Star Wars_ The Dark Lord Trilogy - James Luceno [266]
The men of Decoy Squad Five would have been alert on any post. They were bred to be. Here, though, they were in a combat zone, where their lives and their missions depended on their perceptions, and on how fast their blasters could come out from inside those Jedi-style robes.
So when a ragged, drooling hunchback lurched out of the gloom nearby, a bundle cradled in his arms, Decoy Squad Five took it for granted that he was a threat. Blasters appeared with miraculous speed. “Halt. Identify yourself.”
“No, no, no, Yer Graces, oh, no, I’m bein’ here to help, y’see, I’m on yerr side!” The hunchback slurped drool back into his slack lips as he lurched toward them. “Lookit I got here, I mean, lookit—’sa Jedi babby, ennit?”
The sergeant of the squad squinted at the bundle in the hunchback’s arms. “A Jedi baby?”
“Oooh, sher. Sher, Yer Grace. Jedi babby, sher azzell iddiz! Come from outcher Temple, dinnit? Lookit!”
The hunchback was now close enough that the sergeant could see what he carried in his filthy bundle. It was a baby. Sort of. It was the ugliest baby the sergeant had ever seen, alien or not, wizened and shriveled like a worn-out purse of moldly leather, with great pop eyes and a toothless idiot’s grin.
The sergeant frowned skeptically. “Anyone could grab some deformed kid and claim it’s anything they want. How do you know it’s a Jedi?”
The baby said, “My lightsaber, the first clue would be, hmm?”
A burning blade of green slanted across the sergeant’s face so close he could smell the ozone, and the hunchback wasn’t a hunchback anymore: he now held a lightsaber the color of a summmer sky, and he said in a clipped, educated Coruscanti accent, “Please don’t try to resist. No one has to get hurt.”
The men of Decoy Squad Five disagreed.
Six seconds later, all eight of them were dead.
Yoda looked up at Obi-Wan. “To hide the bodies, no point there is.”
Obi-Wan nodded agreement. “These are clones; an abandoned post is as much a giveaway as a pile of corpses. Let’s get to that beacon.”
Bail slipped into the rear of the Naboo delegation’s Senate pod as Palpatine thundered from the podium, “These Jedi murderers left me scarred, left me deformed, but they could not scar my integrity! They could not deform my resolve! The remaining traitors will be hunted down, rooted out wherever they may hide, and brought to justice, dead or alive! All collaborators will suffer the same fate. Those who protect the enemy are the enemy! Now is the time! Now we will strike back! Now we will destroy the destroyers! Death to the enemies of democracy!”
The Senate roared.
Amidala didn’t even glance at Bail as he slid into a seat beside her. On the opposite side, Representative Binks nodded at him, but said nothing, blinking solemnly. Bail frowned; if even the irrepressible Jar Jar was worried, this looked to be even worse than he’d expected. And he had expected it to be very, very bad.
He touched Amidala’s arm softly. “It’s all a lie. You know that, don’t you?”
She stared frozenly toward the podium. Her eyes glistened with unshed tears. “I don’t know what I know. Not anymore. Where have you been?”
“I was … held up.” As she once had told him, some things were better left unsaid.
“He’s been presenting evidence all afternoon,” she said in a flat, affectless monotone. “Not just the assassination attempt. The Jedi were about to overthrow the Senate.”
“It’s a lie,” he said again.
In the center of the Grand Convocation Chamber, Palpatine leaned upon the Chancellor’s Podium as though he drew strength from the Great Seal on its front. “This has been the most trying of times, but we have passed the test. The war is over!”
The Senate roared.
“The Separatists have been utterly defeated, and the Republic will stand! United! United and free!”
The Senate roared.
“The Jedi Rebellion was our final test—it was the last gasp of the forces of darkness! Now we have left that darkness behind us forever, and a new day has begun!