Rene let out a long breath through his teeth. No plan that risked Solae sat well with him but there was a distinct lack of easy alternatives. The recent rains meant that all of the crops were too wet to burn and the buildings were concrete and steel so fire wasn’t a viable diversion. From where they were concealed Rene could make out four guards, they were all armed and looked agitated. No doubt by now they were spooked by the fact that their raiding party  hadn’t returned.

“They can’t,” Rene said, voicing a conclusion without verbalising the question. Solae looked at him in askence.

“I was wondering if maybe they were going to go out looking for the men that we, that I, killed last night,” he explained quietly.

“But they can’t, they don’t know what is happening, for all they know the Syshin are waiting for them to try so they can come swarming in here and finish them off. The fog of war.” None of that was immediately helpful of course. One of the guards flicked a cigarette to the ground and crushed it out with a boot. The man, unshaven and a thirty pounds too heavy, slid his rifle into the crook of his arm and opened his fly, urinating onto the grass.

“Well they aren’t the Imperial Guard,” Rene commented dryly.  His eyes drifted across to Solae his heart fluttering in his chest in a way it didn’t do when he was in danger.

“Look Solae I…” 

“Rene if you are about to make some speech about how I shouldn’t put myself in the line of danger I have every right to take the same risks you do!” she hissed, her voice rising with each syllable. Her eyes smouldered and he raised his hands in mute surrender.

“Okay okay… here is what we will do…”

Rene crouched amidst the stalks of sugar cane only a few feet back from the edge of the field. His skin prickled and stung. Sugar cane was covered with a multitude of small hair like filaments that prickled and irritated his hands and neck. Discomfort could be ignored, a fact on which both the aristocracy and the marines could agree.

“Ready?” Solae asked breathily, she was standing in the clear though she was concealed from the house by the corner of the cane field.

“I am, is your gun off safe?” he whispered. THere was a pause and an audible click.

“Ok, do it.”

Solae stepped around the corner and into view of the guards. It took a second but then a shout went up. Solae let out a scream that chilled Rene’s blood for all he knew it was coming, and then turned and ran.  The shouts swelled as the men pounded over the grass towards where she was last seen. Rene lifted the sword and powered it on judging his moment. Behind him he heard Solae cutting through the cane herself, circling back towards the main house through the concealing greenery. At the last possible moment Rene leaped from cover, swinging the sword in a low whistling arch that cut the right arm from the fat guard, continuing up into his neck in a bright spray of arterial blood. The three remaining men were too close and too shocked to react quickly. Rene reversed his stroke and cut another man across the belly. The guard screamed like a gelded animal dropping his weapon to the ground as he clutched desperately at the entrails that erupted from the razor sharp cut. The rifle must have been off safe because it stuttered out two rounds when it hit the ground. The bullets ricocheted off a nearby steel warehouse flying skyward in spray of incandescent sparks. A rifle butt swung at Rene’s face but he parried with the blade and whipped the sword around in a low arc shearing through both legs at the ankles and dropping him in a screaming heap. The final guard staggered backwards trying to get a clear shot, his knuckles were white with terror and his lips were formed into a scream. Rene shot him in the chest with the plasma pistol pitching him to the dirt in a cloud of vaporised tissue.

More shouts of alarm rose from other points on the estate. The screams of the men on the ground were terrible to endure but noise and confusion were their allies now. More guards burst from around the corner of one of the buildings firing wildly in Rene’s direction. He took off at a run, bullets kicking up tufts of earth around him as he hurled himself through the doors of the nearest warehouse. The interior was dark and cool and reeked of coffee. Large wooden crates were stacked to the ceilings and the heat of a roasting furnace in the rear made the place feel like the antechamber of hell. He fired a couple more rounds out the door, more to make sure his pursuers knew where he was than any chance of a hit and ran for the rear of the warehouse, praying that he had drawn enough men away to give Solae a chance to infiltrate the manor.