The Queen's Honor Guard
by Nyohah

Part 5:
Confrontation
Twenty-Two Years Before MK1

I.

An arrow split the wood of a sapling not three inches from his left ear, and Ta Lian Shi chuckled. Finally, the attackers were getting smart, experimenting with regressing from their advanced weapons to those that couldn't be stopped by Vyrenchi shields. If the aim of the few who were using non-energy weapons improved, even the honor guard would have to begin wearing the heavy armor worn by the unshielded Mandalorian troops.

Lian let his energy blades dissipate—sadly, he could not bend them into the slight S shape of his metal weapons without exhausting himself—and wrenched the arrow from the tree. The craftsmanship of the head and the balance of the entire thing were shoddy: these attackers obviously were not applying themselves. The lieutenant would have been ashamed to let such an imminent failure fly.

Lian turned to the rock perch from which the arrow had originated, hoping to use the arrow against the archer. He saw the uniformed human scrambling for his energy gun, perhaps realizing he was wasting his time, or more likely, based upon his desperation, out of arrows. Lian sighed as the man was killed by a bolt from a Mandalorian soldier's stolen weapon. He almost threw the arrow on the ground and stomped on it a few times in a proper fit, impervious as he was, but a lime-skinned humanoid, equipped with the standard energy weapon, came running, screaming unnecessarily shrilly, up the hill to Lian's vantage point. The attacker's wild shots vanished a few particles before Lian's black shirt began, but even the ill-made arrowhead easily punctured a throat. He leapt onto a boulder, his ego suited to being the highest sentient in sight, and let a rush of water wash away a line of attackers, crush them into a rock formation, and explode into the sky before re-evaporating.

Lian the Warlord, said his ego. He began to grin, but scowled as he saw Captain Lan Yiao Nih create a vacuum in the atmosphere to kill a group of attackers. Lan would have killed for such a title. Well, granted that was somewhat necessary considering the title, but Lan would have killed needlessly.

Lian the simple warrior, he corrected, and dived off the boulder. He somersaulted as he hit the ground, then jumped to his feet, surrounded by a group of attackers, and activated his light weapons. The men had no defense except to fire wildly in panic, and he killed them quickly in an admittedly wild flurry of movement.

Lian the not-so-simple warrior, he corrected again, and allowed himself the grin. He leapt forward to continue his work—

—And everyone around him died without a sound, twitch, or expression of any kind—no pain, no shock. Nothing.

He stopped so suddenly he almost fell over backward when he over-compensated to avoid falling forward, flailing his arms for balance before instinctively throwing them up to block his head from the unseen attacker. His light blades passed into his flesh, slightly warming it as his life force was sucked back into him.

He lowered his arms and saw Kei Sa open her eyes.

Rah Cai Yue squinted at a flying object in the distance, turned, and ran. Behind him, his attacker, heartened by his sudden flight, gave chase; Cai Yue could feel the warmth on his back of energy bolts absorbed by his Vyrenchi guard.

Surely, they hadn't—not arrows. Not when they were so attached to advanced weaponry. Not when that would mean armor, and he hated armor.

Having moved far enough to see around the rock the archer was hiding behind, Cai Yue halted and turned his torso half around, stretching out one hand. The attackers who had been chasing him were wrenched into a huddle, pulled mercilessly to the middle. He turned his head back toward the archer, watching anxiously as he readied another arrow. Then he saw the littering of arrows in the area, stuck in the ground like javelins after a throwing contest, but never stuck in anything but ground. The archer couldn't hit a tree—well, actually he did then, and a small one at that, which would have been quite the accomplishment for him if he hadn't been aiming for Lian's head.

Cai Yue turned completely, renewed the energy for his sword, and killed the men he'd trapped with gravity. It was shameless slaughter, but all battles were, especially in this galaxy—or section of galaxy, or whatever it was. They were still won by the luckiest and most numerous, but they lacked the one consolation he had counted on in the battles of Mandalore and its surrounding planets. It was unskilled slaughter, sans honor, not a personal battle in which skill actually mattered. He understood the Art of War was nothing more than learning to kill the most efficiently, but that didn't mean he had to respect it. This place had been slaughter since they arrived, but at least now it was double-sided slaughter, Mandalorians and their attackers falling to identical weapons. That was fair. The honor guard and the Jedi were not.

Which was why he had hoped the archer was a Jedi. But no Jedi would have missed. Had he fired the arrow straight up into the sky, a Jedi would not have missed.

The archer fell to a normal Mandalorian trooper, and Cai Yue turned his attention back to the battle as a whole, then selected a group of men who were advancing on a group of overwhelmed Mandalorians. They were the war gods, the honor guard and the Jedi. They were outside the battle, almost, looking on to help the mortals with transcendent power.

He dragged the men to the ground, pinning them helplessly incapable of twitching even a finger (firing their weapons) or blinking dust out of their eyes. Beside his group, another fell. He glanced to them, shocked by the nothing that had caused their deaths. It was the nothing that Kei Sa created out of their minds, and he couldn't help staring at her.

The men he'd been about to kill stumbled to their feet, his hold on them broken, and were shot down by Mandalorian troops.

And Cai Yue was glad he stared, because in the distance behind Kei Sa's head, he saw a distinctive green blade—non-Mandalorian.

He leapt over some corpses and ran over others.

Crouched behind a boulder on the edge of the battle nearest Mandalorian base camp, Lieutenant Nai Do Xian readjusted his grip on his weapon. All his enemies were in his view, and he carefully aimed and killed any who managed to make it past the last line of Mandalorian defenders. The frequency of this occurring had increased as the battle progressed, but the size of the threats steadily decreased. The Mandalorians were winning again. The soldiers killed their share of attackers, but it was really the honor guard who enabled the Mandalorian victory, felling attackers by the dozens. Only the queen and Yen Sa were unable to incapacitate large groups at once. Do Xian could use his element—earth—efficiently enough, but he was of more use as a sniper. Yen Sa was watching his back. The queen was in the forest somewhere causing any attackers who wandered in after her to be impaled by tree branches, tied in place by the foliage, or strangled with the rare vine.

"There's something on the right," Yen Sa said, "past the edge of the battle."

"My right or yours?" he replied, firing three shots with an energy weapon and killing three humans.

"Your left. A green light blade—who has green?"

"The queen."

"Not long enough, or the right shape. Or the right shade of green for that matter. Hers is darker."

"Zhen."

"Could be." For a few moments, Yen Sa was quiet—not silent, for Do Xian could hear the boy's boots scuffle on the rocks when he shifted position. He was much too fidgety to be any good at stealth.

"Now there's a blue one," he said, shifting again. "They're closer."

"Lian."

"Could be. That would make sense."

Another charge—only three again—came up the hill, and Do Xian shot them.

"They're gone!" Yen Sa yelled as Do Xian's last blast rang in his ears. "They were getting really close, but then they just disappeared."

"Probably went back to the battle. I don't know why they were wandering around back there anyway." He fired twice more—one missed. He glanced up in annoyance, then fired again, just as he felt the shift in energy and saw the extra white flicker of light as Yen Sa activated his sword.

He turned away from his scouting point to see a green blade and a blue blade appear in the trees just behind them. A man held one; a gray-skinned alien of mostly human proportions held the other. Both wore brown robes and looked serene and assured as they stepped into the open.

Yen Sa stood and tilted his blade into ready position. The Jedi adjusted their postures and flew into the air only to slam to a stop, splayed out like they had hit a ceiling.

Do Xian blinked twice in surprise as the Jedi's weapons hit the rocks and rolled, and Rah Cai Yue jumped over his still-crouched body to land with his dark indigo blade already blazing. He swung it up toward the human Jedi, but the man's blade jumped off the ground and ignited with a hiss to block Cai Yue's attack.

Do Xian saw the other Jedi's weapon do the same thing to persistently block Yen Sa's attacks, as a cloud of dust flew into Yen Sa's face and continued past his body toward Do Xian. He raised his arm and shielded his eyes. Then he heard three thumps, and lowered his arm to see that the two Jedi had fallen out of Cai Yue's grip, and that Cai Yue was reeling. A large rock changed direction to fly toward Cai Yue's head—again? He cut it into six less dangerous pieces and stepped backward to parry the attack of the Jedi, who was now holding his weapon.

The other Jedi was only just rising, having fallen hard. Yen Sa, his eyesight apparently still suffering, let out a broadly aimed flash of light that left large spots on Do Xian's vision and presumably blinded the gray-skinned alien. When Do Xian's vision cleared, all four light blades were gone, and the two Jedi were dead.

Yen Sa shrugged and rubbed at his eyes. "These Jedi really aren't that bad."

"No, I guess not," Cai Yue said, "but what were they doing back here? I mean, usually they're out in the thick of it, doing to our men what we do to theirs. And it's generally a good show, what with all the bolt deflections and telekinesis."

"Maybe they were trying to stop the lieutenant. He does manage to make a pretty big instant-kill zone."

"Thank you," Do Xian said, standing up to lean against the boulder—their attackers had retreated while Cai Yue and Yen Sa fought the Jedi.

"I could have come up with a much better way to stop him than skulking through the trees," said Cai Yue. "Besides, he doesn't take out any more of them than the rest of us do." He glanced to Do Xian. "No offense."

Do Xian shrugged.

"Except for me," said Yen Sa.

Cai Yue nodded once. "Except for you. So—"

"And the queen," said Do Xian.

"And Ming," Cai Yue said a trifle impatiently. "So why not—"

"And I was watching you," said Yen Sa, "and I think he probably killed more people than you did this battle."

"So why not go after one of us out there, who's more vulnerable?" Cai Yue stopped for a moment, waiting for an interruption. Seeing Do Xian's position, he frowned slightly. "Why are you—" He looked to the battlefield. "Where did everyone go?"

"They retreated while you were fighting," Do Xian said. "There weren't many left when you came over here. Surely you noticed."

"No, there were a lot." Cai Yue folded his arms. "They were just all dead." Do Xian almost expected him to stick out his tongue. "So, they didn't wait until these guys were dead before they left?"

"I don't think they even knew they were—"

"Do you think they were after the queen?" Yen Sa said quickly. "She was in the woods; they were in the woods."

"Ming? You don't suppose they found her, do you?" Cai Yue looked to the woods with panicky little breaths. "She's all right, don't you think? I think we had better make sure."

"Cai Yue," Yen Sa said sharply, pointing to the middle of the field. "She's right there."

"Oh, good." Cai Yue's breathing relaxed. "We'd better tell her, then. About the Jedi." He scrambled over the boulder.

Do Xian gave Yen Sa a questioning look.

"They were...close," Yen Sa explained. "Growing up, I mean."

"I guess so."

Braeden Leer smiled politely, lips unparted, at the woman on the other side of the counter and kept his eyes open to avoid offending her. It wasn't that she was particularly interesting; she said nothing he didn't already know, and she said nothing in a unique manner. She wasn't even somebody of importance—diplomat, officer, crime lord—for whom he had to feign respect. She was just a merchant, selling him a crystal, and chattering about her wares. But he was enjoying her speech if not her conversation and didn't want her to stop. She had a lovely voice made more appealing by her accent, with which he was unfamiliar. Her consonants were short and precise, enunciated at the front of her mouth without the laziness or throatiness common to Coruscant's citizens. Her vowels were similarly precise and distinct, which also marked her as someone who hadn't been on Coruscant long. His own language hardly bothered with vowels, the one it did have only a means of getting from one consonant to the next. Hers were long enough to remind him of the Mandalorians. While they'd had many, some of them distinguished by the smallest inflections, she had only six—stilting her Basic considerably—but all six uncommonly pure.

He should have gotten himself off Coruscant months ago, but he'd managed to get entangled in an 'information retrieval' scheme of General Tascilo's. Eavesdropping and playing with the general's mind were two of his favorite occupations—the only two not tarnished by his 'dishonorable discharge', as Tascilo would say—and not opportunities he could pass up.

The entire Republic was factioned on how to deal with the Mandalorians who dared to take their worlds (despite the fact that they kept only one at a time) and challenge their military might (despite the fact that the Mandalorians almost never initiated a battle). In typical, infuriating Tascilo fashion, the general had refused to ally himself with any, instead doing his best to know what everyone was doing and inflict the military equivalent of a filibuster on any plan he did not like. It would be interesting if it involved assassinations and covert operations rather than inexplicable lockdowns on different forms of transportation, impassable security, and sudden lacks of available troops or weapons.

Tascilo was a powerful man, and, for him, remaining undecided had perks beyond the great freedom of merely being undecided. At least a quarter of the Republic's officers were solely loyal to him, and would follow his orders even if they conflicted with those of the Supreme Chancellor and the Senate. He was courted by all factions, and even without Braeden's help, he knew more about what everyone was doing than anyone else, except perhaps Supreme Chancellor Palpatine, who was behaving decidedly Tascilo-like, if more diplomatic, and generally pleasing everyone except Braeden Leer.

Really, people—especially important people—ought to pick a side and stand their ground.

At least the Jedi were, and he could respect that even if he didn't agree with their position. One would think the Mandalorians had lined up and one by one spit on Yoda's face by how determined the Jedi were to defeat them. They were mostly interested in the powerful ones—super-commandoes, as the few who had seen their skills and lived had dubbed them. They wanted to capture one and find out where this power came from; they wanted the secret of their shields; and they wanted to know why each of their lightsaber-like weapons did not harm the 'supercommando' brandishing it; but mostly, the Jedi wanted them dead. Braeden couldn't entirely blame them for it: it had to be tough on such narrow-minded fools to be challenged by a power they could neither defeat nor explain.

At least they were distracted, which meant they weren't on the lookout for him.

The merchant girl dropped the crystal on the counter—he didn't hear the clatter he knew it made—and let out a squeak that he did hear. He belatedly realized that he had been concentrating too closely on her and had unconsciously blocked out all sound but her voice. He abandoned all the audio filters in his brain and clicked his tongue at the din of the thousands milling behind him that re-entered his awareness.

He heard two quick steps behind him of a heavy—if human—someone. A dark red-gloved hand closed on the crystal.

"Excuse me, Braeden Leer. You are required by Republic Law to either acknowledge your identity or provide proof to the contrary when addressed by a palace guard." The voice was male and human, which had been happening more and more frequently since Palpatine took over. He was entirely clothed in the same red as his gloves.

"I didn't hear you the first time."

"That's a new one, Mr. Leer; I was standing right behind you. Come with me or I am authorized to arrest you, with force, if necessary."

He should have gotten himself off Coruscant months ago.