“One bedroom will be fine ma’am,” Rene nodded in greatful acceptance as Oanh began to spoon generous portions of soup into bowls with a large wooden ladle. It was thick and filled with a variety of vegetables grown in the local garden. The pair seemed prosperous in their own terms and by those of most of New Concordia. Rene wondered if that was a result of funds, or merely the natural translation of the kind of organizational skills that a covert life style demaded.

As a child of the nobility Rene had undergone his own regime of genetic manipulation as well as minor cosmetic surgeries after birth. The process was far less extensive for males with the primary changes being metabolic in nature. Rene’s body produced muscle much more readily than fat and burned calories less efficiently. The result was that his physique was maintained by only moderate exercise and he suffered slightly in cold environments. The Marine Corp medics had noticed the changes but didn’t feel them to be worth more than a casual mention. It hadn't occurred to him that Solae’s astonishing beauty might bring with it worse drawbacks.

“And I’d appericate anything you can tell me medically. It really would be a huge help,” he told Oanh who made an ‘its nothing’ gesture with her left hand.

“I had to remove…” he began but Oanh interuppted him.

“Yes I saw, not a bad piece of work for a grunt,” she said with the slight unconscious contempt for a professional for the work of amateurs, “though you were lucky the pain didn’t send her into shock.”

“We used drugs to put her under,” Rene admitted, slicing the loaf of instant bread into thumb thick slices with a large serrated knife. Little wheat grew in the tropical lowlands and most of the subsitutes were similarly temperate crops. Bread was an offworld style on New Concordia where rice agriculture predominated but he was glad for the presence of the familiar staple. 

“What drugs?” she asked, cocking an interrogatory eyebrow.

“Candemamine,” Rene admitted somewhat uncomfortably.

“Cand…” Oanh trailed off in shock. Rene explained the details of the manor to her hastily and Oanh seemed to relax as he told her how they had taken the drugs from Lord Armon’s recreational stores. Towards the end of the discussion Min Ho returned, his arrival completely silent but given away by the blast of humid afternoon air. Storm clouds were already beginning to pile high on the eastern horizon, making the normally brilliant sunlight seem flat. The two constants on New Concordia were heat and rain.

“Seems clear,” Min Ho said, moping he sweat from his brow with an armored gauntlet. The layered ceramic and polymerized metal succeeded in smearing the fluid without actually wicking it away. Oanh made a clucking sound and dabbed at her husband’s forehead with a dish towel.

“Looks like there might be something going on at one of the Manors off west, saw a couple of jumpers headed that way, hard to tell with the heat shimmer this time of day but there might have been smoke.”

“Enough of that, take off the turtle suit, our other guest will be down for dinner in a moment,” Oanh ordered, with all the authority of a field marshall directing a very junior subordinate.