The Queen's Honor Guard
by Nyohah
IV.
While it perhaps drained Rah Cai Yue and Kei Sa to create a portal, it took almost no time to pass through one's indigo gate and emerge from its swirling exit. It had taken less than a minute for the entire Mandalorian convoy to travel the billions of light years to the other nest of life in the universe, but that had been followed by weeks of wandering travel and ceaseless searching.
What was time-consuming was finding a handful of tiny colonies in a plethora of inhabited planets. They wouldn't have had a hope, if it weren't for Mr. Tse's detailed mapping of the star systems in which the five colonies had settled, and a path connecting them. Even with such help, finding them was proving to be a ludicrous chore.
And if it weren't for some bizarre coincidence or luck that set the humans of Earth's own English as a prominent language in the wretched galaxy they'd found themselves in, they would have been forced to abandon their efforts before they really began.
But Hua Quy Ling wasn't interested in contemplating the reasons for such a connection. Let Rah Cai Yue invest all his knowledge and zeal of history to determine the previous point of contact between the two regions and mull over what significance had pushed such a hypocritical, difficult, ugly language into prominence; Quy really didn't care.
In the mind-numbing weeks that had passed, they'd all experienced a bit of cabin fever, and they relished the opportunity to wander the varying planets and interrogate the Basic(as the galaxy's residents called it)-speaking natives for a clue to their next destination on which to focus a portal, even if it meant they had to refresh their English skills or completely learn the language. He thought it was a stupid language, all cobbled together from various others, but if it was his only ticket off the cramped Templar...well, he'd do anything it took.
His wife, growing ever more prominently pregnant with each passing day—if time could even be classified on the eternal bright of the ship's halls and in the perpetual blackness of space—spoke English well, better than he, but she had not once left the ship. Kei Sa had immersed herself in studying the star charts and mapping everything they scanned, the living counter to Yen Sa's ever-upgraded computer-like devices.
Therefore, Hua Quy Ling was not the least surprised when he woke on a day mirroring any other to find Kei Sa had already left. He whistled a nameless tune, doubtless the melding of any number of songs he'd heard in his life, and subconsciously rubbed his left thumb on the end of his katana's hilt as he walked through a nameless hall.
He intended to spar with Rah Cai Yue, sick of the odd ways most of the members with unorthodox weapons fought. Unfortunately, although Cai Yue fought with an ordinary sword, he used a unique style and Quy Ling wasn't likely to encounter any normality in his next fight, either. But he hadn't had any other choice: Li Wei Yong was busy commanding the army, Yen Sa with his mapping projects in their desperate attempts to merely locate their colonies, and Hua Quy Ling refused to acknowledge that Vendetta existed unless the situation necessitated it.
Years had passed and times had changed—Quy certainly had—and while the ex-ninja had never done a thing to hint at betrayal, Quy would never like the caustic man, probably not even accept him. And Vendetta likely didn't care, so what did it matter?
Rah Cai Yue sat on the floor of the emptiest large space on the Templar, awaiting Quy, but obviously too engrossed in a book that was, for once, not his Bible to care.
"Cai Yue," Quy Ling said firmly.
The priest looked up from his book with a jolt, then closed it with a resounding thump, leaving it to lie lonely on the floor when he stood in one fluid motion.
"Tell me," he said, "what time is it?"
Hua Quy Ling's mouth dropped into an almost imperceptible frown that went unnoticed by the other. "Time?" he asked.
"I thought since I had no clue, I should find someone who did to enlighten me."
"I don't think anyone on the Templar knows what time it is, not since Yen Sa pirated his clock and our watches for parts."
"Oh." Cai Yue tapped his foot. "What time of day would you say it was, then?"
Quy's forehead creased in perplexity. "Morning?"
"Oh," Cai Yue repeated, sounding surprised. "Did I miss breakfast?"
"No, not yet... Why?"
"Well, I thought it was night, and I'd missed dinner, and I thought you were really eccentric for wanting to spar at night. But now, if it's morning, I've missed dinner, I'm about to miss breakfast, I've been up all night, and I guess I'm the eccentric one."
"We already knew that," muttered Quy Ling. Then he said more clearly, "I don't suppose anything useful has come of your sleep deprivation and unwitting fasting?"
"Actually, my somewhat skeptical colleague," he said with the giddy cheer of the sleepless, "I believe I have figured it out."
"Oh, really," Quy commented, mildly surprised not only at Cai Yue's accomplishment but also to find he was mildly interested.
"Yes," said Cai Yue, sliding his sword from its sheath on his back. "Have you ever heard of the Sorceress Ennir?"
"No." Quy drew his katana and held it in front of his body with both hands. "Should I have?"
"Probably not. Basics are that she was Edenian and she was evil." He tossed his sword into his left hand and dropped into an extremely low stance, one leg extended, the foot kicked far out in front of him, his weight resting on the other where it was bent under his torso. His left arm held the sword straight above his extended leg; the blade continued the line made by his leg for a short distance. His other arm was splayed out behind him for balance. "It's a new stance I've been toying with," he explained. "Like it?"
Quy Ling sighed inaudibly. "Can't you fight normal?"
"'Fight normal'?" Cai Yue stood, abandoning his absurd stance. "You mean fight boring?"
But he reverted to his typical, more orthodox stance, his sword held once again in his right hand and tilted back to rest on his left hand in the space above his left shoulder.
Quy darted forward with a simple horizontal slash that Cai Yue parried casually, continuing his explanation as he did so.
"She was in power just before the Transformation, and she was the reason for the lengthy war before the Transformation, excelling at manipulation as much as the one who was later awarded her powers by the Demon Master as Ennir's punishment for failure."
"And who would that be?" Quy asked with a forward stab.
"Shang Tsung," the priest answered simply, nimbly dodging a strike.
Quy dropped his guard. "Who would be worse to encounter?"
Cai Yue paused as well. "I don't know." He flicked his wrist, sending his sword into a rising slice. "And I don't care to find out." He slashed twice, then tossed his sword into his left hand. "So after the war when she was defeated—"
"Wait," Quy said, with three rapid thrusts that sent Cai Yue hopping backward. "Don't I get to hear about the war?"
"Do you really want to hear about the war?"
Quy spun quickly, swinging his katana in a wide arc that was interrupted by clanging loudly against Cai Yue's blade, sending a vibration up his arm. "No."
"Then stop complaining. After she was defeated and Kahn stripped her of her powers, they had to decide what to do with her followers. See, a lot of weird things showed up to help her, which had never been seen before and haven't been seen since. Most were ordered to go back to wherever they came from."
"Which you think is this galaxy." Quy blocked a keenly aimed blow; it would have disabled his dominant arm and sailed through his trachea had it been serious and not blocked.
"Most likely," said Cai Yue. "But more difficult to deal with were the humans. Ennir had a large following of men who had been corrupted by evil and supernatural powers and could not be sent back to Earth. So they were sent with the others, back to whatever place they had emerged from to serve Ennir. And they spoke an early form of English, that they likely developed."
"Ah, interesting."
"Yes, but disturbingly," Cai Yue dropped his sword suddenly and was forced to duck an attack that had already been loosed, "a majority of them were clones. Ennir was a shameless cloner."
Hua Quy Ling was unsettled by the thought. "Do you think they could have spread cloning through this place?"
"If they had the influence to spread English..."
Quy shuddered. "Abominations of nature."
"It's an abomination," said an unmistakably accented voice from the doorway, "that you two are here when there's good news."
They both turned suddenly.
"Well, news anyway," amended Zhen Feng Qui. "Cai Yue, you're wanted on the bridge."
The 'bridge', if it could be called such on a ship the size of the Templar, was not far from the corner in which Quy Ling had picked to spar. Actually, nothing was far from anything on the Templar, a large part of the reason the weeks on it had become so unbearable.
Cai Yue bounded through the door, undoubtedly suffering from lack of sleep, decided Quy Ling.
"Ming," the priest said, addressing the queen with the informality only two other members of the honor guard had to history to share, "I have good news, too. I figured out the connection for the language."
"I'd be delighted to hear it, Cai Yue," she replied, a flat quality caused by weariness underlying her tone, "but you need to create a portal at the moment."
"Where are we going?" Cai Yue dropped into his seat.
"To visit our people."
The planet was brown. And green. Most planets were. But most planets were blue, brown, and green. This one just had occasional splashes of a disgusting orange.
Zhen Feng Qui twisted his face into an expression of revulsion, "What celestial being retched up this place? I'd like to desecrate her temple."
"Looks fun," agreed his long-time friend, Ta Lian Shi, with a similar expression. "You know I think I might actually volunteer to stay on the Templar this time."
"If this is the right planet," the queen cut in sternly, "we're all going."
The two fell silent. Zhen resumed staring out the viewport. He'd seen some ugly planets in their lost wanderings, but this one beat them all. And it only got worse as the Templar Aria approached, skipping into a low orbit.
"Now," Yuen Ming continued, "to find our colony. We know it's in a swampy area."
"Oh," Lian said, turning his head toward Zhen so only his friend saw the slow rolling of his eyes. "That really narrows it down, doesn't it?"
"I think I saw some dry ground down there," Zhen responded as the Templar descended. "But then I realized it was just a rotting tree stump."
"And I'm sure there are no evil blood-sucking insects here, either."
Zhen absently adjusted his hat. "I don't think leeches are considered insects."
"I wasn't talking about leeches."
"Maybe not, but leeches are the worst."
"No, the worst were the kamikaze flying amphibians we 'found' a week ago. I still have some bruises and this cut on my hand—"
"Will you two be quiet!" The queen snapped, turning viciously in her chair.
"Now is not the time for jest," scolded Vendetta in an acidic tone.
But now was always the time for jest in Zhen's opinion. If not now, when?
Nai Do Xian, skillfully guiding the ship through unpredictable air currents, spoke into the silence that followed. "We're approaching the approximate coordinates of the colony. Hopefully we'll be able to see it through the foliage."
Staring at the drab green of the twisted treetops outside the ship, Zhen glimpsed a cloud of darker gray than the others, and fed by a stream rising off the ground.
The queen leaned forward, her lips opened slightly in shock. "Is that smoke?"
"Yes," said Hua Quy Ling. "And it's not from any normal forest fire."
Lian spoke again. "Do they have forest fires in a swamp?"
The queen whipped around in her chair to tongue-lash him, but a flash and an unmistakable shake of the ship turned her back to the viewport and the pilot. "And that was..." She trailed off, her voice high with disbelief.
"An explosion," finished Quy Ling in a phlegmatic tone uncharacteristic of fire elements: more fodder for the belief that his was the marriage of two entirely separate basic elements, one undoubtedly fire, and in the opinion of most, the other air.
"Lieutenant Nai," Yuen Ming urged, "faster!"
The Templar Aria was already rocketing through the planet's atmosphere, skimming the surface of the trees. In contrast to the queen's distress, it slowed, descending to a jerky landing in a clearing near the origin of the smoke, one in which the water appeared to be shallow.
"Draw your weapons," the queen ordered. "We have no idea what we might find."
"We never do, Ming," argued Rah Cai Yue in a light, almost unthinking tone.
"This time," amended Kei Sa, "expect hostility."
Only a few paces separated the cockpit from the ramp; Zhen covered them quickly with his long legs. The ramp was stopped at a horizontal position, a finger-width from the water. At the sight of the swamp's scummy surface, Zhen hesitated.
He made a disgusted noise in the back of his throat. "Leeches," he muttered.
Li Wei Yong waved his sword. "In we go," he ordered. Holding his sword above his head, he jumped off the ramp. The water sloshed away from his landing spot, sweeping away the surface scum to leave him an aura of cleaner filthy green water.
"Only knee deep," he said, lowering his sword. "Let's go."
Zhen hopped in with a silent sigh, following the general as he waded toward the column of smoke shrouding the sky.
"Oh, the lovely feel of slime in my boots in the morning," grumbled Lian.
"It's not morning anymore, you dimwit," replied Zhen, trudging with less effort than his shorter friend beside him.
"It is here," retorted Lian, pointing to the sun where it hovered just above the horizon, its edges barely visible through the creeping foliage.
"How do you know it's not dusk?"
"Because I was paying attention as we landed and we're heading almost straight toward this planet's north pole, which would make that east," Lian concluded with the hint of a smug smile under his scowl.
Yen Sa, from near the back of the group, called up in reply. "And how do you know that we're not heading toward the south pole and how do you know this planet doesn't rotate on its axis the other way?"
Lian grunted. "I hate this space travel thing."
Zhen silently agreed. For him it had been intriguing to visit strange planets in the beginning, but it soon became tedious. Lian, however, had lacked any interest in their exploration since the moment he found he was not going to be allowed to actually explore the planets themselves and do crazy things that had a high chance of getting him killed. And, though he would have never admitted it, Zhen knew Lian missed his fiancée and watching Hseh An traipse along beside Tieh Chen Yi hadn't helped matters. In their naivete, they'd all thought they'd be home weeks earlier, and everyone was dwelling on the cranky side of their personality.
"It's morning," Nai Do Xian acknowledged. "This area was rotating further into the day side as we landed."
"Ha," Lian said simply, to anyone who happened to be listening, which added up to no one.
"Has it ever occurred to you," Tieh Chen Yi suddenly snapped, "that your useless arguing is ruining our chance of ambushing anything up ahead?"
"And this huge scumless wake we're leaving isn't?" Lian raised his weapons far over his head in an irritated gesture.
Tieh Chen Yi glared at him. Zhen stifled a laugh as the yokel, so intent on resisting the impulse to strangle Lian with is whip, stumbled when his boot met an incline in the sucking mud and tripped up it and onto the relatively dry dirt before he realized it was ahead of him.
Flames licked at the soggy foliage around a pile of metal wreckage, sending up a trail of oily, black smoke. People scurried about, desperate to smother the flames, and others lay on the ground with various burns and lacerations, but all seemed to be Mandalorian, and none seemed to be fighting.
As Zhen stepped into the area, his drawn sword dangling uselessly from his hand, an injured man lying in the dirt near the edge of the clearing raised a blackened arm and tried to sit up, grunting. The woman tending him pushed him back down. She looked up, her worn skin crinkling in the corner of her eyes. "Reinforcements," she whispered, standing to leave her patient in order to hurry toward the newcomers.
She rubbed her palms on her blood- and dirt-caked dress and inclined her head toward the foremost of the honor guard. "I am Sun Leh," she said.
"I am Li Wei Yong, commander of the army," he replied. "And this is the rest of the Queen's Honor Guard."
Sun Leh hastily dipped into a deep bow toward the general alone. His introductions ignored the queen, as they had decided at the beginning of their trip not to mention her place on her own guard among strangers, and this woman had either instantly joined the ruse or forgotten that her queen was a member of her own honor guard.
"Tell me," the general continued, "what happened?"
The woman straightened. "We were attacked, but that much should be obvious. We have been several times already, but this was the worst. Before they burned crops, dumb little pranks to try to get us to leave. This time... We never actually saw them. They fight like cowards," she snarled. "They flew above us in their invulnerable little ships, firing at our buildings, our ships, sometimes our people."
"They strafed our colony?" Nai Do Xian seemed horrified.
Sun Leh grimaced in affirmation, anger simmering in light blue eyes.
Zhen shifted anxiously on his feet, watching a chain of people carry buckets to toss on the fire. They wouldn't get very far with a single bucket at a time against that blaze; even Zhen knew that. He wondered how Lian managed to keep himself from running over to correct them or simply summoning a gush to cease the burning.
"And what was the explosion a few minutes ago?" the queen asked.
The woman pointed at the smoldering wreckage behind her. "Our last working ship exploding. The drive was damaged by the attack, and a group of men tried to prevent its explosion, but they're all dead now. And Peng was a little too close," she added, indicating the man she'd been tending.
Finally the people waited, filling each bucket they possessed, and as they threw their stock onto the fire as one, Zhen thought he saw Lian's hand twitch, and wondered how much of the water had simply appeared above the flames.
"How can we help you?" asked Kei Sa.
"Put out the fire—" A cheer interrupted her words and she glanced over her shoulder. "Never mind." She rested her hands on her hips. "Repair our homes, I guess."
Li Wei Yong shook his head. "We're taking you home."
"And you have enough room on your ship for all of us?"
"On those we left in orbit there probably is. But we have other colonies to visit, so we'll need to repair your ships. Some are repairable, right?"
"If you have the supplies, they should be." Sun Leh pursed her lips. "But first, you have food on your ships, no? The first attack destroyed most of our crops, and no one will trade with us."
"Lieutenant Nai," the general ordered, "go back to the Templar and call the other ships." The sniper nodded and started off. "Three of us will go to any nearby settlements and interrogate the locals for information on this terrorism. The rest of you will help repair the ships and tend to the colonists. I'm going."
Zhen began to consider which was the lesser of two evils, but the need was soon averted.
"I will go." Hua Quy Ling spoke quickly.
Rah Cai Yue spoke at the same time. "I'm coming."
"Cai Yue, you can't go," the queen said. "You need sleep."
"If I stay," he said, "I'll help, and then I'll end up falling off the hull I'm patching and break my collarbone and rupture my spleen. I'm going."
The queen sighed but said no more.
Lian shook his head slowly. "He gets this obstinacy from you, doesn't he?" he said to her. Ignoring the glower he was given in reply, he continued. "Lucky dolt, too. Why can't I ever be ordered to take a nap?"
"Lian," said Zhen. "I order you to take a nap."
"Nice try, dimwit, but technically I outrank you."
"Get to work," scolded Li Wei Yong. He turned to Hua Quy Ling and Rah Cai Yue. "Back to the Templar."