The Cestus Deception (32 page)

Kit crawled along a ledge until he found a barred window, and used his lightsaber to slice through it, letting himself in.

He heard the sound of racing feet just outside the door. A secondary alarm rang insistently, perhaps announcing the appearance of Desert Wind. He waited until the feet had passed, then made his way along the corridor.

The pumping station’s ground floor was some ten thousand square meters, with a ceiling that arched four stories overhead. The artificial streambed ran through the center of it, where every bit of water trickled past heat rays and the crackling arc of a flux light, the first line of purification. While not filtering the water as thoroughly as the station in town, it was the first line of defense, killing 80 percent of microorganisms and neutralizing many toxins.

The floor bucked as an explosion shook the complex. This blast originated near one of the outer doors. Kit Fisto smiled grimly as more guards ran in that direction.

With the present limited lighting and a distracting attack going on at the front, it would be easier for him to complete his mission. Not easy, perhaps, but easier. Clinging to the underside of the catwalk, breathing into the strain in his fingers and shoulders, Kit hand-walked around the room’s perimeter and dropped fifteen meters down to the deck, landing silently.

He slipped into the room, and the single guard didn’t even have time to turn around before Kit hurled himself forward. The guard managed to level his sidearm as Kit sliced it from his hand. The Nautolan continued the motion into a kick to the head, disabling the hapless Cestian before he could make a sound.

He whirled, examining the control panel, shutting down the water flow to Clandes. The next phase was easy: destroying the panel to freeze the setting. Kit’s lightsaber flashed, and within seconds the panel was a smoking ruin.

He surveyed the damage swiftly: it would take days to get this station working again. The floor beneath his feet shook as an explosion ripped through the building.

Good. More confusion, more damage. Hopefully, not more loss of life.

Time to make good his escape.

Kit Fisto left the room and instantly ran into the returning security team. He was a beat ahead of them, his lightsaber flashing as he was forced to defend himself without restraint. He tried to avoid lethal maneuvers.
They are just trying to do their jobs.
There came a time when such restraint was of no use at all, and after a whirlwind engagement, two men fell. A third brought his weapon to bear and the Jedi leapt over the railing, falling two stories to land in a crouch.

More guards. His lightsaber seemed to move of its own accord, before the blasts were launched, and he blocked two, three, four… and then was among them, tight-lipped and narrow-eyed.

Guards screamed, dying there.

This Cestus affair grows uglier by the moment,
Kit Fisto thought bitterly. Then regrets and second guesses dissolved as a web of lightsaber light filled the air around him, and guards crumpled to the ground. He flirted with battle fever, the howling demon in his mind trapped behind the bars of discipline, but guiding him as he slid down Form I’s razor edge.

He heard the siren before he stopped, but just before, making him think that the sound had simply not impressed itself on his consciousness; his focus had been so tight that everything external had simply failed to register.

Eight guards lay around him, moaning. Kit’s mouth twisted in an oath he would have been ashamed for the Jedi Counsel to hear. This was exactly the sort of carnage he’d hoped to avoid.

Out.

On the way a huge technician swung a pry-bar at him. Sick at heart, the Jedi spun to the inside of the aggressive spiral and twisted it out of his hand. He shifted his attacker against the wall as his eyes rolled up, voluntary nervous system paralyzed by a strike to the nerve plexus beneath his arm. “Sleep,” Kit Fisto whispered as the technician slumped. “All life is a dream.”

Or a nightmare, he thought. One from which more and more Cestians would never awaken.

Nothing even vaguely resembling good cheer lived in ChikatLik’s halls of power. The word from the Clandes manufacturing facility was that the water flow was reduced by three-quarters, and it would take days if not weeks to get everything back online. In the meantime, if drinking water was not shipped into the city, Clandes risked an unprecedented humanitarian disaster.

G’Mai Duris’s three stomachs felt variously heavy, sour, and leaden. Who was doing all of this? The Jedi? Might Obi-Wan still live? After his ship had been blown from the sky, they had detected only a single escape capsule, containing the barrister. Who then? And in another sense it hardly mattered. It was obvious to her where all of this would ultimately end. There would be a naval bombardment, and the Republic’s war would leave Cestus a smoking husk.

And the worst thing of all was that she was about to meet a complication. Oh, yes, Quill had smirked, claiming that the person about to enter the throne room represented an answer to their problems, but Duris had been a political animal long enough to know that most solutions were just future problems in a pretty cocoon.

Nonetheless she straightened her back, expanding to her full height and breadth in her throne chair, and nodded to her assistant to allow the guest entrance.

Her heart beat faster, although there was nothing on her painted face to betray it. And she knew that the newcomer would feel her heartbeat, even from a distance.

She was afraid.

The woman who entered the room walked like a military officer, but with that same unnatural lightness Duris had noted in Kenobi. It bespoke severe physical and mental training, a sinuous quality simultaneously enviable and somehow terrifying. The Jedi had displayed the same refined motion, the same absolute and intimidating focus, but through it had also projected decency and wisdom, a profound respect for life and spirit.

Those qualities were missing from this creature. Her dark eyes peered out of her pale, shaven, tattooed skull and saw… what? What deep, cold spaces between the stars did
this
one call home?

The woman made the deepest, most arrogant bow Duris had ever seen in her life. “Commander Asajj Ventress, at your service,” she said. “I crave but a single minute of your valuable time.”

“No more?”

“No more. I am no politician. My business is with your manufacturing concerns.”

“The business of Cestus is business,” Duris replied.

Ventress might not have heard her at all. “I am trade ambassador from Count Dooku and your allies in the Confederacy of Independent Systems.”

“Allies?” Duris asked with mock surprise. “We have no political aspirations. We do have
customers,
of course, whom we cherish highly.” She tried to filter the stress from her voice, and was not completely successful.

Ventress cocked her head slightly sideways, her pale lips curling into a contemptuous smile. “You do not entirely welcome my presence.”

Duris forced her own lips into her most formal, neutral expression, and her voice to do the same. “Of late, I have had reason to be cautious whom I trust. But I wouldn’t want you to think I number you among the untrustworthy.”

Ventress’s mouth twisted. Duris sensed that the offworlder had not merely detected the evasion, but actually enjoyed it.

“I see. Yes.” Ventress lowered her head, and remained silent. At first Duris assumed that Ventress would speak. After a full minute passed the Regent realized that the woman was waiting for her. Whoever spoke next would be in the weaker position, but Duris could see no polite way to avoid it.

“Tell me, Commander Ventress,” she said carefully. “I understand that you have been here on Cestus for a number of days.”

“Do you?” she said without raising her eyes.

“Perhaps you were enjoying our fabled hospitality.”

Stepping softly, Ventress circled the throne, until she stood behind Duris. “Was I?” The other eyes in the chamber were glued to this woman who walked among them with such authority, such apparent disregard for their protocol. Yet none dared show offense.

The tattooed woman leaned forward from behind Duris. Her face was just at the Regent’s velvet-padded shoulder. Duris could smell the woman’s breath. It was cloyingly sweet, like cake batter.

“I fear I have little time for entertainments. There are mighty deeds to be done. The galaxy is in foment.”

“What brings you here?” Duris asked.

“I wish merely to ensure that our orders progress smoothly. I understand that the Clandes factory will be shut down for some days.”

“I assure you we can accelerate the repair process. Perhaps seventy-two hours…”

“Yes, yes,” Ventress whispered, and then continued to circle. “My Master and I would appreciate that greatly. But there is another matter. You may think that you have information that would cripple Cestus Cybernetics. Some small matter of a two-hundred-year-old contract, obtained under false pretenses. Might this be true?”

Duris dared not lie. “Perhaps.”

“Yes. A two-edged sword, that. If you bring this before the Senate, I promise the Supreme Chancellor would use it to shut down the factories as fully as any bombardment. Your hive would suffer, I promise you. And more than that—you,
personally,
would bear the brunt of Count Dooku’s wrath.”

Duris nodded silently.

“I’m certain threats are superfluous,” Ventress continued. “But Lady Duris… if there is anything that I can do to help, please do not hesitate. Count Dooku and General Grievous have powerful resources, and empathize with your struggle against a corrupt, repressive Republic. Together, we can do great things.” She paused. “Great… things.” She smiled. “That is, for now, my only message. With your permission, I leave.”

Commander Asajj Ventress backed out of the chamber, bowing, her eyes half lidded, almost reptilian.

When the doors closed behind her, Duris exhaled a long, sour, infinitely relieved breath. Her entire body felt like a coiled spring. The woman made her flesh crawl. Clearly, Asajj Ventress was more lethal than Master Kenobi. Duris was certain deceit had not come naturally to the Jedi. This creature had no such compunctions. No shame, no fear. No mercy, either.

In fact, as little mercy as the ship that had blown Obi-Wan from the sky.

With painful clarity Duris could visualize, actually
see,
five generations of Cestian social progress sliding into oblivion, and there seemed nothing she could do about it.

Her assistant Shar Shar rolled closer. “The rest of the council is ready to meet, ma’am. Are you…”

Duris was still lost in her speculations. The timing of this woman’s arrival was no accident. Had Ventress landed before or after Obi-Wan? And were their efforts coordinated or mutually antagonistic? Surely she was aware of Kenobi’s presence, but had he been aware of
her
…?

“Ma’am?” asked Shar Shar, her skin purpling in anxiety.

“Yes?”

“Are you ready?”

Duris nodded. In the air around her, a dozen holoscreens blossomed. Smooth-pated marketing and sales executive Llitishi spoke first. “Regent Duris. The fraudulent kidnapping is clear evidence of the Republic’s intention to interfere in Cestus’s sovereign affairs. It is time for us to strike. We must find these rebels and their collaborators, and show the Republic that we will never bend the knee.”

Duris ached for his naïveté. “And who then will our friends be? Can you imagine that the Confederacy sent its spies to help us only? We stand in the shadows of two giants, each of whom uses honeyed words to attract us. Each of whom would destroy us rather than see us fall into the other camp.”

Executive Llitishi seemed reluctant to agree. “That is not necessarily true—”

“Ah,” G’Mai Duris said. “And with which of our sons and daughters are you willing to gamble?”

And to that question, he had no answer at all.

The rest of the meeting did not go well, although there were stories of rebels caught, and sabotage averted. But the death toll had now passed thirty. The fires of wrath generally proved easier to ignite than extinguish. Cestus’s security forces would hunt these saboteurs down, but a sinking sensation deep within her bones told Duris that this would hardly be the end of her troubles.

Too clearly, she remembered her experiences with Obi-Wan Kenobi. It seemed a lifetime ago that she had first opined that there might be no solution to her problems. With every passing hour, she began to believe that she had been more prescient than she could ever have imagined.

As G’Mai Duris’s court and cabinet were disturbed by the goings-on, both hive and criminal contingent were in similar turmoil. Gambling and drug revenues dried up as ChikatLik, fearing the coming of war, began to hoard resources. All of Trillot’s varied businesses were at risk, and she had begun to feel the pinch.

But it was more than a pinch that she felt as Ventress returned to her den and presented herself. As always, the offworlder carried herself as if her humanoid form were a mask. This was pure predator in every word and action. This one lived to kill.

“I am a simple woman,” Trillot said, “who cannot claim to understand all of the meanings and machinations. But it seems to me that no one can truly say how this will end. Begging your pardon, of course, Commander.”

“For once, you are correct,” Ventress said. “No one can know how this ends—with one exception.” When she spoke there was an odd passion in her voice that Trillot had not heard before.

“And who, or what, is that?”

Ventress narrowed her eyes, and her pale cheeks colored. “Count Dooku foretold it, and I have seen it. Whatever else happens, Obi-Wan Kenobi and I will meet again. On Queyta I promised Kenobi I would kill him. My Master wants him alive. So: he will leave Cestus in bondage, or he will rest beneath its sands.”

There was a flush in her face that Trillot recognized. It was lust. No mere physical passion, although a nameless, fleshly hunger burned within her. It was like lust turned inside out, and it burned inside this strange woman like a fire she could not extinguish.

The two strange and powerful offworlders were on a collision course, and she prayed not to be between them. When such giants clashed, small folk such as Trillot could be utterly destroyed.

On the other hand, however, in times such as this even small people could make large profits…