On the Hapan world of Andalia, several dozen males - all of whom ranged from their teens well into their sunset years - had gathered a few meters away from the gated entrance of Ducha Lorangal's noble estate in broad daylight. Some of the men held picket signs with pro-male sentiments over their heads as they chanted, "Free men now! Free men now! Free men now!"
Lorangal herself looked out from the window of her bedroom to stare directly ahead at the protesters, dozens of meters away outside her estate's perimeter, in abject bemusement. Since when did the handlers of these men allow them to go out on their own to do this? How dare these testosterone-laden pieces of meat taint her view of the morning sun of Andalia? And for what? A futile attempt at getting...
The Ducha chuckled lightly at the thought, in spite of herself. Free men now. What were they expecting? That she would help them gain equality with Hapan females? That she would send over a proposition to the Queen Mother that would initiate the passing of a bill that would give them equal rights? Preposterous. Absolutely preposterous. Lorangal didn't even like Her Majesty either, and that didn't even take into account her Jedi heritage.
Men were mindless barbarians, no better than the common house pet. Actually, they were worse than pets; at least pets could be trained to do what you want, and they wouldn't go beyond the boundaries that you establish for them. Men were so filled with stupidity, it was a true wonder to Lorangal as to how the rest of the galaxy could survive with them running in positions of power.
And considering how badly men ran governments like the Galactic Alliance, she wondered how and why the rest of the galaxy didn't catch on with the Hapans' matriarchy yet.
Lorangal and all the other Duchas she knew agreed that men had to be reined in, lest their wild emotions and desires overwhelm them and bring about the downfall of Hapan civilization all throughout the Consortium. Acts of murder and rape from these men would run rampant, and the Consortium would devolve into chaos. Putting the leash on the actions of man was how the first Hapans were able to establish order over anarchic male pirates, and Lorangal was not about to change her mind about that.
Lorangal's commlink buzzed in the pocket of her dress, and she took it out to activate it. "Yes?"
"Your Excellency," the captain of Lorangal's guard, Jehlak, replied. "Would you like us to do anything about the crowd of men outside the estate's walls?"
"Yes, Captain Jehlak," Lorangal replied. "I want you to send out two of your women and have them eliminate those testicle-sacks."
"As you wish, Milady," Jehlak replied with neither hesitation nor uncertainty. Lorangal respected that; oh, sure, she could have ordered Jehlak to have called the police to arrest the men, but Jehlak did not question even the most rash of her Duchas's decisions. The captain then cut off the connection.
Roughly two minutes later, Lorangal's bemusement turned to that of mild amusement as she watched the guards sent outside the walls begin to mow down the male protesters with lethal blaster bolts. Those who survived the initial onslaught began scurrying away like rats, but none of them were able to make it far before they, too, had joined their comrades in death.
All but one of them ran, however. A tall blonde male made a foolhardy attempt to run down the guards, but he was promptly shot by both of them for his trouble.
Perhaps that will make all the other males on Andalia remember their place, Lorangal thought with a satisfied smirk. And, hopefully, it'll make sure that all other male handlers remember to keep a tighter leash on these animals.
.
"Happy birthday, dear Chume'da, happy birthday, dear Chume'da, happy birthday, dear Chume'da, happy birthday, dear Chume'da!"
The song was sung in the Hapan language by Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo and all the other party guests, all of whom were seated around the long banquet table. At the head of the table, for her ninth birthday, was the smiling Chume'da - or Princess of Hapes - Allana Djo Solo, who had this seat for just this occasion today. Her mother, Tenel Ka, sat to her left, away from where she would normally sit. Accompanying the song was the grand fruitcake that was wheeled in by the butler, which had a total of nine flaming candles on it, all neatly arrayed along the top of the cake at perfectly-placed intervals.
Once the cake arrived, it took two servants to pick the cake up from either end and place it on the tabletop before the royally-dressed birthday girl.
"Make a wish, Chume'da," Tenel Ka offered.
Allana nodded enthusiastically and blew out the candles without hesitation. At this, everyone around the table clapped and cheered, while the servants, bodyguards, and butler only clapped, as it was custom.
"Well, Allana, what did you wish for?" Tenel Ka asked.
The Queen Mother noticed that her daughter's smile suddenly looked more generic than not. "That I could ride a rancor," she said with mirth.
Everyone chuckled and giggled, although Tenel Ka could feel the small tinge of pain in her daughter's voice as much as she could sense it through the Force. The Queen Mother knew that her Chume'da wanted to say, That I could have my father here with us. But as young as she was, Allana was smart enough not to bring that up on a joyous occasion such as this.
For that, Tenel Ka felt more proud of her daughter. Even after all these years, Tenel Ka herself still felt a tinge of grief herself from both Jacen's descent to the dark side of the Force and his subsequent death by the hands of his own sister, Jaina, who was one of the party guests right now. If Tenel Ka wasn't convinced that killing Jacen - no, Caedus - was the necessary thing to do to end the Second Galactic Civil War, she wouldn't know if she could still look Jaina in the eye right now - especially since Tenel Ka felt Jacen's dying warning that saved her and Allana from Imperial Moff Drikl Lecersen's nanovirus attack during the Battle of Shedu Maad.
It was necessary, Tenel Ka thought. Even though he ultimately saved his ex-lover and daughter from death, Jacen was, in the end, irredeemable for all that he had done.
"Next time we're on Dathomir, honey!" Allana's grandmother, Leia Organa Solo, called further down the table. She and her husband, Han, along with their own daughter, Jaina, had memorized the Hapan translation of "Happy Birthday" for just this occasion.
Tenel Ka was grateful for Leia's humorous interjection. Though she always blanketed her emotions in the Force when it came to Jacen, she was doubtful of her ability to hide her emotions. Leia's lightening of the mood right then, as minor as it was, was enough to bring a considerable measure of joy in Tenel Ka's thought.
And no doubt Allana's, too, Tenel Ka thought.
"You said that last time!" Allana mock-countered with more genuine enthusiasm this time.
"Hey, you got to ride the Falcon then, that's worth three rancor rides," Han jokingly countered back.
Everyone laughed at that, but the laughter became even more forced among the guests, who did not care for the fact that a man spoke out of turn, even if it was just mild teasing to the Chume'da. Only Tenel Ka and Allana's chuckles felt at all natural to Han's reply.
"Well, everyone, let's cut the cake now!" Tenel Ka announced. She signaled the butler, who was behind her. "Jerok, if you would be so kind as to provide the tooth to cut the cake?"
The butler promptly nodded and removed the rancor tooth, brought in straight from Dathomir for Allana's birthday, from the holster on his belt. He then proceeded to approach Allana to give her the tooth.
It was then that Tenel Ka's danger sense struck.
She abruptly stood up from her seat and used the Force to send her chair flying back against Jerok. By then, the butler had already impaled the rancor tooth through the back of the chair, which would have stabbed through the Queen Mother's back if not for her quick action, and Jerok went flying back to the wall behind him.
Before he even landed in a heap on his hindquarters, the guards stationed at the banquet hall's exit already had their blasters out and aimed at the downed butler as they came rushing toward him.
"Don't move!" the guard on the left demanded from Jerok.
Even as everyone at the table - Han, Leia, Jaina, and Allana included - were still flustered over what just happened, Jerok said to his wrist chrono, "Attack, now!"
The guard who warned the butler stopped in her tracks with her companion and shot him straight in the chest, killing him instantly.
But scarcely a second later, the skylight above the banquet hall shattered into dozens of pieces of glass, which were then followed by several Hapan men descending to the banquet floor on rappelling lines. As the men descended with one hand on their harnesses, they were firing their blasters with their other hands.
As the males' unified attack commenced, few of the guests decided to get out of danger by scurrying beneath the banquet table. Everyone else who wasn't a Force-sensitive decided to stand up from their seats and begin trading fire with the invaders while simultaneously trying to find cover elsewhere; it was expected of Hapans to fight, no matter what. The guests who now hid would have their reputations badly damaged. Those with lightsabers - like Leia and Jaina - were deflecting the descending blaster bolts while shooting their own blasters at their enemies.
Tenel Ka herself already had her lightsaber out and activated, deflecting the bolts back at the men while escorting Allana beneath the table. Once she noted, through her peripheral vision, that Allana was as safe as she could be under the table, Tenel Ka returned most of her attention back to the invading males.
Only three of the attacking men had died from blasterfire upon their descent, their corpses dropping to the floor. The rest had managed to hit the floor running and firing, unceasing in their firefights against their opponents.
It wasn't long before Tenel Ka found herself facing a stocky but no less handsome dark-skinned male who had holstered his blaster, even though lethal bolts still flew everywhere; it seemed this one was quite confident that his individual confrontation with the Queen Mother wouldn't be interrupted by friendly or enemy fire. Whether he was incredibly stupid or incredibly confident was irrelevant to Tenel Ka; what was relevant right now was the lightwhip that he produced from his utility belt and which he then flung out against the Queen Mother, fully active.
Tenel Ka caught the whip on her lightsaber blade and rotated her grip around so that her opponent was pulled in toward her, ready to be struck down by a kick that the Queen Mother planned to plant in his sternum. But instead of being thrown off-balance from the move, the man used the momentum to propel himself into a flip, which he then used to disengage his lightwhip from Tenel Ka's blazing green blade. That move caused Tenel Ka to be thrown off-balance instead, allowing the man to plant both feet against the Queen Mother's face.
Tenel Ka then flew back and over the table to crash on her back against the floor. A second later, she saw her opponent descend from the tabletop and slash down with his lightwhip. The Queen Mother quickly rolled off to her left and leaped back up to her feet to rush back to her opponent. By then, however, the man had already turned in her direction and slashed out his lightwhip again. This time, however, Tenel Ka dodged the move entirely while not even breaking stride, which then allowed her to slash her blade forward in a cut that would have cut him in two diagonally across the chest.
But the man quickly ducked beneath the strike and came back up to deliver a solid uppercut beneath Tenel Ka's jaw. She stumbled back in pain, but recovered quickly enough to see the lightwhip come back for her, prompting her to jump off to her right. The Queen Mother landed in a graceful tumble across the floor, and she cam back up in a crouch, ready for the next lightwhip attack that came her way. She caught it on her blade again, but instead of pulling it in a vain hope that she could get her opponent to be thrown off-balance, she slashed her blade down to outright yank the lightwhip from his hands.
It worked. As the pommel of the still-active whip flew toward her, Tenel Ka sprung up from her crouch and slashed her blade down in time against the lightwhip's pommel, deactivating it in an instant. She looked back to her opponent and flung her lightsaber forward to spear him. But he ducked beneath it and scurried beneath the table.
Allana! Tenel Ka thought worriedly.
Even as she recalled the lightsaber to her hand, which had skewered one of the gun-toting male attackers from behind, Tenel Ka was already on the run back to the table. She slid beneath it just in time for the rancor toothed-pommel of her weapon to smack back into her sole palm, and then she looked in the direction that her daughter would be hiding.
She wasn't there, and neither was Tenel Ka's opponent. The Queen Mother looked to the other direction, only to find that the former whip-wielder was absent there, too.
Her danger sense spiked again, and she looked ahead to find that her opponent was on his belly and aiming a blaster at her. She deflected the resultant shot, and it ricocheted back toward the shooter, hitting the gun square in the barrel. The blaster flew out of the man's hands, causing him to wince from the gun's abrupt departure from his grip. In the five seconds that the man was distracted by his pain, Tenel Ka used the Force to propel herself out from the table and rush toward her opponent.
The man recovered from his brief pain by then, and he already pushed himself back up to his feet. Seeing that he was unarmed against a Force-sensitive with a lightsaber, he turned and ran toward one of his fallen comrades, snatching the blaster up from the fellow's dead hand before swinging around and firing more bolts against the Queen Mother. This time, however, he decided to scurry off to the side so that Tenel Ka wouldn't be able to deflect one of his bolts back toward him.
Yet, even as he fired on the run, Tenel Ka had no less difficulty deflecting blaster bolts away from herself, and often, she would deflect them back to one of the still-living attackers, who either went down dead or injured. And as she chased after him, she only managed to get closer.
Finally, when Tenel Ka got close enough, she slashed the blaster out of the man's hand, but before she could swing her blade to strike him down, he hurriedly grabbed at her wrist with one hand and punched her across the face with the other. The Queen Mother then crumpled to the floor, allowing the man to yank the lightsaber out of her hand before delivering a knee into her torso.
Wielding the blade now, the man struck down with it, but Tenel Ka used the Force to prevent it from digging through her chest. She then extended the invisible barrier to send her attacker flying back, where he hit the wall behind him before collapsing to the floor. The lightsaber clattered away from his grip before Tenel Ka called it back to her with a single motion, reactivating the blade the second it reached her hand.
But the man was back on his feet again and already hurrying for another blaster, which had clattered away from its wielder upon his death. Tenel Ka rushed to reach him, but she had to slow down when her danger sense warned her of an attack from behind. She ducked beneath the vibroblade strike from the male behind her, which allowed her to impale her blade right through his chest. But that brief distraction gave her opponent throughout the attack to rest his hand upon the blaster he intended to grab.
However, as soon as he had his hand on it, it was just as promptly pinned there by the rancor toothed-knife that was meant to cut the birthday cake. The man screamed in pain before looking up to see that his own attacker was Chume'da Allana Djo Solo herself, who exchanged his look with one of determination before yanking the blade out of his hand and impaling it through his forehead.
Tenel Ka's opponent died by the hands of her daughter just as the rest of the battle around them had died down. One or two more male attackers were shot dead - the last of them having decided to die fighting than to suffer Hapan interrogation and torture - before the entire banquet hall went completely quiet.
The dead stillness in the hall was disrupted by a rough squishing sound as Allana pulled the knife out of her victim's head. She then looked out to the survivors of the battle - who included Han, Leia, Jaina, and her mother - and dryly said, "Some birthday."