@Drakador_Chaos There we go! Sorry about the delay, I just had to write and rewrite this about ten times until I was at least moderately happy with the finished product.
Alearan growled and swept her arm across the table in front of her in frustration. Ever since the declaration of war from that idiot above Taros, she had been desperately attempting to marshal her scattered fleets and armies. A task made just that much harder without her advisor there to help handle matters. And to make the dilemma even more galling, she had been the one to dispatch him to other duties in the first place!
As she glowered at the towering stacks of reports and statistics she thought she heard a muffled boom somewhere in the distance. She glanced up and cocked her head. Gunfire? Not possible, not here in the palace, surely not...
As the noises got closer, her hand strayed towards a pistol she'd tucked under the table. Just before her hand closed around the grip, the doors to her study exploded inwards, flame and smoke roaring outwards from the blast. Alearan stumbled back, pulling the gun out and bringing it up as weapons fire, no longer muffled by the doors rang out and bullets started whining and cracking through the gap between the ruined doors.
When security finally brought the intruder down almost a full minute later, they didn't quite comprehend what they were looking at when the entered the Imperator's personal study. Smoke, scattered books and shredded papers,... and blood spray painting the far wall.
When the medics came rushing over to respond the guards' urgent cries, they found themselves woefully unequipped for the task at hand. Desperate, they rushed her to the palace medical suite and began setting up a stasis chamber. Just before they activated the device however, the Imperator struggled through to consciousness. Coughing blood out of her lungs, she appointed her absent advisor Aldenan as regent over the realm of the Dawn until such time as she was healed and revived or an heir could be produced from her stored genetic material and raised to the age of majority...