The Cestus Deception (39 page)

Dripping and limping, Obi-Wan and Kit helped each other from the lake.

“Are you all right?” Obi-Wan asked.

“I will be soon enough,” the Nautolan replied. “She may have underestimated me.”

Obi-Wan remembered the severing of the dock, and shook his head in delighted disbelief. “I would say so, my friend. Come.”

They followed a stairway cut into the rock, climbing up almost twenty stories before reaching the hives’ surface, some two kilometers south of ChikatLik. Obi-Wan and Kit watched as, on the southern horizon, lightning seemed to flash. The distant thunder of massive bombardment wafted to them.

“The destruction has begun,” Obi-Wan said. “We have failed.”

“Strange.”

“What?”

“I would have expected the attack more to the southwest.”

“You’re right,” Obi-Wan murmured. “It seems to be near Kibo.”

He took out a pair of range-finding macrobinoculars and focused in.

Through the closer view a column of smoke and fire spiraled into the air. There were dark shapes raining from the clouds, as well as energy beams. A lethal, blazing conflagration.

“Well?” Kit asked.

Obi-Wan’s eyes narrowed in confusion. “Strange indeed. Come.”

When they finally reached their ship, a blinking control light attracted their attention.

“A message,” Obi-Wan said.

“We should claim it.”

“I should get you medical attention.”

“I will survive,” Kit insisted. “Take the message.”

Obi-Wan manipulated the keypad, and the hologram image of an ARC officer appeared.

“Jangotat,” Kit murmured.

The strong brown face had been battered, his left eye closed, but the trooper was smiling slightly. “Greetings to General Kenobi, General Fisto. This is A-Nine-Eight, he whom you have been kind enough to call Jangotat. If you receive this message, then at least one of you is still alive. In all likelihood, I’m using a stepladder to pick sunblossoms.” Beat. “Contrary to Code, I disobeyed your direct commands, and take full responsibility for all that may have happened as a result. Not my brothers, who did everything they could to stop me. I went to the Five Families’bunker at Kibo, with the intention of capturing them. You were limited in your actions, and because of that, thousands of innocent people were going to die. Things didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, but there was an answer, and as you probably know by now, the Five Families are dead—”

Kit whispered, “They… what?”

“—I used a priority signal to reset the bombardment coordinates to the Five Families’ bomb shelter. Not long now.”

So… the smoke…

“What does this mean?” the Nautolan said.

“That depends on the kind of woman G’Mai Duris is,” Obi-Wan said.

He closed his eyes. “Duris is Regent and head of the hive council. With the Families in chaos, she is the most powerful woman on the planet… and I believe we can negotiate with her. Call Admiral Baraka.”

“
Thousands?
” Kit asked in disbelief. “Jangotat saved
millions.
”

“But he didn’t know. He had no idea that Ventress had changed the targeting codes. He had no idea just how important his choice was.”

Obi-Wan and Kit shared a moment of silence. Then Obi-Wan reached out and put in the call to the
Nexu.

The following day in the Zantay Hills, as Jangotat had requested in this, his last will and testament, the Jedi showed the message to Sheeka Tull.

“Don’t worry about the JK droids,” Jangotat continued. “They’d never have functioned on a battlefield. Anyone who has ever met a dashta would know they are healers, not killers. When Thak Val Zsing died violently in its arms,
the dashta inside the JK went insane.
I know, I’m no tech guy. Don’t ask me how I know, I just do. Nonlethal security application? That’s one thing. Killing thinking people was just beyond them. Even a
sleeping
Guide was driven crazy. The Guides are simple, good creatures. They brought the X’Ting and the offworlders together. The X’Ting brought fungi to farmers dying of poor soil. They brought back some of the old ways.

“I believe the Five Families knew the truth, and lied to Count Dooku. Perhaps they planned to take the first payment, then disappear before the Confederacy mounted the JKs in combat, leaving Cestus to pay the price if the Republic fell.”

Obi-Wan and Kit stared at each other, dumbfounded. Had
anyone
in this entire matter told the truth? Astounding! Nothing but lies, top to bottom.

“I will not be returning, which grieves me, because I wished to. For the first time in my life I actually dreamed of a future.” Jangotat paused, lost for a moment in a private thought. Then he went on. “This is hard for me. I am not a person of words. Until I met you, I was not certain I was a man at all. I was the vows, the uniform, the rank. No. You showed me I was more than that, more than one of a million soldiers stamped out of a murderer like pieces on an assembly line. There is value in knowing your place in the universe, but there is also something else, and you helped me discover that.”

The three regarded each other uneasily.

“There is something that you need to know: if I had lived through this, if I had returned with my duty done, I would still have returned to the GAR. As hard as it might be for you to understand, it is still a great and good thing to fight for what you believe is right. Sheeka, if I were another man, I could think of no greater joy than to stay with you. If and when my days as a trooper were done, I would have wanted to come to you, if you would have me. I am sorry I’m not the man you once knew—”

She had known Jango? Quite a bit made sense now.

“—I’m sorry that you and I had neither past, nor future.”

Sheeka made no sound, but her lowered eyes spoke volumes.

“Know that more than anything else in the world, I was a soldier. And that you, and no one else in all the galaxy, held this soldier’s heart in your hands.”

Save for Sheeka’s gentle weeping against Obi-Wan’s shoulder, there was no sound in that room for a long, long time.

ChikatLik swarmed beneath them. It was now easier for Obi-Wan to detect the original architecture, and see where offworlders had made their mark. The hive still lived. It could grow and change, like any living thing. It had been ground almost into the dust, but the hive lived.

He, Kit, and G’Mai Duris stood on a bridge, peering down as the city seethed beneath them. Synthetic air currents rippled her gown.

“Strange how they go about their lives as if nothing has happened,” she said.

“Has it?”

“Debbikin, the Por’Tens, my cousin Quill, half the Llitishi clan. Wiped out. What remains of the Families is in chaos, fighting over scraps. As they fight, the hive council has taken power. The surviving officers of Cestus Cybernetics will have to deal with us fairly now. The rule of three hundred years just ended,” she said, “and no one seems to know it. No one seems to care, to feel, to grasp that they are free.”

“Are they?” Kit asked.

“Yes, Master Fisto. As free as they have the strength to be.”

“A different thing.” Obi-Wan paused. “But they have a leader worthy of admiration. In this whole sordid affair, you are the only one who told the truth, even to your enemies. You, G’Mai Duris, are an extraordinary woman.”

She lowered her eyes shyly. “You are too kind. Well, Master Kenobi, I suppose that you win here after all. You are generous to allow us the Supreme Chancellor’s initial terms. I am surprised you are not harsher. We are hardly in a bargaining position.”

“Nor am I a bargainer,” Obi-Wan said. “This role is not comfortable for me, and I will be glad to put it down. Regent, I regret that my duty bound me to deceive you.”

“We were not friends, Master Kenobi. Your actions bore the weight of necessity. In the world of politics, truth is merely another thing to be bartered.”

“Then I wish to spend the rest of my life among friends.”

They shared a smile. “I hope you know that I will always think of you as our friend,” she said. “My friend.” A pause. “So, then,” she said, returning them to business. “The Republic guarantees us service droid contracts for its army. This will give Cestus a chance to establish networks of service and instruction on every world in the Republic.” She paused. “But no more JKs. If the Chancellor keeps his word, then we will still be safe.”

“I think that your current situation might reasonably be described as a running start.”

“Thank you, Master Kenobi.”

He had a thought. “I need a favor from you,” Obi-Wan said.

“Yes?”

“Many people sacrificed themselves in this fight,” he said. “Many of them died. I wish an amnesty for the survivors, and those you captured. No black marks against them. Let them go back to their lives. Let this be a new beginning. And one more thing…”

“Yes?”

“Let the spiders have their caves. They have little enough.”

“I am sorry for the endless cycles of misery on Cestus. Our hive made many mistakes—but I will do what I can to correct them.”

The time had come for the Jedi to say their good-byes. The remaining forces of Desert Wind filled the caves a final time. Resta sang them a song of Thak Val Zsing’s courage. They shook hands, saluted, shared hugs and strong, warm words as the surviving troopers packed their equipment on the shuttle dropped down at the personal request of Admiral Baraka.

“Master Kenobi?” Sheeka Tull said during a quiet moment.

“Yes?”

She couldn’t meet his eyes. “Did I do a bad thing,” she said, “an evil, selfish thing?”

“What do you mean?”

“I wanted to bring back something I thought I missed from my life. Something… someone I knew a long time ago.”

“You tried to bring him back?”

She nodded. “For all my talk of living for today, I see now… that I was the worst kind of hypocrite.”

“How?”

“I woke him up, Master Kenobi. He could have gone his whole life feeling complete, and finished, and at peace with his path.”

Obi-Wan folded his fingers together. “He sounded complete to me. He sounded much like a man who has traveled the galaxy’s rim only to find himself at home.”

“But don’t you see? He knew what to say. He knew I would see that vid, that he wasn’t coming back. And he said that to set my mind at ease.” She wagged her head side to side. “I know, I know, I sound crazy, and maybe I am, just a little, right now.”

She looked at him with desperation. “Tell me. Tell me, Jedi. Did I wake him up, convince him he had a life that was precious, just in time for him to lose it? And what does that make me?”

“A woman who once loved a man, and then tried to love him again.”

Tears streaked her face as she gazed at him.

“None of us is completely in control of our heart,” Obi-Wan said. “We do what we can, what we will, what we must… guided by our ethics and responsibilities. It can be lonely.”

“Have you ever…?” she began, unable to finish.

“Yes,” he said, and offered nothing more.

For Sheeka Tull, that single word was enough.

“So,” Obi-Wan said. “You must be strong. For Jangotat, who, I think, would have thanked you for however many days of clarity you were able to afford him. For yourself, whose only sin was love.”

He came closer. He rested his hand on her flat stomach. “And for the child you carry.”

She blinked. “You know?”

Obi-Wan smiled. “A strong one, I think. And he’ll have a name, not a number.”

“Not a number.”

“No.”

They stood in an empty cavern. The eels had gone. What had driven them away? Groundquakes? Rumors of war? No one knew. Perhaps they would return. Perhaps not. But humans had abused their precious gifts, and humans and X’Ting alike could wait for the Guides to make up their own minds. Here, for a hundred years and more, in love they had offered the greatest gift imaginable: their own children, that their new friends might prosper. And that gift had almost killed them all.

Best they be gone.

Among the rocks outside their second camp, Obi-Wan and Kit witnessed the death ceremony of an ARC for one of their own. It was as simple as could be imagined.

The three dug a shallow trench and gently placed Jangotat’s body within. Each added a handful of sand and dirt. Then Forry said, “From water we’re born, in fire we die. We seed the stars.”

When they were done the Jedi helped the commandos build a rock cairn, taller than it was wide, like a single declamatory finger pointing to the stars. They stood for a time, looking at the cave, the rocks, the sky, absorbing a bit of this place that had cost them so dearly.

Then they were done, and there was nothing left to do.

And so they left.

Trillot tossed and turned in her bed, deep in a recurring vision of blood and destruction.
Mountains fell. Planets exploded. The space between the stars ran black with blood.

She awakened suddenly, relieved. It was only a nightmare. Just another of an endless stream of horrid sleep-fantasies…

Her vision cleared, and her sense of relief evaporated. More substantial than any nightmare, Asajj Ventress stood over her.

“You strode my dreams,” Ventress said. “And as you did, I saw you.”

Her single lightsaber descended.

At a spot only thirty kilometers from ChikatLik, two guards lay broken in the shadow of Ventress’s ship. She tucked her lightsaber back into her belt, mounted the ramp, and began to check her instruments, preparing for takeoff.

“Obi-Wan,” she said quietly. She wished to see him dead. But in the water, when she could have followed him down into death, he had remained firm. He was…

She focused on her hands. Why did they shake? This was not like her. She knew who she was. She had made her bed long ago, and was more than prepared to lie within it.

Asajj Ventress turned her mind to the hundred small preparations necessary for flight. Halfway through the preparations, she realized that her hands had stopped shaking. Action. That was what was needed. That was what she hungered for. She would accept Count Dooku’s scathing approbation, then volunteer for the most dangerous assignment General Grievous could devise, and on whatever planet that was, in whatever maelstrom of wrack and ruin she could immerse herself, she would find cleansing, and peace.

Ventress lifted off into the clouds above ChikatLik, and was gone.

From behind a rock on the slope just beyond Ventress’s landing zone, Fizzik crawled out, trembling uncontrollably. It was time to leave Cestus. This planet had suddenly become an insanely dangerous place. If only he could get back into Trillot’s nest, perhaps he could get his hands on some of his sister’s credits before her corpse was found.

Of course, if the body was discovered before Fizzik could escape, it might not go well.

What to do, what to do?

Lack of courage meant poverty.

Fizzik decided: he had been poor before, but he had never been dead, and he wished to keep it that way for a very long time.