Post by Bobbi on Sept 27, 2018 11:25:03 GMT -5
The day after Sadhric held his meeting in the concourse of The Aud, letting Niko have his claim to the restoration of honor between himself and Dorara, and Ja’eeth had been publicly corrected for insulting the Prince of Hapes, Ja’eeth was taking some time away from the menial tasks she had put herself to within The Aud. The sun was settled at mid-height, counting the day toward its noon-time hour, the streets lit fully by the crisp clear sky overhead. Today there was no breeze, and the heat was climbing. The dust of a dry world waiting for rain to come.
The city, for as dry as it was just then, was active. There were no truly empty streets that she had run into, her feet traveling at a quick clip across the dirt streets, leaving imprints of the boots she wore as each step hit the ground. She ran from no one, and ran to nowhere. There was no real path to how she traveled, the turns taken at random. It was just the motion she needed.
It had started as a walk, and turned into a light jog, and then a full out sprint. Thoughts of the past few days were the driving force, pushing her to try to outrun herself. What she’d seen in Kel’dan’s office, what Sadhric had said, her interactions with Prince Nikolaus, the bombing, Kel’dan. The thoughts spun themselves inward within her mind as she ran, and then fanned out and refocused as small clouds of dust rose around her boots and then settled behind her.
There was no true shelter from the sun at this time of day, nearly every street was stuck in the unforgiving light. She found that to be a comfort. It was warming through and through, causing her to easily break a sweat. It did have to end eventually. She did get winded.
Known neighborhoods had gone by, roads had been crossed, houses she knew passed.
When she finally did slow down to stop it was near a larger building several blocks away from the Aud. This was one of the few buildings that cast a true shadow in the mid-day sun. There she paused, slowing to a stop and letting her breath catch up to her.
This is what I’d be doing
Within the shadow of the building, she shut her eyes and let her mind see the lines that had overlapped Kel’dan’s office. Sadhric had said it was history, so many many years of it. Likely too many to count! He had so much to go through, so much to explore.
This is what I’d be doing
He couldn’t do it. This new war they were fighting was in his way. It was a war of change, a different change than a physical fight would bring. This was a war of fundamental change, a challenge to how they had been living for so very long now.
Sadhric had asked if she thought they could do it. She told him she had hope that they could.
But what about Tou Nix and his ilk? The thought was a seed of doubt that was sprouting to take root. How many more like him were out there in the city? How many more were beyond Keldabe’s limits?
Her breath barely caught, she was off again, her boots pounding her random way through the city streets.
Later that day.
Ja’dan was with Kel’dan, leaving Ja’eeth’s modest home empty and quiet. In some ways it was welcome, and in other ways -- sitting down for her evening meal, a pre-cooked and warmed up meal for one, Ja’eeth’s head was still full of thoughts. There was not much that was keeping this reform in balance. It would not take much for it to falter and fail.
Sadhric had nailed it down when he had said he knew this wasn’t her kind of fight. It was a lot easier to think of ways to contribute to a physical fight. It was easier, in many ways, to fight a battle like a conventional war. This -- seemed impossible.
Outside, lurking in the long shadows of a short day her little home was being watched.
“You sure, Gahr? She’s in there?”
“Yeah, been watching it all day. She came home a while ago and hasn’t left since.”
“Her boy?”
“Out, likely with his father. I haven’t seen him.”
“Well, at least we’ll get one of them.”
“Right.”
Within the small home, Ja’eeth was just cleaning up after her meal. There was no chime to the door when it opened, the lock forced from the outside, jacked open with a creek and the whine of protesting hydraulics. It simply was not meant to work that way, and cried with the force of being pushed back against its will.
That noise was enough to draw her attention from elsewhere in the house. Blaster drawn, Ja’eeth turned toward that noise and caught the shadow of movement just beyond the doorway to her small food prep room. Slowly she moved forward, ready to fire.
By the time it was over two male Mando’ade lay dead in the doorway of her kitchen, their lives claimed by one quick shot each from her blaster. One more lay dead, claimed by a close range shot that had been aimed upward through his skull.
Ja’eeth lay with her back pressed against the wall by the doorway, her right hand pushing down against a puncture wound to her side, the bloodied blade laying several feet away from her right boot near the middle of the floor. Her left hand was useless, swelling even now and still she fumbled for her comm unit. Her mouth barely worked, the joints there feeling just as swollen and clumsy as her left hand, her right eye seeing the mess through a squint as it grew faint and more fuzzy in focus. Her left saw nothing.
Norres. She put her last ounce of strength into calling the Peacekeepers, but could only mutter “Help.” In basic once the line was picked up before that fuzziness turned into an all consuming blanket of darkness. Her blood flowed freely from the hole that had been ripped into her as her right arm went slack, her breathing thready, uneven and shallow as the house around her faded from awareness.
