Rene’s heart thundered in his chest as he raced through the moonlight forest. Silver light flashed overhead, dappled and distorted by the canopy above. A vine ripped across his arms scraping the skin raw as he strugled through it. Roots and rocks tangled his feet and more than once he tripped in the uncertain light, bracing his fall with one hand to keep the weapon clear, as he had been taught. Far to his rear the hollow boom of a shotgun discharge shook the darkly plumed birds from a distant grove but it was in the opposite direction of the scream and thus unimportant.

The ground fell away quickly enough that Rene picked up speed, desperately picking his foot falls and hoping to avoid tripping. Fortunately the jungle thinned on the thin soiled decline and he made it nearly to the bottom before he misjudged a step and tumbled, rolling the remainder of the way down the slope. Cold water slapped at him and rocks bit into him as he came to a stop on the moss covered rocks of a shallow stream. He groaned for a moment and pushed himself to his feet, the rifle in his hand hissed slightly as water cooled the still hot barrel, tracing lines of steam, more felt than seen, towards the sky.

“Solae,” Rene breathed, more of a prayer than he had spoken in years. He glanced around, the sound of the scream no longer enough of a beacon to lead him on. The stream ran on for a hundred yards before a small bridge, just a silhouette against the moonlight, crossed over it. Atop the bridge were a group of shadowed figures, three of them carrying a supine forth. The old railroad was the only built structure, beyond Amber Horizon, that he knew off. Intuitively he realised the unconscious form must be Solae a moment before her golden hair glinted in inopportune moonlight.  He raised the rifle, settled the sight picture on the chest of the lead man and pulled the trigger. The weapon screamed like a banshee. Pale witchfire licked over the barrel and Rene’s hair sprang on end. With a shouted curse he cast the weapon away. It hit the shallow stream with a shattering QWAAH that raised a cloud of steam. The barrel had warped either due to over firing or previous contact with the water and the precise magnetic mechanism had shredded itself in a moment of spectacular destruction. Worse the flash of light attracted the attention of the men on the bridge.

“Chook!” the one not burdened with Solae cried and swung his weapon to bear on Rene. Muzzle flash blossomed in bright yellow stars and water sprayed over as bullets tore up the stream. He grabbed at the pistol in his belt and dived to the side, water founting over him, sour on his lips with the tanniny byproduct of jungle flora. One of the river rocks nearby shattered like a bomb, flint sparking crazily in the uncertain light. Pain flashed in Rene’s arm as jagged shards of rock traced bloody lines across his right arm and shouler.

“Get her out of here!” the lead guman yelled as he levered the empty clip from the weapon and slapped another one home. Rene pulled himself up behind a moss covered log rested his pistol on the soft timber and pulled the trigger. The bright flash of a plasma bolt lit the night, illuminating Rene for a heartbeat in a semicircle of blue white light. The bolt flew low, blowing one of the wooden sleepers into flaming spinters. The lead gunman reeled back, tetted on edged of the bridge and fell backwards to the rocky creek bed. The remaining two men dragged Solae out of Rene’s closely circumscribed line of sight.

“Fuck!” he snarled, pushing himself to his feet and running up the far side of the creek bed at a steep angle, grabbing a handful of branches to pull himself up over the shallow lip. He saw the fleeing men through the trees but couldn’t risk a shot for fear of hitting Solae. His lungs screamed for air but he forced himself into a run. With shocking suddenness he burst from the edge of the jungle and onto a narrow strip of grass distorted with muddy wheel ruts. Five meters ahead was sugar cane, almost impenetrable and twice the height of a man. Both men carrying Solae crashed out of the jungle one of them firing a panicd burst that would have been no danger even if it had been in Rene’s general direction. He braced his feet in a shooters stance, sighted and fired. The plasma bolt struck the man carrying Solae’s leg squarely igniting the front of his shirt as it flash heated on his chest, propelling the man backwards under the force of vaporized tissue. Fragments of flaming fabric few into the densly packed stalks of cane and began to smoulder. Solae’s legs fell and the second man staggered under his newly aquired burden but he didn’t quite drop the Marqessa. Instead he dropped his rifle and pulled a knife from his belt, pressing the shining blade against Solae’s pale throat.

“Put the fucking gun down!” he shouted in a voice that cracked with terror. Rene froze, his face a ricktus of pain. The man kept Solae between them as a shield with only his head visible. Rene wasn’t confident enough to risk Solae’s life on the shot, not when he was already trembling with adrenaline, fear and fatigue.

“She is worth nothing dead!” Rene called, not lowering the pistol, trying to stall for time or anyting which might help the situation.

“I don’t care about that put the weapon down or she dies!” Rene hesitated a fractoin of a second longer. A rational man wouldn’t kill Solae and waste a fortune but this man was scared half to death it was impossible to predict what he might do. Rene lowered the weapon reluctantly.

“Toss it aside,” Solae’s captor instructed. Rene tossed the weapon of to his right careful to place it close enough that he could jump for it.

“Thats a good little chook lover. Let me tell you, we are going to have some fun with your bitch here when we get her back to the plantation, every man on the plantation and half the horses…” The man’s head snapped sideways as the point of a steel spear suddenly split it temple to temple. Horribly the man didn’t die instantly but instead made a liquid mewling sound. Solae’s dead weight slipped through his fingers and slumped to the grass. The man took a staggering sideways step, weighted down by the weight of the spears half and then collapsed twitching to the ground. A monent later a shadowy form emerged from the trees. Rene recognised  Enro even in the darkness, his plumae was undyed. He sank to his knees and groped blindly for his pistol suddenly thirsty and weary beyond description.

“Stars upon stars,” he groand. Beside him the cane was begining to burn, the bed of trash and fallen stalks catching the flames and casting a hellish light on the whole scene.

“Stars upon bloody stars.”