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Riyo spends forty-seven minutes trying to speak.
The support committee spends all forty-seven of them proving why she can’t.
Reports on the Malevolence disaster cycle across the central display: fleet redeployments, shattered medical routes, emergency funding demands, and casualty projections that keep climbing no matter how many times the committee chair asks for a “more optimistic model.”
Riyo has three suggestions.
One is sensible. One is necessary. One might actually save lives.
She says none of them.
Every time she draws breath, another senator leans toward the microphone. Someone older, louder, and more certain that their voice deserves the room. Riyo’s prepared notes remain open on her datapad until the session ends, perfectly organized and completely useless.
She leaves with a cup of caf in one hand and humiliation sitting heavily in her chest.
Her aide had warned her that the Senate would be difficult.
Her aide hadn’t mentioned that Senate committees were ninety percent interruption and ten percent people congratulating themselves for surviving the interruption.
Riyo turns a corner too quickly.
She walks directly into a man.
The impact knocks the caf from her hand and sends it across the front of a pristine white uniform.
Riyo loses her balance.
A strong hand catches her forearm before she hits the floor.
For one terrible second, all she sees is white fabric, red piping, and the dark stain spreading across someone’s chest.
Then she looks up.
The clone officer holding her wears formal dress whites, cut sharply across broad shoulders and marked with deep Guard red. Two braided command ropes cross one side of his chest. Medals sit beneath an ARC bar, and a peaked cap shadows most of his face.
Riyo’s stomach drops through the floor.
“Oh, goddess.”
The officer steadies her.
“Senator?”
“I’m so sorry.”
He glances down at the caf soaking into his uniform.
Riyo follows his gaze and experiences the emotional equivalent of being shot.
“I didn’t see you. Obviously, I didn’t see you, because if I had seen you, I wouldn’t have walked into you, and I definitely wouldn’t have poured caf on you.”
The officer looks back at her.
Riyo keeps talking because apparently fear has disconnected her mouth from any meaningful supervision.
“I can pay for the cleaning. Do military uniforms get cleaned? Of course they get cleaned. That was a ridiculous question. I’ll replace it.”
“That won’t be necessary.”
His voice is low and even.
It’s also unfairly pleasant.
Riyo finally notices the face beneath the cap.
He’s young. Roughly her age, if the corrected reports on clone development are accurate. The Kaminoans had confirmed that the accelerated-growth claims were Separatist propaganda, which means the man standing in front of her is actually in his early twenties rather than an adult grown in half the time.
The war has left its mark anyway. There are faint lines of exhaustion near his eyes and tension held too carefully through his jaw.
It hasn’t made him unattractive.
Quite the opposite, which feels deeply inappropriate considering she has just assaulted his uniform with government-grade caf.
His eyes catch the corridor light beneath the brim of his cap.
Gold.
Not brown, like the files say.
Actual gold.
Riyo forgets how sentences work.
The officer releases her arm once he’s certain she’s steady. “Are you injured?”
“No.”
That answer comes out too quickly.
She clears her throat. “No, Commander. I’m fine.”
His gaze drops briefly toward the empty cup rolling across the floor.
Riyo wants the marble to open and claim her.
“I’m very sorry,” she says again.
“You’ve mentioned that.”
There’s no irritation in his voice. If anything, she catches the faintest edge of dry humor.
That somehow makes him more attractive.
This is becoming a crisis.
Riyo forces herself to look at the rank details instead of his face. One rope means commander. She’d worked that much out from watching Guard officers in the Senate.
He has two.
The red piping marks him as Coruscant Guard, but his dress whites place him within clone high command. Beneath the ARC bar are two medals: the Silver Star from Geonosis and a Flying Star.
A pilot, then.
A highly decorated ARC officer with two command ropes, Guard red, and eyes no official report had bothered to mention.
Riyo’s thoughts slam together.
Marshal Commander Fox.
The name had come up in the Guard medwing after the incident with Senator Paltrin. The commander who reviewed every abuse report personally. The officer every Guardsman seemed to speak about with a combination of loyalty, protectiveness, and mild fear.
This is Fox.
The infamous Marshal Commander Fox is standing in front of her with caf dripping down his uniform because she apparently handles attraction by committing minor property damage.
Riyo looks at him again.
This is a mistake.
He’s even more handsome now that she knows who he is.
“Oh,” she says.
His brow shifts beneath the cap. “Senator?”
“You’re Marshal Commander Fox.”
“Yes.”
Of course he is.
Nobody else could make soaked dress whites look intentional.
Riyo immediately hates herself for thinking that.
“I’ve heard about you.”
The words leave her mouth before she can stop them.
Fox goes very still.
Riyo remembers, too late, that a senator telling a clone commander she has heard about him probably sounds less like admiration and more like an incoming disciplinary execution.
“Good things,” she adds quickly. “Mostly. All good, actually. From your medics. Not that they were discussing classified information. I wasn’t asking inappropriate questions.”
Fox watches her in silence.
Riyo can feel her dignity crawling away to die somewhere private.
“Chief Medical Officer Scalper mentioned you,” she says.
One corner of his mouth almost moves.
“That could mean several things.”
“She said you’d review a complaint.”
The humor disappears.
His attention sharpens immediately. “The Paltrin report.”
Riyo nods.
“You filed the witness statement.”
“I did.”
“Thank you.”
The words are simple, but they carry enough weight to quiet the panic in her head.
Riyo looks up at him. “Was anything done?”
“The investigation is ongoing.”
Which means no.
She recognizes that kind of answer. The Senate uses it whenever the real answer is politically inconvenient.
Fox must see the realization in her face because his expression hardens, though not at her.
“I won’t let it disappear,” he says.
There’s no performance in the promise. No senatorial warmth polished for an audience.
He means it.
Riyo believes him immediately.
Respect settles beneath the attraction, giving it roots before she has enough sense to stop it.
“That’s more than most people would do,” she says.
“It shouldn’t be.”
“No.”
Their eyes meet again.
His are still gold.
Riyo would really appreciate it if he stopped having those.
A group of officers appears at the far end of the corridor, all dressed in either white or grey uniforms for the strategy summit. One calls Fox’s rank, then wisely stops when Fox glances toward him.
Riyo steps back.
“You have somewhere to be.”
“So do you, Senator.”
Her committee notes feel heavier under her arm.
“Yes. Somewhere extremely important where I’ll sit quietly while people ignore casualty projections.”
Fox looks at the datapad.
“Support committee?”
She nods.
“The medevac proposal from Pantora was sound.”
Riyo stares at him.
“You read it?”
“I read every support proposal attached to Guard and fleet logistics.”
“They didn’t let me present it.”
His jaw tightens again.
“You should.”
The simple certainty in his voice hits her harder than any compliment could have.
Nobody on Coruscant has said that to her yet.
Riyo straightens slightly. “Perhaps next session.”
Fox inclines his head. “Senator.”
“Commander.”
“Marshal Commander,” he corrects, not unkindly.
Her face heats.
“Right. Two ropes.”
For the first time, his mouth actually twitches.
Riyo’s brain promptly catches fire.
She steps backward before she can say anything worse.
“I’m sorry about the caf.”
“You’ve mentioned that too.”
“I’ll stop now.”
“That may be wise.”
He walks toward the waiting officers, the white uniform still stained across the chest.
Riyo watches him go.
She watches for several seconds longer than professional courtesy requires.
Then Fox glances back.
Riyo whips around so quickly she nearly walks into another column.
Her heart is beating like she has just survived atmospheric entry without a ship.
She looks down at her abandoned caf cup.
This is bad.
This is catastrophically, politically, unfairly handsome bad.