fighting_mad | [oom] Eiattu

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[oom] Eiattu - Palace

Plourr was in the middle of an informal audience with the governor of one of the planet's largest provinces when the aide interrupted and murmured in her ear that something had happened. She told him to define 'something,' and he had said the magic word: the Priamsta. She excused herself from the audience and left her office (something the palace was still atwitter over; princesses didn't have offices), and that was when she'd been told that Nental, one of Eiattu's larger cities, was in the process of being attacked by a group thought to be led by the rebelling nobles.

They were smart; going after the governmental buildings, the royally-operated or loyalist-run businesses rather than the ordinary people. Wouldn't do to alienate the people they were trying to gain control over, after all.

"I want Zee Squadron moving at all possible speed to Nental for air support. Who's in charge of the city's Guard? I need him on the comm ten minutes ago," Plourr snaps, cape and outer tunic lying crumpled on a table, sleeves rolled up to her elbows. It's still chaotic in the impromptou war room but less so than when she'd first entered and started setting things to rights.

She talks over the general buzz of voices, moving quickly from terminal to terminal and person to person, answering questions without hesitation and often in the middle of other sentences. "Someone tie in to the--yes, do that--to the newsfeeds; see what they're reporting, if we're not getting through on the official channels."

She bends over a terminal alongside a low level tech, named Zhaleian if she's remembering correctly at all, and he brings up a holo of a local reporter, standing on what looks to be a building roof. The dull whine-whump of heavy blaster and cannon bolts can be heard, and occasionally flash in the distance over the female reporter's head. Plourr watches and listens, her face tight and well under control, but furious.

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"Shit," says Plourr, straightening up abruptly as she hears the explosion, and she doesn't care who hears the Earthian curse. "Shit shit shit." Back into the comm unit: "No, not you, General; yes, a regiment will have to do. How soon can you get them there? ... Where are they coming from? -- Good." The whole time she's talking, she's trying to inch away from the comm unit to get a better look at the holos, which most people in the crowded room are staring at now. "Good. Do that. Come up with a plan of attack and call back in fifteen minutes. Out."

She whirls to Rial's side. "What's happening?"

"Too much," Rial says, pushing a stray bit of hair behind his ear, "but it looks like they've gone after the Governor. There's still nothing on the official channels."

There's another, smaller explosion, and one projector fuzzes out. A tech, young-looking and obviously stressed, glances up from his terminal. "We're losing the signal-"

"Shitshitshitshit," she says into her hand, frozen in indecision a moment, and then another tech saves her.

"Could we route it through the university? They've got a strong carrier," says the woman, and whether or not the plan will actually work, Plourr shakes herself.

"Get me the general back on the line," she says grimly, and then she's lost in a sea of planning; of strategy and assaults and troop movements and trying to (and mostly succeeding) keep track of what exactly the general and his staff are proposing. It's hard, without any infantry training. She keeps an eye on the holos and she trusts Rial to handle what's going on, for the moment.

The do route it through the university, in the end, and the holo stops fuzzing out. But that doesn't change the end result - the city is under attack, and it's all they can do just to keep it together. He's not quite as efficient as Plourr, but he barks orders and listens to what is going on, watches the maps and offers advice where he thinks it might be necessary.

Even if in his head he's watching everything he knows start to weaken.

But there's no time for that kind of thought as he reassures the captain of the Guard that reinforcements are coming, hands the earpiece to Plourr and stares at the map, at the streets marked in black.

Plourr has one in each ear and she takes a seat; she's not entirely sure how she's keeping the conversations separate as efficiently as she is.

"They're on the way, Captain, with an ETA of ten standard minutes. So now would be the optimal time to--

"Yes, General, that's the plan. Do that. --

"to attack now that you're in position. ... That was not a request, Captain; that was an order. Call and lead the assault, and avoid civilian damage as much as physically possible, or I will bust you to buck private and promote your second-in-command so fast your vaping head will spin. Understood? ... Good. Out. --

"General, we have a plan?" A long pause. "Good. Out."

Both comm units click off and Plourr is out of her chair quickly, moving to watch one local station's feed, which has given up on its hysterical reporter and is trained on the street below. As luck and narrative coincidence would have it, they're looking down on the main boulevard, where the counterattack should be starting right about -- now.

Hopefully, Captain Herjee is not the incompetent fool militarily that he came across as over the comm.

An explosion takes out the lead landspeeder on Seventeenth. In the smoke and chaos that follows, the air looks like it's thicker with blaster bolts than it is with oxygen.

Plourr stands tall and watches, silent, as her fingers dig into her palm. She can't stand being here, watching this, instead of leading the charge herself.

Rial watches, as do most of the people in the room. The comms are still crackling with bits of disjointed messages, and there's the tinny whine of blaster fire mixed through the static. He watches, eyes quiet and hard and far away as the second landspeeder crashes into a wall, flames licking around the nose. Armored soldiers are pouring into the streets, ducking behind rubble, taking cover behind the downed 'speeders.

Rial watches (his) streets fill with the smoke, watches debris fall from (his) buildings, watches (his) soldiers fall as blaster bolts flash through the air.

Rial watches, because he cannot look away.

The comm goes off and Hilunda answers it, fumbling for it in the sudden silence in the room. Silence aside from the holo.

He has to say her name four times before Plourr realizes someone is talking to her. "Princess Isplourrdacartha?" he says again, louder this time, and she tears her eyes away from the holo and she goes.

It's the commander of the squadron on the comm and then it's Herjee who is better at his job than she'd expected, and she and the aide sitting across from her are communicating between them, coordinating an air attack. Maybe it's something that someone would traditionally do for her, but Plourr has never been about tradition and she needs to do something, and this is quicker than routing everything through an aide for decisions, anyway. And this, she knows. The speed of those Headhunters, their armaments, how precisely they can fire. She knows this and she works with it.

Rial stays watching the projector, only glancing up when he feels a light tug on his elbow. It's the young tech who told him about losing the signal. Rial takes the earpiece from him, but it's no good, going dead before he can distinguish more then a couple words.

"Kriff," Rial says again, and turns back to the holo as another explosion rocks the street. A building is swaying dangerously, showering debris down on the heads of the soldiers and filling the air with dust.

It's going to come down, Rial realizes, even as the holo fuzzes out before stabilizing once more. The building's going to come down, and when it does, it's going to block Sixteenth off completely. Meaning no reinforcements from there would be able to make it through on foot. Meaning that the opposing forces would have one less place to take cover.

"Plourr," he says, reaching out for her, but the building is already starting to crumble.

Plourr spins just in time to see the building come down, sending an avalanche of stone and mortar and glass down on those below and the other buildings around. A tsunami of dust and debris several stories high sweeps through the street, obscuring the cam's lens entirely.

There must have been civilians taking shelter in that building.

The princess doesn't let herself look away for a long, long moment.

But when she does, she is utterly cool. "Herjee?" she asks, and there is a long moment, but she gets a stunned, choking response. "Good. Back off, do you hear me? Back off. Get as many of your people as you can and get back down Seventeeth. Draw them with you. --

"Commander, it's going to be impossible to tell friend from foe at the intersection of Sixteenth and Seventeenth Boulevards. Do not engage there. From what we're hearing, there should be--" She checks the holomap again. "There should be some repulsortrucks on the southwest edge of the city, waiting to take the soldiers back to wherever the hell they came from. Burn them down, but leave at least one or two still able to fly, understood?"

And she goes on calmly.

Rial isn't as good as Plourr, it takes him a long minutes before he can look away from the wreckage in the streets. When he finally does shake out of it, he sees that Plourr seems to have the military aspect under control.

He moves to the map and stares at it, frowning. A female tech appears at his side and bobs a very quick half-bow. "Count Pernon, there's a call-"

Rial takes the earpiece and sits down, answering it with a brisk "Pernon." The voice on the other end sounds like someone trying desperately not to panic. It's the director of Nental's emergency response forces, stumbling over his words; they're going to need medical assistance, search and rescue teams, firefighters; and so Rial listens and does his best to calm the man down.

But the sight of the downed building outlined in smoke and flickering fires, the feeling of tension in the air all around them, just make it harder to concentrate.

The reinforcements arrive. The two groups clash harder this time; the rebels are outnumbered several hundred to one. They flee.

They flee, and they arrive at the edge of the city to find that most of their transports have been destroyed, and those who don't make it onto the two that escape are slaughtered. One of the two transports is shot down. The other manages to get away; it escapes when they were supposed to follow it, to use it find the Priamsta's base of operations, and Plourr isn't happy about that.

Though to be fair, she isn't happy about any of this.

Hours pass.

The fighting is over, but the aftermath isn't; husband and wife stay and direct the clean up, the mop up, the intelligence; Plourr tries, to no avail, to track that solitary transport. They give an address, broadcast across the planet, condemning the nobles and the use of force and promising governmental aid to Nental. They begin making plans to go there.

And eventually, they exhaust the crop of aides and advisors and techs, and the new group works with them a little while before it revolts; before they tell the princess and the count that they need to rest, that the aides can handle what comes and comm if Eiattu's rulers are needed.

They go, surrounded by a cadre of guards.

Plourr's hands starts shaking when they're nearly to their rooms, but she doesn't say a word.

Neither does Rial.

It's been a long time, it's been long and stressful and hard and somewhere deep down, Rial knows that as the husband he's probably supposed to say or do something comforting. Tell her it's alright, (it isn't), tell her it'll be alright (it won't), hold those shaking hands until she's strong again.

But even though he knows he should, he doesn't. Just walks along, hands by his side, head up and eyes quiet. On the outside, he looks calm, unruffled, like everything is fine.

On the inside, he wants to find some quiet little spot and hide until this is over and done with.

It's for the best. She'd tell him to shut up if he said anything comforting right now. She keeps her head up, too, for the benefit of the guards. Of those they pass in the corridors.

So they walk silently, through hallways, through a secret passage or two, until they reach the quarters. Two guards go in first in what has become a ritual; Rial and Plourr wait with two more outside until the 'all clear' comes, and they go through the door.

Plourr murmurs her thanks to the guards, as she usually does, and heads straight for their bedroom.

Rial nods his thanks, pulling his hair out of the ponytail and walks over to the bedroom, slipping through the door and pulling it shut behind him.

And then he exhales, a long sigh, and just leans back against the door, not moving from where he is.

Eyes shut, "You okay?"

Plourr doesn't appear to have heard him. Immediately upon entering, she had kicked off her shoes -- thunk, thunk -- and moved to the mirror, where she is leaning her elbows on the bureau and removing her earrings.

At least, she tries to remove her earrings. Her fingers are cold and won't hold still, much less obey. She gives up after a moment with a low, helpless curse, and she rests her head in her hands, running shaking fingers through her hair.

Oh, damn.

Rial remains where he is for a moment, then opens his eyes and moves over to the bureau, standing behind her.

"Plourr."

They could play this game. She could say 'what' and he could say whatever it is that he wants to say, and they could go on like that.

Or Plourr could just cut to the chase and turn to him and wrap her arms around his neck, since that's going to be the end result of that whole emotionally stunted conversation.

She goes with the second option.

"Kriffing hands won't hold still," she murmurs into his shoulder, but it's an attempt at normalcy that is half-hearted at best.

"Yeah, I figured."

Rial wraps his arms around her, holding tightly. "Are you going to be okay?"

"A lot of people died today," she says, and her voice has gone contemplative and quiet, still steady. "Under my orders."

"Yeah. They did." He stares at the mirror behind her, frowning slightly. "But you did the right thing, Plourr. You did the right things."

"How do you know it was right? How can it be right, when hundreds of families are missing husbands and wives and sisters and brothers and children?" Her hands shake a little harder; her mouth sets into an angry line against his shoulder and she wills them to still.

"I've never ordered anyone to their death before."

"It was right, because..." and then there, right there, that's the problem. He doesn't know what to say, because when she puts it that way - when he really thinks about what he's about to say - it doesn't work anymore.

So he holds her a little tighter and says "It was right," because that's just what he says.

"Right," she says, voice hollow, and she falls silent.

She could handle only the soldiers. They would still weigh heavily on her conscience, as they do now, but in the end, they were soldiers. They knew the risks when they joined up.

It's the civilians, at least seventy-five of them, the newsfeeds are reporting, who are getting to her.

Once, she had spoken to Wedge about loss.

"It's a painful truth, but sometimes the only way evil can be defeated is by the selfless, sacrificial efforts of good people," she had told him. "We can only hope that when our time comes, the cause is as noble, and the need as great."

Where was the nobility in a library collapsing around you? Where was the selflessness in being caught in the crossfire and gunned down as you hid in a marketplace? There is none. Their deaths are on her head.

Suddenly, she finds herself with a hell of a lot more sympathy for Wedge Antilles and the commanders she'd served under during the Rebellion.

Rial doesn't say anything, maybe can't. Just holds her like she's the only thing keeping up right now.

He's not used to this. He can fight, yes, he's fought before, but that was all just him. This killing, this attacking cities full of unarmed civilians, this is new.

He doesn't think he likes it one bit.

They're holding each other up, and her hands may be the ones cold and shaky, but it's hard to say which of them is leaning more on the other right now.

And neither of them says a word for a while, and Plourr would never allow such weakness with anyone else around, but she sees Nental burning when she closes her eyes.

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