Having been debriefed about what tonight's headlining topic would be by his producers, award-winning Chev anchorman Perre Needmo allowed the makeup people around him to polish him up for his next live broadcast, dreading that he would be among the first to let the citizens of the Alliance of the Galaxy know about what was plaguing a section of the galaxy right now.
As soon as the lights were on and one of his producers had ended the countdown for the vidcams to start rolling, Needmo began reading off the monitor directly ahead of him.
"Good evening, citizens of the Alliance of the Galaxy. Our top story tonight is the chaos now being sown throughout the Hapes Consortium."
As Needmo continued with the story, he knew that people watching this broadcast on the HoloNet would now be seeing pre-recorded footage of mayhem in the streets of many Hapan worlds, including Hapes itself, with citizens of the Consortium rioting, damaging property wildly, and murdering each other violently, in spite of the efforts made in some shots of Hapan security officials and police officers trying to quell the chaos. Accompanying bits of that footage would be snippets of space battles among the warring Battle Dragons and other war vessels. Needmo himself was still unsure as to whether or not reporters like Madhi Vaandt and others who went out of their way to record that footage had made it out of the violence safely to return back to AG space.
"In light of the discovery by an anonymous Hapan source that Queen Mother Tenel Ka Djo has disappeared mysteriously, the entirety of the Consortium has erupted into anarchy. In the absence of their beloved Queen Mother, Hapan citizens find themselves without reason to follow the laws of a Consortium without a head. Security officials among the sixty-three worlds and other sectors in the Transitory Mists are hard-pressed to keep what order they can, even without the lead of the Queen Mother that they worship as a goddess. Rivalling Duchas have taken advantage of the mayhem and are now in the process of openly warring with each other for not only territory, but for whom can succeed the vacant throne of power on Hapes.
"As for the whereabouts of Queen Mother Tenel Ka herself, Hapan officials who are doing their best to keep what order they can muster have claimed to volunteering Alliance of the Galaxy military forces, the Jedi who are also trying to help, and news officials of The Perre Needmo Newshour and other AG news organizations that, at this point, they are unaware as to what had happened to Her Majesty. We here at The Perre Needmo Newshour continue to lack information as to the Queen Mother's whereabouts at this time, but we will inform the public if and when we do receive that information."
.
Across the galaxy on Dathomir, Jacen, having heard enough from what Perre Needmo just told him, immediately shut off his datapad and rushed out of his hut to find Tenel Ka. He delved into the Force to locate her presence, but as he searched outside his temporary homestead, he found that his friend was shielding her whereabouts from him through the Force.
She must be mad at him, Jacen thought.
Hurrying, he rushed over to Verrella's hut, knocked on her door, and the old woman responded almost instantly.
"I need you to take me to wherever Tenel Ka is," he said in a rush.
Verrella simply nodded and left her home to lead the way to Tenel Ka's own hut, hurrying her own pace for Jacen's benefit. Once they got there after a few minutes, Verrella stood off to the side as Jacen began knocking on his friend's door.
"Tenel Ka, please, open up!" Jacen called. "We have to talk!"
"Go away," Tenel Ka's surprisingly subdued voice returned.
"Look, Tenel Ka, this is important!" Jacen said after a moment. "You have no idea just what your absence is bringing to the Consortium right now! It's absolute anarchy over there!"
"As I said, I do not care," Tenel Ka's still-subdued tone replied from the inside of the hut. "I knew that this would happen. Now leave me alone."
Jacen sighed, frustrated in not knowing what else to try to tell his friend. But before he could even try to think as to what else he could say to her, he felt, through the Force, several beings enter the Dathomir system. Quickly, he took out the radio that he had keyed to incoming frequencies from ships that might communicate with the planet, turned it on, and heard a male Rodian voice speak with the female Dathomiri spaceport manager that Jacen himself had conversed with upon his return here.
"Dathomir Control," the male Rodian voice said, "we have a new delivery of toys for the children here."
"Confirmed," the spaceport manager replied stoically. "You may send your shuttles down to the coordinates that have now been sent to you."
"Thank you."
"'Toys for the children here' is code for male sex slaves for the adult women here," Verrella said to Jacen, having overhead what was spoken between the Rodian and the spaceport manager just as the Grand Master had.
Jacen looked at the elderly woman in disgust. "How do you know this?"
"I have heard women from other tribes calling their male sex slaves as toys," Verrella elaborated, her tone betraying neither approval or condemnation, but somehow objective neutrality. "Apparently, that is what they see their men as, and I at least presume that that is what the captain of this ship is talking about."
"And he's what I've come here for," Jacen said as he shut off the radio and replaced it in his belt. He then looked up into the sky and saw that, by now, several shuttles were appearing to descend at various points.
Jacen turned back to Verella. "I have to go now."
"What about your matter with Augwynne Djo's great-granddaughter?" Verrella asked.
Jacen hesitated. "I'll deal with my matter with Tenel Ka later. Right now is probably the best opportunity for me to find my sister."
He then turned away and, with the Force as his guide to pinpoint where the lifeforms in the shuttles would be heading to, began running through and then out of the village for a site that one of the shuttles would be unloading their batch of male sex slaves.