The Queen's Honor Guard
by Nyohah
II.
They were fighting again, immature bickering in front of everyone, and Zhen Feng Qui rather wondered if anyone else was at all alarmed by the apparent lack of reason in their two main leaders' arguments. Not that he was one to talk, but he didn't make the decisions. He put it down to the peculiarities of marriage and also rather wondered whose idea it had been to allow spouses to have to work together in such positions of authority. The queen and the general: cute in theory but nightmarish in fact.
But mostly he wondered why the general even tried.
"No, we're going to keep this planet for a while yet," said the queen. "It's extremely easily defended, and it has all the resources we need."
The general had to chase her around the room to talk to her.
"Yes, but we've been attacked here three times—"
"And easily turned back our attackers three times."
She walked in a circle around the yokels, and he followed her every step. He had to be a man of great humility—the general, not Tieh Chen Yi. Or maybe that was just the effect of being married to the queen. The yokel boy just looked frightened that his yokel girlfriend—her arm limply hanging in a sling with scarcely a chance of recovery at this point—would end up like the queen.
"Yes, but how do we know that they're not figuring out how to defeat us? The fourth attack could be the last."
The queen stopped and turned, hands on hips. The general almost ran into her. "You said that after the second fight. 'The third fight could be our doooom.'"
He had, although he hadn't used a silly tone of voice or a melodramatic word like 'doom'; Zhen remembered. The queen grew more childish as she grew more irritated every time they rehashed the same argument.
"Well..." The general faltered. "Bad things always come in threes."
"That they do," said Zhen.
The queen and the general both looked perplexed at his interruption.
"Just ask my mother," he added.
"Oh, and you say we Sapphire Coast citizens are superstitious?" said Chen Yi.
"I never said that."
Chen Yi opened his mouth to retort, but they were arguing again.
"You said it after the first time, too."
"Yes, but—I mean it this time."
Ah, 'yes, but,' the language of love. Lian started every sentence with it when he tried to argue with Shenah. He'd heard Chen Yi say it to his girlfriend the day before. Poor kid was doooomed.
But not as doooomed as the general's argument.
"I am the queen, and I order you to accept my judgment on this matter."
"Well, I'm the general, and I know military strategy, and I—"
"Indignantly acquiesce?" Zhen offered.
When all a room's inhabitants turn on you as one with that sort of a look, it is always best to leave.
Even if he had wanted to, Braeden couldn't have stopped smirking. The scene he stood in the middle of was far too enjoyable. They could recite their 'anger leads to the dark side blah blah blah' mantra as much as they wanted, but they couldn't stop from looking as though they were going to give in to it and pull him apart bit by bit until he died.
Mace Windu was hunched forward with his forearms on his knees in some attempt to look less threatening (as though Braeden would ever be intimidated by him); he only came across as condescending. "Now, Leer," he said.
"I prefer to be called Yktv Leer," Braeden cut in. "When speaking to someone of another culture, it's only polite to use the proper title from his culture when you took away his title in yours."
Windu looked slightly thrown, as intended, and hesitated. "...Yktv Leer, you do understand why we're upset about the hospitalization of seventeen palace guards and the minor wounding of six others."
Braeden rolled his eyes—one of the many useful human gestures his people hadn't the visual acuity to develop—and was rewarded with a tighter, louder tone in man's next words.
"Especially in light of the fact that you then chose to walk peacefully—alone—into the very room to which you were only being escorted."
"I have been here before. I do remember the way. And—please—don't try to tell me it was only an honorary escort. You have to be important for that, and generally, well, not excommunicated."
"Yktv Leer," said Ki-Adi-Mundi, easily recognizable even in Braeden's poor vision because of his lumpy, conical head, "it is for the very skills which you have chosen unwisely to display today that we summoned you here."
"Now, if I remember correctly," Braeden said, deliberately scratching his temple, "it was my fighting that got me into trouble with all of you in the first place. Or at least—" he dropped his hand— "that was the reason you gave."
The senior council members didn't have the hearts to even look ashamed. The newer ones looked slightly confused—they probably didn't even realize there was a political aspect to the Jedi Council yet.
"We understand how you may harbor resentments toward us due to your situation," Mundi replied, "but as you must have realized, there is a situation at hand that requires us to take some action beyond the normal procedures. You have heard of the Mandalorians?"
Braeden closed his eyes and slouched, and only the quiet wave of indignant motion he could hear kept his smirk from entirely fading.
Mace Windu took over, all patience again. "There are some Mandalorians that pose a particular threat that only we Jedi have a hope of defeating. Every Jedi we have sent up against them, however, has been killed. It has become clear to us that these Mandalorians possess not only unique powers, but also extraordinary fighting skills. Our only hope of defeating them may lie in sending a group of our best fighters to infiltrate their base. Despite lapses in judgment concerning your method, you are arguably one of the finest fighters the Jedi Order has ever—"
"Now this is where I have a problem." He heard almost every one of their breathings glitch in shock, and he shook his head. "No, not in what he just said. You can't win that tournament as many times in a row as I did and not get called 'one of the finest Jedi fighters ever'. None of you would even bother to argue that. My problem is what is about to come out of Windu's mouth."
Saesee Tinn was the one to be least offended by his disrespect to Windu, and thus the first to speak, the Iktotch's voice by nature every bit as tight as his plentiful muscles. "You do not wish to fight the Mandalorians?"
"That is not the issue at hand. You cannot tell someone to leave forever and then drag him back to do your bidding when you get into a tough situation."
"Ah," said Yoda, "but you it was who came back."
"With all due respect, Master Yoda," Braeden said, and, for once, meant it—Yoda was the only decent one among them— "I came back to Coruscant because it is the only place besides my home planet where my people gather. I trust you all remember I cannot go back there because of you."
"We thought you might not want to help us," Windu said, "so we've decided that if you prove trustworthy enough, you will be reinstated as Jedi."
Braeden clicked his tongue twice as his gills opened in shock. "Has it never occurred to any of you that maybe I don't want to be in your little order anymore?"
"You cannot expect to ever get the title 'Master' back," Windu continued, "which we may have been hasty to award you in the first place. Also, we will officially remove the restrictions on your person which you have so thoroughly ignored."
Braeden rubbed his hands on the side of his neck to try to rub moisture from the wrap on it into his now-irritated gills. "Do I get to be in charge?"
The half of the council that knew him best, except Yoda, sat up with shock. Ki-Adi-Mundi sputtered but was unable to speak.
Braeden crossed his arms and let a second pass, then said, "I meant the mission." And grinned.
Mundi inhaled deeply and sighed, then said, "It would be...unacceptable for us to put any of the Order under the command of one who has proven himself...dangerous to the ideologies of the Council."
"I won't take orders from any of them."
"I will be in charge of the mission," said Shaak Ti, the newest member of the council. Braeden remembered her from the last tournament he'd fought in—her tall, pale horns connected with long, striped lekku and her bright red skin with large, pale ovals around her eyes made her appearance stick in his mind more easily than most others'. She was good. He beat her, of course, but she had been good.
"I trust," Shaak Ti continued, "that you will honor my suggestions if I honor yours."
"Do I get my lightsaber back?"
Mundi said, "There have been some unforeseen difficulties stemming from the design of your weapon and its similarity to the one used by a Sith Lord defeated some ten years ago by Master—then Padawan—Kenobi."
"No lightsaber, no Braeden."
"We intend to give a normal one—"
"No. Mine. Or no deal."
"Very well, then," said Windu, "but we will not be held responsible for any assumptions or unpleasantries caused by your weapon."
"Well, congratulations, then. You've just hired yourself a shamefully cheap mercenary. How do you feel? Liberated? Relieved? Dirty? Oh—and one favor. Could you assign a cash value to the title 'Jedi Knight' in case I decide to take a monetary payment for my services?" He smiled, all four sets of incisors deliberately exposed.
"Master Tinn," said Mace Windu, "could you please escort Yktv Leer to the Calyaar district and make sure that he understands if he leaves it before the scheduled hour of his departure, he will spend the rest of that time incarcerated."
They'd have to catch him first.
"My queen?" Yen Sa called across the Mandalorian headquarters main planning room. "We have problems."
"Problems?" The queen looked worried, but irritated to be so. Her mood swings were continuing to become less severe as she matured, if only because opposite moods were now mixing into the same swing. Her emotions had always seemed overpowering and flighty to Tempest, but he was remarkably placid for a wind elemental—the result of first terror, then guilt, and now, finally, age.
"What sort of problems?" continued the queen.
"Well, it seems our attackers last week didn't retreat so much as regroup. We're surrounded."
"How long until we have to defend ourselves?" the general said.
"Well, that's the thing. They're not moving. It's—they're camped, sir."
"Camped?" The general blinked, then slowly said, "We're under siege? How is it we just now know about this?"
Yen Sa answered in his defensive tone—quicker and slightly whiny. "They're quite a ways out. They've been scrambling us. I just broke—"
"Never mind," said the general, lifting a hand in a halting gesture. "Yen Sa, you stay here and study your...stuff. Quy, Chen Yi, Cai Yue: alert the people. Zhen, Lan, Vendetta: check on our supplies. We should have plenty now, but we need to know what to conserve. Tempest, Do Xian, Lian: go scout, several different places. Split up. We need lots of details. Don't get killed. Kei Sa, stay here and help us."
When Tempest didn't move, nobody noticed. Yen Sa was focused; Kei Sa's eyes were closed. The queen and the general were engrossed in standing and worrying.
Tempest knew, even without looking, that something was off. Siege tactics would never be forgotten, and that they were used was no surprise. But the execution was all wrong for this galaxy. With their technology, why not work on a large scale where they'd have the advantage? Why not use their technology to set up a barrier instead of manpower? They had to know the honor guard could demolish their forces without much trouble. Why take the chance that the Mandalorians had a lifetime of supplies instead of trying to destroy them? They should have been attacking.
Instead, they seemed to want only to discourage the Mandalorians from going outside. Poised to kill anyone who tried to leave? No, they knew about the Vyrenchi. They had to know they couldn't harm the Mandalorians; they had to have some physical way of keeping them indoors. But then why gather? To watch? Watch what?
"They're holding us," he and Kei Sa said simultaneously.
The queen, the general, and Yen Sa jerked around, unsure at first whom to look at. They settled on Kei Sa, but she smiled and looked at Tempest.
"They don't want us to leave," he said, "but they're not going to hurt us unless we try to. Besides which, I doubt we can leave. They must have some way of keeping us in the building. Either someone's going to try to capture us, they're going to send someone to kill us, or they're waiting for a diplomat. Something, but this is no siege."
"Are you sure?" asked the queen.
"The danger isn't here," said Kei Sa. "It's coming, but it isn't here. It's strange and hostile, but the cold is somehow familiar."
"So, what you're saying is, it's a diplomat?" The general gave half a grin.
"My brother would hurt you for that remark," the queen returned.
"Yeah, well, touching as all that is," Lian said from the doorway into the hall, "why won't the doors open?"