The Cestus Deception by Steven Barnes Page B

She was his contact, given by the Chancellor’s most trusted tacticians. Trust was his only option. “Very well. I must speak to the anarchists known as Desert Wind,” he said.
    “They took quite a beating last year,” Sheeka Tull said. “What do you want with them?”
    “You have no need to know that,” he replied.
    “No.” Her eyes narrowed. “That is exactly what I need to know. If you won’t tell me, I can’t help you. I wouldn’t dare.”
    Kit watched her. If he had known her longer, he might have determined if she was telling the truth, or bluffing. A useful ability, but again, calibration was everything. He had to make a field decision, one that was tough no matter how he looked at it. “We need to create an effective force capable of sabotage and deception, in case the government needs to be overthrown.”
    He knew that his words rocked her, but she hid her flinch very well. “Well. Thanks for the honesty.”
    “You can take us to Desert Wind?”
    “No. But I can take you to the people who know them.”
    “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. ”
    Chapter Sixteen
    The insectile Cestian’s name was Fizzik, and at the moment he was at his most aggressively ambitious, in the peak of his species’ three-year 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