The Cestus Deception (27 page)

In the last moments before he lost his honor, old Thak Val Zsing was thankful and content. For years he had struggled to bring advantage to his people, and those hard times had taken their toll even before the last few disastrous years, when betrayals and murderously ruthless security reprisals had reduced Desert Wind to a shadow of its former strength.

But despite his early reservations, it looked as if the Jedi were actually the answer to his prayers; perhaps his grandchildren would not have to eat the dust for as many long, painful years as had Val Zsing before them.

He had watched the revelry, noted with sober approval that the two Jedi maintained a slight and leaderly aloofness from the proceedings, polite but not intrusive.

These Jedi were responsible and respectful. Strange, all of ’em. The human, the clones, the Nautolan… and that Vippit was the strangest. All fluttery fear when the retrieval team found his capsule, but as soon as they’d brought the mollusk into camp, he’d instantly found work coordinating intelligence. Sharp as a laser scalpel, that one.

In the final analysis, Thak Val Zsing had lost leadership of Desert Wind, but was winning the war. Not a bad trade. Not a bad final chapter in the long, strange life of a murderer’s great-grandson, a history teacher turned miner and anarchist leader.

So Thak Val Zsing found himself a fine bottle of Chandrilan brandy and wandered back to one of the rear caves to enjoy it—a taste of a homeworld he might never see again. There were only two things that Thak Val Zsing enjoyed: fighting and drinking.

The bottle was three-quarters empty when he momentarily blacked out, leaning back against the cave wall to watch the stalactites spin. And spin they did, in a happy blur that made him cry out in pleasure as he finished the bottle. He was down to the dregs, sliding down a warm dark tunnel toward blissful slumber, when he heard a cracking sound. Another. Then the ground beneath him began to heave.

He looked at it curiously, finding it amusing. Distantly, the tinkle and burr of dance music echoed through the caves. Although he could not hear the happy voices, Val Zsing knew that they were there. He could feel it: after an uncertain start, with the Jedi attempting to pull off some kind of elaborate con operation, the plan was back on track, with the program of harassment and sabotage that Desert Wind had begun so long ago. And now it would succeed.

He was basking in that thought when the cracking sound came again. Thak Val Zsing rolled over onto his hard round belly so that the cave was right-side up again, and blinked his bleary eyes.

A rock rolled to the side, revealing a fissure in the ground. Perhaps it was one of the myriad micro-tunnels running through every bit of these mountains. Most were too small for a human, so there was no need to be concerned about the safety. What was this, then, some kind of volcanic activity? Perhaps a burrowing male chitlik…?

And then the first shadowed, amorphous shape emerged.

The four plastidroids and their JK companions had traveled a hundred kilometers at an average rate of just under ten kilometers per hour. It had taken them half a day to reach their target. Tirelessly they crawled through the dusty tunnels, edging toward their prey. The droids did not always travel in a straight line: when tunnels branched, some of them took alternate paths, either burrowing or climbing back to maintain a rough sense of direction. When they reached an obstacle that they could not easily push or burrow through, they backed up and went around. When the sensors at their surface detected the sounds of music, they began to converge, all of the fractally mapped alternative pathways canceled. Machines could not sigh with relief, but one prone to fancy might have attributed a certain eagerness to the manner in which they seemed to accelerate as they emerged from the cave floor.

The plastoid infiltration droid pushed its way through, melting and crushing rock as it went. Then a second, third, and fourth followed it.

After them appeared the JKs, until all hunched quivering in that empty cave—empty save for a single intoxicated human who watched dazedly, assuming that the drink that dulled his pain had also clouded his sight with hallucinations.

The four plastidroids looked like gigantic protozoans, studded with shadowy mechanical puzzle pieces in place of nuclei or organelles. Once reaching the desired destination, magnetically encoded pieces suspended within each bag wormed their way toward each other and began snapping together. Slowly, as the lengths of metal and plastine found each other, the newly formed limbs created nightmarish silhouettes beneath the transluscent skins, stretching them.

The JKs seemed to watch as the four bags of plastine and metal heaved and quivered. In turn, each was distorted by the assembling metallic pieces within it, until there stood not four amorphous shapes but four fully formed infiltrator droids, treaded monstrosities as tall as three humans with heavy armored bodies and long, flexible necks.

Thak Val Zsing watched, not understanding what he was seeing, laughing at the hallucination’s oddness. Intoxication had caused stranger visions in the past, but not many. It was all terribly amusing. He continued to chuckle until the first infiltrator machine was almost completely formed. Its outline, suddenly and horribly familiar, began to resemble that of a killer droid that had shattered a mining union strike five years earlier.

That outline burned its way through the chemical fog, the realization that death had just, impossibly, oozed up from the very ground below him. He stood and staggered back against the wall. Then a moment came when he realized that he was wrong, that what he saw was no hallucination at all, but something real and appalling.

There are defining moments in a being’s life, moments when actions are taken—or not taken. Once done, certain things cannot be undone. Thak Val Zsing was drunk, so perhaps he could be excused. He was also old, and the veteran of more Desert Wind raids than he could count. Perhaps life gave every person a specific allotment of nerve, and when that allotment was expended, there was simply no more.

Until the end of his days, Thak Val Zsing struggled to explain, to himself if not others, why he did nothing except crawl back beneath a shelf of rock. And there he trembled, sobbing his fear and misery.

And did not raise the alarm that would have turned the murder machines’ attention to him.

It is a choice no one should have to make: to save life, at the cost of the soul.

As the JKs waited patiently, lubricant drained from the plastine skins still tightly stretched over the now fully assembled bodies of the infiltrators. One at a time, the skins stretched around the metal frames, then ruptured, like birth membranes rupturing around metal infants.

The JKs sniffed the air like living things, as if hungry to fulfill their function.

And in their mechanical way, perhaps they were.

Kit Fisto leaned back against the uneven rock wall, his tentacles twitching in sympathetic rhythm with the music. Although his face did not change, he was amused to find himself responding to these primitive melodies. Like most Jedi, Kit had been raised not on his homeworld, but in the halls of the Temple. However, to amuse himself, he had made a study of Glee Anselm’s customs, becoming especially fond of its music. On Glee Anselm, no one would be gauche enough to play songs with less than three different rhythms, and far more complex melodies than this. Still, there was something attractive about it, and he finally raised a hand and said: “Hold! I would join you.”

The musicians paused, surprised that the normally taciturn Nautolan had spoken, let alone that he wished to participate. Nervously, they offered the various instruments at their disposal. Kit scanned them before choosing one that combined string and wind. “This will suffice.”

He noted that Obi-Wan and Doolb Snoil were watching and decided to make a special effort. Obi-Wan had proven himself one of the ablest warriors of Kit Fisto’s experience. And while some might have considered it an unworthy urge, he wished to impress his companion with his native music.

So, taking the instrument in hand, he began to blow and strum simultaneously, each action reinforcing the other. It took him a few moments to find his way, and despite his extreme dexterity there were notes that he could not hit, chords that he could not play. It mattered not. As had his forebears, Kit had mastered the art of performing music underwater, and although he was comfortable in the air, sound took on a different character when transmitted through the thinner medium. Adjustments had to be made, and his nimble mind and fingers made them within moments. As his tones grew smoother and more pleasuring, the other musicians began to accompany him on string and wind instruments. Then voices crooned in wordless song, in a fashion that almost made him homesick. Despite the aridity of their world, these Cestians were a good lot.

Then came the ultimate compliment: some of the more daring attendees rose and actually began to dance. At first they had difficulty finding the beat and rhythm. With Nautolan music it was more important to listen to the pauses
between
notes than to the notes themselves, which were sustained in irregular bits. They seemed to find their groove, and were beginning to really enjoy themselves. Snoil’s long, fleshy neck traced the beat in the air, his eyestalks keeping counterpoint.

Then Kit stiffened, his dark eyes narrowing before his conscious mind comprehended the threat.

The rough cavern floor trembled, as if sections of the mountain had wrenched their way free and now crawled toward them in the darkness.

A bearded miner from the Clandes region sprinted out of the back caves. “We’re invaded!” came a scream. Then a light flashed, and the miner hit the ground like a bag of smoking rags, no longer screaming at all.

“What in space is that?” Skot OnSon yelled, shoulder-length blond hair flagging.

“This shouldn’t be possible,” Fisto said, surprise momentarily fixing him in his tracks.

Something
appeared in the passageway leading to the back caves. Its neck was serpentine but mechanical, supporting a head that was both weapon and sensory probe. The body it was attached to was as tall as two humans at the shoulder, but composed of more individual pieces than he would have thought possible for something of its size, almost as if it were constructed from baubles found in a child’s toy chest. It rolled on treads. A thin sheaf of plastine was stretched about the frame, and his mind searched frantically, some part of him sure he already knew what this thing was.

Whirring around its feet were one… two… three… four of the golden JK droids.

“Run!” Skot cried. That single word accomplished what the appearance of horror had not: spurred them into action.

Revelers fled toward the exit. The general chaos spoiled the sight lines for targeting, made the soldiers of Desert Wind fear to fire for risk of hitting their own people. The infiltration droid’s blaster fired again, catching two more Desert Wind fighters.

When the soldiers tried to help their friends, the smaller JKs swooped in. They could not be stopped, reasoned with, blasted, or evaded. Shock tentacles, electrified netting, stun darts, and blaster bolts erupted with dizzying variety.

It was impossible to predict their moves, or escape them. The JKs restrained and cocooned one miner after another, moving on to their next victim with mechanical dispassion.

“What
are
they?” Skot screamed, fleeing toward the entrance. “It’s not possible!”

Kit raised his lightsaber, triggering its emerald blade. His every nerve tingled. Obi-Wan had been right. From the very beginning this entire operation had been a disaster.

“Not possible? No one told
them
!” Sirty yelled tightly. The battlefield sarcasm disappeared almost as swiftly as it had blossomed. “What do we do, sir?”

Kit looked around quickly, trying to spy Obi-Wan. If the other Jedi was in a good position, it was possible—

No more time for thought. One of the droids had trapped a family of four at the edge of the pit. Its blaster tendril pivoted to face them.

“Cover me!” Kit called, and dashed out. He felt the tingle before the beam struck, and skittered aside. He weaved wildly, fiercely, Form I–style improvisation applied to pure evasion. He dodged and dashed, covering ground toward the crouching family with blistering speed.

Sizzling bolts missed him by bare centimeters. Where they struck, rock shattered and smoked. He felt a brief, intense electric jolt as a bolt grazed his hip, splashing against the ground. The Nautolan had begun to dodge even before the beam arced in his direction. Kit thanked his Jedi skills, and knew that his only hope was to stay out of range. These were personal security droids: apparently the tactical chips hadn’t been swapped. That would limit their effectiveness as instruments of aggresssion, but still…

Now he was close to the infiltration droid, and his lightsaber seared the air, slicing through the treads with a flash. The intruder droid staggered and toppled toward the others. Another droid was nicked but managed to stay erect as it pivoted to target Kit.

Finally, he located Obi-Wan. The Jedi had clung to the shadows, and approached the droids from the rear, grim and determined, two clones at his back. Their sidearms were inadequate to stop the invading machines, but proved excellent distraction. Obi-Wan was able to approach from another angle. His lightsaber flashed, slicing treads. As one of the droids fell to the ground, Obi-Wan closed the gap and slit its mechanical underbelly. Gears and plastine coils bulged out.

Oily smoke flooded the cave. Miners, troopers, and Jedi were engulfed in vile thin vapor. While not actually poisonous, the caves soon echoed with hacking and retching sounds. Through it all, the JKs captured one miner after another. Nothing stopped them. Nothing slowed them. They seemed to aim where a person would be in a moment, rather than where he or she was
now.
The infiltration droids had weaknesses, but the JKs seemed to have none at all.