The Cestus Deception (24 page)

Doolb Snoil watched the display as their ship rose, freeing itself of Cestus’s gravitational pull. Once free, it paused as the nav computers plotted their jump to hyperspace. He already missed his friend Obi-Wan, and was formulating an explanation to the Chancellor. What would he say? Was there any way to cast this disaster in a favorable light? He doubted it, but…

Xutoo’s voice disturbed his reverie. “Ah, sir, we may have a problem.” There was an edge of something Snoil understood all too well in that voice: controlled panic.

“Problem? Problem? Master Kenobi promised there would be no problem!”

“I don’t think he took
that
into consideration, sir.”

“What?”

From a point between Cestus’s two moons, a small ship approached them, bearing in like a bird of prey. It was small and black, with an ominously spare design that said it was built for pure practicality. A war drone. A hunter-killer.

Mind working at fevered overdrive, Snoil managed to rationalize the ship’s presence.
Perhaps it’s just visiting Cestus, and has mistakenly aligned its flight path with our departure point—

Then all such optimistic speculations were revealed as foolish. The new ship fired a probe droid at them. The intelligent weapon spiraled in, locked on target, and began to home in, a spinning ball of death. A salute from the Five Families?

The consummate professional, Xutoo managed to keep his voice calm at a moment when Snoil wanted to scream at the top of his lungs. “I’ve commenced evasive maneuvers, but I don’t know. Sir, I would suggest that you follow General Kenobi’s example and evacuate.”

All Snoil could say was: “Aiyee!”

The ship began to make looping evasive maneuvers. More probe droids must have joined the first, because they rocked and juddered with blasts as Xutoo did his best.

“Sir,” Xutoo repeated. “I suggest you go.”

“No. I will stay here with you. Master Kenobi promised I would be safe.”

“I can’t make you go, sir, but in a moment I’ll jettison the remaining escape pods in an attempt to distract the missile.” Listening to Xutoo’s machinelike calm somehow penetrated Snoil’s defensive mechanisms as even the explosions had not. No escape pods! He broke. “No! No! Wait for me!”

Pushing himself to emergency speed, Snoil moved as rapidly as a human being might stroll, wedging himself into the escape capsule. He pushed the automatic sequence button, and his eyestalks twined in anguish. Crash foam billowed up around him, and sight was lost. For a moment he could barely breathe. Then his lips found the emergency nozzle and air flowed into his lungs.

Then things went black as his pod sank back into and through the ship’s walls. He felt a rush, and then a jolt… followed by sudden, deep quiet. Then a sensation of floating.

Snoil had no control at all—everything was managed by the automatic emergency program. A screen opened up before his eyes, some kind of computerized display showing the exterior of the ship as six other escape pods burst free.

Two of them attracted probe droids away from Snoil as he plummeted toward the atmosphere, but the screen showed the ship evading one… two… three of the droids, and he began to feel more optimistic.

Then the screen went very, very bright. When the light dimmed, only smoke and debris remained. Xutoo and the ship were gone, destroyed.

He stared, horrified but almost incapable of speech, watching as missiles streaked after the remaining pods.

Snoil was frozen with fear as the pod descended. The pods spun crazily as evasion programs began to kick in. One of the droids rushed past a spinning pod—and headed directly for him.

He watched as one pod after another was blown completely out of the sky, now beginning to turn blue as they skimmed deeper into the atmosphere. He heard something babbling in the background and became horribly aware that that sound was his own voice, raving out against the moment of expected pain and finality. “I’ll sue! Or my, my heirs will sue! For damages and emotional distress…” A probe passed immediately close to him on the left, in pursuit of one of his capsule’s programmed distractions. The resultant explosion painted the sky yellow and sent his pod juddering to the right, coincidentally forcing another droid to miss its target. “Oh my, that was close, and—” another horrendous explosion, and he made a bubbling, shrieking sound. “And oh my!”

He turned to look back up—once he managed to determine which direction “up” was—and saw another missile heading directly for him. “No, no, I was joking! I’ll retract that complaint! I’ll file a full admission of guilt or wrongdoing, or…
Aiyee!
”

And in the instant before discourse would have become terminally irrelevant, one of the other escape pods swooped back in, intercepting the offending missile.

As Snoil closed his eyes and offered his soul to the Broodmaster, a new explosion dwarfed all the others in both scope and effect on Snoil, who realized that his shell would certainly need washing after all
this.

Then suddenly, there was nothing but silence from outside. To his wonder, he realized that he had survived the storm. Now there was just the little matter of the landing.

A red warning light flashed on the control panel, and the capsule requested a series of manual operations, warning him in a calm female voice that certain “
explosive impacts have damaged the capsule’s automatic systems. Please do not worry, as the manual backup systems can perform perfectly well. Please perform the following functions in the sequence requested.
”

And one after another he did perform the tasks as requested, while simultaneously watching the ground explode toward him. The altimeter shifted toward zero with nauseating rapidity. “
—Now disengage the external shields—
” A switch. “
—and now please, within five seconds, disengage each of the primary source nodes, routing all of their power to the secondary chamber—
” Which switch? The altimeter dizzied him, but he dared not look at it, nor glimpse the ground spinning up at him like a vast hand rising to swat him from the sky.

“
And now please trigger the main repulsor.
”

Disaster was almost upon him now. Certainly nothing he did would make any difference. Surely this next moment would be his last. Surely—

A violent whip sideways almost made Snoil’s stomach roll. The capsule bobbed as the repulsors fired, and the air outside flamed pink. Snoil managed to breathe again, his eyestalks ceasing their wild and frantic dance as he drifted toward the ground below.

Far below him and to the west, Obi-Wan Kenobi rolled his escape pod into shadows and heaped sand and rocks atop it. Instinct made him gaze up at the sky, where streaks of red and white blossomed against the clouds. He frowned, trying to make out the shapes, and then recognized them for what they were: shattered chunks of the ship reentering the atmosphere. His heart was heavy, fearing that his bungled mission had cost the lives of Xutoo and the harmless, brilliant Snoil. How had this happened? What secret forces opposed them here…?

Then he saw the purple glow of repulsor fire, and relaxed just a bit. Someone
had
escaped the ship. And Snoil was nothing if not lucky. There was more than a chance that his old friend remained alive.

And that would be good. If anything on Cestus could be considered certain, it was this: they would need every strong hand and agile mind in the hours ahead.

Obi-Wan disguised his distress signal with narrow-burst encoded messages. Less than two hours later, Thak Val Zsing and Sirty reached him with a dozen recruits. He sent half of them after Snoil and followed the others back to camp, where he rejoined Kit Fisto and the clone troopers.

There he was heartened to see all that had been accomplished. They fed him, listened to the short version of his narrow escape, and then settled down for serious conversation. “The least of our problems,” he concluded, “is that negotiations with G’Mai Duris and the leadership of Cestus have failed.”

“I agree,” Kit said. His black eyes gleamed. “There are other forces at play here. From the beginning, we have been manipulated. It is time the next phase of our operation went into effect. Nate?”

He said this raising his voice and nodding toward the clones, who one by one rose and gave their reports.

As the food worked its way through his system, Obi-Wan was comforted by the troopers’measured, military cadences. On occasion he’d found that emotionless precision irritating, but now it calmed him. The value of such competency could not be underestimated. Here, it might save all their lives, and the plan as well.

All in all, he was pleasantly surprised by the commandos’ accurate, perceptive, and entirely admirable reports.

When they were complete, Kit Fisto leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Your thoughts?” he asked after Obi-Wan had remained quiet for almost a full minute.

“Impressive,” he said. “It makes my own blundering seem all the more childish in comparison.”

Obi-Wan stood, slapping his palms against his legs. “The situation has changed,” he said. “Our resources have changed, and the nature of our adversaries has changed. Gentlemen”—He scanned the assembled. “—an unknown person or persons destroyed our transport ship and killed one of your brothers. This was an unspeakable act, and must be addressed as such.”

The recruits, their new and improved “Desert Wind,” were hard now. Their grueling training had weeded out the weaklings and transformed them into a band capable of following orders, of marching courageously into danger. Still, a vital question remained: were they really willing to kill or die? It was never possible to determine who would cower under fire. Only combat itself could answer the questions burning in every raw recruit’s breast:

Will I? Can I?

He saw that question now. Saw also that his brush with catastrophe had not diminished him in their eyes. In fact, it seemed the surviving members of Desert Wind now accepted him as they had not before, saw him as an ally, one who might now be willing to go beyond his stated parameters into something more radically dangerous.

Someone had attempted to
murder
him. Someone had betrayed and manipulated him. Duris? The Five Families? Trillot?

Someone. But who? Who stood to gain by his death?

He pulled his mind back to the task at hand. “We will continue on,” he said. “And we will finish what we started together. You do not know me, but through the glowing reports of my associates, I know
you.
” He had their eyes and minds. What he needed was their hearts. “In the coming days, the nature of our new situation will become clear to you, and I trust that none of you will falter at the grim task ahead. This is no longer a charade. Justified it may be, but I ask that you control your rage. I ask you to follow the path of least violence for the damage that we are called upon to do. To be merciful when possible, and courageous in action when not.”

He paused, and gathered himself. “We journeyed to Cestus seeking a diplomatic solution. It would seem that that option is no longer available to us. Ladies. Gentlemen.” He locked eyes with each of them in turn. “We must consider ourselves at hazard.”

For hours G’Mai Duris had pored over her advisers’ reports and suggestions, seeking to better understand her current position. The Republic had attempted to influence her decisions by deception. The Jedi had won her the leadership of the hive council. Had given her a piece of information that could destroy Cestus Cybernetics, or offer her people a new beginning.

But by perpetrating a fraud, Obi-Wan had plunged her into a nightmare. She could not support the Jedi, or accept his support. The information in her hands could not be used to manipulate Cestus Cybernetics. Without support from the Republic, the information would do little save ensure her own assassination.

Another question remained as well, one she was having a more difficult time answering. How
exactly
had the Jedi been foiled? She didn’t believe for an instant that the scheming Quill had trapped Obi-Wan in such a fashion. No. She had seen too much of her cousin’s past power-grubbing to think her rival capable of such a coup. Quill had received serious assistance. But from whom?

There was another force at work here, and one that might prove far more dangerous.

Her assistant Shar Shar rolled into the room, blue skin gleaming splotchily in alarm. “Regent Duris!” she cried. “We have terrible news!” Shar Shar extruded an arm and punched a code into the machine, waving her stubby hands through the reading stream until the images changed. “This just came through a minute ago.”

The view was from orbit, one of the drone satellites used to monitor and protect the entire planetary system, everything from the moons to the mines. They watched Obi-Wan’s ship rising up through the atmosphere. “We lost the image for a moment as the shift between the ground monitors and the orbiters was disrupted. Perhaps by this drone ship—”

Something appeared from the direction of a moon. It was black and configured strangely, and Duris thought her eyes deceived her. For a moment she imagined it to be some great bird of prey, but then she saw it to be no manner of living thing, but a ship of an unfamiliar design.

But was it really unfamiliar? Hadn’t she seen such a ship design among a series of craft purchased by Cestus Cybernetics security just last year? It appeared from nowhere, swooped out of frame until another satellite caught it, and then it and the Jedi’s ship were both in the viewing field at the same time. The black ship spat something out toward the Jedi ship, which promptly commenced corkscrewing maneuvers. “Who is in the escape pod?” G’Mai asked.

“Let me see.” Her assistant manipulated the field. “Not much shielding on a pod. We might be able to—ah! Not human… it was the Vippit barrister.”

“Then the Jedi is still piloting the ship?”

“Perhaps, and—” Suddenly the entire visual field flooded with light, enough to wash the shadows from the room and temporarily render them all dazed and nearly blind.

“What was
that
?” Duris asked, instantly comprehending the horrid absurdity of the question. She knew
precisely
what it was. Even more important, she understood what it meant.

Some unknown force or person had destroyed the Republican ship and, with it, the Jedi personally appointed by Supreme Chancellor Palpatine to negotiate with Cestus. She groaned. Things had been horrendous enough. The discovery of Obi-Wan’s perfidy, and its public disclosure, had tied her hands. But this went so far beyond
bad
that she would have to find new descriptions, and those new words would have to wait until she ceased feeling too nauseated to think.

For all her current anger, she suspected Obi-Wan had acted from a desire to bring Cestus back into the Republic’s sheltering fold. With respect and deep relief she noted that no one had actually been harmed during the fraudulent kidnapping. In her heart she believed that this suggested genuine concern for the lives and welfare of even the lowliest security people, let alone the Families themselves. But who or whatever had acted
against
the Jedi had displayed no such scruples. Beyond doubt Cestus would be blamed, and she would have no option but to throw her support to the Confederacy.

And although she could not fully grasp the intents of all sides in this matter, she knew that for all of his deception she preferred Obi-Wan to these shadowy assassins.

“What do we do?” asked Shar Shar, bouncing in agitation.

“There is only one thing we can do,” she replied. “And that is to safely retrieve any survivors. Snoil, at least, may be alive. Search for a rescue beacon!”