The Queen's Honor Guard
by Nyohah
VI.
The planet that had housed the second Mandalorian colony sparkled in the midst of space's great darkness, with deep cerulean oceans quietly rolling against the shores of fertile green continents: a little too much like home. Rah Cai Yue would have thought the planet's proximity to perfection would make the colony a greater target for the haters of the Mandalorians. However, it had not been attacked, threatened, or apparently even noticed by any of the galaxy's other occupants. They had not managed to trade with anyone, but they had not tried. Perhaps their reclusive actions had prevented an attack, keeping them from annoying the planet's natives.
"No, you don't understand," he heard Ming say to the colony's leader, a tall, thickly built and seemingly equally thickheaded farmer named Jau.
"I think I do," he argued back, slamming the front of his hoe into the ground. "We just finished planting and you want us to abandon all our hard work on some flighty paranoia."
Ming simmered; Cai Yue could see her hands clench tighter. But she managed to keep her voice calm, although the colonist's stubbornness was wasting time when the honor guard tried to desperately clutch every second, relieved that this colony was safe, but fearful for the others. "If you stay here," she explained, "there's a good chance not only your crops will be destroyed, but also your homes and your families."
"I don't care if some stupid aliens thought that swamp land was valuable property and wanted them off, this is our land now and we're going to stay here and defend it if necessary."
"With what?" Ming asked, her voice soft and condescending.
"Now, don't mock me, little girl," he puffed up his already expansive chest, "I fought in the army before I came here."
Cai Yue imagined Ming hadn't heard anything after, 'little girl'. She was going to punch him; he could see it in her stance. He darted forward and grabbed the arm she intended to use, but only that one arm in an attempt to remain inconspicuous and with the hope he could convince her to restrain herself before she used her other hand. She whipped her head around to glare at him and he awaited her berating.
But as Sun Leh stepped forward and spoke, Ming turned her head back. "Excuse me, sir," Sun Leh said, "but I know how you feel, and I would have hated to abandon my colony. However, you will not be able to stop them. They attacked us from the sky. How will you stop that?"
Jau seemed almost worried. "They bombed you?"
"If you want to call it that, there are better words but that one will do." She sighed, heartbreak expressing itself in her eyes. "I suggest you get your people out of here."
Then his ego returned, and with it brought the former stubbornness. "I don't take orders from women," he huffed, obviously offended by the very idea.
Ming was quiet, and Cai Yue, knowing her silence was not of defeat, cringed slightly as she narrowed her eyes.
"You take them from this one," she spat, raising her chin. "Yuen Ming, Queen," she over-articulated the word, "of Mandalore orders you to pack up this colony and come with us."
He opened his mouth and closed it almost immediately, then repeated the stupid-looking action several more times. Cai Yue thought it looked as though he was chewing his cud in the manner of the livestock he raised, whose intelligence probably rivaled their owner's.
"The...q-queen?" Jau stammered, dropping his hoe. "I-I'm sorry. I didn't know. Forgive me, Your Righteousness."
"Correct your mistake immediately," Ming said, her tone chilly, "and I'll think about it."
He hurried off without another word to her, shouting incoherent orders to his fellow colonists. They ignored him, and a more natural leader arose to organize the departure.
"Ming," Cai Yue said, still holding her elbow in his hand, "was that wise?"
"What?" she said, wrenching it from his grasp.
"I thought we had decided as a group to keep your status as queen a secret during this trip."
"All the people already know that their queen is a member of her own honor guard. If they plan to assassinate me, they have a fifty percent chance of getting it right, and that's ignoring the fact that most of them probably remember Kei Sa and would recognize her, narrowing their choices to one. It's only the non-Mandalorians we're going to keep it a secret from." She crossed her arms, rubbing the elbow he had held, perhaps a little too tightly.
"What if one of them tells an outsider?"
"Then they'll know hardly any more information than they already did. Really, Cai Yue, don't worry so much." She stepped away, heading toward the true leader that had arisen from the others.
Worry? It was hard not to in the situation. They had three more colonies to evacuate.
They caught the next colony just hours after their first attack. It had been small, enough to burn some crops, but the ships were unscathed, and no one had died. The jittery colonists left without a single belligerent word. They headed to the fourth colony.
It had settled in a valley, surrounded by cliffs on three sides. Not a wise tactical choice for the possibility of ground battles; it was much easier to get things down into the colony than for the colonists to get them back up at potential attackers standing on the cliffs' tops.
The Templar Aria set down on the plain on the final side of the colony. From their distance, the Honor Guard could see nothing wrong with the colony—well, nothing was smoking and there were no bright flashes of light, so that had to count for something, in Tieh Chen Yi's experience with this galaxy and its forms of warfare.
However, stepping past the colony's borders, he knew immediately something was wrong. It was quiet. Never a good sign. And he could see signs of earlier damage, shoddily repaired. But something else...
People. Where were the people? Colonies tended to have colonists.
"Great," he muttered. "They've already cleared this one out."
"What was that?" asked Zhen Feng Qui, stepping past him to kick over an empty barrel, one among the many.
"Where are the colonists?"
"I've kind of been wondering that, too." He knelt to peer into the barrel's depths, ensuring that he hadn't missed their importance. "Then," he said with a snap of his fingers, "I figured it out."
Chen Yi jerked his head. "You have? Where are they?" he asked, a little too quickly.
"They all turned themselves into barrels." He spread his arms to indicate the dozens that stood to their left.
"Zhen, you're not funny." Chen Yi stepped away, heading back to the rest of the honor guard, who systematically began to search all the houses.
"Well, why else would they have a whole hoard of empty, useless barrels?" Zhen said, half-attempting to justify his peculiar logic as he followed Chen Yi.
In the center of the colony, Hua Quy Ling shook his head as he exited one of its buildings, no more than a metal shack. "These buildings have been abandoned, and I think they've been this way for quite a while."
"Why do you say that?" asked the queen.
"The roof in that one leaks pretty badly," Rah Cai Yue answered, pointing to the building he'd searched. "There are pools of water on the floor."
"And," added Quy Ling, "well, just look." He grabbed the edge of the building's thin metal wall and shook. It easily swayed, parting from the joint to reveal tiny glimpses of the building's shabby interior.
"Hey, don't do that," said a strange voice from...above?
Tieh Chen Yi looked up and saw a thin Mandalorian walking across the neighboring building's roof, each step causing it to vibrate. With a swift stride, he leaped from the roof, landing just in front of the queen with a quick stumble.
"Hi," he said, as though jumping from roofs was an ordinary occurrence in his life. "What are you guys here for? You look kinda familiar. Have I met you before?"
"We're the Queen's Honor Guard," Li Wei Yong said slowly.
"Oh, right. I knew that. I'm Ken Lih Ne." He slammed his hand on the wall Hua Quy Ling had shaken, snapping it back into place.
"What happened here?" asked the general.
"We got attacked," said Ken Lih Ne, shutting the building's door. "I think they wanted to steal our food, or something. But we chased them out, so no problem. Got a few holes in our houses from their guns, but those were easily patched."
"You 'chased' them out? This was a ground attack?"
"Yeah. Is that odd?"
"The other two colonies that were attacked were attacked by starships, from the air."
"That would not have been good." He shrugged. "Well, most of us have had people tell us we're uncommonly lucky before, so I guess this is just another example."
"Then, are most of the people that lived here...dead?" asked the queen.
"Dead? Oh, no," he laughed. "None of us died. They're all up there." He pointed to the cliffs. "We've been up there since we were attacked. I just got sent to down to check if we left any barrels of food, or something important like that."
"So you've been up there since you were attacked," mused the general. "We thought these buildings looked neglected."
"Neglected?" Ken Lih Ne looked around. "It's always been like this."
Tieh Chen Yi took another glance at the buildings. These were obviously people with priorities other than keeping their homes intact.
"How long have you been up there?" asked the queen.
"Two days," he said. "But don't worry; we like it up there. Some great caves. Sure, some of them are shallow and are only good for sleeping in and stuff, but a lot are deep, nice and mildewy and perfect for exploration."
Beside Chen Yi, Zhen swept off his hat, running his fingers through his hair. "'Nice' and 'mildewy' do not belong in the same phrase."
"I'd actually have to agree with you, for once," Chen Yi whispered back.
"So if you're living up there, I guess you guys are pretty good at getting up those cliffs," said the queen.
"Of course. They were the first thing we tackled when we got here. In fact, they were the reason we chose to build here. And to find that they had great caves, too. Yeah, we're a bunch of lucky people, all right." He began to walk toward the barrels.
"What exactly are you doing up there?" asked the general.
The colonist's eyes seemed to glitter. "Planning. Setting up traps. Making sure if they come back we can take them out."
"At this site, you have the disadvantage of being at a low point. Hills are far more defensive sites."
"We know, we know. We have a few people here who were in your army, General Li—that is who you are, right? They told us that. We're making sure that we can keep possession of the tops of the cliffs, and hopefully trap them down below us if they go for our buildings."
"And what if they attack from the air?"
"Then they melt our houses? I don't know, and I don't really care. This is going to be so much fun."
"Fun? You're risking your lives."
"Risking our lives? We've all climbed cliffs, explored the depths of caves, dived to the ocean's floor, swam with sharks... We came on this colonization trip because we had run out of exciting things to do at home. General, it's not fun unless you're risking your life. This could very well be the ultimate adventure." The colonist seemed to be getting a substantial adrenaline rush from the mere thought.
"Exactly," answered Ta Lian Shi. "Nobody else ever understands."
Chen Yi groaned. "And I'd hoped you were the only you."
"Mr. Ken," said the queen. "We came here because you are in considerable danger, and we're gathering everyone to take back to Mandalore."
"What?" He shook his head. "And ruin our fun? No one will ever go for that." He began to look into the barrels.
Kei Sa spoke, her eyes closed, and clutching her hands together tensely. "We still have a colony left to save. You could take part in the battle there."
"No," he answered. "It's not just the battle. We're doing this ourselves. It's our adventure. We'll rescue ourselves and make a name for ourselves."
Before he could look back down, Kei Sa opened her eyes and snared him. "If you help these people, not only will be it be an adventure, but you will be heroes."
"Heroes? You really mean it?" He tapped his fingers on the barrel rim. "Heroes. I think they'll go for that. I'll go tell them now. You wanna come? There's some really tricky parts we could go through. I almost fell three times the first time I climbed them. Amazing."
"No," said everyone except Lian.
"Of course," he said, stepping forward so quickly it almost seemed like a leap.
Li Wei Yong looked up from the map of the fifth and final colony. "Kei Sa," he said, feeling the strain of the muscles in his face caused by worry and knowing he needed to relax, "are we really going to let those people fight with us if we run into trouble?"
She did not answer immediately, running her finger across the map. "We have to, don't we? It would be dishonest if we didn't."
"You know we'll just get them killed." The image of novices fighting, slaughtered, things he'd seen too many times before... He flipped over his hand, tapping a finger on the palm in an attempt to distract himself away from the thought. "A good bunch of them have been in the army before, but most of them left a few months after training. Only three have ever held an officer's rank, and they were not outstanding, else they would likely still be with us."
She glanced up. "Perhaps it was foolish of me, General, but it got them out quickly."
"And put more people in danger." Haste cost lives; delay cost lives; inexperience cost lives...
"I know," she said, lowering her head and her voice, "but I had a feeling..."
"A feeling?" The portent of the simple word wiped his gloomy thoughts away. He glanced to the other honor guard members as they rested, scattered about the bridge, and leaned forward, speaking quietly as well. "Like a premonition?"
She spoke quickly, her thoughts unusually scattered. "I just felt a colony was in danger, and it couldn't have been the ones we already evacuated, and I thought it could have been a warning about the one we were at being attacked again, but it seemed like it was happening at the moment, as we were speaking to him..." She shook her head. "No, not a premonition. It was...occurring, at that time."
Li Wei Yong breathed deeply, trying to keep a calm temperament. "We're too late?"
Her head tilted to the side in a strange action: not a nod, not a shake. "We may still have a hope of liberating them, though we'll need every extra fighter."
"Oh, sure." He knew his voice had been rudely mocking, but he couldn't bear the thought. More people to fight only meant more people to die against an invulnerable enemy. "How do we have a chance against their ships?"
"There's always hope, General, always. And even if we seemingly have no chance, we cannot turn from our people."
"I know, I know." He turned his head away. "It just seems so impossible. I'm beginning to doubt we'll ever leave this place. They're too advanced for us. We're fighting a primitive war as they scoff..."
"Yen Sa's creating some pretty advanced stuff. He's been inspired..."
He narrowed his eyes, not wanting any reminders of Yen Sa's endless trifling. "Then tell him that when he creates something that works and that everyone can use and that is helpful, not some crazy prototype, that he can come talk to me. There's too much at stake to risk it on his whims."
"Please try not to be too hard on him." Kei Sa's voice remained soft. "You really hurt him at the meeting."
"He should have picked a more appropriate time to debut your little project." It had been a tense meeting anyway. Useless gadgets were not worth wasting the time of the council and making the honor guard seem any more like the undisciplined fools numerous council members thought they were.
"It has great potential."
He had trouble believing her. "Maybe. If anyone else can use it and if there is ever a need to forsake our trusted steel." He'd grown up appreciating the weight and balance of a well-forged sword. Maybe he was being xenophobic, but the battlefield was no place for untested pet projects.
Kei Sa did not reply and he sighed inwardly and turned his attention to the rest of the bridge. The other fighters on the bridge seemed hopeful, more so than before visiting any of the other colonies. "Should we tell them?"
"No," she replied quickly. "No need to worry them."
"Yeah, we're the only ones who need to be worried." He looked down at the map, marked with their plans for different scenarios. This situation was beyond anything he had faced in battle before. Supernatural occurrences he could deal with; his ability to handle science he was beginning to doubt. Maybe he really did need to listen to Yen Sa.
He stood, but before he left to get his sword he turned back to the honor guard's leader. "I really wish you could come with us, Kei Sa. I'd trade that entire colony's help for yours."