Nar Shaddaa - Rebel Alliance Headquarters

[Queen Namari]

The walk home back to the prefab housing district was a long and troubling one. It was not an easy walk, and even as dawn began to break from behind the lurking planetary bulk of Nal Hutta, the queen’s mind was troubled. It was a long walk, and even though her shoes were comfortable, her feet were still aching as she silently slid open the door to her quarters to find an Imperial Knight frowning down at her with all the grace and kindness of a Bantha. 

 

“The Empress calls for you.” 

 

Queen Namari of the decimated world of Naboo choked back a gasp and quickly ran to her room for more appropriate clothing. 

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A dark uniform of the Naboo officer’s corps was what she chose. The high riding boots that matched the bloused dark pants with a dark leather belt with matching thinner strap that looped over her shoulder. The traditional S5 blaster pistol was tucked securely into the flap holster on her right side. She tucked her hair into a bun and hid it with a matching dark military cap. The familiar bright green ensign chevron of the Naboo royal arms being the only identifying mark over her left breast. Made of chromium around a corusca gem, it was one of the few military pieces of jewelry left in the treasury. 

 

When she emerged from the refresher she was met by the Imperial Knight and the surviving members of the Naboo officers corps, who wore matching uniforms of dark fabric. Naboo, and what was left of her military, as cerimonial as they were, would now officially join the Rebel Alliance. Marching to war beside the Imperial Stormtroopers of the Remnant, the Royals of Outremer, Hapan Guard, and the Galactic Alliance. 

 

_______________________

 

Arriving in the hangar, the military attache of Naboo made their way past the cluster of Jedi and Imperial Knights. They were a dark mass of officers, but the queen led them towards the citadel. She turned her head to see Frond, giving him a quick salute and handing one of her officers the badge on her chest. The dark skinned lieutenant ran over to where Frond was and handed the tree the Corusca gem. Before running back to his queen. 

 

It was time for war. And Naboo would do her part.

[Queen Namari]

“Ladies and gentlemen of the provisional government.” The young queen curtsied to the gathering of generals and fellow monarchs. “I come from a world that has little power. A world that believed in the silken words of the Galactic Alliance. We believed in the security of the senate. We believed in the righteousness of a democracy. Selecting our heads of state to be little more than pawns to the bureaucracy. Figureheads in white, whose skirts hid the failings of great men. We did not see what a mistake it was to trust the Galactic Alliance until it was far too late. Now I am the queen of a doomed planet, whose people lie under the heavy yoke of Sith thralldom.

 

“While the Remnant screamed about Sith Incursions to the far Galactic East, the Galactic Alliance and its senate twiddled their thumbs. Arguing about taxation and trade disputes while men fought and died on their very doorstep. Now I will not disparage the brave men and women of the Military. I would never doubt their commitment, but they were shackled by foolish policy that withheld their hand from intervention. They were forced to watch while a great power rose to eclipse them that they could do nothing to stop. Because they were held back by the democratic senate. We may discuss rule of law and the punishment of specific crimes all we like. But if we do not fix the problem at its source we will just see the problem come around again. 

 

“I agree with the empress of the Imperial Remnant and I think all of you here when I say, never again should we allow ourselves and the Alliance to fall to this weakness. What else is a galactic government for if not to protect its citizens from threats external or internal. Naboo stands with the formation of a strong central government who is not bound by having every single thing its military does be voted upon by ten thousand competing interests. Interests I must point out that did not believe it within the power of the GA to stop slavery in the outer rim. Interests that put the crying of millions of innocents out of mind so that they could stay in their ivory towers. 

 

Her smile became a grim and hard jawed look of determination. Something that clashed with her soft and kind face. 

 

“For the safety of the people. We must not let a democracy result from this war. We cannot repeat the mistakes of our past. Because if we do, we have ignored the lesson bought with the blood of trillions.”

[Queen Namari]

“True, a Jedi knight and her apprentice saved me at Naboo. Whatever Hubris caused their almost c complete destruction at Coruscant has surely played itself out. Seven hells, the new Jedi Council have shown themselves most eager to enter the thick of it beside Imperial soldiers. They are not fools, they will not plunge the galaxy into another war just because they disagree ideologically with a head of state being a monarch.” 

 

She let her young eyes scan the grim looking faces. 

 

“They would not fight a war they would be certain to loose. We give them reassurance that their planets, their people will be able to self rule under a galactic government and they are certain to not reject it. If anything this would allow them to flourish like they have never been able to before. I do not see them rejecting the proposals laid out here. But then I am young and have not seen the true nature of the Jedi order. They have learned from their errors. Or at least I hope they have.” 

 

[Queen Namari]

The violence in their drumbeat hammered against her lungs. The warriors of iron danced before their fires in a ritual almost as old as humanity itself. The age of shamans, axes, and the ships that sailed the single sea. The age of magic, bones, and a single tree whose roots wrapped the galaxy. Faeries, prophecy and the Bersærkergang. 
 

She shuddered to watch it. A mix of fascination and gleeful dread. These were the same Mandalorians that had presaged the fall of Coruscant and had drawn a line of blood and ash across the core worlds. But still the drum beat hammered relentlessly on her eardrums, reverberating in every breath she took. Even from her hidden vantage meters away from the mass of celebrating Mandalorians. 

 

They danced the dance of death. A wild and loving thing. A warrior culture that held nothing so close but that bitter blood and screaming fate. She wished that she could join them and from her vantage she pulled back her hair into a tight braid, tied her shawl close about her shoulders, and made her way down towards the chanting. 

[Queen Namari]

The thud of the drums reverberated in her lungs, echoed in its ferocity by the stamping of the dancing mandalorians. There was evil here. She could feel it in the pits of her stomach, growing with every hammering of the war drums. They worshiped death, they worshiped war, they worshiped destruction. She could see it echoed in the flames. The yellow and orange flames whipped into dancing figures that grew and reduced in a cycle that matched the drums. The embers at the base of the fires glowing like red blood as the figures danced in reckless destruction above them. 

 

Naboo looked like that fire didn’t it? 

 

It was like nothing she had ever experienced. It was haunting in a way. But these men and women danced like the fire itself, blood covering their bodies, reflecting off war paint and tattoos whose meanings the Queen could only guess at. It felt like she stood entranced for hours, watching the flames dance in endless fantasy until she saw the Mandalore. 

 

If there had been a Mandalore in history as fierce and as terrible Anne did not know of them. There had been great names in the annals of a thousand wars. Crusades for gods long dead. Foolish men that fought as mercenaries for men better than themselves. Or for foolish code of honour. But study could not show the reality of the being herself. For this being was violence embodied, a face that carried the scars of a decade of war and the blood of trillions of deaths. The Queen’s breath faltered and the feeling in her stomach became a gnawing hole of dread. 

 

A hand and arm, wet with blood, encircled her thin waist, pressing her close and a cup into her hands. 

 

Perhaps she should have hesitated. That would have been what every queen of the Naboo from eons gone by would have wanted her to do. But Naboo. Its granite halls, great parks, and blissful life were dead. Snuffed from the face of the galaxy at the tip of a tungsten spear and the lightsabers of the Sith Lords. 

 

So when the choice was presented to her she did not hesitate. She did not doubt. She seized the cup and drank it to its last drop. Blood dripping down her chin to splash across the chest of her thin white dress. 

 

In the fire rose a great figure. A god in his glory, purifying the galaxy in a ritual fire. 

The fear in her stomach became a boiling fire of hate, and her voice joined with the Mandalore in the demonic cry of the jai'galaar.

[Queen Namari]

All around the circle bloody hands raised to the starstruck heavens, howls of delight echoing from frothed lips as the faint glimmers of hyperspace materialized into the hulking behemoths of the Sith Advanced fleet. The drums played a final crescendo of beats, falling to a slow durge as the dancing slowed to a stumbling end. 

 

Namari relaxed her grip around the mandalore’s waist, breaking away covered in a mixture of blood, sweat, and pitch black ash. The queen had never been drunk before, and this experience was completely new. But she did know that they had danced arm in arm for what could have been hours. Long enough and hard enough that her thin leather shoes had worn through, and the soles of her feet were slick with blood. She would have likely been completely overcome from exhaustion and have collapsed right there on the spot if she had not looked skyward. 

 

The sight of those ships would have overwhelmed her with fear a month ago. It would have brought in mind the burning of her homeland. The bubbling flesh, and all of the faces of those friends she had lost forever. 

 

But for some inexplicable reason she was not afraid. Instead a flicker of anger passed through her. 

 

The Sith had come to their doom.