The Cestus Deception (29 page)

Obi-Wan surveyed the small group of stragglers who had survived the cave slaughter. They huddled in a rocky defile, invisible to any ship overhead, but of course also invisible to other survivors or potential allies. If there were any who had not fled into the desert.

All in all, he estimated that half their force had been killed or captured, and most of the rest scattered. He did not look forward to making his next report to the Supreme Chancellor.

That, of course, assumed there would
be
another report.

He climbed back up to the top of the ridge without exposing himself to enemy fire, looking down to where they had left their new transport, a cargo craft purchased from a small farming community southwest of the capital.

The ship was now a smoking crater. Much of the communications gear, and their astromech unit… gone. Doolb Snoil… slain while heroically saving Obi-Wan’s life. At least two clones had made it out—he did not know if there was a third. He had seen one ARC go down protecting the woman Tull, but no more than that.

Unless something changed drastically, this mission was shaping into the greatest disaster of his career.

Kit Fisto came up behind him. Although it was not in Kit’s way to offer a comforting gesture, Obi-Wan knew his companion’s hearts. Everything that could go wrong had gone wrong, but none of it had been the Nautolan’s fault. Perhaps, just perhaps, it was not his fault, either. G’Mai Duris had warned him that sinister forces were at work. That they were never meant to succeed… could that be true? And if so, what did it mean?

“I do not understand.” Kit said. “Each individual move we have made has been without stain.”

Obi-Wan rotated those words in his mind, seeking to put the lie to them. To his sad relief, he could not. They had done everything right. “And yet we’ve been outmaneuvered at every turn,” he said, finishing his thought aloud. “Almost as if we’ve been playing the wrong game all along.”

All along. Obi-Wan remembered the moment in the throne room when he had pretended to locate the car by sensing its influence on the rest of the system. Well, he had only thought of that because of similar, less complex exercises taught long ago by Qui-Gon Jinn. He’d felt that same part of himself triggering, rising as from slumber. He needed to see something. To notice something.
Look at all the pieces. Which ones have been disturbed? What do you
not
see, as well as see?
Not
sense, as well as sense? Where should there have been a ripple where there was not? If something has caused each of your plans to disrupt… if someone attempted to kill you… was that Duris’s way? And do any of the Five Families have the power to cause such catastrophe? And if they do not, then what possibility does that leave?

“Obi-Wan?” Kit asked, and suddenly Obi-Wan realized that he had been staring trancelike into the distance. Kit was studying him, and worry creased the Nautolan’s normally impassive face.

He whispered his reply. “There is another player. Another
major
participant in this tragedy, and has been from the beginning. Somewhere in all of this.”

“But where?”

Obi-Wan shook his head. “I don’t know. But I fear that before this is complete, we will know the answer to that question. And will wish we didn’t.”

One of the clones approached from behind him. He cursed his self-pity. If
he
was confused, how much more so were these poor creatures, raised since before birth to operate within an immutable chain of command? He had to shake off this malaise, be worthy of their trust.

“Your orders, sir?” Sirty asked.

“Collect the equipment,” he said. “Round up the survivors. We’re moving to the secondary location. I don’t know who betrayed us. But this time, we keep the loop closed.”

Sirty nodded tightly. “Very good, sir.”

“Casualties?”

“Sixteen dead or captured that we know of, sir.”

Obi-Wan noticed that a few more stragglers had joined them without attracting the hunters. Good. Where there was discipline, courage, and creativity, hope still remained. “Casualties?”

“Captain A-Nine-Eight, Nate, is missing and presumed dead.”

That hit Obi-Wan hard. Strange. Hundreds of thousands of clones, all cut from the same cloth. And yet hearing about that particular trooper caused him a special pain, and he wasn’t entirely certain why.

Sheeka Tull made very, very certain her pursuers were thrown off the track before continuing. She traveled south to the commercial air corridors, and then slipped along those, changing directions several times to be absolutely sure that
Spindragon
was not followed.

Once certain, she zigzagged 200 kilometers into a stretch of rolling brown mounds 180 klicks east of the Dashta Mountains. A river channeled snowmelt from the Yal-Noy’s whitecapped peak to their north, so the hills were greener than much of Cestus’s surface, pleasing to the eye even from a distance. Still, the water supply was adequate rather than generous, so the population remained relatively low.

Most called them the Zantay Hills. Sheeka Tull called them home. Sheeka went into a landing pattern, and breathed a sigh of relief as the engines slowed and stopped.

At first there was no sign of habitation. Then an X’Ting cloaked in a brown robe emerged from one of the metal buildings. As Sheeka Tull walked Jangotat down the ramp, he hailed her, the customary smile of greeting gone thin and tight.

“Brother Fate,” she said.

“Sheeka,” he said. His faceted eyes peered more carefully at the burned uniform, and the unhappy expression deepened. “Bringing this soldier here is
dangerous.
”

Sheeka tightened her grip around Jangotat’s waist. “He was injured in
our
cause. Help him, Brother Fate. Please.”

The old gray-tufted X’Ting examined the wound, rubbing the singed cloth between his fingers. “Blaster?”

“What difference does that make?” she said urgently. “Help him!”

Brother Fate let out a long, slow sigh. His faceted emerald eyes were filled with pity. “For you, my child,” he said, and then raised his voice to the others. Slowly, a few other people, and then a stream, emerged from their shelters and, smiling, approached.

Three children emerged, came running toward her, crying, “
Nana!
” and hugging her leather skirts.

“Tarl!” she cried, hugging the boy child. “Tonoté,” the girl. “Where is Mithail?” One youngster hung back a bit, but then she gathered him into her arms and kissed his mop of unruly red hair. “How have you all been?” she asked. As she distributed hugs and kisses to them she watched from the corner of her eye while Jangotat was carted away by several X’Tings in dark cloaks.

“Who is the man?” Mithail, the youngest, asked.

“A friend,” she replied, and then ruffled their hair. “A friend. Now. Tell me everything that’s happened in the last week.”

Groaning with pain, Jangotat pulled himself into wakefulness. Everything inside him hurt, which he found alarming. Was this how it felt to die?

He tried to open his eyes. He felt his lids slide up, but was still unable to see. Global pain combined with blindness triggered an unexpected and quite unwelcome panic response. He sat up, as he did so experiencing a tearing sensation in the skin along his waist. Agony forced an oath from his lips, and he thrashed his arms about, trying to discover the extent of his…

Prison?

“Now, now, calm down.” A pleasant male X’Ting voice. “Everything is all right. It is imperative that you rest.”

Absolutely nothing in that voice triggered any sense of threat, but Jangotat couldn’t dampen his reaction. Danger flared over his entire nervous system, as if his every sense had triggered simultaneously. And yet…

And yet…

His conscious mind knew that he was
not
in danger. In the oddest paradox, the flood of pain and the sense of danger existed simultaneously with a sense of peace, and this he found confusing.

“What… what are you doing?” he gasped, alarmed at his own weakness as they took his arms gently. Tenderly, perhaps. He wanted to sink back into those sheltering, supporting arms and find peace and release. Wanted it so abruptly that the very depth of his desire frightened him. “Stop. I have to report—”

“You must heal,” a familiar voice said.

It was the robed X’Ting who had met Sheeka outside her ship. Yes. The ship. He knew this creature. Where had Jangotat seen him before…? “Who are you?”

“Call me Brother Fate,” he said.

“Where is Sheeka?” Jangotat gasped.

“With her children,” the robed X’Ting replied. A burr of other voices filled the room around him.

“Her… children?”

“Yes. She makes her home here, among us.”

“Is this where her husband lived?”

“Yes.” Brother Fate paused. “Before she left this last time, she asked us to take special care of her children. I believe she suspected herself to be in danger.” The voice paused again. “It seems she was correct.”

“Yes. But it was… in a good cause.”

“Yes,” the voice said. “So were they all.”

“I have to go,” Jangotat gasped. “Or at least report.”

“Not yet. You will interrupt the healing process. You could die.”

“
The first duty of a trooper is to protect the safety of the whole. We live but a few days, the GAR lives on forever…
” His mouth seemed to be moving without his mind being engaged, and in that automatic state he momentarily seemed his old, fierce self. Then his strength ebbed, and he sank back down again.

“Forever?” Brother Fate clucked. “You won’t last an hour if you don’t stay quiet and let me treat this wound.”

Jangotat groaned. Then something minty and cool was pressed against his nose, and sleep claimed him.

Under ordinary circumstances, the only time Jangotat remembered his dreams was when sleep-learning vast quantities of tactical data. Then events in the external world might trigger the memory of an odd dream or two. Aside from that, nothing.

But then he’d spent his entire life surrounded by troopers and the tools of war. This place was different. This was all new and unknown. Here in this alien place the darkness swarmed with odd images: places he’d never been, people he’d never seen. It was all so strange, and even while sleeping he seemed to grasp its oddness.

Twice… perhaps three times he rose toward the surface of his mind like a cork bobbing up in an inky sea. Neither time could he see anything, but once he felt something, as if something heavy and oblong lay on his chest. When he began to move beneath it, it slithered away, and once again he slipped from consciousness.

Jangotat awakened from a dream of a rising sun, and once again felt a squishy, flat weight upon his chest, a resistence against inhalation. This time, his skin no longer felt tender. It was a rather gauzy feeling, if that made sense, as if he were filtering all sensation through some kind of thin filter.

But the weight was there. He moved his hand much more slowly this time, just a bare centimeter at a time.

Whatever lay on his chest pulsed more rapidly, but didn’t move. His fingertips probed at a solid but gelatinous mass. Cool, but not cold. It felt rather like a piece of rubbery fruit. He moved his hands in both directions. It was about half a meter long, and…

But that was all the strength he had. His hands dropped away, arm gone numb. He tried to call out, to ask someone to remove the thing from his chest, but some instinct told him that it was this thing that kept the pain from searing his mind. So he said nothing and settled back again. Beneath the sheltering bandages his eyes closed, and then relaxed. There was nothing he could do right now. That much was true. So he could heal.
Would
heal, if such capacity remained.

Jangotat remembered the cave debacle. He remembered watching their recruits scattering, mowed down by the killer droids, captured by the JKs, or fleeing from the cave to be slain by enemy blasters.

Xutoo had perished in orbit. All right. And men and women who had trusted him died in the caves. And that meant there was a debt to repay. And troopers knew how to repay debts. Yes, that was one thing they understood quite well.

In the darkness, Jangotat’s burned mouth twisted into a cold and lethal smile.

Jangotat flowed through endless cycles of sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes the cool, moist animal was on his chest, and sometimes not. Sometimes he heard voices and sometimes he didn’t.

When he awakened hungry, Jangotat was fed some kind of fruity mushroom mash. The texture was vile and slippery but the taste was incredible, fresh, as if made by hand.

From time to time he was massaged, and afterward felt someone peeling dead flesh away from his back. The hands managing him were the softest and most caring he had ever known. He was alarmed to realize that there was a part of him that craved that, loved that, and wanted more if he could have it.

No. This is not my life. Not a trooper’s life…

He could not be certain but it seemed days later when the last twist of gauze was finally unwrapped from his eyes. He reached up and gripped his nurse’s wrist. A thin wrist, like a stick, really. He could have snapped the bone with a single wrench. By touch, he knew his caregiver to be a male X’Ting.
Brother Fate.
He heard breathing, but no words. “Where is Sheeka Tull?” he asked.

“Right here,” she answered from nearby. He swore that he could hear the smile in her voice.

Layer upon layer of gauze was unwound, and as it was, light began to stream into his famished optic nerves. “We’ve turned the lights down. Your eyes may still be sensitive.”

And so they were. When he opened them slowly, blinking hard, the light in the room struck like a physical blow.

He held up one hand in front of his eyes.

“Are you all right?”

He blinked and lowered his hand again.

As images began to resolve, he saw he was recuperating in another of Cestus’s endless cave formations. Sheets and blankets covered the walls, and simple furnishings divided the floor space into living quarters. There was a fair amount of equipment that he didn’t recognize but guessed to be medical materials of some kind. A makeshift hospital?

“Why did you bring me down here?” Jangotat asked.

The brown-robed ones glanced at each other in amusement.

“Who are you? Are you medics or mentops or something?”

“No, not exactly,” Fate said. “It’s a little hard to explain.” Although he declined further explanation, Jangotat felt no harm from the X’Ting, and managed to relax.

“It’s time for us to look at those wounds,” he said. They helped Jangotat to a sitting position and peeled away the leaves that had been placed—

Leaves?

He hadn’t looked more closely, merely felt them on his body. What he had assumed to be cloth was actually some kind of broad, pale, fleshy thin fungus.

They peeled the fungus away one sheaf at a time. They were dead, that much was certain. In peeling them away, a thin film of mushroom remained behind, clinging to his skin.

His skin…

The light in the room was dim, but there was enough to look down at his body. He remembered when the killer droid’s blast struck him, searing away skin. He feared muscle and bone might be damaged as well. Looking at his body now, he saw a pale shininess between knee and hip, but nothing else to indicate that a burn had ever existed at all.

This… this is better than synthflesh,
he thought, comparing the fungus to the healing compound included in ARC first-aid kits. This discovery would have to go in his report. To see such results from a healing chamber was one thing entirely. To see its equivalent achieved with a few leaves was simply astounding. This was X’Ting biotechnology? Certainly, on the galactic market these plants would be precious.

Nicos Fate was joined by a human male and an elderly X’Ting woman, and the three checked him from foot to fol

licle. Sheeka stood watching, and averted her eyes as they peeled the sheet back.

At least, he
thought
she turned her head.

Finally they seemed satisfied with the general trend of his healing, replaced the bed covers, and turned to Sheeka. “We’ve done what we can. Now it’s up to you.”

And the three physicians filed out of the room, leaving Sheeka and Jangotat behind.

For a long time Sheeka just looked at him, and then finally she sighed. “I’ve endangered these people by bringing you here.”

With a groan, he pushed himself up to a seated position. “Then I should leave.”

“It’s not as simple as that,” she said. “What you’ve brought to this planet can’t be unbrought.”

Jangotat frowned. “I’m sorry things seem to have turned out so badly.”

“I thought,” she said, “I really thought I might be able to avoid all this. That never again would I have to watch people I love die.” Her face twisted with sudden sharp anger.

“You must hate me,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

Sheeka raised a reasoning hand. “I hate what you represent. I hate the purpose for which you were made. But you?” She paused before speaking again, and he filled that pause with a thousand hurtful comments.
I hate you most of all…

But what she said was the one thing he would never have expected. “I pity you, Jangotat,” she said. There was genuine compassion in her voice. He looked up at her wonderingly, barely comprehending her words at all.