Chaya Al-Hadin - Street Theater
Jun. 16th, 2024 07:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyChaya Al-Hadin - Street Theater
In an ordered Islamic society, there is a place for everything and everything in its place.
The Great Plaza was a place for reflecting on the history that had brought humanity to this world. Some of the laid stones had been quarried in the first generation of colonists. A few - covered in transparent acrylic to protect them - had come as relics from Old Earth herself.
There was no apparent center, no ka'ba, no circle or focal point. Despite the premium of space in the Emir's capital, the Great Plaza was large enough that one could see across it only with difficulty.
The only powered vehicles permitted - and that very rarely - were ambulances actually transporting an ill or injured person from the Plaza to care.
The walls of the Emir's Palace took up the north end of the Great Plaza. The west end was an extension of the Gardens, built for the Emir but open to all - even Christians - and containing amenities both prosaic and wondrous. Fountains, toilets, zoo exhibits, light shows.
The east end bordered the general City. A shopping mall, of course, because merchants would do as merchants had always done. A terminal of the WAT, the Wide Area Transit, that brought people from near and far to this place. Apartments that overlooked the Plaza. Services of all sorts. Even, in a half-embarrassed corner, a single Gnostic church with an elderly priest, the most senior of the Christians on the world who was in good standing with the Emirate.
The south bordered the city's star port. A series of three fences - a polite line of wrought iron chain, easily stepped over but with no breaks in it. A hundred meters on, an easily moved line of waist high concrete barricades that bore firm warning signs. ("Restricted Area - Do Not Enter - By Order Of The Illustrious Emir") A hundred meters past that, a line of poles, each ten meters apart and ten meters high, that supported a loose mesh made of razor ribbon and spikes. Unclimbable. Also bearing the universal skull and crossbones that authorized deadly force. That last was new, a product of the Christian unrest.
There were yet miles of concrete tarmac between the Great Plaza and the Port. Generally only ship watchers and small children were found between the line of chain and the barricades, and no one beyond them.
The ceremonial Great Gate of the Emir's Palace was in bronzed metal and hinged. The walls were dressed stone, twenty meters high. No warning signs. Instead, two Emirate soldiers stood either side of the Great Gate, their issue rifles their greetings to everyone, their purpose ceremonial only. It was one of the highest military honors, keenly competed for, to be appointed to the Emirate Guard. Blood counted but was not itself sufficient. Inherited, often. Spilled, occasionally.
Tourists who visited the Capital would make the circuit. Past the Great Gate, the Emir's Palace had historical displays and waiting rooms, and the Jewel Room and Treasure Room. Then the Gardens with its zoos. A quick cut across the plaza, or loitering to see a ship take off or land, then back to the shops and the city and perhaps nightlife, for those so inclined.
The very size of the Great Plaza and the neighboring structures was a boast of power and prestige and might.
Chaya Al-Hadin found herself in one of the lesser guard rooms of the Emir's Palace, with four other Guardians, getting her instructions from a bored Doorwarden. Not an Emir's Guard, a member of the permanent Palace staff. A sinecure for family of minor officials or the occasional retired soldier.
"Today we have received warnings that a large Christian contingent will insist on its right to tour the public places of the Plaza. They have assembled in numbers at several WAT stations. The crowd is estimated at four to six thousand souls."
A pause.
"It is not clear who is paying for thousands of WAT fares or how so many Christians have arranged to take the time to visit away from jobs and family obligations. There is ... rhetoric ... that is distasteful to the Emir and his servants. Nonetheless, the customs will be properly observed."
It was a Guardian's job to consider the obvious. And the less obvious.
"How is it that they have been screened?"
The Doorwarden yawned.
"They will not be permitted through the Palace Gates as a group."
There were detection instruments built into the gates. They were capable of sniffing out explosives, energy weapons, other such devices. But many bodies confused them and weapons did not necessarily need electronic energy storage. Kinetic was possible, chemical more detectable but also feasible.
Even a kitchen knife could be deadly in the hands of a skilled or determined lost soul.
"How are they to know this, and who is to tell them?"
"You."
That ... did not bode well for her odds of reaching a retirement.
###
So it was that she, in full but working uniform as a Guardian of the Emir, saw the line of people leaving the WAT station. With banners. And amazingly, the sound of trumpets, although she could see no instruments.
Walking straight towards her, where she stood a hundred meters before the gates. Alone.
To touch her, treason. To raise a weapon to her, rebellion. To resist arrest, death.
The banners read, mostly in Christian runics, FREEDOM and JUSTICE and OUR RIGHTS. The few Islamic syllabari read WE ARE NOT YOUR GOD'S and CHRISTIAN > ALLAH.
"Star One, and I state this clearly and calmly, what the actual FUCK," she said, making sure her body camera remoted the scene.
"Numbers five hundred plus nazrani with banners and projected sound, approaching my position in formation, with no prior warning. Flag entire event for post incident review. Chaya Al-Hadin."
Her name was not necessary. It was more of an indictment.
What Star One, her dispatch service and the one of the ways in which the Emirate guarded her People, not given any warning of the apparition that now approached? It was beyond lazy incompetence. It was impious. It itself bordered hard treason.
"Ah, Al-Hadin..." and there was a crisp interruption from a new voice, another Star One dispatcher.
"Override, Star One, Star One. Enemies approach the Palace. Closing Palace Gates."
Her visor displayed an image behind her. Gates. Not closing.
"The Gates!" she complained. "Not closing! I say again, the Gates are NOT closing and are open!"
A squad of troops double-timed their way out of the Gates. A mere two dozen.
They were ... as much as she hated to see it ... slovenly. They were not of the Emirate Guard. But they were armed, heavily, with burners and with grenades.
This was not right. This was wrong. All wrong. All of it.
Wrong in ways that could not be made right.
A set up.
And, she the token piece in between the crowd and the fire.
The soldiers took up a line formation and prepared to level their weapons.
The crowd walked forward.
At least one of her problems was no longer an issue. She did not need to seek a discreet toilet in a palace built primarily for men. Now a matter for decontamination, not personal hygiene.
Some question as to whether her remains would be in the condition to require a mortician's services.
Burners.
Who brings burners to a crowd action?
She mentally discarded her orders. They did not apply.
Her task, any Guardian's task, was the preservation of human life.
She spied the officer of the soldiers. He was also slovenly, and as she approached him he tried to wave her off.
She ran forward towards him. Forty meters.
"Datalink, officer, withdraw your troops at once! Back into the Palace! That is a direct order, I am a Guardian of the Emirate!"
"Shut up, you dumb bitch..." he started to say.
Twenty meters.
She felt as if her entire life had led to this moment.
She knew she would suffer for this, if not be executed.
"Treason most foul," she hissed. "Withdraw your troops or suffer present death! By the Emir I serve!"
The law was clear, both civil and military.
Her orders were his law. His disobedience, as she had said, treason most foul.
The officer turned towards her, and as she hoped and prayed, began to level his burner.
Not at the crowd, that atrocious crime from which there could be no coming back.
At her.
Freeing her to act.
As if it had a mind of its own, her needle-gun leapt into her hand and she sent a whirring string of ultra high velocity needles directly into the face and chest of the Emirate military officer.
He crumpled into a mess of blood and guts and torn flesh.
"Star One, command override, disable every burner in this Plaza."
No answer.
Military weapons were configured to obey the Emirate's orders, even if the men carrying them did not.
So either Star One had nothing for her, or they were not authorized ...
She activated her loudhailer as well as the datalink.
"Soldiers sling your weapons or you will be destroyed by loyal Emirate forces! There is treason in the house! There is treason in the house!"
That was the words of present nightmare.
The soldiers looked at each other, in horror where they had not in seeing their officer emulsified.
Treason could result in a long sit on a short stake.
She dared not even spare a moment for the crowd. The soldiers and their weapons, that was all that could be allowed to matter.
She reached the first soldier in the line, held her pistol at waist-point, flush with her belt.
"Sling or die, do it now."
He hastily slung. Then the next. They all followed example within moments. So she holstered her own.
She could only then spare an instant to consider gates and crowd.
The gates were closing, slowly but inexhorably.
The crowd had split. Some headed for the gate, some headed for her, not running but at a walking pace. Angry but determined.
"Soldiers, you shall walk with me to the wall. There we will wait for proper supports. As you love Allah and fear His Wrath, keep your weapons slung even if we together die for it."
An aircar silently overflew, she saw the shadow, but could not take her eyes from the soldiers. They were under only the most cursory control, doing what they were told because of her uniform and replacement of their officer.
The loudhailer on the car spoke. "The Palace is closed for ah... spring cleaning. The Palace is closed today. We are very sorry and shall honor your tickets and travel on a future day."
Someone else was using their head for something other than holding up their hair.
The Gates closed with an audible click.
The crowd started to reunify. They looked about them for a focal point.
Much as she hated to do it, much as she did not want to lose her rear vision and some of her sensors, Chaya Al-Hadin discarded her very expensive helmet.
"Soldiers, remove your helmets. Take them off. Leave them on the Plaza stones."
Puzzled, it was something for them to do, so they did.
The crowd approached, more slowly, as a boy does with a scorpion he plans to poke with a stick.
They could now see her hair and know that she was a woman, also an initiate of the mysteries of death.
So.
She had read it right.
"The man or men, who lead this crowd, I would talk with you. As person to person I beg of you."
She could not beg as a Guardian. She could serve, or die.
"Fuck you Islamic whore!"
It was truth in that she wore trousers.
It was false in that she neither sold her favors nor allowed men between her thighs for any reason, professional or personal.
"Star One, battlesight, agitator," she whispered.
"Got him," a voice whispered.
He suddenly starting screaming and tearing off his clothes.
"It burns, it burns!" he screamed in the Nazrani language.
And so it did. A Palace vibratory projector was heating his skin without killing. At least not for quite the while.
"Pardon me, sir, but who in their boldness of Lust is now unclothed?" she asked sweetly.
He ran off, sideways to her and the crowd.
It was funny.
Allah inflicted a mercy upon them all.
A Nazrani in the man started laughing, at the absurdity.
Soon the crowd was laughing.
Behind her, a concealed door - a prudence door - opened in the wall of the Palace and two of her fellow Guardians were leading the soldiers through it.
She could not take the path. The crowd was still regarding her.
Further distraction was needed, so she dodged forward.
This... would hurt. And not just in pain.
"Star One, battlesight, me, friendly fire ordered."
A frozen pause.
"Friendly fire as you love the Emir and love your God!"
A burning sensation covered her body then.
She shouted involuntarily, then began to caper and spin to and fro.
"It burns!" she shouted first in Arabic, then in Nazrani. "Burning! It is the burning of my womanly time! I do feel burning in my body!"
The crowd roared with laughter as the last of the soldiers made it through the prudence-door and it sealed and disappeared from sight.
She kept up her screaming, at first with willingness and then in genuine agony.
But as she crossed the line of the crowd, the vibratory projector lost line of sight and the pain cut off as if with a switch.
She kept up the running, not the screaming.
"Star One, extraction, aircar, swiftly," she gasped instead. "Cease fire."
One of the features of her uniform was resistance to genuine fire. Not projection.
Certainly not military burners.
The aircar swooped down and she ran right into the open hatch. A rescue technician - as it turned out - grabbed her without hesitation or consideration of her gender.
"Uninjured," she said to his query as they lifted.
Safety.
"Star One, tactical, Palace Gates secured, crowd mingling, no apparent threat or escalation. Concur?"
"Concur," a different cool voice said. "Investigation is indicated."
She caught her breath. Someone offered her water and she drank greedily.
Investigation was in fact indicated, of many things.
Who was it that attempted to profane the Emir's peace by taking burners - Shaitan damned burners! - to his mildly unruly children?
It was known who had taken a needler to one of the Emir's appointed officers. Or at least someone wearing that uniform.
She had ruined a horror plot.
Whose?
###
"Am I under arrest, Guardian-Captain?"
His face hurt.
"No. That you are not. There has been a review of your actions, by the Nextmost High."
The Emir that was to say, because the only higher review could be by Allah, notoriously unresponsive to requests for decisions, let alone interventions.
"Your actions are endorsed. By Star One, by the Emir, by the Council..."
Her heart sank and her soul fell through her boots towards the Starless Dark.
It was poorly to be judged by Star One, although a part of her job.
To come to the personal attention of the Emir. Unhealthy.
The Guardian-Council - it was theirs to judge the fitness of any Guardian to serve. She was already a special case because of her gender. A special case again, under the watch of the Morals Officer of her brigade, for her personal choices.
"I see that you get my point. I also judge your actions."
A long pause.
"I am very proud. You have upheld the traditions of the Guardians at great risk. You prevented a slaughter. That is what we are there to do. Not just of the crowd, but of the draftees dragged into atrocity by a traitor officer.
"Investigation continues. You are restricted to this Barracks. As much for your safety as for any other reason.
"I understand you are a student of the esoterica. Enjoy your study. Guardian by rank, hero by trade."
He turned away from her, seated at his own desk, dismissing her.
But not disrespecting her.
In an ordered Islamic society, there is a place for everything and everything in its place.
The Great Plaza was a place for reflecting on the history that had brought humanity to this world. Some of the laid stones had been quarried in the first generation of colonists. A few - covered in transparent acrylic to protect them - had come as relics from Old Earth herself.
There was no apparent center, no ka'ba, no circle or focal point. Despite the premium of space in the Emir's capital, the Great Plaza was large enough that one could see across it only with difficulty.
The only powered vehicles permitted - and that very rarely - were ambulances actually transporting an ill or injured person from the Plaza to care.
The walls of the Emir's Palace took up the north end of the Great Plaza. The west end was an extension of the Gardens, built for the Emir but open to all - even Christians - and containing amenities both prosaic and wondrous. Fountains, toilets, zoo exhibits, light shows.
The east end bordered the general City. A shopping mall, of course, because merchants would do as merchants had always done. A terminal of the WAT, the Wide Area Transit, that brought people from near and far to this place. Apartments that overlooked the Plaza. Services of all sorts. Even, in a half-embarrassed corner, a single Gnostic church with an elderly priest, the most senior of the Christians on the world who was in good standing with the Emirate.
The south bordered the city's star port. A series of three fences - a polite line of wrought iron chain, easily stepped over but with no breaks in it. A hundred meters on, an easily moved line of waist high concrete barricades that bore firm warning signs. ("Restricted Area - Do Not Enter - By Order Of The Illustrious Emir") A hundred meters past that, a line of poles, each ten meters apart and ten meters high, that supported a loose mesh made of razor ribbon and spikes. Unclimbable. Also bearing the universal skull and crossbones that authorized deadly force. That last was new, a product of the Christian unrest.
There were yet miles of concrete tarmac between the Great Plaza and the Port. Generally only ship watchers and small children were found between the line of chain and the barricades, and no one beyond them.
The ceremonial Great Gate of the Emir's Palace was in bronzed metal and hinged. The walls were dressed stone, twenty meters high. No warning signs. Instead, two Emirate soldiers stood either side of the Great Gate, their issue rifles their greetings to everyone, their purpose ceremonial only. It was one of the highest military honors, keenly competed for, to be appointed to the Emirate Guard. Blood counted but was not itself sufficient. Inherited, often. Spilled, occasionally.
Tourists who visited the Capital would make the circuit. Past the Great Gate, the Emir's Palace had historical displays and waiting rooms, and the Jewel Room and Treasure Room. Then the Gardens with its zoos. A quick cut across the plaza, or loitering to see a ship take off or land, then back to the shops and the city and perhaps nightlife, for those so inclined.
The very size of the Great Plaza and the neighboring structures was a boast of power and prestige and might.
Chaya Al-Hadin found herself in one of the lesser guard rooms of the Emir's Palace, with four other Guardians, getting her instructions from a bored Doorwarden. Not an Emir's Guard, a member of the permanent Palace staff. A sinecure for family of minor officials or the occasional retired soldier.
"Today we have received warnings that a large Christian contingent will insist on its right to tour the public places of the Plaza. They have assembled in numbers at several WAT stations. The crowd is estimated at four to six thousand souls."
A pause.
"It is not clear who is paying for thousands of WAT fares or how so many Christians have arranged to take the time to visit away from jobs and family obligations. There is ... rhetoric ... that is distasteful to the Emir and his servants. Nonetheless, the customs will be properly observed."
It was a Guardian's job to consider the obvious. And the less obvious.
"How is it that they have been screened?"
The Doorwarden yawned.
"They will not be permitted through the Palace Gates as a group."
There were detection instruments built into the gates. They were capable of sniffing out explosives, energy weapons, other such devices. But many bodies confused them and weapons did not necessarily need electronic energy storage. Kinetic was possible, chemical more detectable but also feasible.
Even a kitchen knife could be deadly in the hands of a skilled or determined lost soul.
"How are they to know this, and who is to tell them?"
"You."
That ... did not bode well for her odds of reaching a retirement.
###
So it was that she, in full but working uniform as a Guardian of the Emir, saw the line of people leaving the WAT station. With banners. And amazingly, the sound of trumpets, although she could see no instruments.
Walking straight towards her, where she stood a hundred meters before the gates. Alone.
To touch her, treason. To raise a weapon to her, rebellion. To resist arrest, death.
The banners read, mostly in Christian runics, FREEDOM and JUSTICE and OUR RIGHTS. The few Islamic syllabari read WE ARE NOT YOUR GOD'S and CHRISTIAN > ALLAH.
"Star One, and I state this clearly and calmly, what the actual FUCK," she said, making sure her body camera remoted the scene.
"Numbers five hundred plus nazrani with banners and projected sound, approaching my position in formation, with no prior warning. Flag entire event for post incident review. Chaya Al-Hadin."
Her name was not necessary. It was more of an indictment.
What Star One, her dispatch service and the one of the ways in which the Emirate guarded her People, not given any warning of the apparition that now approached? It was beyond lazy incompetence. It was impious. It itself bordered hard treason.
"Ah, Al-Hadin..." and there was a crisp interruption from a new voice, another Star One dispatcher.
"Override, Star One, Star One. Enemies approach the Palace. Closing Palace Gates."
Her visor displayed an image behind her. Gates. Not closing.
"The Gates!" she complained. "Not closing! I say again, the Gates are NOT closing and are open!"
A squad of troops double-timed their way out of the Gates. A mere two dozen.
They were ... as much as she hated to see it ... slovenly. They were not of the Emirate Guard. But they were armed, heavily, with burners and with grenades.
This was not right. This was wrong. All wrong. All of it.
Wrong in ways that could not be made right.
A set up.
And, she the token piece in between the crowd and the fire.
The soldiers took up a line formation and prepared to level their weapons.
The crowd walked forward.
At least one of her problems was no longer an issue. She did not need to seek a discreet toilet in a palace built primarily for men. Now a matter for decontamination, not personal hygiene.
Some question as to whether her remains would be in the condition to require a mortician's services.
Burners.
Who brings burners to a crowd action?
She mentally discarded her orders. They did not apply.
Her task, any Guardian's task, was the preservation of human life.
She spied the officer of the soldiers. He was also slovenly, and as she approached him he tried to wave her off.
She ran forward towards him. Forty meters.
"Datalink, officer, withdraw your troops at once! Back into the Palace! That is a direct order, I am a Guardian of the Emirate!"
"Shut up, you dumb bitch..." he started to say.
Twenty meters.
She felt as if her entire life had led to this moment.
She knew she would suffer for this, if not be executed.
"Treason most foul," she hissed. "Withdraw your troops or suffer present death! By the Emir I serve!"
The law was clear, both civil and military.
Her orders were his law. His disobedience, as she had said, treason most foul.
The officer turned towards her, and as she hoped and prayed, began to level his burner.
Not at the crowd, that atrocious crime from which there could be no coming back.
At her.
Freeing her to act.
As if it had a mind of its own, her needle-gun leapt into her hand and she sent a whirring string of ultra high velocity needles directly into the face and chest of the Emirate military officer.
He crumpled into a mess of blood and guts and torn flesh.
"Star One, command override, disable every burner in this Plaza."
No answer.
Military weapons were configured to obey the Emirate's orders, even if the men carrying them did not.
So either Star One had nothing for her, or they were not authorized ...
She activated her loudhailer as well as the datalink.
"Soldiers sling your weapons or you will be destroyed by loyal Emirate forces! There is treason in the house! There is treason in the house!"
That was the words of present nightmare.
The soldiers looked at each other, in horror where they had not in seeing their officer emulsified.
Treason could result in a long sit on a short stake.
She dared not even spare a moment for the crowd. The soldiers and their weapons, that was all that could be allowed to matter.
She reached the first soldier in the line, held her pistol at waist-point, flush with her belt.
"Sling or die, do it now."
He hastily slung. Then the next. They all followed example within moments. So she holstered her own.
She could only then spare an instant to consider gates and crowd.
The gates were closing, slowly but inexhorably.
The crowd had split. Some headed for the gate, some headed for her, not running but at a walking pace. Angry but determined.
"Soldiers, you shall walk with me to the wall. There we will wait for proper supports. As you love Allah and fear His Wrath, keep your weapons slung even if we together die for it."
An aircar silently overflew, she saw the shadow, but could not take her eyes from the soldiers. They were under only the most cursory control, doing what they were told because of her uniform and replacement of their officer.
The loudhailer on the car spoke. "The Palace is closed for ah... spring cleaning. The Palace is closed today. We are very sorry and shall honor your tickets and travel on a future day."
Someone else was using their head for something other than holding up their hair.
The Gates closed with an audible click.
The crowd started to reunify. They looked about them for a focal point.
Much as she hated to do it, much as she did not want to lose her rear vision and some of her sensors, Chaya Al-Hadin discarded her very expensive helmet.
"Soldiers, remove your helmets. Take them off. Leave them on the Plaza stones."
Puzzled, it was something for them to do, so they did.
The crowd approached, more slowly, as a boy does with a scorpion he plans to poke with a stick.
They could now see her hair and know that she was a woman, also an initiate of the mysteries of death.
So.
She had read it right.
"The man or men, who lead this crowd, I would talk with you. As person to person I beg of you."
She could not beg as a Guardian. She could serve, or die.
"Fuck you Islamic whore!"
It was truth in that she wore trousers.
It was false in that she neither sold her favors nor allowed men between her thighs for any reason, professional or personal.
"Star One, battlesight, agitator," she whispered.
"Got him," a voice whispered.
He suddenly starting screaming and tearing off his clothes.
"It burns, it burns!" he screamed in the Nazrani language.
And so it did. A Palace vibratory projector was heating his skin without killing. At least not for quite the while.
"Pardon me, sir, but who in their boldness of Lust is now unclothed?" she asked sweetly.
He ran off, sideways to her and the crowd.
It was funny.
Allah inflicted a mercy upon them all.
A Nazrani in the man started laughing, at the absurdity.
Soon the crowd was laughing.
Behind her, a concealed door - a prudence door - opened in the wall of the Palace and two of her fellow Guardians were leading the soldiers through it.
She could not take the path. The crowd was still regarding her.
Further distraction was needed, so she dodged forward.
This... would hurt. And not just in pain.
"Star One, battlesight, me, friendly fire ordered."
A frozen pause.
"Friendly fire as you love the Emir and love your God!"
A burning sensation covered her body then.
She shouted involuntarily, then began to caper and spin to and fro.
"It burns!" she shouted first in Arabic, then in Nazrani. "Burning! It is the burning of my womanly time! I do feel burning in my body!"
The crowd roared with laughter as the last of the soldiers made it through the prudence-door and it sealed and disappeared from sight.
She kept up her screaming, at first with willingness and then in genuine agony.
But as she crossed the line of the crowd, the vibratory projector lost line of sight and the pain cut off as if with a switch.
She kept up the running, not the screaming.
"Star One, extraction, aircar, swiftly," she gasped instead. "Cease fire."
One of the features of her uniform was resistance to genuine fire. Not projection.
Certainly not military burners.
The aircar swooped down and she ran right into the open hatch. A rescue technician - as it turned out - grabbed her without hesitation or consideration of her gender.
"Uninjured," she said to his query as they lifted.
Safety.
"Star One, tactical, Palace Gates secured, crowd mingling, no apparent threat or escalation. Concur?"
"Concur," a different cool voice said. "Investigation is indicated."
She caught her breath. Someone offered her water and she drank greedily.
Investigation was in fact indicated, of many things.
Who was it that attempted to profane the Emir's peace by taking burners - Shaitan damned burners! - to his mildly unruly children?
It was known who had taken a needler to one of the Emir's appointed officers. Or at least someone wearing that uniform.
She had ruined a horror plot.
Whose?
###
"Am I under arrest, Guardian-Captain?"
His face hurt.
"No. That you are not. There has been a review of your actions, by the Nextmost High."
The Emir that was to say, because the only higher review could be by Allah, notoriously unresponsive to requests for decisions, let alone interventions.
"Your actions are endorsed. By Star One, by the Emir, by the Council..."
Her heart sank and her soul fell through her boots towards the Starless Dark.
It was poorly to be judged by Star One, although a part of her job.
To come to the personal attention of the Emir. Unhealthy.
The Guardian-Council - it was theirs to judge the fitness of any Guardian to serve. She was already a special case because of her gender. A special case again, under the watch of the Morals Officer of her brigade, for her personal choices.
"I see that you get my point. I also judge your actions."
A long pause.
"I am very proud. You have upheld the traditions of the Guardians at great risk. You prevented a slaughter. That is what we are there to do. Not just of the crowd, but of the draftees dragged into atrocity by a traitor officer.
"Investigation continues. You are restricted to this Barracks. As much for your safety as for any other reason.
"I understand you are a student of the esoterica. Enjoy your study. Guardian by rank, hero by trade."
He turned away from her, seated at his own desk, dismissing her.
But not disrespecting her.
