Solae Falia. The name, the family name at any rate, as dimly familiar from long ago lessons on the political make up of the Empire though he couldn’t imagine that made much difference at the moment. Rene supposed he would have helped anyone whom the Gids were hunting but he wasn’t so much a fool as to believe that the fact that she was noble and attractive didn’t move him. Some instincts couldn’t be ground out of you even in the brutal year long induction that the marines used to grind down the individual.

Gunfire crackled in the distance an echo from the horizon rather than anything to do with them but it served to break Rene out of the adrenaline induced reverie he seemed to be falling into. In the wake of any successful rebellion, and the destruction of the marine outpost and the embassy certainly meant that this one was successful at last locally, there were likely to be executions both of loyalists and those not sufficiently enthusiastic in their loyalty to the new regime. That was rarely the end of it however. Common people had grudges to settled, people they owed money, someone who stole a wife or girlfriend, and anyone unlucky enough to fall in the way of the mob.Columns of smoke already rose dark against the horizon. One of those would be the embassy and perhaps other official targets but some would be the result of an excess of excitement, alcohol and arson.

“Yes ma’a… Solae,” Rene corrected himself, deliberately keeping his eyes from focusing on her tears. He wondered how she had survived an attack on the embassy, he didn’t kid himself that it had been anything other than luck that saved him during the attack on the Rat Trap. If the attack had been anywhere near as well executed it a miracle she was alive at all. His stomach growled as the adrenaline left his system and his body reminded him that it had been well over a day since he had eaten anything. Going to ground made sense, he had been focused on reaching the embassy, not because it was the best plan but because it was a plan. With that gone they needed time to regroup.

“We should get under cover,” he agreed crouching down to strip the webbing belt from the dead soldier. He pulled a canteen free and drank greedily before offering it to Solae who took it eagerly. The strapping as of unfamiliar design so he hoisted it over his shoulder rather than try to put it on. It would have made sense to take the jackets of the dead men, but in all three cases they were sufficiently spattered with gore to make the prospect unappealing.


“I’m not very familiar with Armistice,” he admitted, the few leaves he had been granted didn’t give him much confidence, “do you know of a place?”

Solae did. It took them an hour to circle around the outskirts of the city, keeping to hedgerows and the light manicured woods where they could. Several times they had to stop and hie while patrols passed close by but the killings seemed to have drawn the manhunt eastward. The Gids had to assume that Solae, whom Rene now realized was the real target of the manhunt, was trying to get out of the city rather than back into it. They approached a small manor house along private drive flanked perfectly manicured Xhasson trees. The trees were from Pyris Reach originally but were cultivated extensively by the rich and powerful throughout the empire. The bark was a brown so dark as to be almost black but shot through with traceries of bright gold. The leaves were the same metallic hue though they shifted from gold to silver in slow pheromone mediated waves which passed from tree to tree. The sight woke an unexpected pang of homesickness and Rene wondered if the gardener who devoted so many hours to the plants had been swept up as a loyalist or was part of a drunken rampaging mob.

The door of the large two story house was ajar, broken from its frame by a ram when the rebels had come for whomever had lived here. Rene gestured Solae down with a marine hand signal that the woman had no way of recognizing, fortunately his intent was clear enough and she flattened herself behind a nearby bush. For long minutes he watched the house, the door swinging open and then closed banging against its warped frame as the wind willed. Finally he relaxed.

“Looks like the rebels have been and gone,” he said with obvious relief lowering the rifle from his shoulder as he looked at the beautiful, if disheveled, marquesa.