[IC] Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

[Penny]

Rene couldn’t help but smile, he could easily imagine the sort of clash of wills that might erupt over the issue of marriage in a family like the Falias. It was axiomatic that nobles were strong willed, but people rarely appreciated the reality of placing a group of iron willed individuals together in a family environment. Privately, he suspected it was one of the reasons that familial relations among the upper classes were so strained. It was hard to love the ideal to which they all aspired, but impossible to aspire to anything else.

“I’m not sure you mother would have approved of you marrying a disgraced noble who enlisted in the marines to avoid being tried for murder, maybe the janitor wouldn’t look so bad,” he joked, stroking her soft lustrous hair. It wasn’t really true of course, he might be disgraced but he remained of the correct stock and station. In theory at least his offspring would not share in his disgrace, it might be generations before either the De Quentains, or the Falia’s acknowledged the links but they would eventually form a link in the Byzantine chains of family and influence which kept the upper echelons of the Stellar Empire running. It was even theoretically possible that Solae might one day lay claim to some portion of the Du Quentain legacy, although unless it was specifically condoned by Rene’s father, it would certainly require years or decades of legal battles.

“My mother died when I was eight or nine, aneurysm,” he went on plowing through the unpleasantness while the topic was open, rather than risk revisiting it later. He remembered the funeral clearly, it had been an almost bacchanalian affair, a solem service in public followed by a bawdy affirmation of life in private. He remembered being sad because the house staff was sad. His mother had spoken to him rarely and then formally and her loss was more academic than practical. His father had been a little more hands on, although for most of his life it had been servants who tended him. He remembered his father being proud when he had won a fencing match, or scored well in some test or other, but he remembered weeping when Old Mae, their kindly cook, had passed away much more vividly.

“I think my father would have like you too,” he told her after a few moments of reflection. It was hard to know exactly what the stoic, dour, Alric Du Quentain would think about anything, but Rene suspected he would have approved of the fiery young woman, though the Falias and Du Quentains had few previous contacts.

“He is a very hard man to read, after I enlisted I held out hope that he would get in touch with me and… Stars I don’t know, anything really.” It had been painful weeks, then months before Rene had finally given up hope that his father would speak to him. It shouldn’t have surprised him, he couldn’t fault the man politically, but it still stung.

“There are no other loves to report,” he told her truthfully.

“During training there is no time and afterwards…” he trailed off considering the graduation festivities before the first posting. There had been ample opportunity, indeed some of the women who lived near Camp Able made their whole years salary by freelancing for graduation week, but Rene couldn’t bring himself to partake. It wasn’t that he was a saint, though he generally tried to do the right thing, but a sort of residual class loyalty. His fellow troopers had mocked him ceaselessly, and he had gained the nickname Galahad, which he supposed had died at the Rat Trap.

“It probably sounds stupid but I just couldn’t. I suppose I figured that even as low as I had fallen I was still a Du Quentain, and that so long as I acted like a noble ought, it couldn’t be taken away from me. He trailed off finding the words in adequate to describe the thought behind them.

“In any case let us talk of happier things. We are still alive, we have a ship, I think we need to consider that a win!”

[Syrenrei]

"Yes, truly our success at grand larceny is to be celebrated," Solae remarked wryly with a laugh. Even in the most stern courts of the Stellar Empire it would be a challenge to find any member of the judicial branch willing to chastise the couple. Stealing was criminal, no matter the planet in question, but the smugglers and slavers had been operating an illegal enterprise that did considerably more damage to the imperial citizens and reputation. Not only would anyone with a pulse be sympathetic to the morally righteous duo over the scoundrels they had slain, they would have to concede that the property was taken only after the original owner was killed in self-defense, and in flight of a coup that threatened interstellar security. The marquise had no desire to break more laws than absolutely necessary for survival, but it was undeniable that they would be officially pardoned and forgiven so long as they did not commit treason, genocide, or other heinous acts the Empress could not explain. Nobility had a greater latitude in general with what they could 'get away with' on account of status, wealth, and connections with powerful attorneys, but it paled in comparison to the implied liberty with which the two aristocrats in the Bonaventure could operate until such time they were referred to safe space.

Solae let out a sigh of contentment. Technically the pillow was more comfortable than Rene's shoulder but it lacked the reassurance touch granted. The sigh was chased shortly by a yawn that announced how drowsy being in his embrace, in a slightly lumpy bed dressed in fine silks, after several full days of activity had made her. She only wished that the captain's quarters had more expansive windows so that she could watch the stars drift by as they sailed through the universe. Even in a freight ship that was hobbled together from scrap of other vessels there was no denying the cosmic beauty outside. Her parents would have argued that space was only properly viewed from a prestigious spacecraft. Fortunately the celestial heavens did not pay heed to elitist opinions and were just as stunning no matter whom looked upon them or what vehicle they traversed in.

"I personally think it's a win there's no past lovers I have to compete with," she teased as she curled up on the soldier and closed her eyes completely. Long golden hair splayed across him as her body grew heavy and she started to allow herself to succumb to the allure of slumber. While she was not asleep she would undoubtedly be shortly. Even an hour's rest would go a long way into repairing the damage of been driven to the brink of death as had occurred not so long ago. Their new home was not ideal but the thought it was theirs and they might be able to keep it for more than two consecutive nights was wondrous. Solae had never known how much she took for granted until it was ripped away.

"If we make it to a communications array we will need to decide who we want to reach out to. My... my parents are already dead and I am not close to my cousins. Perhaps we should send a message to your father? The rebellion will suppress news of all the deaths on New Concordia, so he won't realize the danger we're in immediately. He might try to ignore the missive, but perhaps if he hears where it's from, or if you can send him a coded clue we can get his attention. I know that it's a risk but he has more investment than most in us. Your family's honor could be restored when news of your heroism and triumphs spread; we'll be the talk of the sector, if not more, by the time the Empress is done with us. I'd rather reach out to someone that you trust to help than someone whose name I have only read on a piece of paper," she confessed.

It was too early to tell if they'd be able to find any operational equipment on Panopontus. With significantly less land mass for settlements there was less need for the expensive pieces of technology that were keyed to accept only specially screened diplomats' directives. There was also a very real chance even if they managed to send out a signal that it would be traced, interrupted, and/or intercepted, creating a high risk for the couple to be located by their enemies. Solae and Rene couldn't dictate the future but it was in their best interests to find an array, send a singular message, then evacuate, and try to locate one or more additional arrays for additional messages if necessary. Much as she believed in the Stellar Empire, they would not sweep in to save the marquise and her beau immediately, and she'd not forfeit her life in the last hour because she stopped thinking strategically.

"You should think of a coded message for your father, something that would let him know it's really you, so that he'll believe us both when we ask him to go to the military or the Empress as our advocate, just in case," she restated just as her consciousness bled away into the land of dreams. Already she was wistfully yearning for a day where she could repair the severed bonds of Du Quentain men. It was too late for her and her parents, but it wasn't too late for Rene, and she would become his knight in shining armor just as he had become hers so many times over in the last week.

[Penny]

Rene slipped out of bed, reluctantly leaving the warmth of Solae’s body behind. It felt bizzarley surreal, like a weird dream in which you get what you want but it is all twisted up with your fears. He carefully pulled the covers over Solae, the recycled air of the Bonaventure was not cold, but it was cool and dry compared to the sweltering tropic sunlight of New Concordia. For a moment he gazed at her face, it was still luminous in its perfection despite the hard few days behind them, the losses and the pain she had to be feeling.

“I will get you back safe,” he vowed quietly to himself, “by the Stars I will.”

No living spacecraft was every truly silent. Thousands of systems from complex navigational processor to simple fluid pumps thrummed and throb beneath bulkheads and access plates. Rene rifled through the possession of the former owner with millitary organisation, first he swept all the trash up, piling old food, machine parts he judged beyond repair and anything else he judged to be useless into the aft airlock. Given the filthy state of the place, that ended up being about as much as the airlock could hold. He wiped at his brow sweating from his exertions. It wasn’t really safe t vent the airlock while they were in jump, the carefully computed jump state was a fragile thing and ejecting a bunch of matter moving in excess of the speed of light was at best foolish and at worst deadly. Resolving to do it the moment they returned to the sidereal universe, Rene began to empty boxes, chests and personal effects from the dead crewmans quarters. It was not alot to rave about. Dirty clothing mostly jumpsuits stained with grease and other unfamiliar but equally soiled civilian garb, a few personal keepsakes, tablet computers and porno holos of unlikely and imaginative subjects. A few weapons, pistols mostly and a sawed off mob gun that Rene wasn’t sure would function without putting the user at more risk than the target. There was food, mostly dried stuff that would last forever and an electrolyte replacement mix that seemed to have crystalized into sedimentary rock.

In the cockpit he found a small and poorly concealed safe. Though it had a numeric keypad, Mia was able to over ride it with trivial ease using security cam footage to recreate the key sequence. Rene punched in the alpha numeric code and worked the release lever. Inside he found a hand full of Imperial Soledii, coins with wire rims in integral diffraction gratings which held their value. Each world struck its own currency under imperial auspices and coins varied slightly in shape and design from world to world. It wasnt a fortune, maybe the equivalent of half a year of Rene’s salary, but it had the attraction of being available and more or less untraceable.

The starscape shimmered as Rene sat down at the pilots station. Though he was glad for the sudden lull it also made him uneasy. The plan he and Solae had settled on was vague. They either needed to reach a PEA and transmit their warning, or win their way back into loyalist space. The didn’t even know where saftey might lay. The rebellion was clearly wider than New Concordia, possibly sector wide in scope. If that were the case they would need to pass through the central jump point at Casta Mirandila, the only system close enough to the coreward reaches to make a safe jump. Gulfs of interstellar space were transversable so long as there were large gravitational bodies linking them via gravitic distortion. While it was theoretically possible to jump from anywhere to anywhere, the practical mathematical and power requirements restricted routes to known and charted points. Dedicated exploration vessels could make longer jumps but they were rare and expensive, especially when astronomical data was easily attainable to plot new routes. If the rebellion was sector wide, they would certainly have seized Casta Mirandila in the opening moments, interdicting traffic through the vital jump point to stop the spread of the news. Rene wasn’t a naval officer but he wasn’t fool enough to think they could run the blockade in a tramp freighter.

That left the PEAs. Panopontus was too minor a world to warrant such an installation but it was as good a place as any to gather information. Enemy forces on New Condorida would certainly mount a pursuit but they had no way of knowing where the Bonaventure was headed once it entered jump space. The selection had been random and thus difficult to predict and Rene doubted there were enough rebel vessels on New Concordia to cover all the possible options.

“Mia is their any data on Panopontus in the ships computer?” he asked after a desulotory attempt to find the information himself.

“Pilotage data only Master Quentain,” Mia whispered, her tone implying that this meant their were wonderous and sensual discoveries to be made. The marine shook his head wryly. The AI was almost a friend but he doubted he would ever get used to it.

“No visuals or transaction data?” he pressed.

“According to the diagnostics most of my eyes are blindfolded,” she confided breathilly. Rene frowned as he pulled up the pilotage data, a series of meaningless vectors punctuated by a radio landing beacon frequency. Not a lot of use, he doubted either he or Solae wanted to land wherever the Bonaventure's previous crew had done business.

“Your eyes? You mean the external visual sensors?” he asked frowning, Mia was used to interpreting data from a wide variety of sensors, why should she have a preference for optical?

“Yes, there are no records of scheduled maintence,” she went on, a little sulkily. Rene cracked open one of the protein bars he had bought from the plantation and put it in his mouth. It tasted like sawdust and beef stock but he chewed with stoic determination.

“When we get on the ground I can take a look,” he offered. The chronometer wound down with the majesty of an hour glass, twelve hours till the broke out of jumpspace. After that they wouln’t be able to reenter until their positronic load rebalanced, four or five hours at the earliest. If there were rebel warships in orbit, it would require fast talking and no little luck to get past them. Rene watched the star scape for another minute before admitting to himself he was stalling. Reluctantly he set down the protein bar and thumbed the console live.

Dear Father, I write to you….

[Syrenrei]

Solae was not certain how long she slept nor did she remember her dream, but the cold sweat on her brow and irregular gallop of her heart as she jolted awake signified her dreams had been unpleasant. The marquise rolled onto her stomach from her side and buried her head into the pillow. Even with the luxurious silk covering there was no hiding the economical composition of the stuffing that had flattened from prior use and clumped in the interior. This was not the refined quarters of an aristocrat as had greeted her every morning for her entire life before the rebellion. It had not been so long she had forgotten the comforts of her home on New Concordia. For each day of the past week she had opened her eyes to a place that was unfamiliar, that was not immediately recognizable to the sluggish pace of a mind rousing from slumber, and tried to piece together how her world had changed. She would be lying to herself to say it was not a struggle. Were the nightmares that plagued her at least in part fueled by the dissonance between her past and present situation she would not have been surprised.

What she knew, however, was that it was not the abrupt departure from a life of courtly pursuits and decadence that had disturbed her in Rene's absence. Death chased her, haunted her, and nipped at her heels no matter how quickly she tried to run. The smell of burning flesh as missiles plowed into the embassy was still fresh in her mind. What surprised the noblewoman was how memories consumed all five senses in their recollection. Not only was there a scent to her concept of death now, there were the sounds of people gurgling as they choked on their own blood, images seared into her eyes of limp bodies falling to the floor, tactile impressions of falling on top of a corpse, and the coppery taste in the air that permeated tragic scenes. Rene had dealt with the horror of the coup admirably. He was courageous, valiant, and did not waver in his protection of herself and others. The mental fortitude of the Quentain man was yet another strength she admired, loved, and was concurrently wretchedly jealous of in secret.

"Mia?" she reluctantly called out for the artificial intelligence she had poorly integrated into the ship. When there was no immediate response she realized that her voice was sufficiently muffled by the pillow such that the freight's sensors had been incapable of picking up the sound, much less interpret it. With a pronounced groan she shifted back onto her side and cleared her throat loudly. "Mia?"

"Yes, Lady Solae?" was the coy reply. While she would have welcomed such a tone from Rene as she languidly laid in bed, it felt especially peculiar coming from Mia. The linguist tried not to hypothesize on why Lord Armon would want a seductive synthetic female being cooing to him while he laid nude in his bedchambers.

"Where's Rene? How long have I been asleep?" she inquired as she instinctively reached for the void on the bed next to her. The sheets were cool to the touch; he must have not stayed long after she fell asleep. The rejuvenation chamber would have provided him with sufficient rest that the diplomat realized he would not have been tired at all when she was succumbing to her fatigue. Though he was not obligated to stay by her side she was somewhat disappointed he had not; it was selfish, greedy, and would have meant he was twiddling his thumbs doing nothing while she slept, but there was a calm reassurance provided by his presence.

"Sir Rene is in the cockpit," Mia announced with inappropriate sultriness. "You have been in a state of repose for approximately 8 hours, 43 minutes, and 15 seconds. Would you like me to summon Sir Rene?"

"No, I'll go see him myself." Determined not to waste the rest of their time in jump space dosing, she jumped off the bed and hastily dressed herself. Her parents had often argued over the thermostat in her home; her father complained it was oppressively hot when her mother set it, and her mother complained that it felt like winter on Destuna when her father was in control. With a smile on her lips she wondered if she and Rene might have such mundane disagreements in their future. Regardless of any currently held perceptions, she felt slightly chilled and took a threadbare blanket that had been kicked to the floor and wound it around her shoulders.

"Mia," she started as she stepped outside the captain's quarters and into the adjacent hallway, "Would you be capable of talking me through doing some routine cleaning and maintenance of the Bonventure's internal components? Would that help your successful integration into the vessel?"

"Yes, Lady Solae, that is a possibility. There are some components and connections in the wiring that are less conducive to my processing, especially the secondary central nexus," she answered quickly with what almost sounded like excitement. Mia was incapable of genuine emotion but her simulations were uncanny enough they edged on believability.

"Where are the tools I'll need?" she asked as she paused in the hold.

"There should be one in the wall in a panel to your left," Mia directed. Solae wandered over and found a compartment labeled 'SYSTEM MAINTENANCE' in large, bold, black font that had faded slightly with age. When she popped the portal open she found a thick layer of dust on the plastic case that indicated that no one had ever bothered to withdraw the set much less use it for its intended purpose. If she was honest with herself she would have been more shocked if the filthy smugglers had shown such dutiful responsibility to conduits given the trash they had strewn about the ship from nose to thrusters.

"Can you please let Sir Rene know that I'm awake and where I am?" she said as she wiped clean the container and pulled it out for a brief inspection. "I don't want him to panic if he tries to check in on me. The ship is just big enough that two people can lose one another," she needlessly explained.

[Penny]

Dear Father,

I write to you to inform you that a Rebellion against the Empire has broken out on New Concordia and potentially the entire Eastern Cross. Imperial forces on New Concordia have been completely destroyed. All loyalists on the planet have been captured or killed. I believe that the Rebels lack the genetic codes to access the PEA network.

I have with me Solae Falia, a Marquissa and the sole survivor of the Falia family. The rebels are hunting her for her genetic codes but we have managed to get off planet. I do not know who to trust other than you but depend on you to help me to do my duty.

Solae and I are betrothed. I do not know if we will survive for this to be of import to anyone but ourselves but if I should perish and she should live I will depend on your honor to do all in your power to protect and support her.

Rene Quentain - Acting Captain General for New Concordia - Imperial Marine Corp

It was a cold and clinical letter Rene thought but even those few paragraphs had taken him the better part of an hour to assemble. His father was not a man to be swayed by emotion and everything depended on him taking the message seriously and acting accordingly. The message would need to be updated as they gathered more information but for the moment it would have to do. Rene didn’t know where or how they would find a PEA to get it out but taking even a small step made him feel better. With the a click he downloaded the message to a small memory chip and slipped it into his pocket.

“Mistress Solae is awaiting you in the cargo area,” Mia whispered with breathless anticipation. Rene started at the interjection. Some part of his mind had expected Solae to sleep until they reached the end of the jump, although now that he thought about it consciously there was no reason that should be so. The jump chronometer spun downwards like an hourglass counting off the hours and minutes until they dropped back into real space. The air temperature had already begun to increase by a slight but noticeable amount. Friction from the tiny proportion of the ship that interfaced with the material universe had begun to stress the cooling system. That was one of the normal limiters for jumps. Vessels that operated in hard vacuum could only handle waste heat by a slow process of radiation, or by dipping into an atmosphere or passing through another substrate, like a nebula to gain an assist from convection. In that regard bigger ships were actually able to jump further than smaller ones, their large surface areas allowing a more efficient radiation of waste heat. The fact that the Bonaventure was already heating up suggested that the drives could use a tune up, a task for which Rene didn’t even pretend to be qualified. Well if it were a perfect universe many things would have been different.

He found Solae in the cargo hold as Mia had promised. She was in the process of prying open an access panel that probably hadn’t been opened in their lifetimes. With a sudden snap the rust and void frozen seam gave and the panel crashed open in a cloud of dust. Stars above how had the vessel kept functioning for so long without even the pretense of maintenance. Solae peered inside the panel, evidently she either knew what she was doing or Mia had told her what to look for. Watching the stunning noblewoman work was a surreal experience, like watching a sculpture by one of the Masters come to life and start cleaning a floor. Rene suddenly remembered what it had been like for him when he had found himself in the Marines, exposed to a world of physical labour he had, until that point, only a theoretical knowledge of.

“Feels strange dosen’t it,” he said as he crossed the deck grating to where she stood.

“I didn’t think I’d ever get used to having to do things like this myself. I used to say to myself that I was the first Du Quentain to do anything useful in the last three hundred years.”

[Syrenrei]

Solae laughed lightly and dusted her hands on her pants. Before she might have balked at dirtying herself, even in her most mundane clothing, but recent circumstances had erased any pretense of sophistication and refinery. The marquise had also discovered a much abandoned closet in the Bonaventure that housed equipment that was capable of cleaning their garments. From the layer of dust on its surface she had wagered a guess that the prior owner and employees had been quite at peace with their filth and saw no reason to fight against its accumulation. Its current occupants, however, were of a different mind and would make certain that it did not go to waste when they had no such apathy to their personal hygiene. If Rene had allowed himself to descend further into his disgrace and wallow around in the muck willfully there would have been no realized romance before the pair.

"I rather enjoy having something like this to do," Solae admitted with a gesture to the nexus of fiber, translucent strings, and components to which she could not hope to put a name to. The light that was emitted was diffused by the cloud of particles that had grown during the years, if not decades, since the vessel was built. Without maintenance for simple acts such as cleaning hubs like the one she had just uncovered, the ship had been arguably abused, and the grime only added to the risk that it would deteriorate past being functional before either of the aristocrats had reached the end of their natural life. Had the Bonaventure been handled with more preventative measures and care she would have been able to be passed down for generations. Without intervention the machinery would seize sooner rather than later and it would be lucky to be gutted and made into an attachment to a Syshin community. Fortunately Mia was of the belief that they could remedy most of the issues currently plaguing the duo.

"The first Falia of any real importance was Yuri Konstantin Falia. As my father told it, he was indirectly involved in the events leading up to the Treaties of Vaetis Proximii. Yachion was a planet that had been colonized some time prior and had flourished because of the natural resources according to history texts, though they might have a rose-tinted view considering who actually wrote the texts. The people of Yachion did so well they were of the belief that they would be best left completely alone. Rather than try to stage a coup and take over a solar system or sector, they wanted to restrict space travel entirely, and govern themselves with no intervention. They became so convinced they had the best planet, and the best people, they tried to reject immigrants to the world with their growing xenophobia. You can imagine what they thought of the empire. Yuri Konstantin Falia spearheaded talks that brought them to the table and acted as a mediator for some of their disputes. I'm not sure how glorified he is posthumously but he was given title for his efforts and Yachion did not officially leave the Stellar Empire."

This sort of prestigious ancestry was commonplace for people of their status. As far as she was aware, no one was named Lord or Lady unless an individual in their lineage had a meaningful contribution, and even that was no guarantee. The Stellar Empire was vast and scandal spread more easily than virtue. Before the madness of the late emperor there had been familial lines stripped of their recognition and reduced to wealthy commoners (if that) for the crimes of one. It took dedication to remain among the elite or to ascend into its ranks as some of the recently appointed had. Solae had heard her mother and father speak ill of the rise of 'newcomers' to the courts, something she suspected played into their willingness to move to New Concordia, but not once had the linguist herself considered them to be less. The fight to stay in favor and the fight to claw into the light were equally challenging and worthy of respect.

"My mother and father love..," she paused and shook her head before changing to past tense, "loved me. But they both wanted me to follow a path like my predecessors. As far as I know Yuri wasn't a translator, but he was a diplomat, so they were hopeful that I would become a leader like he once was. It still seems silly to me, however, that they didn't ever encourage me equally to pursue a profession like the men and woman that wed into the Falia name. There were officers of the military, fellow bureaucrats, philosophers, mathematicians, historians, wealth managers, and lawyers that exclusively represented only the most affluent members of society. I wish they had allowed me to explore more. If they saw me now, actually enjoying toying around with the electrical guts of a freighter, they might have sent me to a retreat to reform myself," she jested although she was serious about the point she was trying to make. Nobles were bred for their brilliance but then painted into proverbial corners. It was an endorsed madness that was hilariously negligent; Solae could have become an inventor, an engineer, a scientist of renown, and yet she was restrained just as much as all of their peers. Each one of her former classmates had the tools to achieve their dreams but none of the freedom.

"Now that I'm an orphan, and perhaps a hero of the empire by virtue of surviving a rebellion without being caught, perhaps I'll start a scandal by openly admitting I tinkered on a smuggler's run down ship. Would you like to join in on the blasphemy? I promise not to tell your father," she teased. "Mia's telling me what to do and I could use another set of hands."

[Penny]

The junction box flexed and cracked as Rene heaved against it. His muscles bunched and strained. The ancient plasteel began to fracture like spiderwebs spreading across ice. With a final snap the ancient work hardened joint gave way and the junction box came free with a puff of dust. The box, a grey cube about a foot on each edge snubbed up against the nest of varicolored wires which fed into it. Rene blew a breath out from between his lips. In theory the box should have unclipped easily, but, like every other box they had checked, the attachment groves of this one had been cold welded by years of hull torque and neglect.

“Got it,” Solae said, reaching her smaller hands over his and popping the burned fuses, identifiable by ancient charing, from their housings and replacing them with two fresh units. Then, with economy of motion, she applied three beads of adhesive to the unit. Rene pressed the box back into position. It felt momentarily greasy before the powerful chemicals set and locked the unit into place. Rene carefully withdrew his arm from the duct, taking care not to crush Solaes. The had been at it for hours, both of them were filthy from the task but Rene was not sorry for it. They had talked why the worked, speaking of their families and their pasts. Of small things mostly, the sort of minor adventures and anecdotes that had seemed important before the chaos and bloodshed of the coup. Rene could imagine they were on a date.

“I estimate you have increased servo efficiency by 2.6 percent,” Mia purred, filling each syllable with sultry suggestion just shy of scandalous. Almost Imagine it anyway. Given the state of neglect a few points of improvement was actually a fairly impressive accomplishment. It gave Rene hope that the Bonaventure might one day be a real vessel, rather than a travelling coffin. It seemed to Rene that Solae had a real talent for it, whereas he was just a useful pair of hands. He wondered if the diplomatic corp taught a course on electronics, perhaps for the installation of listening devices or some such. Perhaps it was simply an innate talent, the way some men were artists without ever attendinging a school, or became crack shots after only a days on the range.

“Alright,” Rene responded, drawing the back of his palm across his forehead, smearing grease and grit across his tanned skin, “What is the next best gain?” They had followed a simple procedure for prioritizing repairs. Mia decided which repair would yield the largest improvement and they attended it. Then they moved onto the next largest problem, moving down the hierarchy of the Bonaventure's dozens or hundreds of minor infirmities.

“Chips 22a and 19b on board 210 are non functional, but I do not project you will have sufficient time to effect repairs.”

“What do you mean sufficent time?” Rene asked, realising the moment after he spoke the answer to his question.

“We will be exiting jump in a little under twelve minutes,” Mia crooned, “I estimate replacing the chips will take twenty one minutes at current speed.”

Rene straightened, working the kinks from his back induced by spending too much time controlling himself to reach into the various access plates and maintenance ducts. An irrational resentment filled him at having to return to the universe where he had to think and act. There might be rebel warships on station above Panopontus, or troops on the ground. They might just as easily be completely unaware of the rebellion. Either way, he didn’t want leave this idyllic respite.

“Alright,” he said with a heavy sigh, “lets strap in.”

Extracting from Jumpspace was almost as unpleasant as entering it. The Bonaventure snapped back into the sidereal universe with the suddenness of a rubber band released from an unimaginable tension. Rene had the sudden sensation of his individual atoms dispersing through his harness and out into hard vacuum. He squeezed his eyes shut to banish the hallucination, his vision momentarily pulsing red.

No rebel warships hung in orbit around Panopontus. According to the Bonaventure’s admittedly crude sensors, the only other ships in the vicinity were a trio of freighters, two inbound and one in the final stages of atmospheric accent. Rene sighed with unconcious release as he cycled the sensors through the various bands of the electro-optical spectrum, double checking the ships conclusion as best he could.

They were several hundred thousand kilometers from the planet, a dark greenish orb on the central display. Rene had expected it to appear blue, as Cappela did, having subconsciously associated ocean with the seas of his youth. More impressively a vast cyclonic storm seemed to cover two thirds of the distant globe. Rene turned up the gain on the sensors, rolling the magification up several hundred fold. In the close up image they could see vast whorls of black storm clouds thousands of miles long. Lighting flashed in syncopating cascades like distant artillery fire.

“Uhhh is this storm activity normal Mia?” Rene asked watching the monitor in wide eyed wonder. Worlds varied in their habitability, there were worlds where vast electrical storms danced in the atmosphere or tectonic activity rent the crust into canyons of bright magma, but in general Imperial terraforming tamed the worst of natures excesses.

“Previous records suggest that it is not,” Mia supplied with unusual austerity, “there are also emergency broadcasts on seven hundred and twelve local frequencies which I can detect.”

It seemed that Rebellion was not the only disaster plaguging the worlds of the Eastern Cross.

[Syrenrei]

"We don't really have a choice," Solae remarked as she stated the obvious. "We need to diffuse the excess heat and jump energy," she explained more for her own benefit than Rene's. Although she had not voiced it aloud she was already preparing to be personally responsible for their landing. In order to summon the courage and strength required for such a dangerous descent, one into atmosphere plagued by a natural disaster already consuming more than half of the planet, she needed to justify the need rationally. They were sitting ducks for the rebellion so long as their ability to re-enter jumpspace was mitigated or negated entirely. The Bonvaventure did not have sufficient weaponry to defend itself against an assault much more launch one against their enemies.

"I am obligated to caution you against this course of action," Mia stated stiffly. Whenever they pushed her into programming that contradicted her personality overlay she sounded clinical. It reminded Solae of the more basic computers that were utilized in public buildings to guide everyday citizens to their destinations. Apparently software engineers thought the dissonance between the rigid robotic voice and whatever synthesized tone their clients chose would help impart the severity of certain warnings. The marquise would be lying if she said it wasn't at least partially effective.

"Thank you, Mia. Do you think you could instruct me how to pilot to the surface?" she asked as tested her straps and turned towards one of the nearby consoles. Because it was only a freight transport, rather than a luxury liner, there was only room for a couple of navigators. Traditionally one did almost all of the actual piloting and the second was a back-up for when the primary helmsman was indisposed or otherwise unavailable. Since Rene had taken control when they were departing New Concordia (she was in no position to argue or try to take charge even if she wanted to) the unspoken assumption was he'd continue in this role.

"Do you have experience piloting space vessels?" Mia asked with a slight sense of incredulity. Her logical parameters had led her into the assumption, just as the soldier's deduction might have, that Rene would be steering.

"No, which is why I would need your guidance," Solae answered smoothly. "Please answer my question, Mia. Do you have a manual or other documentation that you can utilize to instruct me how to pilot this spacecraft as we break orbit?"

"Yes, Lady Solae," was the sullen response. Even Mia could recognize she was being chastised for asking questions rather than defaulting to obedience. A pang of fleeting guilt resounded in the diplomat's heart; she knew that Mia didn't have feelings but there was something cruel about being so stern with an entity whose prime directive was to keep her safe. In a way Mia was both friend and the closest thing the linguist had to a parent after she was left orphaned. As an adult, and an aristocrat of high stature, she was obligated to show a polite and respectable amount of grief while remaining indifferent in practice. No noble wanted to be viewed as "emotional." The turbulence of her heart, however, was indicative of the fact that Solae was not the paragon of unfaltering composure and stoicism that was paraded around the courts regularly.

"I want to try to do this," she explained to Rene. "I've always applied my intellect to languages but... I want to contribute more than translating on our behalf. I'll rely on you to step in if things go horribly wrong. Would you be all right with being my arm candy just this once?" she continued on with a coy, bemused smile.

"Excuse me, Lady Solae, but may I inquire what 'arm candy' is? Is this a function for Sir Rene? Should I reroute some of the systems to his console accordingly?" Mia asked breathlessly in her unflappably sultry voice.

"I'm just teasing him, Mia. Perhaps Lord Armon familiarized you with another term that had the approximately same meaning. Trophy wife? Trophy husband? Trophy fiancee?" Despite their dire and grim future on Panopontus she could not help but laugh as she imagined how Mia might interpretation of 'arm candy' in a literal sense. Once they were in relative safety she might very well produce a pin for the marine's uniform that was emblazoned with the humorous title.

"I apologize, Lady Solae..." Mia began.

"It means I am keeping Rene by my side because he is exceedingly handsome," Solae said as she simplified the concept the best she could. Sarcasm would be a lesson for another day. "But I was not being serious. He's also quite strong, charming, empathetic, considerate, and a multitude of other things I could spend the entire day listing. I'll spare you both for the time being," she stated with a wink to her paramour. "Are you both ready?"

"Yes, Lady Solae," Mia purred.

[Penny]

Rene chuckled as he took a seat to the side and slightly behind Solae. He reached a hand forward and squeezed her shoulder.

“I don’t suppose I’m much in the way of arm candy right now,” he said with a grin, catching a glimpse of his grease stained face in the view screen. Dirt and grit caked his arms and most of the front of his tunic. Dirt was a constant companion to an infantryman, the only more frequent companion was mud. Rene hadn’t previously given it much thought but spending time in Solae’s company made him more self conscious, as though the woman's presence was triggering his mind to slip back into the older more fastidious patterns of an Imperial nobleman. He wondered if that was entirely a good thing.

Although Solae’s decision was unexpected Rene was pleased that she had chosen to take the controls. During the escape he hadn’t had time to worry about it, but afterwards he had begun to worry about his performance. He had done well enough during that panicked flight, but it had been a simple powered lift without nuisance. He had spent a little time on simulators in training, but he didn’t have the right instincts for it. At his heart Rene was too aggressive, the same characteristics that made him an effective combatant on the ground were a disadvantage when it came to the subtlety of flight control. Doubt had begun to gnaw at him, doubt that had gotten worse with the sight of the storm.

“I’ll do what I can to keep us stable,” he told Solae. A slight shudder began to run through the hull as they reached the upper atmosphere. The rattle of the plates and the ping of the heating hull metal began to set up an unpleasant vibration, something that rattled at the back of the teeth, or like the whininging of inistant insects. The friction heat slowed the ship with a series of increasingly violent shocks, Rene could see trails of smoke and steam peeling back from the nose of the vessel in long greasy ribbons. Solae worked the controls carefully, following instructions from Mia that Rene couldn’t see from his vantage points.

“I think I’ve found a landing site,” Rene said, watching the sensor data in a quarter of his view screen while the remaining quadrants displayed pitch and velocity graphs. The stresses on the hull were displayed as highlights from green to red. Rene was uncertain how far he could trust the sensors but it wasn’t as though he was spoiled for options. With a series of swift key strokes he bought up a grainy image of a storm tossed island, perhaps ten or twenty square miles. The surface of Panopontus was covered with such islands, but this one was unique for containing the remains of a volcanic caldera. The crack in the crust that had spawned the island was gone but the twenty foot high walls of compacted cinder ash remained. It was what the Marines called ‘keyhole cover’ a depression steep enough that a satellite or orbiting vessel would need to pass nearly directly overhead.

“Sir Rene,” Mia said with the coy protest which was the closet she could come to active disapproval.

“Those coordinates take us nearly through the center of the weather system!” The hull began to slew as they dipped through the ionosphere and into the upper reaches of the sucking malestrom below. Even though they were a few thousand meters above the black storm front the air was still swirling at the top of the cyclones funnel. Rene began to fire the external maneuvering jets attempting to balance out the yaw so that Solae could focus on the decent without worrying abut the wind. It was a difficult and taxing task and it was several minutes before he felt he was able to answer.

“That is the idea, no one is going to be watching sensors in this hash, if we can get to the ground….” The Bonaventure pitched sideways violent as it hit an unexpected wind shear, dropping several hundred meters in a fraction of a second. Solae, grim faced adjusted her controls and they smoothed out. Rene put up a landing track on her screen with distance and vector information, trusting Mia to display it in a useable form.

“Once we make it to the ground, no one will know we are here,” he concluded. The external visual sensors went black as they hit the clouds, even through the pressure seals the cyclonic howl of winds was deafening. Rene furiously tried to compensate for the wind as Solae continued her grim duel with the controls. The island he selected was less than thirty miles from an inhabited island but showed no signs of settlement. The screens lit up again as Rene tumbed the display to millimetric radar. A stark black white picture but intelligible nonetheless.

The hull ran with impacts as the descended further towards the surface. Small pieces of vegetation or shells picked up by the winds hissed off the hull like a squall of hail. On the scopes Rene could see the dark greenish seas heaving in colossal waves fifty or a hundred meters tall under the lash of the winds. There was a metallic twang as something carried away on the outside of the hull, maybe an antennae or a poorly secured hull plate. Rene clung on grimly whispering encouragement to Solae as she took both their fates in her hands.

[Syrenrei]

Solae couldn't be absolutely certain, but she was willing to bet a substantial sum of currency that every navigational alarm that was still functional was illuminated on her console. There were more lights flashing than were at Lord Armon's last 'singles' party (not all the attendees were actually unattached) and that was quite the achievement. While the interface had been designed such that they did not clutter the screen with their insistent flickering neon yellow or ominous red, it was more distracting than helpful, and even the seasoned multi-tasker was having difficulty keeping their data at the edge of the vision while also focusing on piloting the Bonventure. Only time would help her efficiently track all the information at her fingertips. Learning a language was a wholly different process, but much like any skill it required practice and familiarity, something she was sorely lacking with her task at hand.

"Next time I'm picking the landing site!" she yelled out over the roar of wind outside. Because they were no longer utilizing the auto-pilot, which was not programmed for natural disasters like the typhoon were currently in the midst of, the marquise was manually steering the vessel. In each hand was a rod outfitted with a serious of sensitive pressurized buttons. Had they been in a luxury vehicle the manual system might have been orbs or a hologram but this was far from cutting edge; the mixed metallic and electronic instruments were not designed for comfort but utility alone. Ergonomic sticks would have been twice the cost and smugglers apparently thought it was an extravagance not worth investing in. Truthfully she could not blame them. No one save the unlikely couple would be desperate and foolishly courageous to dive into a hurricane of this size and intensity. The criminal deviants would have never found the need for this situation because they would never have reacted the same way as the two aristocrats.

"Lady Solae, the angle of descent..." Mia began to warn. One hexagon-shaped icon on her console was an offensive shade of orange that outlined their anticipated trajectory if the thrusters were not adjusted. Solae was not an expert but she could tell at a glance that pushing their spacecraft into the ground nose-first would not preserve the integrity of the hull nor do them any favors. The cockpit would presumably absorb most of the impact and be heavily damaged. There was much the diplomat could risk but Rene's safety was not one of them.

"I see it Mia!" she called out in frustration. Veteran members of the most prestigious branches of the military would have difficulty managing this particular landing. Solae was no longer convinced she wanted to remain the pilot- not if she was going to endure this sort of situation in her very first foray into this skill. She had volunteered with the anticipation that they would have selected a spot on the third of the world not currently concealed by black clouds. Stubborn, willful, and proud as she was, this sort of trial by fire undermined both her faith in her natural abilities as well as eliminated what enjoyment she might have reaped from a less horrifically stressful scenario.

Cyclonic winds whipped the sides of their craft and battered the exterior with equal parts precipitation and debris from the nearby land masses. Their landing site would survive the monstrous storm but she had doubts whether the residents of the planet would; if Mia had been correct that this was unprecedented occurrence they may be ill-prepared for the devastation. They had just fled from the corpse-laden world of New Concordia and now they may be very well walking into another land of death. Before her eyes she saw her hopes of digging through archives washed away with the tidal surges. If the governmental buildings were not underwater they would soon become hubs of activity, bustling with citizens of the Stellar Empire who were victims to Mother Nature, and who would all instantly recognize the marquise from the bulletin blasted sector-wide.

"I'm not convinced this is better than sitting in space and being shot down," she admitted with gritted teeth. Surprisingly Solae found she was irritated not only with her own shortcomings as a navigational novice but also with her current company- both Rene and Mia- for making her go through such an unforgiving subsection the troposphere. Rationally she was quite aware that the rotation of Panopontus on its axis was not anyone's responsibility but it was easier to direct her anger at entities than ecosystems without consciousness.

"Mia, divert the power from the thrusters buffering our descent and redirect that energy to keeping our side-to-side stability!" she ordered.

"But Lady Solae," the artificial intelligence began to protest.

"We're going to let gravity carry us down the rest of the way to avoid using too much fuel," she explained, "so I also need you to be prepared to route power back to those thrusters when we are at approximately three thousand meters above the target. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Lady Solae," Mia said with a reluctance that belied the simulated entity had reservations about this plan- as much as she was capable of having anyway. Standard programming was to value the safety and health of the humans over all else. Far too many doomsday media predictions had made engineers overtly paranoid their creations would turn on the biologically living if not given at least a half dozen protective directives.

What had been a chaotic, yet controlled, descent became the Bonventure hurtling towards the ground with a stomach-lurching speed as it blazed through hundred, then thousands, of meters in seconds rather than minutes. The strategy had the benefit of keeping them from going off-course in latitude or longitude but at the cost of achieving enough velocity that the gravity throughout was lost in their reckless freefall. As the sky howled by Solae kept her fingers wound tightly around the rods and held her breath both to help maintain concentration and keep herself from vomiting. Their altimeter's numbers were a blur as they disappeared in a wink; had it been a physical dial rather than a fluorescent digital readout it may have spiraled quickly enough to break. Eight thousand feet. Seven thousand. Six. Five. Four. Three! The vessel jerked violently and, despite bracing herself, Solae was mildly concussed as her head bounced on the back of her economical seat.

"Hold on!" she called out to Rene just in case the harness proved insufficient for the rough landing. She rolled her thumbs and pressed with her ring fingers and pinkies into grooves as she yanked up the bulky nose of the freighter. The pane was covered in rolling fog and heavy rain that almost eliminated visibility entirely. It was radar that was being relied upon for topographical readings necessary to land rather than actually crash and kill them instantly. The Bonventure unceremoniously finished its journey through the typhoon as it, still bucking under the steady hands of Solae, finally met the ground. Impact was far less substantial than anticipated and it did not take the diplomat long to reason why: the same downpour that accompanied the malevolent gales had made the soil into a mud pit rather than an impregnable tightly packed wall of dirt. They wouldn't be going anywhere until the sun re-emerged and dried the surface substantially.

[Penny]

The roar of the plasma motors died instantly as Rene cut the feedlines with a quick slash of his hand, chopping the engines before mud kicked up from their landing sight could clog the feed ports and convert the thrusters into bombs capped with indigenous clay. For a long moment there was the whine of stressed metal seeking its natural state and then nothing but the persistent hiss of a tropical downpour on a metal surface. Rene blew out a long breath, and gingerly removed his hands from his controls as though afraid that some slight motion might spell disaster. It had been close, the gale force had been worse than the ships sensors had predicted, but close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.

“Solae, that was absolutely amazing,” he breathed, loathe to disturb the silence but unwilling to risk that he might actually be dead. It had been an insane piece of piloting even with Mia’s not inconsiderable assistance. The Noblewoman clearly had a knack for the job that Rene could only envy. Unsteadily he slapped at the release plate that held the X shape of his harness together and pulled himself to his feet. The pressure of the semi crash had bruised his chest but hadn’t done any permanent harm. He staggered over to one of the control boards and threw the toggle for the external ventilation hatches. Half a dozen of the hatches returned red tell tales, indicators that they had failed to open, but enough turned green that the sound of pouring rain intensified. Along with the rain came the native air.

After almost two standard days cooped up in the Bonaventure they had gone somewhat nose blind to the stink of it. The reek of the slave ships past life, had not been improved by the eviscerated shot torn bodies of the former crew. Even the cleaning chemical Rene had used to try to salvage the place had simply added to the effluvia that circulated and recirculated through the ancient atmosphere processing unit. By contrast the air of Panopontus smelled fresh and clean, it carried with it a hint of salt from the worlds vast oceans although it lacked the iodine tinge of Capella. Sand and plantlife tinged it as well , although the scent was queer and alien to Rene’s nostrils, as though the biosphere were very slightly alkaline. It washed over them like a cool breeze, the cyclonic winds were blocked by the caldera but there was enough current to kick up dust from hidden recesses. The fact that air was a fluid was rarely better illustrated then by feeling the old stale air of a space voyage washed out by fresh natural air. It smelled heavenly.

“We made it,” Rene said stating the obvious more to reassure himself than anyone else. HIs face split into a broad grin. Unless they were supremely unlucky, they should have arrived unnoticed and any pursuers would find them nearly impossible to detect. They needed to get out and see what damage the ship had suffered, but for the moment he was happy to ride the high of simply being alive.

“That. Was one hell of a landing.”

[Syrenrei]

"Well I am glad you enjoyed the spectacle because I have no intention of repeating it," Solae remarked sourly. Her soldier companion had seen her terrified, anxious, injured, assertive, diplomatic, empathetic, and appalled, but perhaps never quite in such a foul mood as she was now. The marquise punched her own release plate, threw off her harness, and abruptly stood up. Both her arms and legs were shaking as an aftereffect from the tensing of her muscles during their descent, a direct result of duress, which made her momentarily unstable on her feet. A few seconds later and she had stepped away from the safety of her conformed navigation seat and its accompanying console. Needing something to do she twisted her long hair and curled it into a loose bun which she pinned into place with a small metal rod that she kept tucked into her hip pocket for exactly this purpose. It was hardly an updo that was worthy of someone of her station and the simple alloy was more ugly than decorative but she couldn't find it in herself to care.

"Lady Solae, I would like to congratulate you on a successful landing," Mia said. She was either oblivious to Solae's brooding or attempting to assuage any negative emotions with flattery. The artificial intelligence was impossible to understand whether she was being inappropriately seductive or an unwelcome intrusion into a conversation to which she was not a party. "Your excellent coordination and reflexes are to be commended. In my analysis you make a superior pilot and should handle future operations of the Bonaventure."

"Absolutely not," was the linguist's immediate protest to the proposal. "Either of you could have landed on the part of the planet not covered in this storm but we picked this spot- and for what? The Bonaventure's almost certainly been damaged, perhaps even to the point we'll be stuck here longer than if we had landed somewhere else and moved the ship to the caldera after the storm passed, my nerves are frayed, we're lodged in the mud, and we have no boat to ferry us between here and the closest hint of civilization if anyone has survived. We're alive but for how long? If we're stranded in this spot as a result of our choice we'll be discovered by the rebellion with no means to escape!" Without waiting for a rebuttal she turned and stalked her way out of the cockpit and down the narrow corridor to the hold. The true enemy was the Duke staging this coup and yet she felt worse now than she had when they were slowly orbiting Panopontus.

Solae wanted to feel that they were making progress. She had become engaged to the man of her dreams after he had saved her life more than once. The universe, however, continued to conspire and the pressure she was under to successfully touch down a freighter not meant to withstand gale-force winds in a precise location had been crushing. Her mind flickered back to the parents she had lost, the friend whose life had been drained in front of her eyes, knowledge her family home had been ransacked, her co-workers being butchered, her family home being destroyed, witnessing slavers, and fleeing without any real confidence there would be victory. With a sigh she sat down on one of the long benches that had once been utilized to store Syshin. At her core the marquise doubted she had made a difference.

Besides Rene the only things she had to show from the last week were perhaps a dozen Syshin that had been returned to Amber Horizon safely, a deteriorating vessel stolen from degenerates, and funds siphoned from the same criminals' account. Mia's consciousness had been transferred to the spacecraft but a backed-up version of the synthetic being was also remotely saved elsewhere. Leaning over Solae buried her head in her hands and tried to smooth away her ire. Everyone, she reasoned, had days they felt as if their actions were futile.

[Penny]

“Solae…” Rene began, taken aback by her reaction to what he considered to be a brilliant success, but she had already left the bridge, heading down the access corridor towards the hold. Rene stood up to follow her but the door slid shut and refused to open. Suspiciously he glanced at a nearby optical sensor. Was the computer telling him to leave her alone.

“Mia, open this door,” he ordered. The locking mechanism flashed green indicating it was unlocked. Rene pressed a thumb to the access stud and it slid back with a hiss. If it had been Mia’s intention to give Solae a few seconds of privacy it had worked, she was already out of sight, perhaps in the captain cabin. Shaking his head he took a few steps into the corridor and pulled the lever that operated the main hatch. The hydraulics squealed and there was a distinct grinding of metal. The rough landing had evidently torqued the ramp so that it bound in place. The problem was a common one in ships that had to make hard and fast landings. Marine dropships had explosive kickers to force a ramp down in an emergency, lest the men inside be massacred while they tried to disembark. Fortunately there were other options. Rene sprang into the air and let his eighty kilos act as a trip hammer, driving both his feet into the ramp as close to the end as possible. The impact broke the friction weld and the ramp deployed in a slow grinding decent.

There was an instant spray as wind whipped water blew into the gap, soaking his boots and trouser legs with surprisingly tepid fluid. He caught hold of a stanchion and rode the rap down. The metal ramp vanished into two or three feet of water that gutted and edited around it as the winds changed direction. Tiny dots of blue white phosphorescence danced in dark green water. Rene took a few more steps down the ramp and looked out over the Caldera. It was an impressive sight even though there was very little light. Whether it was day or night he couldn’t tell, the mass of whirling storm clouds above rendered everything in gray green. They sat a little off the center of the caldera. During normal weather it was probably dry, but rain and the wind swept sea had filled it to the level of Rene’s knees. Great walls of compacted and ossified volcanic rock rose around them in a near perfect circle, although off to the east there was a semi collapsed section that gave access to the rest of the island. Here and there small saplings, they looked more like coral trees, no thicker than Rene’s thumb poked up out of the rain swept surface of the water. Doubtless the Bonaventure had smashed some flat when she had come down, but such minor growth was insignificant compared to the mass of a starship.

The entire surface of the temporary lake danced with blue white light. Tiny algae, probably normally invisible save for when they were disturbed by the wake of boats or creatures, light with tiny flashes of light every time a raindrop hit the dimpled surface of the lake. Waves of light rose up, reflecting the wind and rain in eerie lockstep. It was somewhat akin to being amidst the sweep of an aurora. Rene looked down at his own legs already spattered with motes of flashing light and turned his hands over to discover more such dots dancing on the back of his hands.

“Stars…” he muttered in quiet awe. Rene considered himself to be a worldly man, perhaps even something of a cynic but the glowing lake, beneath the swirling masses of black cloud and howling winds, was enough to stun him for a moment. He should get Solae. There was duty though. Sighing he waded into the water, sinking to his knees in places as he made a circuit of the ship. The Bonaventure was sunk into the silty muck that had been the bottom of the caldera, but it wasn't as thoroughly mired as he had feared. When the ship had struck the layer of water must have absorbed a considerable amount of impact. In his mind's eye Rene could see the vast sheet of water flying upwards as the ship struck, raining glowing motes of light in a vast artificial geyser. The water impact meant that the ship had taken less damage when it hit the muddy bottom. The aft landing skid was bent unnaturally and leaking hydraulic fluid into the water, and some of the rear hull plating was clearly buckled. To Rene’s considerable relief all of the plasma motors appeared to be intact, although he couldn’t tell in the driving rain if any of the nozzles had been warped or cracked.

Thoroughly soaked Rene clambered back up the entrance ramp, pausing to swap his face clean with an arm. Rough stubble scratched at him and he was reminded that he hadn’t shaved in nearly a week. He snorted in amusement at himself. Shaving seemed rather low on the list of priorities and it wasn’t as though the pirates were likely to have a razor. He squelched back along the gangway, the glow on his body fading slowly as the algae metabolised their energy in quick strobe like flashes.

“Solae? Solae you need to come and see this.”

[Syrenrei]

Putting the Bonaventure into a free-fall had seemed to be a good idea at the time- and indeed the strategy was successful in conserving their fuel to some degree- but their brief encounter with zero gravity had left the interior of the ship in disarray. Engineering protocols mandated that even freighter vessels such as the one Solae and Rene had stolen from slavers be designed with the understanding there would be turbulence. Weightlessness, however, was not a testing simulation for manufacturing nor considered with design. It had been determined centuries ago that artificial gravity was best for traversing the universe and thus no one anticipated any reason their galleys, crew quarters, or cockpits meet pre-empire standards of adventuring astronauts. Solae had sighed at the foodstuffs, tools, and trivial necessities strewn about before rising from her seat and sorting them methodically. Rationally she knew this was just an inconvenience but her heart took it was yet another sign she had made grave mistakes.

"I'm not in the mood, Rene," she called out as she picked up an old-fashioned bar of soap that had escaped its holder in the shower and tucked it back into place. "The last thing I need to see is how damaged the ship is," the marquise admitted to herself aloud. She had assumed the sounds of him forcing the ramp to descend, then the fading thudding noise of his boots upon metal, were indicative of a much-needed survey of the exterior. No one ever claimed had ever claimed the piercing through a typhoon was in the best interests of interstellar spacecraft. There was bound to be some repercussions for their risky endeavors.

Staying inside was her attempt to willfully ignore the pain that came from reflecting upon their circumstances with cynicism. Most would have been like Rene, celebrating their victory with a mixture of relief and excitement, but Solae's overtaxed optimism was crashing as spectacularly as their method of transportation had not fifteen minutes earlier. After landing she felt jittery, ill, numb, fatigued, and frustrated both at the challenge and the imperfect results. Nobility was groomed with high expectations that nothing they did, said, or made should be anything less than flawless, and yet the Bonaventure's current state was a loss contained inside the triumph for an aristocrat. Solae was realizing what a poor loser she was, how badly she accepted any perceived failure, and how much pride she had left to be wounded.

Allies. Though the linguist had Rene, for whom she was eternally grateful, there were no other lasting bonds that would help carry them towards successfully fleeing to a safe sector. The Syshin of Amber Horizon lacked the sophisticated communication equipment necessary to call upon other of their species on nearby planets- as humanity was justly paranoid opening lines between settlements could lead to coups- and so each encampment would require another foray into diplomatic exchanges. The Parks had temporarily assisted the couple but made their intentions to stay on New Concordia, and out of the skirmishes of the war, quite clear. Mia was a synthetic consciousness and her programming was less dependable than the human heart but technically she was an ally for now.

Transport. The Bonaventure was functional but undeniably in a state of disrepair even before they hurtled through a hurricane to the surface of Panopontus. To have the ship in perfect working order would require a substantial amount of currency, components and replacements that she was uncertain would be easily located or purchased, and repairs that would take time and expertise. Assuming there was not significant damage sustained that would leave them stranded on the oceanic world, any business or individuals they sought out for assistance would likely have questions why it had such unusual owners (if they did not recognize Solae immediately from the posted bounty).

Warning to Capella. Their plan to send Rene's father a message was the best chance of relaying the urgency of the situation, but with each passing day the rebellion would strengthen their grip on the sector, and the longer it took them to get to a communication array the more doubts that Solae had any correspondence would make a significant difference. The full force of the empress's fleet was breathtaking but it was not the only factor in a war. Battalions could wipe out the treasonous Duke if his forces were rooted in only a few cities but so long as the empire was ignorant of crimes he had a potent advantage. Outposts of marines could be ambushed and murdered, just as Rene's had, and he could conquer with little resistance.

The more she remunerated on Panopontus the more bleak their outlook seemed. She was skeptical they could find sympathetic souls here, or resources, or information, or means to get to a communication array. Biting her lip lightly she considered once more that Rene would, in fact, be better without his identifiable golden-haired fiancee. If he settled nearby he could forge a new identity, obtain gainful employment, and start over with little risk of discovery. The marquise was in no rush to abandon their mission but she was starting to become convinced that some, if not all, of their goals might be too lofty for reality.

[Penny]

Rene paused, the brusque response jolting him out of the mood of wonder and euphoria of moments before. What was eating the woman? She ought to be euphoric at the success of the landing, not concerned about what amounted to very minor damage considering the source. They were on the surface and the hull was degaussing, not bad going for two nobles whos only experience with ship handling had been theoretical overviews and a little coaching from an AI not suited to the purpose. Instinctively Rene came to parade rest, even though Solae couldn’t see him from this angle.

“Looks like the damage is fairly minor, some hull torque and a bent landing strut,” he reported as though delivering the information to an officer. Water dripped from his soaked clothing to the deck in a steady flow. The slight cant of the hull, drew the fluid in a stream towards the hold and the grating which had once been used to remove the waste products of comatose Syshin.

“We will have to wait till the floor of the Caldera drains and drys so we can lift,” he went on, turning access one of the data terminals built into the wall. The holographic unit hummed to life but the display flickered erratically, another casualty of long disuse and indifferent maintenance. He keyed in a sequence of quick diagnostics and fuel consumption figures. On current reserves they could probably lift out of the atmosphere but only just, and landing again at the next destination would be all but impossible. The Bonaventure had obviously expected to resupply on New Concordia when it picked up its cargo of slaves, an activity forestalled by the violent events of its capture. Fuel and intelligence were the top priorities now. They badly needed to know where a functional PEA might be found and how widespread the rebellion might be.

The nearest settlement, according to the information the Bonaventure’s sensors had gleaned in orbit, was Porto San Roayo. Panopontus was not densely settled by Imperial standards. The relatively small islands didn’t have space or industry to support huge cities. The majority of Panopontians were engaged in the gathering of various species of coral that occurs naturally in the worlds shallow seas. The coral was an essential ingredient in a number of medications and recreational hallucinogens, though the processing of the drugs required tolerances to precise to be achieved on Panopontus itself. The raw coral was transhiped to larger more industrial worlds, processed into its final world and then sold forward to the more populous and prosperous worlds of the Eastern Cross and the greater Empire beyond. The coral divers lived in small communities of several hundred at most, usually on small islands and atolls that clustered around a larger hub like San Roaya, where the limestone plates were sufficiently thick to permit the landing of starships. The hub cities provided light industry, administration and landing facilities for the offworld traders who bought the harvest to market. Even so the star ports were small affairs, suitable for tramps like the Bonaventure but far too small to accept bulk freighters or warships like the central starport at New Concordia did.

The only place on Panopontus that could accept heavy ships was the planetary capital at Areydiz on planets only major continent on the southern pole. Rene had deliberately avoided Areydiz on the theory that if there were rebellious elements on the world, they would most likely be located there. San Roayo with its population of thirty to fifty thousand was one of two or three dozen similarly sized secondary cities, big enough for what they needed, but small enough to avoid too much official attention, or so Rene reasoned. Of course they place might be half destroyed or evacuated due to the storm, but so much the better, the more confused the situation, the easier it would be to get in, get what they needed and get out.

A narrow straight, nameless as far as Rene knew, separated the Bonaventure's current landing site from San Roayo, it was only about 20 kilometers wide. Minutes by jumper or fast boat, but Rene didn’t have access to either of those. He presumed the Bonaventure had sort of inflatable for emergency landings, but if it didn’t he was confident that he could improvise something out of what was to hand.

“Mia do you have an estimate for out state stabilization?” he asked, unable to think of how to call up the information on the flickering holographic display.

“Unknown,” the computer purred seductively. Rene resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

“Based on previous data how long should it take?” he replied, rephrasing the question. It really shouldn’t come as a surprise that even fairly basic sensor equipment wasn’t in working order.

“Previous atmospheric stopovers have been between twelve and sixteen hours,” Mia supplied. It wasn’t simply a matter of shedding waste heat. Travel through jumpspace caused a certain amount of quantum distortion, if you pushed it long enough a vessel could find new and unsurvivable configurations. The exact mechanism was unknown, due to the fact that vessels that suffered such a fate were never recovered, but it was theoretically possible for sections of a ship to boil away or suddenly be rendered The only way to restore the equilibrium was to spend time in the sidereal universe, preferably in an atmosphere where contact with normal state molecules was order of magnitudes higher than in vacuum. Sixteen hours ought to be plenty long enough for them to do what they needed but the sooner they got started the better. He had no way know how much long it would take to dry the base of the caldera to the point they could lift, but he wanted it to be as soon as possible.

Forcing himself to move he headed back into the cabin after Solae. It was clear to him she was upset though he didn’t understand why. The brief freefall had scattered item all over the floor, though it was still infinitely better than it had been when they first found it. Something of a metaphor for their situation in general he supposed. Rene carefully stepped around the detritus. By now the glowing motes on his clothing had all but faded, the photonic reaction evidently short lived. Only a few bright spots still remained.

“Are you alright?” he asked as he stooped to pick up a sanitation pack and replace it on the shelf. The part of him which was used to the subtlety of court squirmed at the bluntness of the question, but if she was hurt, or shaken he needed to know immediately.

[Syrenrei]

"No, I'm not," Solae admitted almost immediately. After Rene had tended to her wounds he had left the medical kit on the only nightstand in the captain's quarters. The bed was welded to both the floor and the wall and had a slight lip around the perimeter that was was customary with economical spaceships such as the freight vessel that was the Bonaventure. Luxury cruisers did not need to anticipate turbulence for their refined gusts but cheaper models had a rougher ride both in relation to making jumps, spacial navigation, take offs, and landings. Just as been the case with antiquated naval boats, the lip was meant to keep sleeping occupants in their bed rather rolling off the higher surface and onto the floor. Solae's tryst with zero gravity had lifted the small first aid container into the air and, with remarkable efficiency, let almost all of its components drift out. A transfusion device loaded with a stimulant had become wedged between their lumpy mattress and the aforementioned metal lip.

"When we were on New Concordia our goal was to get off the planet. That was all I thought about because I was certain that once we had left we would be able to warn the empire, retreat to safety, and start putting the nightmare of war behind us," she sighed. She had fished out the cylinder and deposited it back into their medical kit. With any luck they wouldn't need to use it nor would they need to go looking for the other supplies they had stolen from the slavers. Almost an entire crate had been loaded with various medical items discovered in the makeshift clinic, kitchen, and pantry of the plantation. For better or worse they could tend to a small entourage had they the expertise. "At the very least I was certain our situation would improve."

Abandoning her cleaning task for now she sat down on the edge of the bed. For the last few nights she had chosen to sleep next to the wall. Being strategically placed between Rene and several thick layers of alloy plating had made her feel safe and secure. Thinking objectively this was probably a reflection of some lingering psychological trauma sustained on New Concordia. More than once she had been exposed to the brutality of the violent revolution: when she had watched the embassy's walls explode, when she watched her co-workers get impaled by shrapnel, when she fell on corpses fleeing the crumbling building, when she had nearly been captured by soldiers, when she had been snatched and drugged by criminal degenerates. Had her illusions of protection not been shattered by the first steps of a murderous campaign it would have been more odd than subconsciously seeking out methods to feel guarded.

"Trying to pilot through that typhoon may be the hardest thing I've ever done, and perhaps I ought to be proud, but when we crashed I realized that not only was any victory mitigated by the damage we had taken, but I had struggled and had gained us no benefit. The ship is damaged. We don't have enough fuel to leave. There's no array here. Resources will me more scarce after the hurricane because whatever surviving population there is after this monumental natural disaster will be focused on rebuilding and recovery." She leaned over and rubbed her head in her hands. The loose bun she had created came loose and golden hair tumbled down her shoulders. "On New Concordia the rebellion had more of a presence but we knew the area, we knew the Syshin would be potential allies, and we had a plan. There is nothing for us here. We're stranded and our enemy has only gained strength. Coming to Panopontus is a complete loss, Rene. We're farther behind than we were before, aren't we? What have we accomplished? Having the Bonaventure is only a gain if it can jump us elsewhere which at present it cannot; all it can provide for us is shelter."

"We had a rough plan on New Concordia but... I don't have a plan for what to do from here," Solae confessed. "If we had touched down closer to a town or city I might be able to sneak out in evening hours when my hair is less distinguishable and recognizable, but I don't know that will be possible from the caldera. I'd need some manner of boat, be able to make my way to shore, and be able to infiltrate whatever library or archive they have that hasn't been destroyed. Urban exploration I'd have more success with."

Solae wasn't certain what she wanted him to say. The handsome soldier in front of her had no divine powers with which to change their circumstances into more favorable conditions. Whatever he had called her to see earlier- which she had yet to inquire after- had infused his voice with a light joy. It was her cynicism, her scrutiny, her inability to accept even the hint of failure that was pulling him down from the clouds where had he had been able to savor the relatively positive outcome of descending through gale force winds into a rock formation that naturally shielded them from the savage tempest. At the conclusion of her explanations for her negative outlook she felt guilty for burdening him when he had been so happy before posing such an innocent question. Her irritation with herself renewed she stood and began to clean once more.

"It's too risky for me to go anywhere so I'll stay here and perform maintenance once I've put everything away," she stated with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. Much as she enjoyed fiddling with the Bonaventure and feeling that she could make minor improvements, some of which cured glitches or helped Mia integrate into the systems, she would much rather be gathering information about the sector and solving the murder mystery buried in Rene's past. Afloat in jump space there had been no better use of her time than tooling with conduits and nebulous circuitry but now she was confined by the appeal of a bounty rather than physical limitations. On Panopontus the monetary reward would be twice as enticing as on New Concordia where there were more opportunities for financial growth.

[Penny]

Rene opened his mouth to object but closed it before speaking. It had not occurred to him until that moment just how different they were viewing their situation. Their shared class give them a bond but it didn’t mean they thought alike. Alot had happened and they had been to relieved by the escape from New Concordia, and too thrilled with each others company, to really take stock of the situation. Solae’s training was with the diplomatic corp in which one tiny slip up could mean the disastrous failure of a mission. Rene, as much as he prided himself with resisting the Marine Corps not so subtle indoctrination techniques had a different perspective. It appeared he had internalized more of the Corp never say die attitude than he had imagined. For a moment he flashed back to a tactics lesson in which one of the troopers had asked what they should do if faced with certain death. The instructor, Sergeant Gindi, had shrugged his shoulders and grinned before delivering the line: Well, you can always take one with you. It had become something of a tag-line after that. Rene also had to admit that he had been improvising and hadn’t had time to convey everything to Solae. He had expected her to obey him like a soldier would, which was ridiculous because she was stratospherically above him in any measure of rank. Fighting back a blush of embarrassment he climbed onto the bed and sat cross legged turning her to face him. The light immediately dimmed as Mia attempted to create an ambience, Rene squeezed his eyes shut for a moment in mock defeat.

“Back on New Concordia, we were reacting to the enemy,” he said, taking her hands in his.

“Infact I probably would have blundered around until we had gotten captured or killed if you hadn’t suggested Amber Horizion,” he went on truthfully. Without the Syshin there was almost no possibility they would have found a way off word.

“What I would have given for a slightly damaged, sligltly low on fuel, starship back then,” he said with a rueful laugh.

“But we are off New Concordia, the Rebels have to react to us now. They don’t know where we are, the dont know what our plans are.” It sounded good, although Rene had to privately admit that he didn’t know exactly what their plans were either, that made it easy for them to be unpredictable.

“I can get across the strait to San Roayo, the Bonaventure has an inflatable for emergencies,” he went on the idea firming in his mind as he verbalized it.

“I can probably get fuel and get back here.” It would be chaotic, there would be evacuations, aid workers, rescue efforts and he severely doubted any security personnel would still be at their posts in the face of the storm that still raged outside. Reluctantly he let go of her hand and plucked a personal holo slate from where it had fallen. He linked it to the Bonaventure and bought up the schematic the sensors had created of San Roayo, a sophisticated composite of incoming sensor images, publically available files, and snatches of high orbit images from the ships previous visits.

“What I can’t do is find their governmental communication facilities, or hack their database to get a list of PEA stations, or figure out which one of those stations is likely to be the best bet to approach.” Rene squeezed Solae’s hand firmly. He deliberately omitted any mention of the fact that such a communications center would be an excellent place to dig into the past. It wasn’t that he expected her to forget her investigation, but he hoped the current trouble would drive it from her mind at least for the time being.

“Or for that matter, land an unfamiliar ship in the middle of a typhoon in a LZ half the size of a Grav Ball field,” His features split into a proud smile as he passed the holo slate to her, eyes sparkling with renewed enthusiasm.

“I don’t suppose you know anyone like that do you? Because I could sure use their help.”

[Syrenrei]

Rene's words made her smile despite her sullen despondency. She had certainly been given compliments before; no lady of social standing went through life without hearing praise of their heritage, of their skills, of their beauty, of their intellect, or something similarly suiting. The courts were cutthroat but they were not filled with only ridicule and betrayal. Every noble knew inherently how to forge alliances with honeyed words that would put them in good favor. Her now-fiance was exceedingly sincere, however, as well as kind and earnest, and it was these attributes that made his flattery exponentially more charming than anyone else's she could recall. Unlike her parents he did not possess a familial obligation to appropriately adulate her and nor had he political agenda that would compel. He was simply a man who cared about her, who believed every word he uttered, and was distressed at her injured pride.

"It's not as easy as you make it sound," Solae remarked.

And it wasn't. The inflatable that he referenced had never been used before and could be defective. If the rest of the Bonaventure was any indication she wouldn't shocked to discover it had been dragged out for an absurd purpose, damaged, or simply didn't work. Chances were that the previous owners of the vessel had forgotten it and it was immaculate but that was not their only issue. Getting across the straight, finding fuel and/or a person selling fuel, obtaining it without arousing suspicion, and then crossing the body of water back to the caldera was no small feat. Just trying to visualize the veritable man of her dreams putting himself into such a dangerous situation gave her heart palpitations that had nothing to do with their passionate romance. The marquise would have to send him off and try to trust that he would succeed and return. If he did not she would be mourning the life lost while stranded on a foreign world and awaiting her inevitable capture. She knew she would be a liability to Rene's minor quest but being separated, however brief, terrified her.

"We still can't do anything until the storm clears," she insisted. "It will be hard enough with the flooding but you're insane if you think you'll have my blessing going now. Landing during the storm is our reckless strategy for the week. In seven days we can begin negotiations about what horribly risky proposal you want to indulge," she teased as she leaned over and deposited an affectionate kiss on his cheek. Though she was jesting about the timetable she was quite committed to delaying his outing. The typhoon could have destroyed an armored spaceship; it would absolutely rip a tiny little emergency transport to shreds if it just didn't buck him off to drown. That didn't even factor in him trying to haul fuel through cataclysmic tides almost a hundred meters high.

"Are you hungry? We have a wonderful assortment of gourmet delicacies in the kitchen," she mused aloud as she rose from the bed. If Rene wanted to celebrate she imagined that picking up sundries off the floor of the captain's quarters was not what he envisioned. Solae tucked the holo plate under her arm so that she could assess the map more thoroughly after her adrenaline-induced hunger was satiated.

After a second she paused and turned, however, recalling something he had mentioned earlier. "You said you wanted me to see something? If it's not the exterior of the ship, what is it?

[Penny]

Rene smiled wanly before putting his hand to his heart and bowing in courtly fashion. Relationships among the hyperstatus sensitive nobility often had power differentials which seemed arcane to the outsider but the language of the court was nothing if not nuanced. The gesture conveyed both affection an aquience to authority.

“As you command your excellency,” Rene said, his grin broadening. Just as being the only surviving member of the garrison on New Concordia technically made him the acting Captain-General, Solae’s diplomatic rank made her the ambassador plenipotentiary to Panopontus. Most worlds this insignificant lacked any formal representation in the diplomatic corp with duties handled either by local officials or even merchants with connections to the core systems who were breveted authority in lieu of paid professional diplomats.

“As for what I wanted to show you…” Rene led Solae back to the boarding ramp. It was still open and the howling wind whipped rain droplets inside in a steady spray. Rivulets of water were beginning to run back towards the cargo bay as the heavier rear of the ship was slightly lower than the bow as sediment had given way. Even so, the storm driven air smelled so fresh and alive after the recycled stink of the Bonaventure’s atmosphere that Rene would have been unwilling to close the hatch for anything short of actual flooding.

The rain whipped water glowed and sparkled even more intensely than it had when Rene had exited the ship a few minutes prior. The reflected wake of the Bonaventure’s landing had faded but the wind still drove the shallow pool westward, particularly intense streaks of phosphorescence blossomed where the current rippled in broad V’s around the landing struts. The driving rain dappled the water in an ever shifting pattern that looked oddly ethereal due to the highlights of color.

“I’ve never seen anything quite like it,” Rene admitted, half shouting to be heard over the tumult of the wind and the hiss of rain on water. Biology was a part of education of course and though an interest in natural history and xenobiology weren appropriate eccentricities for a gentleman, it had never been a particular interest of Rene’s. Indigenous life forms at the microscopic level were rarely dangerous to humans save through ingestion, the biology too different to make infection a particular danger and though xenologic infections were not unheard of, they almost never occured on planets which had undergone even basic terraforming.

Rene squeezed Solae’s hand, it seemed even more dreamlike to be taking in the sight with his love by his side. For a moment he was able to put the rebellion and the dangerous tasks ahead out of his mind, simply enjoying the rippling play of light with Solae by his side.

[Syrenrei]

"It's beautiful," Solae murmured to herself though it hardly did the spectacle any justice. She sincerely doubted Rene could hear her voice above the sounds of the typhoon howling hundreds of meters above the ship nor the white noise created by the torrential downpour. When they had been further inside their vessel they had the benefit of the interior structure to help nullify exterior sound while naturally amplifying their own conversation. Even without the ability to communicate vocally they could still utilize body language to convey their thoughts. Rene could easily deduce from the star-struck expression on his lover's visage and the smile creeping upon her lips that she was just as enchanted and humbled by the vision of exotic beauty he was.

Despite her status as an aristocrat, the marquise was not as well-traveled as many of upper echelon of society, the sorts that had luxury cruisers and spacecraft with all the latest technology to expedite their journey with maximum efficiency. The late matriarch and patriarch of the Falia direct lineage had settled on New Concordia not long after she had been born and not been inclined to venture back toward the central systems often. By the most liberal measurements both Marquess Alyosha Falia and Marquise Selene Falia had been quite eccentric in their planetary anchoring. For this reason the backdrop of space, with its offerings of glittering stars and bursts of color from distant galaxies and stellar drifts, had been been fantastical for Rene's proposal. Solae did not expect to find alien flora or fauna that could begin to compare yet she was mistaken.

Feeling adventurous she squeezed her soldier's hand and tugged him down the ramp. She was not confident that, even with the caldera buffering the majority of the gale's force, that her core strength was sufficient to keep her upright if she wandered into the shallow pools. Rene had flattered her on her intellect and coordination but there was no sense in denying that physically she did not have the upper hand in any scenario not fixated on aesthetic appeal. Solae knew that she needed the support of her companion if she wanted to frolic in the glowing phosphorescent liquid.

It was more of a struggle than she had anticipated, due in part to the depth of the veritable pond that had formed around the Bonaventure and her inadequate footwear, but Rene was more than capable of assisting her through when she stumbled. Solae was determined not to let this experience of Panopontus pass her by after she had been put through the duress of making a precise landing through the center of a natural disaster. She felt the universe owed her this tiny expedition. The diplomat was in sore need of reward Soon enough she'd be grounded to the captain's quarters while she her consort went on a mission to obtain them fuel. Getting wet, potentially ruining her clothes, and straining her muscles through the muddy ground was a small price to pay for this joyful immersion in peculiar glamor.

Of course she was reluctant to go too far. Solae knew her limitations and, more importantly, she respected the fury of the beast that assaulted the rocky protection of the caldera's formation. Far too many underestimated nature's ability to destroy. Nobility in particular felt invulnerable, empowered by scientific gains, and out of the reach of anything but courtly assassination plots. The coup would prove to them that they were not gods among men but so could this evening on Panopontus. Strangely she wished a duke or duchess were present to see how weak they were against the might of one 'lowly' storm.