Taya sat hastily at the terminal and began to type furiously absorbed in columns of holoprojected data which meant nothing to Sayeeda. The mercenary explored the luxurious room while the younger woman worked, pausing long enough to truss the unconscious seator in cargo tape. She wondered what would happen to him if Aiden survived this attempted coup, not that she much cared, he had rolled the dice and if the odds came out against him he didn’t have anyone to blame.

“Any idea what you are going to say to your adoring public?” Sayeeda asked Aiden as she straightened from the task, pausing to make sure her weapon was safed. It wasn’t something she would have bothered about with a familiar weapon, but old soldiers were those who realised there was alot you couldn’t control and so you had better make sure you controlled what you could.

“The truth,” Aiden replied simply, looking at the senator with a mixture of anger and sadness. Sayeeda wondered if Aiden really had the stomach to be a ruler. She tried to picture Colonel Andor in a similar situation and found it an impossibility. Andor would have never trusted anyone enough to let this situation arise and he wouldn’t have hesitated to crush it violently and immediately. She wondered if her fate was the same sort of paranoid sociopathy. Well she trusted Niel and Taya and so long as that remained true she was probably safe.

“This is incredible,” Taya breathed and hit a few controls. A hologram appeared in the air, the coherent light illuminating the room in ghostly shades of silver. In the three dimensional image Aiden could be seen creeping through a hallway in dark clothing.

“Hey,” Neil interjected, “that’s the hallway we found your sister…” as he spoke the words Aiden’s sister rounded the corner. There was no sound but she clearly screamed as Aiden sprang forward and buried a knife into her her, stabbing her several times before fleeing, leaving her in the pose in which Neil had found her.

“Whoa…” Sayeeda breathed and all eyes turned to the prince. He held his hands up in desperate protestation.

“I didn’t do it! I couldn’t you were with me!” Aiden whispered, his voice hoarse. Taya entered a few more commands and the recording began again. This time, as Aiden stepped into the frame she paused it and then typed furiously for a minute. The false Aiden disolved into a slightly shorter man. His face was familiar even though the strange suit he was wearing was not.

“That is Kagan,” Junebug noted, he and his team hadn’t been here to take the Highlander, that was just an additional task. The real work had been the assassination.

“Who?!” the prince demanded.

“How?” Neil began. Junebug held up a hand for silence.

“Its impossible to fake holo isn’t it, convincingly I mean, in a way that will stand up to scrutiny,” Taya asked. Junebug nodded.

“Yes but they aren’t faking holo, that suit he is wearing is projecting it and we are holographing that. Could you have unmasked it if you didn’t have multiple camera angles to go by?” Taya shook her head and then looked back at the screen.

“Shit, they broadcast this ten minutes ago across the emergency broadcast, the whole planet just saw you kill your sister my prince.”

[@POOHEAD189]