Star Wars - In Changing Season 1 - Guardian of the People

  IN CHANGING SEASONS

  Part I

  Guardian of the People

  by

  Timothy Zahn

  .lit by DrB 12/03

  They came out of nowhere as Obi-Wan Kenobi flew his Faraway-class scout ship high above the wide expanse of checkered fields: three battle droids on STAPs, firing their twin blasters at him for all they were worth, the droid socket behind Obi-Wan, the scout's R3 unit gave an electronic yelp. "I see them," Obi-Wan soothed him, throwing power to the aft shields and wishing fleetingly he had his usual Aethersprite starfighter instead of a sensor-loaded spotter ship. Still, two years of warfare had taught him how to deal with STAPs, and the scout ought to have enough power to pull this off. "Hang on," he warned the droid and pulled back hard on the control bar.

  The noise of blaster impacts cut off abruptly as he stood the scout on its tail and shot upward, leaving the STAPs far behind. Maneuverable though they were, the little droid carriers didn't have nearly the climbing capability to match a maneuver like this. Obi-Wan continued starward for another few seconds, then shoved the control bar forward, flipping the scout into a full-power dive.

  It was a stunt he'd first seen Anakin pull several months ago, and he'd taken the brash young Padawan to task about it afterward. The younger man had countered with the unassailable logic that, first, he'd survived and, second, the trick had worked. Since then he'd used it at least three more times, with the same record of success. Anakin would be highly amused if he ever found out Obi-Wan had tried it himself. Fortunately, Anakin was a dozen light-years away. Stretching out to the Force, Obi-Wan added power to the dive and closed in for the kill.

  The droids saw him coming, of course. One of them leaned his STAP backward, trying to bring his blasters to bear on the ship screaming down on him from directly above, while the other two shot off in opposite directions as they tried to get out from under the dive. But no defensive programming in the galaxy could compensate for the STAP's basic design limitations. The first droid wobbled violently, nearly toppling backward as its center of mass moved too far away from its antigravity projector. The other two, running now with their blasters pointed the wrong direction, were in equally fatal postures. And neither programming nor design could take into account the accuracy of a Jedi gunner with the Force as his ally. Three bursts from the scout's laser cannon, and the droids and their STAPs had disintegrated into flaming rubble.

  Pulling back on the control rod, Obi-Wan leveled out again, wincing a little as he watched the smoking debris rain onto the ground below. From the large neat patches of stubble he could see all over the plain, it was clear the farmers were starting to bring in their crops, and chunks of twisted metal and plastic were not something their massive harvesting machines were designed to deal with. "At least we now know for sure that the Separatists have a base here," he commented to Arthree. Lifting his gaze from the ground below, he looked thoughtfully around the horizon.

  It was about as unspectacular a landscape as he had ever seen. The farmland stretched as far north and south as he could see, squares of tan and brown and dark yellow dotted with widely scattered clusters of farm buildings. On the horizon to the west, a low ridge of gray mountains cut across the view, running north to south. Another, much closer set of cliffs rose along the east, paralleling the first range. A little ways to the southeast, the monotony of the second set of cliffs was broken by a gushing white-water river that emerged through a narrow gorge in the rock, washing violently into the valley and slowly calming as its banks widened and it turned toward the north. An intricate network of irrigation canals led away from the river, providing water for the entire valley. In the distance near the northern horizon, the towers and buildings of a modest city could be seen nestled up against the riverbank.

  R3 gave a questioning warble. "No, I don't see anything, either," Obi-Wan said. "Let's see if we can get them to launch another attack." Taking a deep breath, he dropped the scout's nose downward, leveling out barely thirty meters above the ground and slowing to a crawl. Alternating his attention between the horizon and his sensor displays, he stretched out to the Force. He felt a warning flicker and twisted the control rod hard. But it was too late. With a thunderous concussion and a screech of metal, the scout's starboard wing exploded, sending shrapnel careening off the cockpit canopy and sending him into a twisting drop toward the ground.

  He pulled hard on the control rod, his free hand darting across the board as he tried to key in the emergency backup systems. But he was too close to the ground, and there simply wasn't enough time. A forest of tan-colored stalks shot up in front of him, and with a violent jolt the scout slammed hard into the ground.

  "What do you mean he went on ahead?" Anakin Skywalker demanded, glaring at Task Force Commander Fivvic as the tall Barabel stood beside the deck officer's desk. The deck officer, for his part, hunched diligently over his datapad and pretended he wasn't there. "Who told him he could do that?"

  "Two points, Padawan Skywalker," the tall Barabel replied stiffly, and Anakin could sense the reflexive anger of his species stirring beneath the surface. Barabels were highly respectful of Jedi, pathologically so, in Anakin's opinion, but that respect didn't always translate to Jedi-in-training, particularly not when the Jedi-in-training was criticizing a full-fledged Jedi Knight. "One: As a command-rank officer, General Kenobi needs no one's permission to carry out his duties as he sees fit. Two: With you and your wing of the survey team delayed, he thought his time would be best utilized by beginning the scouting."

  Unfortunately, both points made sense. "Fine," Anakin conceded. "How soon can we go after him?"

  Fivvic half turned to look at the scout ships scattered around the hangar deck, Anakin's Jedi starfighter off to one side looking like a strange cousin at a family picnic. "You took a beating out there," the Barabel said. "Some repairs can wait. Others must be made before we can leave."

  Anakin took a deep breath, trying hard to cultivate the patience Obi-Wan was always on his case about. "How soon?"

  "Three days. Possibly four."

  Anakin felt his throat tighten as he watched the maintenance team moving purposefully among the damaged scouts. Three days. An eternity, particularly in the middle of a war.

  Still, Obi-Wan was a Jedi Knight, and there were only rumors that the Separatists had moved into Dagro in the first place. There was a fair chance that the rumors were wrong and that Obi-Wan was wasting his time looking.

  So why was Anakin getting an uncomfortable tingle up his spine?

  "I presume," Fivvic went on with only a trace of sarcasm, "that four days will be acceptable?"

  Gently, Anakin stroked his mechanical right hand. "Make it three," he said, "and you've got a deal."

  Slowly, Obi-Wan drifted back to consciousness, with a dark sense of disorientation and an even darker sense of urgency. Carefully, not moving, he eased his eyes open...

  To find himself gazing into the faces of a young boy and an even younger girl.

  "There," the girl said, rather smugly. "See? I told you he wasn't dead."

  "Okay, fine," the boy grumped. "So he's not dead. Yet."

  "Hopefully, not for a long time," Obi-Wan agreed, looking past the two children and trying to orient himself. He was half sitting, half lying in the middle of a patch of broken and flattened grain stalks, his back partially propped up against something hard and metallic. Off to his left he could see the crumpled nose of his scout and could smell the acrid scent of burning plastic. "Did you two get me out of my ship?" he asked the children.

  "Dad did that," the boy said, still sounding a little miffe
d that he'd been wrong about Obi-Wan's condition. "He went to get the cart to get you out of here."

  "A cart?" Carefully, Obi-Wan turned his head to look up over his shoulder, wincing at the twinges from his neck. He was leaning against the side of one of the harvesters he'd seen working the fields, one of the massive catches of the bin dumper sitting directly over his head. "Couldn't he have used this?"

  "He could if he'd wanted to wreck all the sargheet between here and the house," the girl said with exaggerated patience. "Are you a soldier?"

  "He's not a soldier, he's a Jedi," the boy put in before Obi-Wan could answer. "See? He's got a lightsaber."

  Obi-Wan looked down to see the end of his lightsaber peeking out from inside his tunic. "Actually, I'm both," he told them, tucking the weapon back out of sight. Getting his hands beneath him, he started to push himself up.

  And stifled a grunt of pain as agony shot through his right leg. "I don't think you ought to do that," the girl said. "Dad said you probably wouldn't be able to walk."

  "Dad was right," Obi-Wan said, easing himself back onto the ground. "My name's Obi-Wan Kenobi. Who are you?"

  "I'm Kit Swens," the boy identified. "This is my sister, Zizzy. This is our farm you crashed into."

  "Sorry about that," Obi-Wan apologized, searching the sky within his field of view as he stretched out with the Force. There was no sign yet of a follow-up attack, but it could come at any time. "If we don't want to damage any more of it, we need to get me out of sight," he added, trying to look around the side of the harvester. "Arthree?"

  There was no answer. "Dad said your droid looked dead," Kit offered.

  Dead, or else gone dormant. Republic scout droids were designed to do that, if capture seemed inevitable, to try to keep the Separatists from pulling anything useful out of their data banks. "How does the rest of the ship look?" he asked.

  "Pretty much the same." Kit craned his neck. "Here he comes."

  Obi-Wan frowned, listening. No hum of repulsorlifts, but he thought he could hear rhythmic footsteps over the wind-rustle of the grain stalks. A moment later, a pair of slender lop-horned zeles appeared around the side of the harvester, harnessed together and pulling a wheeled wooden cart. A large bearded man sat on a bench seat at the front of the cart with a rein stick in his hand. He gave Obi-Wan an evaluating look as he brought the cart to a halt. "Awake, I see," he said. "How bad is it?"

  "Nothing serious, but I will need transport," Obi-Wan told him. "And a place to hide."

  "I can supply the first," the man said, setting the rein stick onto the seat beside him and jumping down to the ground. "I'm not so sure about the second."

  "One's not going to do much good without the other," Obi-Wan pointed out as the man took his arm and pulled him upright. "The Separatist forces could be back at any minute to finish the job."

  "Your best bet's going to be Vale City," the man said as he walked them to the cart, taking most of Obi-Wan's weight onto himself. "I can try to get you there."

  "Is that the city way to the north?" Obi-Wan asked. "If so, we'll never make it that far."

  "You rather hide in the fields?" the man countered. "That's about all there is between here and Vale."

  "How about one of your outbuildings?" Obi-Wan suggested, nodding at the zeles. "In with your animals, maybe, where they'll help mask my lifeform readings"

  "Forget it," the man grunted as he heaved Obi-Wan up over the side and into the back of the cart. "I'm not risking my family and farm for you. I'm sure not going to help you drag your war here to Dagro. Kit, Zizzy - into the cart."

  "Listen to me," Obi-Wan said quietly, propping himself up on one arm. "I was attacked by Trade Federation battle droids. Battle droids don't travel in small groups. That means the Separatists are here. If they're here, so is the war."

  "Not if we don't let you fight them," the man said, giving his daughter a boost up onto the bench seat beside her brother and then climbing up himself. "And spare me the line about how the Republic wants to protect us from the forces of evil. Coruscant never paid a crippled droid's worth of attention to us before all this blew up." He picked up the rein stick and twitched it, and with a jerk the cart started forward. "We'll drop the kids at the house and head for Vale."

  Obi-Wan looked at the sky. It was only noon, but even at the speed zeles could make, getting to the city would take the rest of the day and then some. "I don't suppose you have anything a little faster,"

  "Look around you," the other growled. "Seventy percent of our crop is sargheet. In case you hadn't noticed - and you probably hadn't -the bottom fell out of the sargheet market half a year ago." He gestured toward the zeles. "Stripe and Trotter eat crop stubble and excrete fertilizer. Landspeeders eat money and excrete debt."

  "I understand," Obi-Wan said, grimacing. It was all too easy sometimes for a Jedi to forget what the life of the ordinary Republic citizen was like. "My apologies. My name's Obi-Wan Kenobi, by the way,"

  "Kirlan Swens," the man said reluctantly. "Jedi, right?"

  "Yes."

  "Figures."

  Ten minutes later they reached the Swens homestead, an old but well-kept two-story house beside a large barn and surrounded by a half dozen smaller storage sheds. Kirlan had pulled the cart up to the barn and the children were getting out when Obi-Wan finally heard the sound he'd been expecting ever since that sudden explosion had crippled his scout ship.

  "STAPs," he said, glancing up at the sky. There was nothing in sight, which meant they were coming from the west, the direction currently blocked by the barn. "A lot of them."

  "Blast it," Kirlan snarled under his breath, his eyes darting around the sky. "You kids - get in the house. Tell your mother to play dumb. Come on, Jedi, move it."

  With the harvester still out in the field, most of the barn's huge expanse was empty. "Over here," Kirlan grunted as he half carried Obi-Wan toward a large, escape-pod-sized object in the corner. A harvester's cab/engine module, Obi-Wan tentatively identified it. "I keep it for parts,"

  Kirlan went on. "There should be enough room for you in the engine compartment. Can you get that ventilated access panel open?"

  "Yes," Obi-Wan said, stretching out to the Force and pulling open the panel. The empty space behind it looked 3 little tight, but with a little squeezing it should do. Reaching up to the lip, he pulled himself up and inside, trying to keep his leg from banging against the side as he did so.

  Wriggling his way into a more or less comfortable position, he reached out with the Force and pulled the panel closed. "How does it look?" he called.

  "Should work if you keep your mouth closed," Kirlan called back. "Hi bring the zeles in and tether them beside you. Don't budge until I come get you."

  It took the Separatist forces over an hour to make their way from the crash site to the Swens homestead. From the noises coming faintly through the ventilation grille, it sounded like the searchers started with the house, then moved to the smaller buildings, and finally came to the barn. There was the usual amount of clanging around, the usual mechanical orders and responses, and a single bad moment when one of the battle droids pulled himself up and actually pressed a photoreceptor against the grille.

  Fortunately, Obi-Wan had had the foresight to spend most of his first hour stealthily unfastening a large radiator coil and propping it up in front of the grille. The droid saw what appeared to be a compartment full of machinery and hopped back down again.

  A few minutes later, the whole squad trooped out of the barn. A few minutes after that, he heard the sounds of the STAPs lifting into the sky to continue the search.

  And then, as he'd suspected it would, the real wait began.

  It was after dark before Kirlan finally returned to the barn. "Jedi?" he called softly from below the access panel.

  "Still here," Obi-Wan assured him, moving the camouflaging radiator coil out of the way. 'Things quiet out there?"

  "Quiet enough," the other grunted. There was a creak of metal, and Obi-Wan felt a rush of
cool air as the panel was pulled open. "Come on -we need to talk."

  They crossed the empty floor of the barn and emerged into the night air. Obi-Wan had taken the time since the droids' departure to do a series of short healing trances, and although his leg wasn't completely healed it was good enough for him to walk without Kirlan's assistance. He could sense the farmer's surprise at that, but he made no comment.

  It was as he led the way across the yard that Obi-Wan first sensed the other presences ahead of him in the house. "You have company?" he asked mildly. Kirlan gave him a sideways look as he climbed the steps to the back porch. "I invited a few neighbors," he said. Pulling open the door, he gestured down a hallway stretching in front of them. "After you."

  Stifling a grimace, Obi-Wan walked down the hallway. At the end, a large but homey conversation room opened off to the left.

  And in the conversation room were Kirlan's guests. An entire packed room full of them.

  "Hello," he said, stopping in the entryway and nodding to the group.

  There were men and women both, he saw, all with the hardened, sunburned skin that seemed to be the common look of farmers all across the galaxy. For their part, the people looked him over in silence, their emotions roiling with suspicion and fear. "I'm General Obi-Wan Kenobi of the army of the Republic."

  A low murmur ran through the crowd, the mood darkening even further. "A general yet," someone muttered, and Obi-Wan silently berated himself for his thoughtlessness. The title, which had sounded so foreign to his ears when it had first been bestowed upon him, now rolled a little too easily off his tongue.

  "I was right," one of the men growled, glaring accusingly at Obi-Wan. “The war's here. And he's the one who brought it."

  "Easy, Hanco," Kirlan cautioned.

  "Easy, my foot," Hanco shot back, his eyes still on Obi-Wan. "Well, Jedi? You have an answer for that?"

  "It depends on what you mean by 'the war,’” Obi-Wan said evenly. "If you mean the struggle for the Republic's survival, then the war is everywhere." He looked around the room. "If what you mean is battles and death and destruction, Dagro might still be able to avoid that."