The Changing of the Guard Read online

  “I have to find my gang.”

  “I’d say you have to get out of here, but all right. They might lock down the compound once they find the room is empty.”

  Becka led him through several turnings. They reached a panel outlined in yellow. He pressed a button and the panel slid open.

  Obi-Wan found himself in a small closet, crowded with wraps and cloaks.

  Becka opened the door slightly. “Go.”

  Obi-Wan eased out. Becka followed.

  The crowd was nervous. Obi-Wan could smell the panic. No doubt a crowd of criminals did not feel secure when a security alarm was going off. Then it stopped abruptly, and the silence was worse.

  “False alarm, folks!” Becka called. “Just enjoy yourselves!” He motioned to the musicians. “Great Leader Teda orders you to keep playing!”

  The sight of someone in an official uniform had some effect. The musicians began to play, and the guests began to murmur.

  “This way.” Becka led Obi-Wan down a hallway and then into the great room from another door. He saw Anakin and Ferus, still monitoring the corridor where Obi-Wan had disappeared. Obi-Wan knew his apprentice was close to charging down the corridor after him.

  He hurried over. “It’s all right. Becka is going to help us. Where is Valadon?”

  “She’s outside, ready to cover you in case you come out the window.”

  Becka, Obi-Wan, Anakin, and Ferus hurried outside. Lights illuminated the wall. Droids buzzed overhead.

  They saw Siri on the side of the palace, standing just outside the ring of guards surrounding the window. The durasteel panel had risen, and some of the guards had leaped inside the room.

  Obi-Wan sent out a call to Siri, using the Force. She turned and saw him. He saw the relief on her face. She started toward him.

  Becka was watching the placement of the guards carefully. Suddenly, a group of them turned and started toward the gates. Lights began to blink rhythmically on the top of the wall.

  “Not good,” Becka said. “They’re going into lockdown.”

  Obi-Wan looked around. “Any ideas?”

  “I scouted out the back wall,” Anakin said. “I think we can make it.”

  “I don’t think you should try it,” Becka said. “If they see you, it will just make things harder. Security will be looking for you until they catch you. Leave this to me. All we need is a little panic for cover.”

  The crowd was on the edge of panic already. They didn’t know what was going on. Security guards were now storming through the place, checking ID docs. Flocks of sentry droids buzzed overhead. The sumptuous party had turned into a replica of a prison—a place nobody at the party was particularly interested in revisiting.

  “Just wait here for a moment,” Becka said.

  He went from group to group, speaking quietly. As soon as he left them, the groups talked among themselves, and then to others. Soon, voices began to rise.

  “This is outrageous!”

  “I will not be detained!”

  “I came to this planet for security and peace.…”

  Becka reappeared at Obi-Wan’s side. “Just walk out with the others.”

  “No one is leaving.”

  “You lead the way. The guests will follow. I’ve told them that Teda is keeping them indefinitely for interrogation. They are furious and afraid. Teda will have to let you leave. He depends on their bribes to survive. He won’t stop them. You’ll see. Go.”

  Siri looked at Obi-Wan and shrugged. “Worth a try.”

  Obi-Wan drew his cloak around him. “I for one won’t stand for this,” he said loudly. “I’m leaving!”

  “Yes, let’s leave immediately,” Siri agreed.

  Heads turned. As Obi-Wan and Siri stalked off, followed by Anakin and Ferus, some of the braver guests followed. At first it was a trickle, then a wave.

  Everything happened as Becka said it would. The crowd approached the nervous security guards at the gate. They drew their blasters but did not fire them as Obi-Wan and Siri continued to stride ahead. One officer spoke quickly into a comlink. Obviously, he was contacting Teda.

  In just seconds, the security gates opened. Teda could not compromise his treasury by angering those who propped up his regime.

  So Obi-Wan and the Jedi left the palace compound in a fashion they hadn’t suspected when they’d arrived—leading a large group of angry criminals straight out the front gates.

  Joylin was waiting for the Jedi in the prearranged spot, in a narrow alley behind the exclusive shops on the boulevard.

  “Heard you had a rough time,” Joylin said.

  Obi-Wan handed him the codes.

  Joylin quickly accessed the small disk and scanned its contents. “It’s all worth it.” He looked up. “Our operatives are in place. We’re going to hit the security center first and knock out the CIP. Then we’ll take over the rest.”

  “Remember,” Obi-Wan said, “we want Zan Arbor.”

  Joylin nodded. “Part of the deal. We won’t go back on it. We’ll contact you at dawn and you’ll tell us how you want to proceed. Your ship will be fueled and you’ll have permission to leave, if that’s what you want. We have plans to confiscate all other transports, so you’ll be the only ones allowed to get off-planet.”

  Obi-Wan nodded. Good. That way, the Slams would be Zan Arbor’s only choice.

  “Until then, my suggestion is for you to go back to your villa and lie low. Things are going to get worse before they get better.”

  “I thought you said this would be a bloodless revolution,” Ferus said.

  “I said I intended it to be,” Joylin said. “I still do.” He looked overhead. Sentry droids were beginning to patrol the streets, sweeping dark areas with panels of light. “Now I’d better knock out that CIP.”

  He turned and disappeared down the dark alley. Obi-Wan and Siri exchanged a worried look. They had rarely seen a government takeover that was easy or bloodless.

  Yet all they could do was wait.

  Chapter Twelve

  The Jedi did not take Joylin’s advice and return to the villa. They remained on the streets to monitor the progress of the revolt, keeping concealed.

  Sentry droids were so thick in the air that a constant humming noise filled the streets. Teda’s government was on full alert after the theft in his office.

  They knew the instant the CIP had been hit. The sentry droids crashed to the ground, lifeless.

  Within minutes, however, the army flooded the streets. The Jedi retreated before them as they headed for Cloudflower Wall, trying to quell the resistance.

  They arrived just in time to see the Romin workers burst through the security gates. The mass of beings was like a huge moving mountain. The Jedi were now swept along as the determined group marched toward Teda’s palace, pushing the army back in a hard battle.

  Obi-Wan had hoped to see joy and liberation on this dark night. Instead, he saw only rage. Sick at heart, the Jedi watched as the looting and violence began. The Romins had been deprived of too much for too long. They had lived with fear as a constant companion. They had watched their children suffer.

  The anger fed on itself and grew. They wanted to destroy what had destroyed them.

  Transparisteel shattered. Monuments fell. Even trees were hacked down. Fires were lit in the exclusive shops, the businesses that catered to the wealthy, the banks, the assembly halls, even the hospitals. Citizens who had profited from the Teda regime were dragged into the streets and slaughtered.

  The Jedi could not be everywhere. It all got out of control too fast.

  Siri and Obi-Wan were shaken. They had taken the risk. They had hoped for the best and seen the worst.

  Obi-Wan saw the horror through Ferus’s eyes. Siri’s apprentice grew silent. Obi-Wan saw him shudder as he saw the things he had feared would happen.

  “We did this,” Ferus said.

  “No,” Anakin said. “They are doing this.”

  “We have to help,” Ferus insisted.
/>   “We’ll help where we can,” Siri told him. “We can’t stop it, Ferus.”

  They found cowering workers and brought them to shelter. They tended to the wounded and prevented violence where they could.

  The night stretched on. The sounds of destruction grew soft as the Romins raged in other parts of the city. They heard the muffled thuds of explosions. The crash of transparisteel. The far-off noise of an alarm. A cry that could have been a bird. But they knew it was not.

  By dawn the Jedi had established their villa as an outpost that they guarded from the mob and used to monitor Zan Arbor’s villa, which seemed untouched so far. As long as she remained there, Obi-Wan was content to do likewise. Scores of Romin citizens sat in their garden, refugees from homes that had been looted and burned. The Jedi could not begin to sort out who had been involved in Teda’s government and who had merely lived and worked in the city. They allowed anyone fleeing to come in and take shelter.

  The rising sun brought a kind of calm to the streets. The resistance workers patrolled now, trying to restore order. Obi-Wan and Anakin sat outside, ready for trouble, though they had received no threat for hours now.

  “A long night,” Anakin said.

  “Yes.”

  “Even after this night, I still think we weren’t wrong.”

  Obi-Wan sighed. He tried to smooth the trampled grass underneath his hand. “Wrong or right—I’m not ready to make that call. We made the decision using the facts we had.”

  “But we were right,” Anakin insisted.

  Obi-Wan saw the will Ferus had been talking about, the need to bend the situation to Anakin’s own vision of it. The need to be right.

  “Anakin, sometimes sureness is not what you should strive for. A little confusion in your mind can be a good thing. Will we be proved right ultimately? I hope so. Did we do the best we could? Yes. That I firmly believe. That’s enough for now.”

  Siri called them from the villa. “The vidscreen is broadcasting. The resistance now has control of the communication system. Joylin is going to speak.”

  Obi-Wan and Anakin hurried inside. Siri, Ferus, and some of the refugees were crowded around the vidscreen. Others began to pour through the doors, and still others stood outside the windows so that they could hear.

  Joylin appeared on the screen. Even on vidscreen, his magnetism was clear. His clothes were stained and rumpled. His face was drawn. Yet strength radiated out from his body, and his eyes were resolute.

  “Romin is now in the hands of its people,” he said.

  A sound rose from the crowd, half gasp, half cry. No one had liked living under Teda. Yet the liberators had come close to destroying the city. How safe were they?

  “The Citizens’ Resistance is now occupying the palace of the tyrant Teda as well as the government buildings. We have control of communications and transportation. Order has been returned to the streets. Some regrettable looting and burning has occurred, but it has been stopped. No one will be granted exit from Romin without the permission of the Citizens’ Resistance. The army of the Great Leader has deserted or joined us. Let us rejoice, citizens, in our victory. Our tyrant is finished.”

  A woman standing next to Obi-Wan began to weep. A man turned away, his hand at his mouth.

  “Although we begin today as the first day of a government of justice and peace, the tyrant who abused our trust, our people, our wealth, our cities, our lands, is still at large. He has fled, like the coward he is.”

  Obi-Wan and Siri exchanged a glance. So it was not over, then. As long as Teda remained at large, the resistance’s hold on the government was shaky at best.

  “Teda has fled along with the few who continue to support him. Among them are his chief of staff, General Yubicon, and the galactic criminal Jenna Zan Arbor.”

  Anakin punched the wall with his fist. It was a rare display of anger. Zan Arbor had slipped through their fingers again.

  “Teda is now a wanted criminal. We hereby charge him with crimes against Romin. And so we announce this. We hold the rest of his senior staff and government officials in custody. If Teda does not surrender to us, we will execute them. One by one.”

  Joylin stared into the camera. His eyes were burning. “Watching, caring, protecting. Roy Teda loves his people. Prove to us you are not a monster. Save those who were loyal to you. And meet the justice of the people you claim to love. We await your surrender. The first execution will take place in one hour. Your first aide, Hansel, will be the first to die.”

  The screen went to static.

  Ferus looked at Obi-Wan. His face was white. He shook his head and turned away.

  All night Obi-Wan had consoled himself with the thought that things had to get better with the dawn. Instead, things had gotten worse, more horribly than he could have imagined.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Obi-Wan was happy to shed the fine robes of Slam. Siri bundled up her shimmersilk dress, now stained and torn, and threw it away.

  “I’m glad to be a Jedi again,” she said.

  Leaving Anakin and Ferus in charge, they hurried down the deserted streets toward Teda’s palace.

  “It’s not that I’m surprised at what has happened,” Obi-Wan told Siri. “It’s just that I had hoped for better.”

  “It is always better to prepare for the worst,” Siri said. “I’m glad we contacted Master Windu before the revolt.”

  “It will still take some time for the Jedi re-enforcements to reach us,” Obi-Wan said. “Mace said he would come personally. I don’t imagine he’ll be in the best of moods. He wasn’t happy about this plan from the beginning.”

  “Neither was Ferus,” Siri said. “He was right about the revolt. It got out of control too easily. He thinks if we hadn’t helped, maybe they would have postponed the revolt. Maybe Teda would have fallen without being pushed. I tell myself that he doesn’t have the experience to realize that sometimes you have to make a hard decision and accept the consequences. And then I think…what if he was right?”

  “If he was right, then we were wrong,” Obi-Wan said. “That’s all. Do you think the Jedi are always right?”

  Siri sighed. “Sometimes you sound so much like Qui-Gon.”

  “After all these years, finally a compliment,” Obi-Wan said.

  He was glad to see that the remark lightened Siri’s expression. “Don’t let it go to your head,” she growled.

  “Ferus is wise beyond his years,” Obi-Wan went on. “He thinks deeply. But even though an outcome may seem likely, sometimes one has to risk for the right result.”

  “Yes, Ferus is reluctant to risk too much. Not like Anakin,” Siri said. “He’s willing to risk everything.”

  She meant it as a compliment, Obi-Wan knew. Siri admired Anakin’s daring, his sureness, how fluidly he used the Force. It was unusual for Siri to second-guess a decision, just like Anakin. In some ways, Obi-Wan was more like Ferus. How odd that he and Anakin had become a team. Their temperaments were so different.

  Choose the Master, the Padawan does.

  Yoda had said that to him many times, from when he himself was an apprentice. The old Jedi Master believed in most cases that the Force drew the Master and his apprentice together for reasons they couldn’t see themselves. Obi-Wan felt strongly that this was true.

  Joylin must have been waiting for them, because his security guards let them through without a problem. A tall guard led them to Teda’s inner office, where Obi-Wan had stolen the codes. On the way, they saw resistance members wandering about the palace, staring at the fine things. Many had pulled colorful cloaks and tunics over their own threadbare attire. Obviously, they had raided the palace closets. The remnants of the grand party still lay about, food half-eaten on plates, musical instruments abandoned, drinks spilled. There was a strange energy here. The people seemed dazed rather than energized.

  Obi-Wan and Siri walked into the inner office. Joylin had cleared out most of the fine furniture and rolled up the rug. Along with an assistant, he was methodi
cally going through Teda’s datafiles.

  “I have enough here to convict him on state crimes ten times over, and I’ve only just begun an hour ago,” Joylin said. In person, Obi-Wan could see both fatigue and triumph on his face. Joylin didn’t look at them, but spoke as he flipped through files. “I suppose you heard about Zan Arbor. She escaped with Teda. Believe me, we tried to trail them. I don’t know yet how they got away. Or where they are. Her ship was destroyed when the rioters hit the landing platform. Don’t worry—I was able to stop them before they destroyed your ship. I even had it refueled for you.”

  Joylin looked up at last. “I did what I could. I assume you came for the last half of your payment.”

  “We don’t care about the payment,” Obi-Wan said. “We’ll give you back what you paid us already. Put it toward restoring the hospital.”

  For the first time, Joylin seemed to notice the difference in their appearance.

  “Who are you?” he asked. His eyes narrowed.

  “We are Jedi,” Obi-Wan said. “We have the authority of the Senate.”

  “We’ve come about the executions you plan,” Siri said. “You cannot do this.”

  Joylin’s skin seemed to tighten over his bones. “I am the leader of Romin. I can do anything I want.”

  “That tone is familiar,” Obi-Wan said. “Recognize it, Joylin?”

  “I am not Teda,” Joylin said. He shook his head at them. “How dare you,” he continued softly. “You arrived on my world two days ago. You’ve seen nothing. You know nothing. You have not seen the prisons, filled to overflowing with those who Teda felt threatened by, filled with those who displeased him. You have not seen even one corner of the misery he has caused.”

  “This does not justify murder,” Siri said. “You are judge, jury, and executioner for these people. That goes against galactic law.”

  “They are all murderers!” Joylin exclaimed. “Don’t you understand? If Teda is allowed to go free, we will never be safe. Our movement will collapse. We don’t know how many of the army deserted or how many went with him. If I don’t do this, we could lose control of the government!”