman, and found the sensation oddly delicious.

He stepped forward, prepared to offer his planned greeting. “Ma’am…?”

The woman tilted her head slowly sideways, staring at him as if he were an unaccustomed form of lower animal life. That odd sensation within him, the fear-thing, swelled. Fizzik went silent.

She took two more steps and then touched her belt. All around the ship, in a giant circle with a radius of perhaps twenty meters, the sand sizzled. Fizzik had noticed a line of tiny sandwasps crawling across the sand, mindlessly carrying their burdens back to their nest. Where that line crossed the sand, half a dozen of the tiny creatures had curled into smoking balls. The others on either side of the line were unharmed.

For the first time, she spoke. “If your people approach my ship,” she said, “you’ll need new people.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“
Very
good,” she mocked. “Take me to Trillot.”

Fizzik opened the back of a little snub-nosed tunnel speeder to her, and she entered without another word. Her movements flowed, as if she were more felinoid than humanoid. A savagely beautiful predator.

The tunnel runner hovered and then pivoted, heading into one of the nearby entrances. The little geebug was built for swift maneuvering in the warren of tunnels beneath Cestus’s surface.

These tunnels had been built by hive technicians eons ago, but had only been electronically mapped fairly recently—a few standard decades, perhaps. The geebug was also equipped with the very latest and most powerful scanning equipment and skittered through the tunnels like a thrinx on a griddle.

Fizzik sat beside the pilot in the front seat, but took a chance to cast a glance back at the rear seat, to see, perhaps, if their guest was at all discomfited by the series of near misses as they negotiated the warren.

She seemed unflappable, her piercing blue eyes amused, full pale lips curled up at the edges as they scraped through an especially close call. She scanned the cave walls as they flew past, noting everything. Their passenger turned and looked at him, curiosity lighting her face at last. “So the Five Families fear to meet with me openly.”

“It is considered risky. But you will be with them soon.”

She snorted derisively. “What is all this?” she asked, gesturing at the walls.

He found her voice a kind of coppery music. “The planet is honeycombed with mines and tunnels. They are the easiest way of traveling without detection.”

She chuckled, although what might have piqued her amusement was beyond him. She turned at last to face him. “And you are—?”

“Fizzik, brother to Trillot, who awaits your arrival.”

When she offered no introduction in return, he shrank back. He stared at her, and as he did her eyes grew vast and dark. “Perhaps,” he said, “I should just let you rest from your no doubt long and arduous journey.”

Their passenger closed her eyes. And no matter how abrupt their spins and turns, what jolts the tunnel runner got from near misses, she did not open them again until the vehicle came to a halt.

The instant the vehicle
shush
ed to stillness her eyes snapped open, and Asajj Ventress was as alert as a Gotal on the hunt. Her short nap had apparently refreshed and renewed her. That is, if such a creature required refreshment and renewal.

They had arrived in a cave below the heart of the city. Five of Trillot’s most trusted aides awaited them. Whereas she had exited the ship like a queen or some kind of dark princess, here she opened the front of her cloak and assumed another aspect, which Fizzik recognized as that of a military leader. Beneath the black skintight suit her body was as sinewy as a snake, only her breasts and hips feminizing an otherwise androgynously muscular physique.

Trillot had briefed Fizzik about Commander Ventress, of course. Rumors had floated about, and even his brother wasn’t certain which to believe. Some said she was a Jedi herself; that she had left the ancient Order, taking her weapons with her. Others said that she was an acolyte of some shadowy group superior to even the feared Jedi Knights.

The ring of greeters parted, and they stepped to a turbolift platform large enough for four. He noted that the aides did not deign to step aboard, as if they wished to keep a safe distance. The two rode up together.

She smelled of acid fruit.

Darkness enfolded and then released them as they reached the upper level.

As they emerged into Trillot’s headquarters, the hard, cold creatures who awaited them seemed to part like shallow water. No one dared touch her; none approached her. A kind of silence descended over the entire floor as he escorted her to her meeting.

Trillot was seated at his desk as she entered his office. He was bloated now, his transformative hormones in full effect, accelerated by the alien herbs. He squirmed and fidgeted almost continuously, as if he could find no comfortable position.

Oddly, Ventress seemed somewhat deferential. From a pack so cunningly hidden upon her taut body that he had missed it entirely, she withdrew several items and politely placed them on the table before Trillot.

The golden gang lord’s faceted red eyes moved back and forth across the items, and he waited. The air shifted, and he smelled the slightest musky tang. Trillot, he knew, exuded musk from neck glands when going through the Change, but that smell intensified when he was nervous. In all the years he had known his brother, Fizzik had smelled it only twice before.

The woman nodded deeply. The bag shuddered. Something black and red thrust its head out of the flap, forked tongue flickering as if tasting alien air.

“Gifts,” Ventress said. Was that the very tiniest trace of mockery in her voice? “Of salt, water, and meat.”

Trillot stared, uncertain what to do. Ritual meals were common, a highly developed art in X’Ting hive politics. But Trillot was no royal, not even a noble. What could he make of this? Mockery or not, he dared not respond impolitely. His gaze shifted to Ventress and then back to the table. The red-and-black head proved to be the head of a banded snake, emerging from the bag slowly. No… it wasn’t a snake. Its small stubby legs paddled as it attempted to escape its confines. It moved sluggishly, as if it had been drugged.

Trillot looked at his protocol droid, and then back at the crawling creature… no,
creatures,
because a second had emerged.

The protocol droid bent and said quietly: “I believe that you are expected to ingest the windsnakes. With relish, sir.”

Yes, that was definitely a tiny smile on Ventress’s face, but whether genuine or artificial he couldn’t say.

Trillot studied her for a moment, and Fizzik wondered what his employer was going to do. Again, an unexpected flash of emotion. This woman became more intriguing with every passing moment.

With a movement swift enough to baffle sight, Trillot’s hand snapped out, grasped one of the windsnakes just behind the head, and dashed its body against the table. Even more swiftly the second time, he repeated the maneuver with the other one.

“Send for Janu,” he said. A droid scurried out of the room, and a moment later an enormous brown creature with a distended chin and a raised, horny crest dividing its head waddled into the room, great dusky folds of skin cascading down to the floor. “Yes, sir?”

“Water, salt, and two succulent windsnakes. What recipe can you concoct?”

Janu tilted his waffled head sideways as if measuring. He picked up the limp bodies and sniffed them, bringing them close to his flat, wet nostrils. Then, suddenly, his thick lips split in a grin. “Ah! Glymph pie. Windsnakes come from Ploo Two, and the Glymphids are famous for a variety of casseroles. I can procure fantazi mushrooms—”

“No,” Trillot said, voice cracking a bit. Fizzik sharpened his eyes. Ah! The vocal change was another dead giveaway: his brother was thick in the shift toward his female state. Soon his eyes would change from rust-red to emerald. “I will need my wits about me this evening.”

As he said this, he glanced at Ventress, who remained motionless, squatting on the balls of her feet, back perfectly straight, immobile as a stone. Again, Fizzik had never heard his brother discussing his private practices or habits with an outsider. Or at all, when it came right down to it. An almost perverse fascination bubbled within him.

“Fine,” Janu said. “Then I will use… banthaweed.”

“That should suffice.” He waved at the tray, and the enormous Janu lifted it and carried it away.

“I thank you for your gifts,” Trillot said. “I assure you that I will enjoy them to the full.”

Ventress inclined her head with palpably false modesty. “A small gift from Count Dooku,” she said. “A delicacy. Take heart: the Yanthans who remove the venom sacs rarely make a mistake.” She smiled. “And even if they do—it is said to be a good death.”

Fizzik wasn’t sure he wanted to know how a creature like Ventress might define
good.
It was difficult to tell whether she was serious, or merely enjoyed tormenting her host.

In either case, the results were fascinating.

“I trust that your journey was pleasant?” Trillot asked.

Her expression did not change. “Irrelevant. I wish to know why I was not met by the Families. At the least, why I was not brought immediately to their presence.”

“We have a new guest in the capital,” Trillot said, attempting to placate. “Until we know his precise business, a measure of additional discretion was thought wise.”

She gazed at him, and although Ventress did not speak, Fizzik felt he could hear her thoughts.
Miserable cowards.

Fizzik had observed Trillot’s immense bodyguards as they watched their boss defer to this woman. There were also a dozen lean young male X’Ting around Trillot’s nest: thugs trying to get rich easy, looking for someone strong to follow. Not necessarily bad, but lost, and lost in dreams of glory past. There was no way of telling how they might react. They might exhibit typical hive behavior and simply follow. The more disloyal might sense an opportunity to jump track, to find a way to ingratiate themselves to a superior power. But there was another reaction as well, and Fizzik could see it brewing in the filmed eyes of one of the smaller bodyguards, a member of the X’Ting assassin clan. His name was Remlout.

“Excuse me,” Remlout said in the high, reedy voice he assumed when speaking Basic. “I’ve heard a story about you.”

She rose and turned to him. Again the corners of her mouth raised, as if she already knew what he was going to say, and welcomed it.

“In all politeness,” Remlout sneered, “I’ve heard that you never, ever turn down a challenge. Is that true?”

She glanced at his shoulders, his hands, his eyes. “You’ve been to Xagobah,” she said. “To learn Tal-Gun?”

“Yes,” Remlout said, confused. Not many X’Ting ventured offplanet.

Asajj Ventress smiled. “Your neck is pale: their blue sun’s burning has faded. You’ve been away from your teachers a long time.”

He nodded, mouth slightly open in surprise.

“Count Dooku told me that if I wished to progress in the arts, it was vital to take every challenge.” She cocked her head lazily at Trillot.

Her smile widened. She turned to Trillot. “Would this displease you?”

Trillot looked back and forth between Ventress and Remlout. Fizzik knew what his brother was thinking. Trillot did not like this woman, but for a variety of reasons was bound to honor her wishes. Fizzik had witnessed Remlout’s skills, but was uncertain they would be enough to defeat Ventress, and didn’t want to lose a bodyguard. On the other hand…

Challenge simmered in the air.

Trillot leaned back, grimacing as he strove to make his swelling egg sac less uncomfortable. The gang lord—not quite
lady,
not yet—templed his fingers together. “If both participants are willing, then it is not my place to say no.”

Ventress nodded and turned to face Remlout, pivoting as if on ball bearings. Her fingers crooked like claws.

Now Trillot added, “But please, Commander Ventress. It is hard to find good bodyguards.”

“I won’t kill him,” she promised. “At your pleasure,” she said to her opponent.

Remlout bowed. His vestigial wings fluttered with warning, and he spread his primary and secondary arms. The creatures who served at Trillot’s pleasure backed against the walls.

Now the two of them were in a cleared space. Remlout stepped in an arc, circling Ventress.

Remlout cartwheeled, and then balanced on his primary hands, his feet tracking Ventress as if they were scan detectors. Those primary hands were as broad and strong as most feet, and Fizzik knew that Remlout could stand like this for hours.

Fizzik had seen this once before: Remlout making his formal challenge of any visitor who had a similar code of warrior ethics—or seemed to offend his master Trillot. The fact that he had made the challenge so soon was not remarkable in itself, but Fizzik suspected that there was something more going on here. He had seen foes attempt to penetrate Remlout’s defense only to be struck with such nimble violence that Remlout’s punishing feet might have been arms.

Most cowered at the sight.

Ventress was another matter altogether, however. She swayed back and forth, ripples surging through her body as if she were some kind of sea frond. Strange: she was clearly female, but she moved more like an X’Ting male.

Remlout made his attack: left–right–left, feet jabbing out in a breathtaking three-strike combination. Ventress never shifted her legs, but somehow avoided the triple threat. Fizzik ran the sequence back through his mind: Ventress had moved bonelessly, with a spinal relaxation so extreme that she could have shifted only a centimeter or less, angling sideways, sliding from the path of each kick as if she had had all the time in the world.

Something else had happened, something obscured by the flash and flex of limbs. Fizzik couldn’t see it, but Remlout was on the ground, writhing, face purpling, twisting on his side, hands reaching around for his shell.

The assassin spasmed, the muscles in his back tightening again. Remlout’s face grew tauter and tauter, more deformed with strain, and he howled as if in the midst of the most monstrous and debilitating muscle spasm in history. His entire body arched, and with a series of rending
pops
Remlout’s supercontracted muscles splintered his own shell. He collapsed, drooling and almost motionless, his head wobbling in aimless circles.

A medical droid rolled forward, performed a swift analysis, and then reported back to Trillot.

Trillot looked at Ventress, eyes gone dark. Fizzik knew that his employer wanted to censure her, to remind her of her promise, but dared not.

Ventress might have read Trillot’s mind. “He is not dead,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Indeed not,” Trillot replied. “And for that I am grateful.”

She bowed graciously as several of Trillot’s employees picked up the hapless Remlout and carried him away. With every jostle, he screamed. They were not as gentle as they might have been, and Fizzik supposed that Remlout’s history as a bully now worked against him.

He noted that, without another word being said, the body language of every creature in that room was suddenly more respectful and alert. It couldn’t have worked better for Ventress had she scripted it. She brushed imaginary dust from her spotless cloak and stood before Trillot once again. Fizzik counted the pulses at her jawline, clearly visible but unhurried. A knot of muscle at the base of one tattoo quivered in unhurried rhythm.

Trillot seemed to have moved on, apparently wishing to change the subject as quickly as possible. “And there is one more development,” he said.

“Yes?” Ventress stood immobile. The previous moment’s violent action might have meant nothing at all. But in the name of the galaxy, what had she done to poor Remlout? And would he, Fizzik, ever have the temerity to ask?

“Yes,” Trillot said. “Now. As to the Jedi negotiating with our good lady Regent—”

That, finally, caught the offworlder’s attention. “His name?”

“Obi-Wan Kenobi.”

Now, for the first time, Ventress’s attention was riveted. “
Obi-Wan.
” Her blue eyes flamed. Again, Fizzik sensed that it might be worth his life to inquire. “I know this one. He needs to die.”

“Please,” Trillot implored. “There is business to be conducted. There may not be time…”

Ventress cast a scathingly cold glare upon her host. “Did someone request your advice? I think not.” She closed her eyes, and in stillness she seemed like the center of a storm. She opened her eyes again. “I don’t believe in coincidence. Obi-Wan and I are here on the same business.” The tip of her pink tongue wet her lips. “I think I will kill him.”

Trillot’s faceted gaze met hers, and Trillot lost, looking away. “I brought you here, thinking that with the Jedi in the capital, we need special arrangements before the meeting—”

Ventress’s head tilted slightly sideways, and her voice was snake-quiet. “No. Obi-Wan will attempt to subvert the Families. He may already have a spy among them. No. Who knows I am here?”

“The families know Count Dooku is sending a representative,” Trillot said. “But not who or when.”