The Cestus Deception Read Free

Advanced Recon Commando.”
    On cue, a single clone trooper, a commando in full battle armor, armed with an infantry-grade blaster rifle, stepped forward from his hiding place beneath the lip of the arena wall. Clone Commandos were specialized troopers. They had been modified from the basic trooper template to allow for specific training protocols. A blast helmet concealed his features, but his posture bespoke aggressive readiness. An uneasy mutter wound its way through the crowd.
    The amphibian seemed taken aback. “I… would not wish to be responsible for a death…”
    The technician fixed the Aqualish with a pitying gaze, as if every response had been anticipated. “Don’t worry.” Her motions were measured and relaxed as she manipulated a few controls. “The machine is calibrated for nonlethal apprehension.”
    Although that pronouncement quieted most of the witnesses, Obi-Wan felt even more uneasy. This droid, with its ethereal beauty and unconventional lethality, had something to do with his mission. But what? “What exactly is the trooper’s objective?” Obi-Wan called down.
    The corners of Lido Shan’s lips pulled upward. “To fight his way past the JK and capture me.”
    The muttering witnesses regarded her with disbelief and something more disturbing: anticipation. They knew they were about to witness something memorable. But which did they desire most? The JK defeated, or this snooty technician given her comeuppance?
    The trooper edged forward warily until he was about two dozen meters from the creature…
    Obi-Wan shook his head. Creature? Had he really done that? Thought creature instead of droid ? What had triggered that?
    The trooper raised his blaster to his shoulder and fired a crimson bolt of light. The spinning absorption disks reappeared, sucking the energy bolts with a liquid crackling sound.
    But the mere fact that the droid needed a force screen seemed to encourage the trooper. He feinted to the right and then rolled to the left, sprang nimbly off his shoulder to fire again, repeatedly changing position as the droid continued its defensive action.
    Obi-Wan opened his senses, stretching out with the Force. He could almost feel the man’s racing heart, taste his nervousness, sense the choices weighed as he wove his evasive web. Left, right, left… the next move would be to the—
    Left again.
    As the great Jedi watched, the JK spat out a webbing of strands as thick as his small finger, ensnaring the clone helplessly in midleap. He might have been no more than a wounded thrantcill, bagged by any musk merchant with a net. The timing was superb. No. More than superb: it had been perfect. What kind of programming made such precision possible? Obi-Wan could swear that the aim had been almost precognitive, almost…
    But that was impossible.
    Struggling in the net as the JK dragged him closer, the trooper pulled his blaster around to draw a bead on the technician. Obi-Wan’s eyes flickered to the technician: she seemed unconcerned. In the moment before the barrel would have fixed on her, an orange spark flowed out along the tentacles. The trooper rocked with a single hard, violent shiver, thrashed his heels against the sand, and then lay still. The JK pulled him close, one tentacle lifting his trunk high enough for a second, more slender probe to flash a beam of light against the trooper’s closed eyes. The JK lowered the trooper back to the sand, then stood still and watchful.
    For a moment the crowd’s every intake of breath seemed frozen in their collective throats. Then the JK’s web unraveled, flowing back into the droid. The trooper groaned and rolled over onto his side. Another moment and he levered himself to his knees, wobbly but unharmed. Another trooper helped him retreat beneath the arena wall’s curved lip.
    The audience applauded, with the exception of Obi-Wan and another Jedi who edged his way through the crowd to stand beside him. Obi-Wan felt relief as the familiar form