{{ absolved - chapter 03
-- FOUNTAIN PALACE -- PERIMETER / HAPES
A frustrated murmur passed through the Hapan's lips as he pulled the blaster back, he and his companions ducking down behind the stone wall they were positioned at.
"Why do we need four of us up here for this?!" One of them cried out. "If you were a better damn shot, we'd only need one!"
"You'll know why we need four of us in about ten seconds," the shooter placed the oversized blaster in a holster across his back and pulled a black mask over his face. "Put your masks on. Don't let them see your face."
Hapan Palace guards stormed around the wall and through the trees after the four, all of which had put their nondescript masks down and were now dashing through the forest away from the Palace.
Trexler Pirr, who was purposely going slow, had no problem turning around every now and then and knocking out a few of the women who chased them. He cackled under his mask, his hot breath hitting the fabric of it and drifting back over his face.
Bringing up the front of the pack, dodging trees and low-hanging branches was lanky man, his arms out in front of him and batting at leaves and whatever else was in his way. He felt a hand on his shoulder as he ran, and turned to find his older brother, still slugging the huge blaster on his back and managing to move as fast as the rest of them. His wide blue eyes were calm through the holes in the mask, and his voice was steady as he spoke, both of them still moving.
"Get back to the ship, we'll stall them here so they don't follow you. Tell ‘Rahjah to start it up and we'll be there as soon as we can."
With a nod, the younger brother veered off of the path he was currently on, away from his companions and brother -- and away from the group of Palace soldiers that were currently hot on their trail, weapons raised and battle cries sounding. Surprisingly, none of them bothered to follow him; they seemed to be too busy with the others.
He could feel himself scowling under the black fabric of his mask, his arms pumping at his sides and his legs moving as fast as he could manage through the thick brush of the forest. He saw the two trees ahead that the ship was parked between and holding his hands out in front of him, he prepared to be stopped by the cold durasteel. Letting his palms slam across the invisible surface, he felt around for the keypad and put in the entry code by memory and by touch. He couldn't see the ship when it had its cloaking device on, but he had entered it so many times in the past that he knew exactly where everything on the outside was placed, even when it couldn't be seen.
"Harahjah! Start the ship! They'll be here soon." Aurelio Tahva's voice reached the cockpit before he did, and he burst in afterwards, breathless and peeling his mask off from over his head. His face was covered in a sheen of sweat, a drop sliding from the bridge of his nose, down off the end and falling to the metal floor. "This is the stupidest thing we've ever done, I swear. Our client is dead. She's been dead for a good while. Why are we still doing this job?"
"Because our client's loyalists have the payment she promised. She specified that if she died, we were the ones to be called to finish the job. Which makes it sound like she's tried many times before, with many different bounty hunters. to kill Her Majesty Tenel Ka. And we were the last resorts; dangerous, risk-takers, the big guns --"
"The ones who would get it done, yeah right." He sounded sarcastic, incredulous even.
"And did we get it done? Any shots fired?"
"One."
Harahjah finally looked at him, away from the console where she had been pressing buttons and checking gauges. "Did it connect?"
"Somewhere in her side." Aurelio's eyes were locked on the corner of the viewport, glazed over and absent.
Harahjah lowered her voice, knowing how much this bothered Aurelio. "Were you the one who pulled the trigger?"
The Tahva brothers were both Hapans, and while Aurelio had been a supporter of the Royal Family, his older brother Verdot had gone off with what was left of the Lorell Raiders. Once their parents died, Aurelio had nowhere to go except with his brother, to lead a life of crime. A life that was taken one step at a time, day by day, the fear of punishment and death always hanging overhead.
"I could never. Verdot did it." His eyes finally came back into focus as he twisted his head to look at her, collapsing in the co-pilot's seat. "I mean… to pull the trigger on your Queen? To pull it on--" He bit back his next question, deciding that spilling all of his secrets about this bounty to Harahjah wasn't a good idea at this point -- no matter how long he had known her and how much he trusted her. She was his closest companion in the group, the only other one who found everything about it all just as overwhelming.
She figured he didn't want to share, and she could see how uncomfortable he was with the whole situation so she dropped it at that point, spotting the others in the viewport ahead. "There they are."
His cerulean eyes narrowed at the masked figures approaching the ship. They were running at full speed, the three of them. Verdot, still with the blaster strapped across his back. Trexler, the other male, his hands balled into fists, red on his knuckles. And Alavia, a lithe female, tall and demanding. She had vibroblades in her hand -- they were covered in red as well.
Blood.
"Ta'a Chume's loyalists have our money." Alavia stormed into the ship first, her voice echoing up and down the metal hatchways and corridors.
"It's not ours until we kill Little Miss Hapan Half-arm." Trexler replied.
"These kriffing Hapans never stop trying to kill each other, do they?! Even after they're dead themselves!" Alavia ripped off her mask and quickly set herself to pulling her wild mane of dark hair back into a tight bun, still breathing heavily from their escape.
"Of course not. We're persistent," Verdot said. He dropped the blaster on one of the benches along the main chamber of the ship with a loud and resounding clang, then approached the cockpit, stopping behind the seats that Harahjah and Aurelio were occupying. "Let's go. If we didn't finish her this time, we'll finish her later. She's ours. And so is that money."
-- FOUNTAIN PALACE -- MEDICAL BAY / HAPES
"Admiral?"
Gadell Vessau tore his eyes from the Queen Mother for the first time since he had sat down, his gaze focusing on a young woman. She was clothed in the uniform of a soldier and had hard, gray eyes. Gadell sat up straight, snapping to attention, showing respect to her. Even though he was a superior, he never failed to give respect where it was due, even if it was to subordinates. "What is it?"
"A ship just landed." She paused, exhaling what sounded like a worried sigh. "It used the Queen's override code."
The override code had only been given to a select few people, by Tenel Ka herself. It was used only when people needed to land quickly and get something to the Queen Mother. Gadell had a feeling he knew exactly who was using the code.
"Thank you."
The soldier dared to steal a peek at Tenel Ka, her eyes quickly moving from the Queen Mother back to the Admiral. Her face twisted into hints of a wary expression while she bowed her head to the Queen Mother's unconscious body and the Admiral and then exited the chamber, Gadell watching after her as she left.
Glancing back to Tenel Ka after he lost sight of the soldier, his mind filled with a sudden sense of dread. Her subjects loved her, the Palace staff loved her. Her friends loved her, Jacen loved her, her family. He loved her.
What would happen if she died?
With a low grumble, he stood from the bedside stool he was still seated on, banishing that thought from his mind. His vision went blurry for a moment as the blood rushed to his head, and he heard his back crack, along with numerous other joints. He had been seated there for awhile and he had lost track of time. There were no windows in the medical bay, just endless walls of white. Spinning on his heel, away from the bed, Gadell stormed out of the chamber and begun his trek to the hangars. The corridor outside of the medical bay had been cleared, and anyone who had been hanging around had been herded into the main hall of the Palace. He could hear murmurs from the main hall as he paced towards it, pulling his gloves out of his jacket pocket and sliding them over his hands. Turning a corner, boots echoing in the empty hall, he spotted the archway into the main hall, soldiers blocking a group of people from moving any further into the Fountain Palace.
"Is the Queen Mother alright?"
"What happened to the Ereneda?"
"She didn't die, did she?"
"Admiral, could you give us an official statement?!"
"We told you already -- soon!" One of the female guards shouted back to the last question.
Gadell had no idea how long he had been seated by Tenel Ka's bed, but a quick glance to the large windows in the main hall showed him the moons were hanging overhead and the sky had grown fairly dark. And media from what seemed like every corner of the galaxy had arrived.
He inhaled deeply, preparing to pass the safety line of the soldiers, to dive into the crowd and sift his way through, towards the hangars. Gadell froze behind the soldier's crossed spears though, as he heard yelling over the excited rumblings of the crowd.
"Excuse me!" A man's voice.
"Pardon! Ow, hey!" A woman.
Jacen Solo emerged from the crowd, slamming into the point where the soldier's weapons met with one another. Zekk and Tahiri shifted out behind him.
"Let them through."
The guards moved their spears for the three Jedi, Gadell catching a frantic Jacen in his arms before he tried to push through.
"Stay calm," he whispered, over the growing roar of the crowd filling up the hall. "They're watching you."
He knew Jacen was worried, he could feel it -- and he could see it in the man's eyes. They were pleading with him, dry and wide. But Solo was on Hapes now and Gadell knew how dangerous it would be if he made his feelings too obvious to the people around them.
Jacen delivered an affirmative grunt, throwing a glance back to Tahiri and Zekk. They nodded to him and then all three calmly passed Gadell, pausing behind him to wait for him to escort them to the medical bay. They tried to appear as calm as possible, but Zekk had taken to biting the insides of his cheeks, Tahiri was nervously picking at the hem of her shirt and Jacen was almost racked with shudders as he waited.
"You'll be getting an official statement soon. Trust me. Everything is alright." The Admiral raised his hands and lowered them a few times before hissing instructions about keeping people at bay to the guards stationed at the entrance to the corridor.
Clasping his hands behind his back, he stepped around the three Jedi, tilting his head as a signal to follow him. He could hear them pacing behind him as he turned the corner, stopping abruptly. They halted just short of him, all four now out of sight of the crowd.
Gadell caught Jacen's shifting eyes.
"Go."
Jacen responded only by stumbling backwards and speeding off down the barren hall, boots clicking loudly on the stone and then smashing into the carpet with the change of the flooring, his cloak billowing out behind him. As he got further down the corridor, he started running even faster, arms pumping at his sides, a chest heaving at the sudden rush of air. His hands slammed on the door to the medical bay as he came to a sudden halt, slapping the panel and entering the threshold of white.
Zekk released a sigh from Gadell's left and Tahiri stretched her arms out in front of her on his right as the three of them quickly moved down the hall after Jacen, in silence.
"Nice to see you again," Gadell mumbled, peering between them.
Releasing a tired chuckle, Zekk reached back and patted the Admiral on the back. "I wish it could've been under better circumstances."
"Yeah," Tahiri added. "This isn't really what I had in mind for my next trip to Hapes."
Gadell threw his arms out to either side of him, pulling Zekk and Tahiri close to him as they walked. "Let's make the best of it then." He sniffled, blinked and inhaled, continuing. "She's going to be alright, I think, but she got hurt pretty bad."
Tahiri reached her arm around Gadell's back and grabbed a handful of his jacket to make sure her hand didn't slide anywhere. She was afraid to voice her next question, gulping as she finally worked up enough courage to ask it. "What... what happened?"
“She was shot with some sort of a pulse blast; jolted her whole system.”
“You don’t know who did it?” Zekk had his hands in his jacket pockets, his head turned to look over at Gadell. “I mean, did you catch anyone?”
“Unfortunately, no. Some of the guards chased the assailants back as far as they could into the woods, but they succeeded in taking most of the guards out, knocking them out cold and then escaping. The guards said there were four of them and they had put masks on. I’m assuming they left in whatever they came here in, cloaked and unnoticeable.” He shook his head. “I have a feeling I have a few long nights ahead of me. While I was sitting in the medical bay earlier, talking to Anhaje, I requested she gather all the security footage from today for me. So I’ll have a good time going through that. Hopefully I’ll be able to find something.”
Tahiri peered around Gadell to Zekk, her green eyes lighting up. “We can help! Right, Zekk?”
“Of course,” Zekk said. “I mean, Jacen is going to want to spend some time here, for obvious reasons. So we’ll have time to give you some assistance, if you want it.”
“Seriously? You two are on Hapes and you want to sit around watching security footage?”
“Well, you’re planning on opening an investigation too, right?” Zekk shrugged under Gadell’s arm.
“Yes, as soon as possible.”
“How much would it hurt to have two Jedi helping you out?” Tahiri inquired, shooting a sly grin to the Admiral.
“I don’t think it would hurt at all,” Gadell responded, with his first genuine grin that day, albeit a slightly weak one. They were approaching the medical bay and he clutched his fingers around Zekk and Tahiri’s shoulders, forcing them to come to a halt.
“Whoa, what?” Zekk flinched at the split second of pain as he was yanked back, his eyes instantly shifting to Gadell.
“We should… we should give him a few minutes.”
“Oh… yeah.”
Tahiri stepped away from the boys, moving to the edge of the medical bay doors that Jacen had left open. The corridors were empty, and growing darker with the approaching night, but the white light from the medical bay spilled into the hall, flooding it with a bright glow. She placed her hand on the edge and tilted her head around the corner to see inside. Everything was a clean shade of white, her eyes instantly moving to the two things that weren’t.
Her friends.
Her brow furrowed instantly at the sight of the Queen Mother, and she scowled even more at Jacen. He looked more miserable and broken up than she had ever witnessed on his part, his elbows on the edge of the bed and his forehead in his hands. She could hear his faint murmurs as he talked to himself, or Tenel Ka – Tahiri couldn’t tell which. The panel to shut the door was beside her face and she took a moment to press the close switch, letting the door silently slide shut and moving away from it.
She did that mostly for their privacy, but a little bit for herself too -- seeing them like that made a part of her want to break down as well.
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