Urik Panteer
Oct 22nd, 2013, 02:19:10 PM
New Alderaan
The sunrise was beautiful that morning, and nowhere was the view better than from the spires of House Panteer. Alderaan was gone, the shock and awe of the Imperial super weapon known as the Death Star had solidified a still precarious Imperial rule, leaving nothing but the Graveyard, the asteroid field composed of the rubble of what once had been a jewel of the Core.
Urik Panteer, one of the last surviving members of the Panteer nobility and heir-apparent to his father, the recent Duke Gault Panteer, gazed out from the uppermost battlements and surveyed the Panteer settlement that lie nestled in the rural countryside outside New Aldera.
Rural was one way of putting it. Frontier was perhaps the more appropriate term. Life had been hard on the Alderaanians this past decade, and those not currently aligned with the Alliance or picking up freelance work in the Outer Rim were here, trying to lay the foundations of a new homeland atop the ashes of the world that had composed their very identity for thousands of years.
There were too few of them left.
For over three thousand years, many of the noble families had made long standing careers serving the planetary constitutional monarchy. The Organas were perhaps the most famed, but Urik’s father had been a member of the planetary parliament, just as his father had been before him. There had been whispers, before the Fall, that old Gault Panteer was going to give young Princess Organa a run for her credits come the next Senate election.
The sins of our fathers…
Urik had grown up on Alderaan, and for a time he had been groomed for a position in government, as was expected of each eldest child within most noble families, particularly now that there was so few of the old nobility left. But that was before the dark times, before the Empire came, and now a fire burned in Urik’s heart that he suspected a parliamentary campaign could never extinguish.
Tears ran down his cheeks, sending shivering pulses down as face as the cold winds of this new, foreign world raked against his features. Today could be the last time he saw this sunrise, the last time he walked the still partially-reconstructed halls of his ancestors. The last time he saw his own mother and father…
“Prince Panteer, sir!” the call came from the hatchway that led back into the tower, and despite the overwhelming sorrow of that moment, Urik managed to crack half of a smile, “Operation: Sojourn is a go. A number of the Guard loyal to their Prince are making final preparations for departure as we speak.”
“Thanks, M-3PO,” Urik said, his vision slightly blurred with tears not entirely because of the radiance of New Alderaan’s rising star, “I will be glad to have you with me, at least.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir,” the military protocol droid had been assigned to help him with combat training. The life of an Alderaanian Prince required one to be versatile, if nothing else.
“You know it’s granted, Em Three. You don’t have to keep asking.”
“Protocol dictates, sir,” the droid responded instinctively, and then took a moment as the cognitive processes worked furiously away inside the unit’s shell, “Prince Panteer, I fail to see the honor Alderaan expects from its nobles in-”
“In running away?” Urik asked, his tone dripping with bitterness.
“I was going to saw tactically withdrawing, sir, but yes. My apologies, sir, it was not my place.”
“No apologies, Em Three. You’re right,” the young Panteer nodded, aware that the harshness in his voice was as much a product of agreeing with his old companion as it was frustration with the droid’s tendency to cut right to the heart of things. “A good Duke knows when to fight his battles, but a great Duke knows when to live and fight another day.”
“Another of your father’s little sayings, sir?” M-3PO inquired.
“Perhaps,” Urik nodded, coloring slightly as he realized how much he had just sounded like his own father, “These past few years...the diaspora, New Alderaan...it’s hard to tell where the Duke ends and I begin.”
The wind still stung and bit at the Prince’s face, but before he turned back toward the hatch and his protocol droid, he rifled through his coat pockets and dug out the crumpled note, as he had done a thousand times each day since it had arrived.
The scrawl was hardly legible, but Urik knew the handwriting well.
Panteer scum.
You are liars. You are hypocrites. You are monsters.
Force harbourers. Alliance sympathizers. Opportunists.
If the Empire doesn’t destroy you, I will.
He crumpled the hand written note back up and, for a moment, entertained the notion of flinging it from the spire, letting it fall and deteriorate wherever it may. But something stopped him, as it always did, and instead he pocketed it, grasping it in his fist so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Desmond, what have you done? What have you become?
“Let’s go, Em Three, before my family returns,” Urik said, turning at last back toward the protocol droid and the warmth of House Panteer.
“The Alliance awaits.”
The sunrise was beautiful that morning, and nowhere was the view better than from the spires of House Panteer. Alderaan was gone, the shock and awe of the Imperial super weapon known as the Death Star had solidified a still precarious Imperial rule, leaving nothing but the Graveyard, the asteroid field composed of the rubble of what once had been a jewel of the Core.
Urik Panteer, one of the last surviving members of the Panteer nobility and heir-apparent to his father, the recent Duke Gault Panteer, gazed out from the uppermost battlements and surveyed the Panteer settlement that lie nestled in the rural countryside outside New Aldera.
Rural was one way of putting it. Frontier was perhaps the more appropriate term. Life had been hard on the Alderaanians this past decade, and those not currently aligned with the Alliance or picking up freelance work in the Outer Rim were here, trying to lay the foundations of a new homeland atop the ashes of the world that had composed their very identity for thousands of years.
There were too few of them left.
For over three thousand years, many of the noble families had made long standing careers serving the planetary constitutional monarchy. The Organas were perhaps the most famed, but Urik’s father had been a member of the planetary parliament, just as his father had been before him. There had been whispers, before the Fall, that old Gault Panteer was going to give young Princess Organa a run for her credits come the next Senate election.
The sins of our fathers…
Urik had grown up on Alderaan, and for a time he had been groomed for a position in government, as was expected of each eldest child within most noble families, particularly now that there was so few of the old nobility left. But that was before the dark times, before the Empire came, and now a fire burned in Urik’s heart that he suspected a parliamentary campaign could never extinguish.
Tears ran down his cheeks, sending shivering pulses down as face as the cold winds of this new, foreign world raked against his features. Today could be the last time he saw this sunrise, the last time he walked the still partially-reconstructed halls of his ancestors. The last time he saw his own mother and father…
“Prince Panteer, sir!” the call came from the hatchway that led back into the tower, and despite the overwhelming sorrow of that moment, Urik managed to crack half of a smile, “Operation: Sojourn is a go. A number of the Guard loyal to their Prince are making final preparations for departure as we speak.”
“Thanks, M-3PO,” Urik said, his vision slightly blurred with tears not entirely because of the radiance of New Alderaan’s rising star, “I will be glad to have you with me, at least.”
“Permission to speak freely, sir,” the military protocol droid had been assigned to help him with combat training. The life of an Alderaanian Prince required one to be versatile, if nothing else.
“You know it’s granted, Em Three. You don’t have to keep asking.”
“Protocol dictates, sir,” the droid responded instinctively, and then took a moment as the cognitive processes worked furiously away inside the unit’s shell, “Prince Panteer, I fail to see the honor Alderaan expects from its nobles in-”
“In running away?” Urik asked, his tone dripping with bitterness.
“I was going to saw tactically withdrawing, sir, but yes. My apologies, sir, it was not my place.”
“No apologies, Em Three. You’re right,” the young Panteer nodded, aware that the harshness in his voice was as much a product of agreeing with his old companion as it was frustration with the droid’s tendency to cut right to the heart of things. “A good Duke knows when to fight his battles, but a great Duke knows when to live and fight another day.”
“Another of your father’s little sayings, sir?” M-3PO inquired.
“Perhaps,” Urik nodded, coloring slightly as he realized how much he had just sounded like his own father, “These past few years...the diaspora, New Alderaan...it’s hard to tell where the Duke ends and I begin.”
The wind still stung and bit at the Prince’s face, but before he turned back toward the hatch and his protocol droid, he rifled through his coat pockets and dug out the crumpled note, as he had done a thousand times each day since it had arrived.
The scrawl was hardly legible, but Urik knew the handwriting well.
Panteer scum.
You are liars. You are hypocrites. You are monsters.
Force harbourers. Alliance sympathizers. Opportunists.
If the Empire doesn’t destroy you, I will.
He crumpled the hand written note back up and, for a moment, entertained the notion of flinging it from the spire, letting it fall and deteriorate wherever it may. But something stopped him, as it always did, and instead he pocketed it, grasping it in his fist so tightly his knuckles turned white.
Desmond, what have you done? What have you become?
“Let’s go, Em Three, before my family returns,” Urik said, turning at last back toward the protocol droid and the warmth of House Panteer.
“The Alliance awaits.”