EBOOK Hive: Star Wars (Short Story)

BONUS: This short story features an exclusive author interviewplus an excerpt from Steven Barnes&' Star Wars novel, The Cestus Deception. WHAT LIES BENEATH Dispatched as a Republic  envoy to the Outer Rim planet Ord Cestusin a bid to halt the sale of potentially  deadly &';bio-droids&' to the ConfederacyObi-Wan Kenobi finds himself enlisted in a  mission more desperate, and dangerous, than diplomatic. The once self-contained world  has long since been co-opted by unscrupulous offworlders, whose plunder of a vital  natural resource has enabled the rise of a powerful corporation that controls the  economy. Ord Cestus&'s native population, the X&'Ting, are now mere second-class citizens  in their own society. Enter the Jedi Knight, with news that a legal technicality  has turned the tablesand the corrupt forces with a stranglehold on Ord Cestus are  now at the mercy of the X&'Ting. Circumstances, however, are more dire than the Republic  suspected. In the wake of a devastating plague, the X&'Ting&'s benevolent rulers are  dead, and the once tightly knit race has splintered into battling factions. Reunification  can only come with the rise of new royals, whom all X&'Ting are bound by blood to  serve. But the eggs that will spawn those sovereigns lie out of reach, secured in  a secret chamber and booby-trapped by those whose knowledge died with them in the  plague. Now, to salvage a people&'s destiny, Obi-Wan will risk a veritable descent  into hell: braving the unknown horrors in the forgotten depths of an alien world,  on a perilous quest from which none who went before have ever returned.