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Eight Hours Later
The room was deserted when he returned from the Prime Minister's offices. With a sigh of relief, Seti threw himself onto the bed. The events of the previous night, even those he could not remember, were still not erased, and their effects on his body were still largely evident.
Seti did not stir as the door was opened again. The footsteps coming in to the room were light, silent. The room was dark, the blinds being shut tight and the lights switched off. They crossed the room and crept to the side if the bed, where Seti slept, still fully clothed.
A light sigh escaped from the LFX Industrial CEO's lips, and he turned over onto his side. The man paused, not daring to make finally, a sound lest the sleeping man wake. Finally, after nearly two minutes, he moved and reached forward with a small blade in hand, towards Seti's throat...
A hand shot out of the dark and grabbed the man by the wrist, yanking him towards him. The assassin emitted a gasp and short shriek before Seti put a hand over his mouth.
"Who sent you?" He asked, fumbling on the bedside table for the blaster he knew was there. Clicking the safety off, he pointed it to the man's head and asked his question again.
"Who sent you?" The man, seeing the blaster out of the corner of his eye, shook his head. Seti removed his hand from the man's mouth and tightened his grip on the blaster.
"I don't know!" The man cried. "It was just a job... just a job." Seti threw the man forward and watched as he landed on his face, moaning.
"Pathetic," the CEO muttered, leveling the blaster and firing it twice. The blue stun rings dropped the man, and Seti turned to the com and called security.
* * *
"What disappoints me most is that this is the second time my security has let a lunatic with a gun get near me. If I didn't know better, I'd say that you folks were trying to see me dead.""
There was an uneasy silence as Seti finished speaking; one that the CEO did not like "I do know better, don't I” The three guards nodded, Harriet smiling slightly.
"Of course we're not trying to kill youm sir." He smiled.
"Good. Have you found out who he was yet?" Seti asked going completely serious.
"Timothy Macnair, sir. An unknown. No criminal record, as far as we can tell."
"A falsified identity, then?"
"It doesn't look that way sir. His history checks out; raised on Coruscant, parents killed in the Rebel attack, ran to Chandrilla and from there to Commenor." Seti nodded, frowning.
"So it's a professional job." The man nodded.
"Very professional, sir."
"Well, it fits in with everything else." The CEO stopped and looked out the window. "My negotiations with the Prime Minister are done, we've agreed that an LFX representative can finish the job. So, where do we go from here?" Any reply that may have been made was cut off by a deafening exposion that swept them all off their feet...
* * *
The explosion that was intended to kill Seti Ashar also immediately alerted the local authorities. In the minutes following the blast, as the smoke settled over the half- demolished building, sirens began to wail across the city. Curious citizens were the first to arrive, swarming in and looking up at the devastated structure. The police responded in what was, for them, record time. Barely six minutes had passed since the explosion. They immediately set about securing the area, rushing away several wounded who had been near the blast site. Luckily for them, the weapon had been fairly precise; it did not level the structure, as some of the weapons that may have been available to the terrorists would have. The first question that rose from the police line was: was this a strike against a person, or against the building, or against Commenor?
The crowds had thinned considerably by the time the relief squad arrived. No secondary explosions had been set off, and thus it was deemed safe for an entry team to search the building. As this was happening, the two late-night site-guards waited below, looking up at the damage.
"Who was the room registered to?" One of them, young, with a hand resting on his blaster, asked. There was a pause as the other punched some keys on his data-pad.
"Ashar... Seti Ashar." Silence.
"The Seti Ashar? As in LFX Industrial? That Seti Ashar?"
"Looks that way from here, Jek."
"Who would want him dead, though?"
"I suppose a man in Ashar's position would make a lot of enemies." Jek nodded, still looking at the building...
* * *
Seti felt, rather than heard, the blast coming. He threw himself into the bodyguard beside him, knocking them both to the ground. Harriet turned to the window, just as the missile hit it, and was tossed into the far wall like a rag doll. He slumped to the floor, bleeding profusely from a wound in his skull. The fire followed soon after, sweeping in and activating the emergency sprinklers.
The blast that struck the hotel window was powerful enough to completely destroy that block of the building. Thankfully, the missile struck the window and not the wall. The transparisteel did not shatter straight away, but instead bent around it and contained the initial detonation. This certainly saved the lives of those inside the building, and prevented a catastrophe.
Seti picked himself up with great difficulty and took stock of his surroundings. The room was barely recognizable; the fire had literally eaten it. Anything that was left was charred beyond any hope of recognition, twisted and melted, and utterly useless.
The CEO swore. Harriet's body was still in the corner, little more now than a blackened skeleton. Whereas the fireproof window had collapsed onto Seti, and the sprinklers had been active, Harriet had had no such protection. The fire had consumed him in minutes. Unknown to Seti, Harriet's collision with the wall earlier had killed him outright, so he felt nothing as the fire destroyed his body.
Seti swore again.
"Someone is going to pay for this!"
* * *
The damage control teams extracted Seti and the other survivors from the wreckage nearly two hours after the blast detonated. The CEO was prescribed a Bacta session for the nasty cuts he had received when the glass shattered. The others were in varying states of injury, and all wee given Bacta treatments on the spot.
Within the hour, however, they were en-route back to their Star Destroyer; the investigation squadron would remove Harriet's body and ensure it was returned to his family. The Vigor made the jump to hyperpsace less than five hours after the attack on Seti Ashar's hotel suite.
