The brush of Solae’s lips tingled on Rene’s cheeks like pin pricks of static electricity. He watched her go to retrieve the cookies, trying to avoid focusing on the soft curve of her figure as she busied herself with the supplies. Beyond the window he could see dark clouds gathering out over the distant oceanic horizon. The wind was already coming up as the incipient storm system sucked cooler air towards it. The tropic heat gathered vast thunderheads of an evening, discharging the days pent up fury in spectacular thunderstorms. If it had happened yesterday Van Heck would never have ordered him to climb the antennae and he would certainly be dead, his body rotting against the berm back at the Rat Trap. Rene didn’t believe in luck or fate in a meaningful sense although like all soldiers he carried the sense that somehow he personally would be spared. His life so far had been an indifferent experiment, born into the tiny minority of privliged nobillity, to have accomplished the great ambition of his young life, only to have it all come crashing down in Amellia’s blood stained bed chamber. And yet here he was, alive by the most haphazard series of events. It was tempting to look at it as karma for stopping to help the farmer. The notion woke a memory of an old proverb about a farmer who experienced a string of alternating triumphs and catastrophes. No matter how much his neighbours sang his triumps or mourned his losses, the farmer simply responded: We will see. Was he lucky to have escaped and to have saved Solae? Or was he about to suffer another shattering reversal. After all, saving the komo hadn’t exactly paid of for Bowie. Perhaps it was thoughts of fate and luck that gave him pause when Solae offered to answer a question for him. A half dozen questions from the verbal games he had played with the ladies of the Court sprang into his mind. Rather than answer immediately he set down this utensils and stood up moving around behind the noblewoman. If she was alarmed she gave no sign and he wordlessly picked up a small spray applicator from the med kit. As gently as he could he gathered up her golden hair, marvelling at its silky fulness as he gathered it away from the cut on her scalp. “This will sting but only for a moment,” he told her and then began to spray a thin jet of aerosolized fluid against the cut, moving from the front backwards in a slow progression. The spray contained healing factors, antiseptic and a topical anesthetic which numbed the pain the otherwise harsh chemicals would inflict. “What is it that you want Solae?” he asked as he finished the application and picked up a small sutcher applicator. The thing functioned like a stapler which applied discrete naturally decaying surgical closures. It would be painful if he used it without preparation but the topical anesthetic would make the process only slightly unpleasant. He placed the first sutcher and pulled the trigger, the device clicked an whired a second from storage. He smiled at her joke about market value as he sank another one ten millimeters above the first. “In the universe I mean, not like a brigade of Imperial Armor to land and rescue us. You have all the wealth you could desire, high position. What is it that you are striving for?”