"Fair enough."
"After you're finished here, you never heard of me." She stood with
her small fists balled against her waist.
"Fair enough."
She nodded, and drew a little circle in the dust with the point of
her toe. "All right, then," she said. "Time for you to meet Spindragon."
16
T,he insectile Cestian's name was Fizzik, and at the moment he was
at his most aggressively ambitious, in the peak of his species' threeyear
cycle between male and female genders. In his current state, the
coursing of masculine hormones was a nerve-dulling intoxicant, and
made him willing to take almost any risk to obtain the medicine that
would balance the hormones more smoothly. The plant capable of
easing, or even accelerating, the transition was called viptiel, native to
a world called Nal Hutta. Far too expensive for a mere hotel attendant.
And that was why Fizzik decided to sell his soul to his distant
brother Trillot. He waddled his bright gold oval through the crowd
until he found a certain alley, disguised as a minor lava tube. Everywhere,
the walls were slathered with promotions for various exhibits
and attractions, and both flat and holographic commercials attempted
to lure stray credits from unwary pockets.
Fizzik had not been here for a year and a half. If there were a few
who might have recognized him, they probably failed due to the fact
that he had been female the last time he had passed this way.
Once, hundreds of standard years ago, the planet had belonged
to the X'Ting, who had driven their only rivals, the spider clans,
into the distant mountains. But the coming of the Republic had
changed everything. At first hailed as a triumph for the hive, in
time the offworlders controlled everything. Regardless of what anyone
said, the last century's plagues had been no more or less than
attempted genocide: the hives had all but collapsed, and Cestus
Cybernetics became the planet's de facto ruler. Most surviving
X'Ting were relegated to cesspools such as this wretched slum.
Some, of course (for instance, that worthless drone Duris, or Quill,
the current head of the hive council), had sold their people out in exchange
for power. Those traitors were the pampered pets of the Five
Families.
In his female persona, Fizzik often secured domestic work amid
the offworlder upper classes. When he cycled back to male, most offworlder
employers found his powerful pheromones sufficiently unpleasant
to terminate his employment. So . . . down to the gutter
again, scraping for a living until his emerging feminine persona
earned him a better berth. Moving between social tissues over the
years had earned him a wide network of contacts—a net wide
enough, in fact, to have snared a valuable bit of information: that the
Grand ChikatLik's newest arrivals were critically important visitors
from Coruscant. There was every chance he might be able to sell
such information to one of the most powerful X'Ting in the capital,
the being who held the threads connecting the criminal underworld
to the labor organizers to the true masters of Old Cestus: Fizzik's
brother Trillot.
In a few minutes he arrived at a heavy, oval iron door set in a shadowed
corridor off bustling Ore Boulevard. In one sense, it was important
to know the code words. In another, those who came to this
door and sought entrance without having funds to spend or something
to sell would find themselves on the wrong end of a flameknife.
The guards, one blue-skinned humanoid Wroonian and a gigantic
furred Wookiee, glared down on Fizzik with no discernible shift in
their facial expressions.
"Need to see my brother," Fizzik said, and added a code word
known only to hive siblings.
The guards nodded blandly and opened the door. One walked
ahead of him, although he looked around as they moved down the
shadowed corridor.
The hallway was lined with small alcoves, in which various galactic
life-forms reclined in shadow, alone or in pairs, staring out at him
with vast, glassy eyes before sinking back into whatever thoughts or
dreams had occupied them.
"What you need Trillot for?" the Wroonian asked.
The guard grunted. "What you say? You want to eat diamonds?"
Fizzik despaired. One would think that a being of Trillot's wealth
and power would employ the very best help, but that rarely seemed to
be the case. "Just take me there."
"His brood-mother what}" the guard said, turning. His face now
betrayed a trace of emotion, and it was not at all pleasant.
Fizzik realized the trap he had entered. The alcoves around him
rustled with curious eyes. This was nothing less than a shakedown.
He thrust his hand into his pocket and pulled out a handful of credits.
His last. Oh, well, life was a gamble. If this one paid off, in a few
minutes he would be flush. If not . . . well, the dead had no use for
money.
As soon as the credits touched the thug's hands, the Wroonian
smiled broadly. "Oh!" he said. "Oh! You want to see Trillot." He
made the credits disappear, and then swept a curtain aside.
At first Fizzik could see only a broad couch, but as his eyes adjusted
to the darkness, he was able to make out his brother.
Trillot was three broods senior to Fizzik. Like Fizzik, he was a
minor child of a noble but impoverished brood-mother, his only inheritance
a yearning for the wealth and power of ages past. Unlike
Fizzik, however, Trillot had talent and a willingness to take risks.
After a false start working in communications for Cestus Cybernetics,
he found his niche in labor relations. Trillot's three-year cycle between
male and female personae tended to keep his immigrant
opponents and rivals slightly off-guard. Fizzik knew that, unlike
most X'Ting, Trillot used an imported cocktail of viptiel and other
exotic herbs to collapse the month-long breeding period at either end
of the gender cycle into mere hours of numbed transformation. No
incapacity, no fertility. No mewling grubs for one as ambitious as
Trillot.
Five years later Trillot had proven his worth to a local Tenloss syndicate,
and two years after that he resigned from Cestus Cybernetics
to work directly for the overboss himself.
A mysterious series of tragic accidents had cleared the way for Trillot's
ascension. Well, unexplained as long as Trillot himself chose not
to comment.
Everything that followed was almost preordained. Seeing Trillot's
utter ruthlessness and perhaps sensing the inevitability of his ascension,
the overboss fled Cestus, leaving the power in Trillot's capable
hands.
It was too little, too late. The overboss met with an accident, almost
as if someone wished to ensure he would never return to attempt
to claim what had once been his.
Trillot's power in ChikatLik had never really been challenged.
Were he not cautious, such a challenge have might come in the
lethargic m
onthlong transition between genders suffered by most of
his kind. Another motivation to use the illegal viptiel cocktail that allowed
him to make this transition in a single painful night. Trillot
was aggressive at all times.
In the twilight zone between labor and management, between
white and black market, between upper and lower class, between offworlder
and X'Ting hive council, there was no fixer like Trillot, and
everyone knew it.
Like most male X'Ting he was a deceptively delicate, insectile
creature. His every motion seemed as carefully cultivated and pondered
as a master's game of dejarik. A high, crystalline brow over
faceted eyes and an elongated oval for a body gave the impression of
vast intelligence and great gentility. Fizzik know that only the former
impression was correct.
But Trillot's thorax was red and swelling, a clear sign of feminization.
Such a rapid shift had to be agonizing, and Fizzik wondered
what herbs and drugs Trillot used to control the pain. And then more
to clarify his mind from all the others. And then more to protect
himself from the toxic effects of the previous dosages. And then
more . . .
Fizzik was dizzy just thinking about it.
Trillot spoke to the guard in a clicking, popping language that
seemed odd emerging from his strangely prim mouth. The guard answered
in the same indecipherable tongue. Then his head pivoted to
face his guest. "Ah. Fizzik," he said. Fizzik had heard more warmth
and welcome in the voice of an execution droid. "It seems you have
information for me. Ah, come along. No, no. Of course, if your information
is sound, there will be compensation."
"I wish only to serve my elder brother." Fizzik lowered his eyes respectfully.
"Ah." Trillot s body seemed to move one section at a time, so that
one part of it always remained still while the rest was in motion. It
was unnerving to watch. Although of the same species, Fizzik had
never possessed such plasticity. Trillot walked a bit awkwardly, his
swelling egg sac unbalancing his stride. They traversed a dark corridor
lined with alcoves, from which the glittering eyes of a dozen
species watched them pass. Trillot seemed to have attracted Cestus's
entire underclass. Fizzik knew that the offworlder majority on the
planet had dominated many of the other species to the point that less
than 3 percent were native Cestians.
The passage through the corridor was punctuated with low, respectful
bows from Trillot's coterie of hideous bodyguards. Suddenly
Trillot stopped and sniffed the air. Now for the first time, Fizzik saw
something like emotion cross the golden face. If he had to make a
guess, he would have said that his elder sibling was unhappy. This
would not be pretty.
"I smell Xyathone," Trillot said. He looked at the guard. "Do you
smell it?"
"No, sir," the guard replied in a Bothan dialect that Fizzik actually
understood. Trillot was rumored to speak more than a hundred languages,
and Fizzik was inclined to believe.
"I do." He moved closer to one of the alcoves. A thin tendril of
steam wound its way from beyond, and Fizzik pulled the curtain
aside.
Two Chadra-Fan were curled into the darkness, inhaling vapor
from a boiling flask. Trillot sniffed again, deeply. He spoke to them
in their own language, and then turned. "Guntar!" he called.
The guards hustled, and for that moment Fizzik thought Trillot
had forgotten him completely. They returned shortly, dragging a fat
little gray ball of a Zeetsa behind them. Trillot looked down on the
sphere as it prostrated itself. "Did you sell my guests the mushroom?"
Lips appeared on the sphere's surface. "Yes," Guntar babbled. "Of
course. Nothing but the best—"
"And why then has it been cut with Xyathone?"
The little Zeetsa was the very picture of outraged innocence.
"What? I did not know, I swear—"
"Do you indeed? Then perhaps your senses are insufficiently acute.
You should have smelled it. Tasted it in the mixing. Do you say that
that insignificant nose and tongue of yours aren't up to the task?"
There was a pause, and Fizzik tensed. There would be no happy
resolution to this matter.
"I . . . I suppose . . ."
"You know how I loathe inefficiency." To his guards: "See that the
offending organs are removed."
The ball screamed as the guards dragged him away. Trillot turned
back to the Chadra-Fan. He spoke to them in their chittering
tongue. They replied, and he drew the curtains shut. To the guards:
"See that they get the best. From my personal stock."
"Yes, sir."
Trillot pulled the corners of his mouth into something approximating
a smile. "Come with me now, Fizzik. It will take a few minutes
to reach my sanctum. I suggest that you use them composing
your report. After all—" From somewhere in the darkness behind
them echoed a stomach-curdling scream. "—you know how I loathe
inefficiency."
17
For hours the clone troopers had busied themselves in the cool,
deep shadows of the Dashta Mountains. They glued, fitted, and
welded, joining together hundreds of preformed durasteel sections,
melding them with native materials to create the nucleus of a fine
command center.
"So where's our first strike?" Forry asked Nate as they worked.
He shrugged in response. "Give me a spot-weld, right here." Their
astromech unit extended a soldering probe. "First of all," he said,
shielding his eyes against a bright, sharp shower of sparks, "there's
reason to think we might not get used at all. General Kenobi s supposed
to protect the entrenched political and economic forces."
"Yeah, right," Sirty said.
"But if it does go down?"
Nate grunted. "Then I'd guess we'll hit Cestus Cybernetics."
"Sounds like a plan."
Their comlink bleeped; a tone said that they'd be expecting
friendly visitors in a little under a minute, and they were not to respond
with force. That beacon triggered long before they heard the
distant but distinct swoosh of air. A few seconds later General Fisto's
speeder bike appeared.
Nate wandered out to the pad, feeling loose, dangerous, and satisfied.
In a matter of hours they had turned this mountain hole into a
reasonable headquarters.
He watched the Nautolan's speeder glide over the smooth and
jagged rock surfaces, heading north. Nate followed on foot, arriving
in time to watch a cargo ship arrive on the open spot they'd chosen as
their secondary landing zone.
The door opened, and the walkway extended. A dark-skinned
human female exited, following Kit back up toward the cave. Nate
saluted as Kit passed. The woman glanced at him with little curiosity
as she and Kit entered the cave. The Jedi received salutations from
the other clones. He briefly evaluated the work that they had already
performed, then took the woman to a scanner and showed her some
material. They conferred briefly, and Kit said: "Capt
ain, Forry, I wish
you to accompany us."
"Yes, sir," they said simultaneously.
Spindragon was a suborbital YT-1200 medium freighter. She was
old, melded with parts from other similar models, with a rounded
hull and an elongated, tubular cockpit. Nate spent a few minutes examining
the welds. Although it was obvious that a dozen different
soldering mixtures had been used, as well as a bit of Corellian epoxy,
they seemed strong enough to stand up to high-g turns, and he gave
his approval.
The interior was barely more than functional: little bits of decoration
suggested an attempt at aesthetics, but nothing frilly enough to
decrease utility.
The woman cocked her head sideways at the ARC trooper, trying
to peer through his helmet. "I didn't catch your name," she said.
"Trooper A-Nine-Eight."
She snorted. "Is there a short version of that?"
"Call me Nate," he said. Curiosity flickered in her dark eyes, and
her lips pursed as if Sheeka Tull was tempted to ask a question. She
didn't surrender to temptation, but he guessed that she hadn't shuffled
him into the nonbeing category to which most citizens automatically
relegated clones.
Within minutes they were all strapped in and ready to go. She rose
from their landing pad and spiraled up into the sky, flying southeast
for about fifteen minutes, then north for another ten.
A small manufacturing complex lay before them. Nate made a
quick tactical assessment: several mine dropshaft shacks, living quarters,
a small refinery, some shipping docks, landing docks, water filtration
equipment, and communications towers. Next to a series of
condensation coils nestled a blue bubble that he figured was a polarizing
hothouse, using shielded plastics to change their sun's spectral
range so that a wider variety of plants could be grown. Typical settlement.
Fragile. Easy to destroy.
But he remained silent. A major part of his job was just being
visually impressive. Most citizens had never seen clone troopers, although
they had doubtless heard tales.
He and Forry were first down the ramp when it extended, followed
by Sheeka Tull and the Jedi.
The community seemed to have turned out for them, but he noticed
that there were precious few X'Ting in the crowd. Most were humans,
a few were Wookiees, and there was a smattering of other species. No