Rene squeezed Solae’s hand as they followed Tychon back through the darkening streets. The fisherman was unusually quiet, perhaps focused on his brush with disaster or simply feeling uncomfortable with his guests. The social strata of the Empire were prous at lower levels but grew more rigid the higher one climbed. The revelation of just how stratospherically high above him his daughters rescuers were made him uncomfortable and raised a wall between them, even if only in his own mind. For Rene it was a surprisingly bitter sensation, he knew that he was incredibly privileged to have grown up as he had, one among literal trillions, but everywhere he went he was out of place, cast out of his own class, yet unable to move into another. He squeezed Solae’s hand again though he couldn’t quite articulate the feeling. 

It was nearly pitch black by the time the arrived back at Julia and Tychon’s home. The stars were out but the moon was nearly eclipsed and cast little light. What illumination there was came from fires that people had built in their yards, mostly with scavenged building materials, and the occasional generator powered illuminator. The people of San Roayo lived almost hand to mouth and few of them had been willing to spend money on luxuries like redundant generators when more immediate concerns.  Rene wondered how long it would be before any organised disaster relief would reach San Roayo and other similarly devastated regions of Panopontus. Ordinarily relief would arrive within days, but with the rebellion interdicting shipping and controlling communications, it could be weeks or months. Duke Tan wouldn’t care about that of course, maybe most nobles wouldn’t care but for all the charges Rene might level against his father, her couldn’t imagine the Elder Du Quentain allowing his clients to suffer. Noblesse Oblige had been one of the few concepts in which his father had taken a personal interest in instructing his son and it pricked Rene’s soul to think of people being neglected by their rulers when they needed them the most. Rene didn’t know that much about Solae’s family, but he was willing to bet that she felt much the same way.

Julia let out an audible sigh of relief as Tychon and the two off-worlders entered the kitchen. She had been holding something beneath the level of the kitchen bench which Rene was willing to bet was a weapon of some sort, though perhaps not a firearm.  Rushing across the room she hugged Tychon tightly around the waist. Rene saw the other man wince, as well he might given the fact that he had been shot with a needle stunner on two separate occasions. From the corner of a doorway Damaris peeked, apparently having been sent to bed but equally unwilling to miss out on the excitement. The chemical luminators were glowing more dimly than they had the first night, though the still provided ample light.

“Thank the seas you are alright!” Julia declared. Tychon sat down awkwardly and Julia peeled off his shirt despite his attempts to object. The front of his chest was a mass of purple bruises, punctuated by welts and shallow wounds where the needles had struck.

“What under the seas happened to you?” Julia demanded, but rushed off to retrieve a small medical kit before Tychon could explain. Once she returned she began to dab at the wounds with a pungent smelling antiseptic and Tychon told her the story. Julia’s face grew darker by the moment as she heard of Vitger attempt to kidnap Rene. Tychon had really be collateral damage, but that was of little comfort to Julia.

“And you Rene,” Julia demanded when she was done treating her husband.

“It really isn’t necessary…”

“What is it with men always downplaying their injuries,” Julia demanded of Solae crossly. Rene responded by lifting his shirt. His bruises already had the yellowish green colour that one expected after three or four days and the puncture wounds were already neatly scabbed over. The increased healing factors in his genes didn’t make him immune to harm but they did help him to recover faster than a normal man might. The extent of genetic manipulation used by the nobility was not common knowledge but rumors did circulate.

“Besides, I only got hit the once,” Rene explained as Julia set down her first aid kit and produced three bowls of cold food. The dish appeared to be some sort of mangrove root, sliced thin and then fried in fish oil. Rene found the texture to be mildly unpleasant but that still placed it far above a lot of things he had eaten in the past few years.  Tychon produced a bottle of wine, apparently brewed from some sort of local berry and poured them all a glass. Rene accepted it politely, though what he truly wanted to talk to Solae privately, to discuss what she had learned and the people she had contacted while at the communications center. They had been on the defensive thus far, reacting to the moves of the Rebels rather than making any overt moves of their own. It felt good to think that they might be able to take the offensive soon, even if he wasn’t entirely sure what that would mean.

______________________

Trallius Major
Day 7

The war room was quiet save for the low background hum of live processors. Emperor Alexius Tan’s tall leather boots, deliberately military in style despite his own lack of service in that arena, rang on the marble floor as he paced. The war room had started life as a large ballroom, a fact that its blue marble floor and richly carved walls still attested to, but over a period of months it had become the nerve center of the Duke’s Rebellion. Powerful computer consoles were bolted to the floor, fed by conduits of fibre links that vanished into holes drilled into the priceless wall carvings, holographic projections shimmered in the air displaying data on a dozen different situations currently going on throughout the Eastern Cross. Traullius Major, as a sector capital, had dozens of better locations for such a task. Fleet command, one of the early targets of the rebels possessed a hundred times the facilities as did any one of the major administrative complexes, even the data centers in the palace were better suited from a hardware perspective. The problem was that each of those systems had been set up by Imperial Command and had, until recently, been operated by Imperial personnel. 

When he had initially conceived of the idea of overthrowing the weak and pathetic government of which he was the titular head, Tan had realised that secrecy was essential. No facility that Imperial Intelligence knew of could be truly safe, and so, under the guise of a major remodel of his palace, he had converted this wing to serve as his base of operations. At the very center of the room stood a large cylinder of gold inlaid quartz. It sat on a pedestal from which cabling radiated like a spiders web to each of the consoles. The quartz pulsed with an inner light as trillions of quantum entangled particles spun and flickered in response to signals from its sister units all over the Stellar Empire. Only high level Imperial communications were sent via the PEA, instantly delivering the will of the Empress and her bureaucracy across billions of light years, orders for Fleet movements, Imperial decrees, Intelligence reports, and all of it completely impenetrable to Tan. He glowered at the PEA, willing the thing to give up its secrets.

“Your Highness.” Tan nearly jumped out of his skin at the unexpected words. Several of the technicians who had been studiously studding their screens while the Duke glowered, also started.

“I’ve told you not to sneak up on me General!” Tan snapped, irritable to be startled. General Antigony Bhast, commander and chief of the Dukes forces, smiled apologetically. At least, the Duke had learned to interpret it as a smile. Bhast was a veteran of a dozen campaigns and had risen through the ranks through her own drive and cunning, her eyes focused well beyond the horizon, perhaps on nothing in this universe. She was difficult to read, even for him.

“That is why I stomped over here like a cadet on parade My Lord, unfortunately you were too absorbed in your contemplation of the PEA to notice.” Tan grimaced and made a gesture of dismissal fluffing his mustache in a habitual gesture.

“Have you something to report or have you just decided to take up startling your Emperor as a hobby?” Tan demanded. Bhast smiled again, though the expression didn’t touch her cold eyes. She gestured at a nearby screen and it flickered to life, displaying footage of a starship streaking into the sky, streaming atmosphere through punctures in its hull the holographic overlay of a crosshair made it clear that it was gun camera footage. The ship vanished into the sky and the loop began again, starting with the ship rising from a plantation of some kind.  A side bar appeared giving the ship name as ‘Bonaventure’ followed by class, registration number and various other pertinent datum.

Rather than give the general the satisfaction of asking what the footage was, Tan merely waited for Bhast to go on.

“This was shot on New Concordia. Three days ago,” Bhast said at last, making another gesture. Holographic portraits of two individuals flashed up one showing the familiar and beautiful face of Marquessa Solae Falia, the other an unfamiliar young man in drab battle dress. 

“It seems the Marquessa fled the planet aboard the vessel, the pilot will be disciplined for firing on so high value a target,” Bhast explained in evident disapproval.  Tan stared hungrily at the picture of the noblewoman, perhaps the one surviving person in the Eastern Cross who could unlock the PEA network. She had been so close and now…

Tan reached out a hand, pointing a finger at the portrait of the man. The system, a complex set of holographic cameras, interpreted the gesture and bought the portrait to a quarter mask of the screen. Rene Quentain. Private. Service Number 7203499. The holo was clear, taken from a military or immigration database rather than from live video. Tan frowned.

“A nobody,” he declared after a moment. Bhast nodded her head, though in acknowledgement of the words rather than agreement.

“We aren’t sure, Marine neo-nomyns being what they are, but analytics suggests some genetic enhancement. There is a Du Quentain family on Capella.”

Tan shook his head shrinking the image by closing his fingers.

“So he is what? Imperial Intelligence or something?” the Duke asked, enlarging the portrait of Solae.

“No way to know, not yet anyway. Perhaps a nobody in the right place at the right time,” Bhast said in a neutral tone of voice that declared she didn’t believe that for a second.

“Those idiots let her slip through their fingers,” Tan growled.

“I trust that…” Bhast was already nodding.

“Governor Cohen and his family have already been executed for crimes against the people,” the general confirmed.

“But his intelligence chief did provide me with this analysis.” The hologram shifted again to a star chart of the worlds in the immediate vicinity of Panopontus. Colored streaks of light mapped out the jump lanes across the starscape.

“They pulled satellite imagery of the ship coming down, a local tramp freighter taking slaves off book we think.” A grainy satellite image of the ship landing and a figure climbing up onto and slipping inside followed by what might have been muzzle flash.

“It didn’t have a chance to refuel before it lifted and we were able to sample its trail and calculate the ratio of the fuel burn and consumption rate.” A sphere appeared around New Concorida, representing the outer limit of the ships projected jump range. Six worlds light up with a bright red. Crelian, Trap 351, Pondak’s World, Panopontus, Jaseem’s Reach and Port St Croix. Tan frowned distastefully.

“So we know they have to be on one of these six worlds, but we don't know which. There was a Marine detachment on Trap 351 wasn’t there?” he asked his chief. The Eastern Cross was comprised of several hundred worlds, there was now reason of the Duke to be aware of every settlement, but he was familiar with most of the garrisons from the past weeks brutal extermination campaign. 

“Yes, destroyed four days ago by Captain Gellan’s squadron, orbital strike,” Bhast agreed.

“Analysis suggests Trap 351 as the most likely choice, particularly given this Quentain’s presence, Port St Croix was the next most likely followed by Pondak’s World. The Intelligence chief on New Concordia dispatched vessels to all of the ports as soon as he could, though these were commendered merchantmen rather than warships of course.“

“Of course,” Tan responded sourly. He glared at the star chart trying to put himself in the heads of the fugitives. The obvious choice was to run to the nearest Imperial base. They clearly hadn’t done that or they would have been snapped up by the squadron at Trap 351. The next obvious choice was to make a run for the celestial center of the Stellar Empire, which meant passing through the jump nexi at Aquillia or Dunbarton. Such an attempt bordered on the suicidal as the ships had description of Falia and orders to stop any ships from passing through the system.

“I want units sent to all six worlds, pick teams of experts to hunt them down,” Tan declared decisively.

“Already done my Lord,” Bhast responded, but the man who called himself Emperor had already turned to resume staring into the impenetrable heart of the quartz, though in his mind he saw only a beautiful face framed by aurite hair, and all the power it represented.