Log:Two Sons of Alderaan
Two Sons of Alderaan
OOC Date: March 4, 2025
Location: Hapes Prime
Participants: Ban Iskender, Ben Solo, Aryn Cortess as Assassin
It had been less than a day since the assassination attempt on the Hapan Queen. The Consortium capital of Ta's Chume'Dan was both in mourning for the death of the Queen's heir, and in an elevated state of defensiveness to ward against further efforts to strike at the royal line. Civilian air traffic was rerouted to other ports, lanes of approach to the locked down Fountain Palace were heavily monitored, and the twilight guard on the royal grounds had been doubled in the past solar cycle.
The Empress was not pleased. One of her acolytes had failed, and the perception that mere Hapans could kill one of them would make the Sith look weak if such word ever became public. Thus, despite the heightened security and despite the greater danger, another strike had been ordered. A Calamari transport had been re-routed from the capital to a berth in another city, forcing its pilot to undertake a lengthy journey to Ta's Chume'Dan on foot. The bearded gentleman in black and grey walked with a steady, solemn gait that- when the minds around him were turned elsewhere- would periodically blink forward crossing dozens of meters between dignified steps. It looked like a video feed had glitched in real time.
Even aided by a stride that crossed crossed kilometers, instead of landing at the capital in early morning, the day had grown long and the largest sun in the Hapan sky had set by the time Darth Durandus entered the capital city. He was stopped and challenged often in his deliberate, brazen approach, but never longer than was needed for a trick of the mind to impose his will on whomever sought to know his business. The matter was urgent, and crucial for the survival of the Hapans, he said; and through the Force, they believed him.
Full darkness never touched the Consortium's throneworld, but with only minor suns and luminous moons remaining in the sky, the present hour was as near to darkness as Hapes Prime ever saw.
Among the populace but not in view, a master assassin of Alderaanian origins navigates the populace. Her route brings her closer to the palace, unseen and undetected, using a stealth field generator that helped bend the light around her, and keep her from immediate view.
It's a dangerous pursuit, to hunt the Sith. To confront the Dark Side; on more levels than one the risk is taken, when one used to be Kylo Ren. Is it more or less deadly when one's aim is not to kill, not to remove each Dark Side adherent from the Galaxy... but to shift the cycle? To tip the war, and the wars to come, in a manner that does not echo through the Force as a sour, ragged note; as a festering, infected wound.
As soon as Ben Solo spoke to the patrolling guards, convinced them of the interloper, made them believe they had dealt with her, warned them more would be coming... the Ronin felt it in his heart to be true. At first it was a calculated analysis-- if anyone would know how angry the operation would make Zapal's superiors, how harshly that spike of fear and subtler doubt would demand action, it's Ben Solo.
They -have- to strike once more, and the songs within the Force only affirm that sense; that belief; that certitude. So the Ronin perches now atop the Hapan palace, above even the waterfall and its luxurious balcony overlook, sensing as much as observing the various routes in and out of the compound. He's not tied into the minds of each inhabitant, per se, but the currents of the Force as they flow around him, through him, coursing through Hapes itself; the separation between them an illusion.
|| "Dark have been your dreams of late, Ban Iskender." || The murmur comes from the back of Ban's mind, and does not address him by the nomenclature of his fearful title. It is, after all, the man that Ben wishes to reach; Darth Durandus will have little interest. || "And dark the veil pulled over the scar of Alderaan, an icon to everything she died to avert..." || The planet. His mother.
Who is in Ban's head? It's likely hard to immediately discern, as Solo remains cloaked in the Force, and the immediate attempts to glimpse him yield a grey-cloaked figure speckled in starlight... and shadow. || "What do you hope to accomplish here? Spreading that pain, rather than bearing it..." ||
Ban Iskender felt a low, humorless chuckle stir in his chest, and a cold smile bend his lips as that voice spoke to his mind. There were many among the Jedi, Ban imagined, that would feel anger toward him. Some that might even seek to antagonize or confront him. But only one he could imagine would condescend to him on the subject of his home; of *her* memory.
The solemn steps came to a stop. He didn't deign to turn and face that star-dappled figure in grey, instead reaching out through the Force to touch that shrouded mind directly, with a powerful voice of his own. ||"I shall accomplish here what you failed to do.. what *she* failed to do. What I have done before and shall do again: I shall prevent the extinction of a people."|| His mind was cold and serene; controlled and bereft of rage. A slow breath was drawn in through flared nostrils, and the gentleman in black and grey spoke aloud, "Face me. Or have you come so far only to hide?"
Up the cliff face and into the palace vicinity itself, the assassin displays finesse. Her craft is a honed one, dedicated and devoted to one single target. The assassin had long ago accepted that her fate began and end in this craft, so it's in the performance of her duties that she feels most alive.
When her booted feet plant upon the surface, it's only sound was a soft huff. She proceeded forward, moving beyond the shield barrier and checkpoint. She'd need to get creative to discover where her target was hiding.
It /is/ at least a little bit humorous. Ben allows it to warm his heart, even in the heart of the gathering blizzard. For a moment, the voices among their conversation are not merely Ben and Ban-- but cut across time, an echo of all the times a nearly identical line has been spoken.
Perhaps it is not the sentiment of //every// Sith Lord... but it is a belief that has driven no shortage of them since the schism of the Jeedai, since the exile to Korriban. Time, and time again, the Dark Lords swear that -this time- the great work will be successful. -This time- the Galaxy will be subdued, tested, /strong/. Time and again, it all sunders in flame.
The final echo is the voice of Kylo Ren: || "I will /finish/ what you started..." ||. But Darth Vader did not start it; Darth Vader barely directed his own destiny, and only in the final moments of his life. || "I am not here to face you. I am here to defend those you would see murdered." || The admission comes without apprehension, on calm reverberations of defiant light.
|| "What would it gain? So sure of your course, as I was, when you rightly knew how wrong I had been." || It's not that that guilt no longer causes Solo pain; but there is more than one way to process such trauma. More than one direction to take its sometimes overwhelming sound. || "You die, I die-- the flat circle turns." || This, the Ronin finds very sad. || "What is left of a people who survive, but surrender everything that made their time remarkable? Worthwhile? Truly -strong-?" ||
The Ronin does not-- yet-- move from his observant perch, from his post as gargoyle and guardian. || "I have nothing left to prove-- you were right. You were always right. Until now." ||
||"Spare me the affectation of your agony over the loss of any single life,"|| Ban sniffed, proud and dismissive as ever. It's when Ben admits his own correctness in years prior that Ban first feels a touch of surprise. ||"You've grown in the years since last we met. Good. Alas that you still remain as short-sighted and arrogant as you ever were. Look about you, Kylo. Behold the art and splendor of the Hapans. Wars are won and lost, Queens live and die, they flourish and are betrayed. This is the Hapan way. So as it is the Galaxy's way. You seek to hold back the tide of inevitability in the delusion you are helping them, but you are not. So long as the planet and people survive and endure, their civilization will survive. It will right itself, given the time to live. The Empire will fall as all Empires do, but what threatens the very existence of the Hapans this night is not me. Oh no..."||
Ban smiled sadly, a truly mournful note in his thoughts. ||"It is you. Your presence here. How do you think the Empress will respond to a Jedi- or at least to *you* meddling? Presume you're correct and this queen survives, and the Hapans govern themselves in merry betrayal awhile longer. A Jedi would bring the Bloodmoons. A Jedi brings genocide."||
He resumed walking toward the palace. ||"I am still right, Kylo. As you say, the wheel of fate turns unrelenting, but your vision is so short you refuse to see the greater pattern. You die. I die. Individuals, irrelevant. It is the people who must survive the rise and fall ahead. And you will not save them as a bodyguard of one alien queen. You will not save them on any far flung battlefield swinging your sword at a tank. You will only ever do it by removing what threatens their very future, and that is not any passing conquest. It is the murderers of planets you ought be seeking, not the killers of queens."||
Moving further in, the Assassin's stealth device suffers a momentary malfunction, but her movement and progress stay silent. When she's able to reach a particular device she needs to disable, she stands at it and taps at the screen, inserting a small object to begin the hack and try and open it up. She's casual about it for now, focusing solely on the task and projecting enough confidence like she's supposed to be there.
|| "And what of when I am on your dark, new Alderaan? Of when I am on Coruscant? Of when I am before your Empress' throne? If the presence of a Jedi, especially -me-, prompts haphazard sacrifice, rampant genocide-- when will the Golden Age come? Time and again the Jedi have been 'extinct'. Time and again the Sith have been crushed. The Force does not deal in the ambitions and delusions of any individual." || Not Solo. Not Ban. Not the Empress.
Not of any Dark Lord or Jedi Master in history; despite time and again their own certainty of control, of shepherding something greater. || "The whole spectrum of the Force will remain to be tapped; more will forever rise; the war will always be unwinnable, seen from any long-term view. It is not the natural cycle you preserve-- but the will of the Dark Side's endless, futile, destructive deceit." || At least, barring a wound deep enough to kill it; to deafen the entire Galaxy, as some have theorized possible.
The stealth field below him glimmers, and Ben reaches out through the Force, for a moment gliding across the Assassin's well-guarded thoughts and professional intentions-- intentions of death. The Ronin drops smoothly from the rooftop to the rail of the balcony before, his eyes closing, his breath deep and even as a wave of his hand severs the power cell and buckle of that belt; shears the metal, and leaves the device falling away. Perhaps-- in an ideal world-- this will lead to an abort of the secondary feint... or the royal guard doing their own jobs.
|| "Point me at those truly responsible, and it will be done; but they are not here, you are. And you know how tenuous any outcome of those endless wars can be. How furtive and convenient your own hope to justify what you've compromised. What -I- once destroyed, thinking it a worthy sacrifice. We should be standing together."||
||"You've never seen Alderaan,"|| Ban returned pointedly. ||"There is no darkness nor light, there is simply The Force, and Alderaan is alive in vibrant and beautiful ways that would make your mother weep for joy. So long as there is life, there is true hope. It does not perish with a murdered Hapan, or a lost war. Your actions here prolong the suffering, do you not see that, Kylo? Let this war end cleanly, leave more of Hapes intact, all the better to grow back hale and healthy when the shadow inevitably passes. You strive to help, and you are only bringing more death, as you always have done."||
Ban had reached the checkpoint, gazed at each of the guards who sought to turn him back in turn, and overbore their minds through power of will. ||"I have told you once, and I shall tell thee again: it is the Bloodmoons which end planets and peoples. Oppression is cruel, but it can be cast off in time. Empires rise and fall, as they always have and always shall. So long as the worlds survive, so too does hope. Let this Queen of Hapes die. Touch her mind if you wish and see that she is no innocent, but as callous and cruel a monarch as any you ever knelt to. Let her die, and let the bloodshed here end with her. Or drag it out further and know that the blood which follows shall be added to that already on your hands. For I will kill her if I must to spare the death of the world that would follow, otherwise."||
There is a moment of pure fear when the stealth field generator is literally torn from her body. She just about topples over, foiling her attempt at cracking the door. By the time she's on her feet, the hatch opens and a guard is stepping through to investigate. Without a second's hesitation, the assassin slips a knife free and wrenches up through the Hapan's chin and into her head. If there were any sound, it was gargled and muffled by the fact the assassin covered the woman's mouth and pulled her into the room, shutting the hatch behind her. The console blinked when the lock was re-engaged.
A few moments later, the 'guard' was joining the rounds and leaving her post.
|| "Do you not see the contradiction in suggesting one should kneel before those that insist that if one fights-- for freedom, for hope, for love-- they invite only greater destruction? It is not peace you envision, but praying that appeasement outlasts oppression, and yields security. That the fear and rage that drives your Empire will burn itself out... before it turns upon that which you care about and consumes it. It is not a gamble I like." ||
In fact, it is a tragic one; an eternal cycle of trauma, insurgency, and suffering. Solo makes no efforts to argue the Jedi's role in that-- but there's a reason he confronts Iskender like he does, rather than illuminated by the glow of a lightsaber. A reason that has nothing to do with the chaos of such an outcome. || "Regardless... you are incorrect. Even if this were about the worthyness of a monarch, which is a fallacy you've already outlined, it is the doctrinal thought -you- prop up which would escalate the death in response to resistance. It is the report -you- could submit that would tell those who would be terrified and outraged by it what happened here. How much blood can you rationalize away with the mantra that this is how it -must- happen?" ||
A sniper posted on the balcony becomes Solo's immediate target, "There is an intruder in the palace; her target is the queen. One guard is dead already." Down the Palace's exterior Ben Solo hops, leaps, and freeclimbs with the aid of the Force, though he reaches the checkpoint moments after the assassin absconds with the new outfit-- even as the door slides closed once more. It's Ban's approach that the Ronin is forced to focus upon, however... as the Sith Lord draws ever closer.
"I am not here to fight you." Ben reiterates, softly; perhaps a touch sadly. All appearances to the contrary. "But you know this cannot be abided." Garbed in black and white leathers, hooded in the same accented dichotomy, Solo looks far more like his father now, like his Uncle than like Kylo Ren. It is not a name he has protested, until now-- and even now, it rings as a gentle but defiant affirmation of self; of change. Of hope. "I will never again be Kylo Ren; I was wrong. And this remains untenable, whoever holds the flight yoke."
Ban Iskender stops projecting his thoughts as Ben descends, bringing his steps to a stop facing the dark haired ronin. "Fear and rage.. always burn out. Appeasement.. does outlast oppression. And when the flight yoke is out of control, a wise pilot ejects, rather than fight to the point of a crash. Hear this, and know it for truth:" Ban states, firm and resolute. "I will do whatever is necessary to keep my people alive. So long as an executioner's blade hangs above their heads.. I will hold it back. All that I have done.. has been to prevent their extinction. And I will continue to do that. Darth Durandus is not a person I became, it is not an otherworldly thing I can contain guilt or pain within. I have always been both. Remove the sword. I am too closely watched, my loyalty too doubted." There was a wan smile.
"I struggle to call you Ben Solo, for you slew one, and would have disgusted the other.. But I say without rage and without spite: the Queen of Hapes will die tonight. If you mean to stop me, you will need draw your saber, sir."
Within the palace, alerts begin to sound, although the disguised assassin is not immediately spotted, lights within the royal wing and a floor above are switched on.
The 'Royal Guard' blended in just long enough to reach the stairwell for the royal quarters. She is trying to address the guards who vehemently suggest she return to the lower level, but this 'Royal Guard' is taking no hints. Both guards react appropriately, and decisively, but so does the master assassin.
The guard bearing the comm is capable of a few words before their hand is forced away. A death blow is avoided, but the Assassin makes opportunities of every motion, dancing back with the knife and disabling their hand. The comm device is dropped with a shriek that is promptly silenced with a second blow. This one cuts her throat with a single slash, spraying blood upon her companion who begins to fire despite. With her companion's blood in her eyes, the shots go awry, and the assassin closes the distance with decisive measure and intent, the knife flipped in hand and preparing for the next death blow.
"It was my mother's love that drew me back, at the end. Before I died."
The words are quiet; but intense. Projected, fervent. It's a clean stroke at what has always been a vulnerable point-- yet it dissipates to steam, met with calm certitude, with resolute retort. "If you think she would have approved of appeasement, of ripping freedom from other systems to defend Alderaan, of tearing entire planets from their orbits to conceal its loss... you are not only deluding yourself, but were your ears and eyes, your mind -truly- open, your vision clear... she would tell you as much herself."
No one is ever -really- gone. Particularly not a Jedi on the level of General Princess Leia Organa-Solo.
It's an accusation, and at least half truth that would have driven Kylo Ren into a rage, shaken Ben to his core a decade ago... it seems to temper him, to steel his resolve. The /look/ leveled on Ban's gaze is a familiar one; not angry, not even condescending or disdaining-- just disappointed. It's not a mannerism inherited from Han.
"The Empire will burn out far faster without the kindling of lives and industry to sacrifice upon its pyre." The Ronin points out simply, though one simple fact limits his plaintive, passionate debate. "I understand." Even if Ben does -not- agree with the equation's veracity.
"Should I survive you, I will do everything I can." But draw his lightsaber first, Ben Solo does not; this is not to say that the Force is not his ally, suffusing him and coursing within him. A ready guardian indeed.
"Leia Organa abandoned us," Ban states back. There is an old bitterness in the words, ironically not directed at Ben, for once. "When Alderaan died, and the last far-flung embers of our culture, of our civilization flickered and faded.. she left us all. She alone had the power to unite us, and she chose not to. She refused the crown, preferring to sit in the senate and argue with former imperials, bicker with Bothans; to waste her breath and years propping up a Republic that couldn't last a single generation, all while Alderaanians suffered in hiding and rootless exile. Hunted by men like you. When she passed that mantle to Aryn, it took us *years* of blood and pain to give our broken people a home, again. And we did."
Green eyes narrow on the son of Solo and Organa. "We did what she could not. We saved Alderaan. And it was not weakness.. nor was it delusion which moved us to appease this new monster. It was not arrogance or anger that moves me to hold back that executioner's stroke. It is love." His eyes shifted up from Ben to fix on the palace at Solos back, as light flared on, and the sound of stern feminine voices mixed with the clatter of running feet. "There is nothing I will not do for that."
The Assassin landed a powerful hit against their chest, releasing the poison into their bloodstream. But being at close range, the blaster went off twice and it was enough to send the assassin back down the stairs in failure before collapsing to the ground, defeated!
Ben smiles, subtly, softly. It's somewhere between the rogueish glint of Han... and the knowing satisfaction of Leia. A most palpable hit.
"She understood that what mattered was the heart of Alderaan, and the fire of resistance. Not its terraformed, hollow facade, cast within the grip of the same shadow that destroyed it. That the weakness and failings of old institutions and the lingering chaos of brutal wars do not negate the cause. Fickle, avaricious sentients and the idiocy of oligarchs and militants will vanish no faster than the Light Side can devour the Dark, or be snuffed out by it. The wrong institutions were resurrected; but it was not according to -her- charts." In fact, the organization ostracized Leia herself, unwilling to hear her speak of its teetering fall, of its misaligned foundations.
"It is all too easy to cling to the past, to the image and idyll of what once was; however much of it is truth. To cling, to claw so hard that the thing you love bleeds, indeed. To drag what you long for, kicking and screaming, into a future where it scarcely resembles what was lost; no matter how beautiful the replica. What have you saved, Ban Iskender? A theme park of loss too late to avert? You -know- what must be done, and what worth is that if everyone -but- your own pay the toll to see it done? What is left... is no longer Alderaan."
It's not a series of observation and insistance that gives the Ronin any pleasure. In fact, it's quite dramatically the opposite. It is a -lovely- dream. The love, curated beauty, a reconsituted culture can be as it was in the yoke of true, malicious darkness; that there is any certainty to the survival of such, untainted.
"Let the past die; it is the future, unknown and wild, beyond our preferences and our personal control, that we must nurture."
"My wife and children *are* the future," Iskender returned. "Our people. THESE people.." he gestured around him. "Hapans, Muun, Ithorians, the noble and lamented Mon Calamari. All must survive. And I know what I must do to ensure that there is not another Dac. And never another Alderaan."
Blaster shots and a scream are audible within the palace, as movement and alarms continue to be raised. There are no further shots fired, and shouts of a slain intruder. The continued cries of, "To the Queen!" indicated the monarch's survival. Ban drew a slow, sad breath through flared nostrils and breathed, "So be it," with a melancholy note to his baritone. Green eyes went shut and power of the Force coalesced around him.
"Surrender by degrees." Ben softly laments. "Without any certainty of the cost; not only in the lives still lost... but the nature of the lives that endure." It's a complicated question. An all but unknowable, chaotic swirl of probabilities, consequences, escalations and reprisals. Where does it all end? To the Ronin's eyes: always back at the beginning. Seeking to crush what cannot be destroyed, to control what is forever wild, to survive what none should have to face.
"There has to be a better way." But for the moment? There is only action, and trying to do what each sees as right and necessary; for Ben, this results in a sudden, remarkable retreat-- or alternative advance-- back up the side of the palace. From stone to sill to rampart, to balcony and onward. Back to the point where he can do -something- to protect the Hapan will to fight, whether it be in the form of a morally dubious monarch or otherwise.
It would be easy to kick himself for not foreseeing the power that Ban wields, but that can wait; there is always ample time for difficult self-reflection... and little doubt this crucible will inspire plenty.
||"It is too late, this day,"|| Ban voiced to Solo. Iskender's eyes were stained vivid yellow by the power of the Dark Side as they opened to gaze up at the balcony where Ben was still struggling valiantly to salvage his original aim in coming to Hapes. ||"Leave now, so that you do not suffer the blame for one death that is *not* your doing. Or sacrifice your life to save her, as you once did for Rey, if you truly believe that this one individual is so worthy. But we both know you will not; you can do too much good elsewhere, and so you must accept that the greater good requires this death."||
|| "It is not about /her/." || Not a question of the individual's worth. Not a question of the Queen's greatness, importance, or karmic balance. || "Any more than it is about -me-, or -you-. It is not even simply the Hapans, or the Mon Calamari, or the Alderaanian culture-- but the Galaxy we accept, what we are willing to do for the whole." || Faced with blast doors, reinforced barricades over every window adjacent to the Queen, and an assemblage of guards within the room-- perhaps there is more wisdom in Ban's assessment than the Ronin wishes to admit. Indeed, a lightsaber could make him a hole.
Perhaps Ben could even brute force his way in another way; but he's been here for some time, now. Sensing those within the palace, but also the palace itself. His ascent ceases just above the balcony, perched atop a fine trellised awning, and surveying the framework around those portals. Rather than brute force, there's a degree of precision, finesse to the effort as stonework -around- one window suddenly trembles, crumbles, and tears away, shorn into a careening descent along the fore of the waterfall below.
It's not precisely a new door, halfway up the wall-- but rather a new window, accessible enough to those with a particular kind of agility... if he can just get a glimpse, a moment, shrouded within the Force...
Within the royal chambers, there are shouts of alarm- several feminine and one masculine- as a section of the secured and reinforced outer wall of the Queen's bedchambers was torn loose. Light is abundant within the now three-walled room, in which the large bed is vacant. Four Hapans are within: a trio of Royal Guards in crested gilt helms bring blaster pistols to bear on the unexpected breach in defenses, and a male retainer who had been close to the windowed wall before stumbling deeper into the room as it was ripped free. The fine double doors that led out to the inner corridors are closed and barred ahead of Ben; to the left was a private refresher, and to the right an expansive walk-in wardrobe. Within that wardrobe was the royal bunker; a sealed panic room for the monarch of a world which thrives on cloak and dagger intrigue, and within which a queen was dying.
On the ground below, where Ban Iskender stood solemnly watching the drama before him play out, two Hapan guards approached him from behind with pistols drawn, shouting at him to show hands and get on the ground. Ban holds both empty hands out from his sides obligingly, before turning to fix one eye on the first guard. He calmly points out, "There is an assassin on the Queen's balcony." The subtle motion of one hand is enough to force the guard to look upward, and the aim of her pistol follows.
Sometimes, those massed good intentions just don't work out the way those holding them might wish. Whether they're guards, Jedi, Sith, or the local farmer. The perimeter is tight; Ben's position, Ban has already given away. Incoming fire is inevitable, and as the Dark Side eats away at the Hapan Queen? The last grains of sand fall from the hourglass. With more time? Perhaps he could surrender, appeal, convince the guards to let him save her.
Even that would be the longest of shots; but the Ronin has hit such before. As it stands? There is little he can do but look back at the guard levelling the blaster on him with legitimate regret, and hurl himself into a high, arcing backflip that carries the one who would, in another life, be the actual assassin high into the air, and clear of the balcony.
Solo's gloved hands thrust into the air, fingers outstretched, curling into a clench as the very walkway Iskender stands on erupts around him; perhaps not to smash and grind him to paste, but certainly in a last ditch effort to rob the Sith Lord of consciousness. A whirling shockwave of rock and dirt, power both visible and very not, momentarily obscures the spot where Ban had stood.
Then, Ben Solo falls-- no, -dives-, aligning his body perfectly into a graceful descent, almost eagerly reaching terminal velocity in short order as he hurtles downwards, lost among the rocks and crashing water.
