Red, yellow, and blue. All three of the primary colors were represented in full. Overhead, the sky dazzled blue. In a lower portion of the sky, Valuan ships showed their flags bearing the yellow moon. And all over the ground, rested red blood. The crimson color dazzled as it poured down the wall, as fires erupted, and as slivers of stone went flying into people, driving organs from their bodies, brains from their heads.
Herrand observed it all through a growing haze of darkness. He was Herrand. He was born in the sewers, he had become an officer, and he had seen the skies, and even foreign continents thought to be long gone. He had watched powers struggle, rise, fall, conquer, and be revolted upon. He was Herrand. He had seen terrible things, he had seen wonderful things. He had seen the world. And so, as blood poured out of his gut, flowing into a steady river to join and mingle with the blood of countless others, as the darkness thickened, and as oblivion seemed to claim him, he was content with his life. Not happy, per se, but content. The darkness closed in.
"This is Isard."
Captain Palleon turned to face the voice. "Yes, Admiral?" he said, his voice calm and clear.
"Execute order number three."
Palleon snapped to attention, his military posture straightened all that much more.
"With all due respect, ma'am, that's suicide."
Isard sighed n the other end of the small video communication, dropping her head and causing the image to pixilated from the lack of the camera's ability to cope in the live transmission.
"Captain, that's the point. You and your crew will all be unharmed. I assure you of that."
"Yet again, with all due respect, ma'am, no you can't. For all we know, they could have installed the technology we gave them back in the early days and experimented with it to the point where they can follow us."
"Just do it, Palleon. They merely followed instructions. The Valuan engineering revolves around building a bigger, better gun, and allowing them to withstand their own guns."
"All the more reason that this could blow up in our faces!" Palleon argued. "They built better guns, and they knew of our former technology. What if they managed to find ways of increasing the angles at which their guns shoot? They could easily blow us from the sky."
Silence ensued as instruments beeped, whistled and buzzed in their usual annoying ways. One of those beeps seemed slightly out of pitch with them all, but then, who could tell these days?
"So, Miss, Isard, have you decided to listen to my request, or-" Palleon's words failed to form as his vocal chords, trachea, and esophagus were slit from behind. Hands flew to weapons before they noticed that the killer of Palleon was merely Thrawn, third in command, and loyal to Isard.
Isard approved on the other end of the communication of Thrawn's actions. The small beeper he had planted on him had beeped in a different pitch than any of the other instruments. Thrawn, being of perfect pitch like all of Isard's assassin officers, had heard the beep that the apparently tone deaf crew had not heard, responding to it and killing Palleon without the captain even noticing. Thrawn sheathed the dagger and came to attention before the small screen that Isard's features came from.
"Rather poor judgment, questioning my orders like that," Isard said as idly as if she had simply witnessed Thrawn smacking an annoying fly.
Thrawn continued to stand at attention at the viewing post; apparently eager for the swift promotions that came about in all manners of drama books in which people were ruthlessly killed.
"That is all I need from you, Thrawn. Continue to serve at your post and get Miss Dala. She will be in command of this task force from this point forward, apparently…"
We know who killed Enrique. We can help you bring him to justice.
What are you talking about? They were Valuans! They were extremists who-
They were not, Dyne. They were from- Well, we can't very well tell you that until our demands are met.
And what, Miss Isard, are those demands?
Nothing unreasonable. Merely the withdrawal of all Valuan ships from Yafutoman airspace. As my… client, so eloquently put it previously.
As I've told you before, that isn't possible. It would cause death to both our peoples, ours more so, obviously, but this is a mutual benefit. I can't do that. I'm not going to stake an entire nation on one man, to bring others to justice.
Ah, but you should.
And why is that?
I also know the next target. I don't think it would be enjoyable for you.
Miss Isard, you and Ambassador Suwong are hereby under arrest.
On what charges, if I may ask, sir dictator?
You are withholding information that could benefit this nation deliberately, and given that you have claimed extensive knowledge of this incident, I can also put you up on charges of having been in a conspiracy of murder in the first degree.
If you carry this out, my information goes with me to the grave.
We'll see about that.
Yes. We will.
James Jade, JJ as he was often called, had come to Valua to see the beautiful famed spires with his family. He, his wife Karma, and their two children, Shishima and Zansubi had come to Valua on a sightseeing tour, hoping to see the famed new spires in Valua. JJ grinned, nudged Zansubi in the ribs and indicated a pedestal covered in what looked like rubble, but was actually art.
"That," he said, still pointing, "Is where statues of all of Valua's rulers were erected, and then smashed by the successor to make way for their own. With the new leadership here, that tradition was done away with, so that rubble shows the fall of a bad tradition."
"Wowee, Dad," Zansubi said with a complete lack of interest. "It's another statue. Are we having fun yet?"
JJ frowned. "Hey, you better start enjoying yourself, here, do you know how much this-"
"Trip cost?" Zansubi said, already having anticipated his father's words. "Over five hundred in good gold. I could have gone out and spent that all on a nicer ship, a nice vacation for just me, but no, I went out and dragged all of you along so that we could enjoy this as a family. And now what are you doing? Just sitting there and sulking!" The boy must have heard the speech at least fifty times from his father on the trip already, and already had it memorized.
"Listen up. You had better start enjoying yourself, or I'm going to-"
Exactly what James Jade was going to do was lost as he and his son were incinerated in an intense beam of light, no longer anything more than a dark spot on the ground.
Karma and Shishima cried out in horror and shock, running towards the spot where their family had been when another, more powerful blast hit the area directly behind them, sending large pieces of stone away in all directions at dizzying speed. As the women ran the stone pierced them, and all of a sudden their internal organs were failing to live up to their names.
A/n: Alright, I stole a lot of names from a lot of places. Timothy Zhan, I apologize if you ever read this (And if you do, could you get your other author buddies to check it out and review? Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaassssssssssssssssssseeeeeeeeeeee?) So, yeah, anyways, I stole the names of Palleon and Thrawn from him… Even though Palleon was an Admiral while Thrawn was the only alien grand admiral. Next up (glances at list) I stole Miss Dala's name from, yet again, Michael A. Stackpole and Bantam Books (trademark), which is a licensed part of Lucasfilm LTD (registered Trademark). This chapter is kind of confusing, so I'll explain what happened- this is all the elements of time unstuck, something I'm planning to do throughout the story (If it gets way too confusing, tell me and I'll quit it). Anyway, the italicized conversation without any quotation marks was meant to symbolize the reason for all of the things that happened in there, being most important element in that time frame. But don't worry; I'll put that in only the beginnings of big action sequences. It's going to be my trademark thing, sort of like the black and white images at the beginning and end of NCIS (if you know what I'm talking about). This should really all be in a bunch of paragraphs, but I don't care. So yeah, there's the new chapter, a lot earlier than I thought it would be, but I felt like writing it, so I did. What to expect in the next chapter- a bunch of tactical technobable in Naval warfare- Admiral Redhead strikes back. I'm not sure about what I'm going to do in it, but I'll put this to a vote for three weeks- either Aika dies but the task force is defeated and Valua lives, or Aika lives, but Valua is effectively smashed, desecrating most of the population. YOU get to decide! By the way, this was posted on June 23rd (Meaning that the next update will be on July 9th.) Your choice on the outcome. Wow, that was a long author's note.