The Queen's Honor Guard
by Nyohah
III.
The Mandalorian colonists loved the parade. If it had been held on Mandalore anywhere other than the smallest of villages, it would have been laughable. The army and the honor guard hadn't brought much of anything decorative—the queen's dress was proof of that—and most of the little bit the colonists had brought had been destroyed or sold sometime since they left Mandalore. There was some left—all people's personal things—and it had almost all been donated to be used in the parade. The Republic donated nothing.
They didn't have the people to put on a parade, either. All of the colonists were in the parade, but few of them were the usual talents. Some were good enough acrobats to do some tricks, and the few children were certainly happy to dance around in what passed for costumes. Their biggest find had been someone good enough to sing—there was a woman among the colonists named Hsu Lin who had been in the opera, which annoyed the queen and made Rah Cai Yue laugh, for some reason.
The honor guard, for the most part, were dressed in their uniforms. Kei Sa was dressed in her white split dress, the general in his dress armor, and the queen in the fanciest dress she had brought. The bottom-most layer was black, with long, widening sleeves and a large dragon embroidered in silver at the bottom, right-hand corner. Over it was a green wrap, tied with a darker green belt and cut diagonally from just below her right hip to below her left knee to leave the dragon visible. She also wore a thick, sleeveless cloak of a very deep green, on the back of which was a large, embroidered silver circle with a water dragon inside—her family's symbol. Her face was painted white with only a slight accent to her eyes and her lips colored. The bottom half of her hair was braided, and the top half was pulled back into a bun. Marking the separation was a silver circlet with a miniature of her family's symbol dangling on her forehead, and coming up from the bun was a small, dark green fan with a Mandalorian poem for peace written on it in silver. She was beautiful, but the both her dress and her hair were far more simple than they would have been had this been a royal parade on Mandalore.
The strangest thing about the parade to Tempest, however, was that it was inside. All the sounds echoed rather than carried, and the colors seemed off in the harsh artificial lights rather than glowing as they should in the sunlight. The ceilings in some places restricted the acrobats, and they went through stretches of narrow hallways in which there were no Republic spectators.
The people were happy, though, and he couldn't help but smile.
They finally entered the Grand Courtyard, and the number of Republic spectators made it clear to Tempest that everyone they had run into in the hallways were those who couldn't fit in the Courtyard. A small square in front of the balcony was empty, and the Mandalorian colonists quickly filled it up. All that was left of the parade as it continued up the stairs to the balcony was the honor guard.
If Tempest thought walking into the Grand Courtyard from ground-level was intimidating, it was nothing to the view he found from the balcony. After the Mandalorians filed into the space left for them, there was no space left in the courtyard. It was entirely filled with people of innumerable species, all their faces looking up at them.
Tempest swallowed and looked at the queen. If she was nervous, she hid it well, her posture perfect and her expression calm. As he watched her step forward toward the edge of the balcony, a tiny movement he saw out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. Why he noticed the tiny movement when there were nine other people on the balcony, none of which was being entirely still, he had to attribute to years of being a ninja.
Vendetta had subtly nodded.
As Tempest stepped forward instinctively, he could see the distinct trails of people moving through the crowd, heading from the outskirts closer to the balcony. As he began to pull the queen down and put himself in front of her, a bolt of red light erupted from one of the trail-makers in the crowd.
Braeden had to admit that the much-touted (by the Mandalorians, anyway) Mandalorian parade was almost worth watching. He had seen parades before, by so many different cultures that he couldn't remember them all, and it was unique enough (he had never seen anything like the woman singing in strange costume) to stand out, but still remained a recognizable parade, unlike so many he had seen, mostly from the insect cultures. Insect species had a sentience so very unlike other species' that it was usually hard to understand them at all.
Partially because the parade was almost likable and partially because he felt a certain amount of responsibility to the Mandalorians—unfortunate side effect of being their rescuer—he, for once, wasn't annoyed to be in the Grand Courtyard on Coruscant, surrounded by three times as many people as ought to be allowed in the space.
He was also almost interested to hear what the queen would have to say to everyone. If he were her, he would have stood up there on the balcony and spoken her own language so only the tiny area of her people could understand her, and end the whole thing with a tiny passage in Basic—something like, "We came in peace; we leave in peace; it's your fault we weren't here entirely in peace." Being a queen, however, she probably actually had learned rules of public speaking and diplomacy to follow them, not to make fun of them.
Braeden never got to hear what she was going to say, however. She never got to say it.
He sensed the sudden threat—it was strong enough to turn the trickle of the force he let through into a gush of awareness—the same moment that everything seemed to happen. Sudden movement in the crowd, sudden movement on the balcony. He made his own sudden movements just as a blaster bolt shot out from one of the areas of disturbance in the crowd. It was, no doubt, aimed at the queen, but it instead hit one of the honor guard, one of the older ones, in the head. The queen was somewhere behind, and hopefully, below.
The woman who was not the queen was moving the next moment, jumping off the balcony and grabbing a banner to lessen her velocity as she slid to the ground, landing in a roll. She was up and after the assailant the moment her feet hit the ground again, easy to track in her white dress as she easily killed him and the next who came after her.
Braeden slid his way through the crowd with considerably less ease than the Mandalorian woman in white, trying to get to her side to help defeat the attackers that seemed to appear one after another as she defeated them. No one would move out of his way. He couldn't even find a gap large enough to ignite his lightsaber in, after which he hoped people would recognize him for what he was—a defender—and stop panicking long enough to get out of his way.
And where were those who were supposed to be defending? Braeden, unable to move effectively anyway, stopped for a moment to look around. There should have been an entire detail of guards around, but they seemed to have vanished. He looked to the balcony to see what the honor guard was doing. Most of them had disappeared, but he didn't look for them. He saw, instead, the queen. She was kneeling by the front wall of the balcony, cautiously lifting her head up to look down into the crowd. Her white face paint was speckled with red spots and a hole in the middle of the fan on her head was still smoking.
He followed her line of sight to see an open patch in the crowd where the woman in white stood resignedly with her hands lowered and her eyes closed, a blaster held to her head by a man Braeden recognized as a rather controversial—though not so much as he—Jedi.
The traitorous Jedi fired the second shot, and the second Mandalorian fell. It was neither the last shot nor the last Mandalorian.
The shot into the balcony had an effect on the honor guard that Rah Cai Yue could only describe as startling them into action. They didn't stop to examine the effects of the shot, terrible as they were, and be delayed by the death of one of their members. They sprang into action immediately, Kei Sa doing the literal springing as she jumped off the balcony, and the rest running for the stairs. Cai Yue hesitated to leave Ming where she had fallen, with Tempest's body in her lap and was the last to reach the stairs when he was stopped by a thought.
Would they all be standing uselessly on the balcony if it was the first death of a member? He was disgusted by the thought because he had thought it, and that was when he heard Ming's scream.
He rushed back to the balcony where she was still on the floor but away from where she had fallen. He crawled over to her so as to be hidden by the balcony wall like she was and was shocked by the sounds coming from the courtyard—many shots of their light weapons and so many screams.
"What's happened?" he asked Ming.
"K-Kei Sa," she whispered.
"What?"
"She's dead."
Cai Yue felt his jaw hanging open and wondered how long it had been that way. "Come on," he said, pulling at Ming's arm. "We have to go."
She didn't respond, only blinking her eyes, which looked more like walnuts than their usual almonds.
He began to pull her toward the door, nearly dragging her, which, he had time to muse, was extremely hard to do when one was crawling, the fact of which was what gave him time to realize it.
When he got her to the chamber behind the balcony, where they couldn't be seen, he pulled her to her feet, and she responded enough to run if he pulled her in the right direction. He ran down a hall and reached a crossing with three others. He turned right and hoped that he knew where he was going. Five steps down that hall, he was grabbed from behind.
After he nearly died of fright, he turned to see Yen Sa.
"Other way, other way, come on," Yen Sa said and helped him to pull Ming down the hallway opposite the one he had chosen. "Braeden Leer is keeping the attackers busy—most of them, anyway—in the courtyard, and they sent me to find you, so good thing I showed up when I did or you two would be lost, because I was going to the balcony, and if you'd turned a corner, I would never have found you, and you obviously wouldn't have found the ship, but I'm supposed to be putting up a light shield, so I better start, shouldn't I?"
He didn't even take gasp for breath before he let go of Ming and began to concentrate—Cai Yue was impressed.
They reached the landing pad where the Mandalorian ships were in less than a minute to find that it was essentially a slaughtering ground. Laser bolts came from somewhere to strike down anyone who wasn't hiding, like the civilians trying to run into ships. Seeing the situation, Cai Yue could only be happy that the shooters seemed to be far away because they were very inaccurate. But people died anyway.
Yen Sa squeezed his eyes shut, and the laser bolts began to disappear at the perimeter of the landing pad. The honor guard stood up and motioned for the civilians to run to the ships. Nai Do Xian headed immediately for the Templar. Do Xian was the only pilot who didn't stay with his ship at all times, so Cai Yue was relieved to see that all three ships would be able to take off as soon as everyone was loaded.
Yen Sa didn't move, so Cai Yue dragged Ming back toward him with his right arm to grab Yen Sa's arms with his left. He dragged them both toward the Templar.
Ming suddenly stopped and pulled him the other way. Cai Yue almost fell over and took the other two with him.
"No, not the Aria!" she yelled. All that remained of the honor guard looked at her questioningly as Yen Sa began to tremble. "Look—it's the closest. It's probably already full. We have time to make it to the next, now."
Hua Quy Ling, holding his baby and some paper and looking shell-shocked, nodded. "She's right. It is full."
Li Wei Yong turned to him, looking questioningly at the baby. "You gave up your spot for someone else?"
"No," Quy Ling said. "There are letters. One for Ming."
"Now?" Wei Yong asked.
Quy Ling made a sort of strangled noise and held them out. Rah Cai Yue recognized Kei Sa's handwriting.
So did Li Wei Yong, who nodded. And Ming, who took hers with a shaking hand.
Yen Sa spoke, his voice strained. "Hurry, please?"
The honor guard was again startled into action, running to the next ship. They climbed aboard the ship, the last of the survivors, and Yen Sa promptly collapsed. Cai Yue wanted to stay and make sure he was going to be all right, but he had to go make a portal. He ran to the bridge, the rest of the honor guard behind him, wanting, he supposed, to at least see their killers should they die before Cai Yue's portal opened.
Cai Yue paid no attention to them, or to the chatter of a few civilians who had pushed their way onto the bridge. He had to make a portal for home, and he had to make it fast.
And he had to make it without Kei Sa.
He found it surprisingly simple. Either Kei Sa had never really helped, which he doubted, making dozens of portals had adjusted him to the process, which he figured was logical, or using Yen Sa's light swords had enhanced his strength of mind, which he thought was possible.
Or panic was his new best friend, which he thought the most likely of all.
In any case, he got the portal open long before he thought he could, which only enabled him to open his eyes just in time to see the Templar explode spectacularly.
It was hard to compare losses. Which was more traumatic? Which had the greater magnitude of suffering or other profound things he ought to be thinking?
Zhen couldn't decide. On the one hand, his best friend had died. On the other, lots of people he didn't know but who symbolized him in a way—his culture—had just died.
It didn't compare. He couldn't compare it. He just knew he felt bad, but in a different way. Sort of numb rather than hit in the stomach by a cannonball.
The rest of the honor guard looked like they felt as numb as he did, except Chen Yi, who was pale and shaking and leaking out tears against his will. He'd sent An into the Templar to await him. Now she was dead. Now they wouldn't get married like everyone except them knew they were going to.
He guessed they weren't going to get married, after all.
Three of the honor guard dead in one day. It was terrible, really. Especially since one of them was the one who wasn't supposed to die.
Kei Sa was invincible. She was supposed to be invincible.
It wasn't fair. Everything had gone sour at once. If Shao Kahn hadn't attacked Viri (Shao Kahn's being active being a very bad thing), no one would have died (another very bad thing).
That was two. It worried him that according to his grandmother there should be an upcoming third bad thing.
Just as there had been three honor guard deaths.
Which just wasn't fair. Why only three of the honor guard when so many of the civilians had died? Wouldn't it be fairer to be proportional? If the guard couldn't protect them, they should at least die at the same rate as them. They should die at a higher rate. They were the ones who had chosen to put their lives on the line for the defense of others. They should all be dead.
And why was he even thinking these things?
It just didn't compare.
"Umm...Cai Yue?" Yen Sa asked, and Zhen jumped.
As did Cai Yue, who looked even more numb that Zhen felt.
"What?" he asked.
Yen Sa stood up and looked out the viewport of the ship. "I thought you took us home."
"Yeah," Cai Yue said.
"To Mandalore?"
"That is our home, yes."
"Right to Mandalore?"
"Yeah. Like I told Braeden. I know where it is, I just don't know where it is."
"Then," Yen Sa paused. "Where is it?"
Zhen looked out the viewport. All he saw were stars, and he was about to shake his head at Cai Yue's thick-headedness when he suddenly realized that, for the first time in a long time, they were very familiar stars.