Tychon cast off the lines off with the ease of long practice and returned to the controls. The smooth whir of a flywheel proceed the deep thrum of the engines as the pumps began to pressurise and then they were moving away from the dock out into the harbor. Though the boat must have had emergency lights, Tychon had deactivated them somehow so they were all but invisible save for the soft purr of the pumps driving the ship out onto the black water. The stars shone down from above but the moonlight was too slight to provide much illumination. Although it was still an hour or two before dawn the eastern sky was lighter with the promise of the coming dawn.

If the darkness bothered Tychon it didn’t show he maneuvered them easily out of the harbor and onto the open sea. The water was choppy and slapped against the hull as a wind rose to cap the greenish sea with white caps. Once they were well clear of the land Tychon touched another control and the outriggers began to extend on their hydraulic struts. An electrical tingle ran through the craft as the outriggers shimmered with induced current and the ship rose on the induced current to ride on its hydrofoils, the choppiness faded to be replaced by a greasy smoothness and they began to pick up speed as the drag of the hull through the water decreased. 

“We couldn’t run on hydrofoil earlier, the waves would have swamped us!” Tychon called, raising his voice to be heard over the rush of the wind. Rene hadn’t been going to ask, he didn’t know enough about seafaring to have an opinion, but he nodded as though he understood. The boat was very cramped, it hadn’t been intended to carry a load nearly as large as this, but the problem was of volume rather than weight. San Roayo shrank behind them until it became an indistinct grey blob on the horizon.

Rene allowed himself to relax at last, the tension in his body easing as the threat posed by exposure to civilians lessened. The citizens of San Roayo were no worse than any in the Empire, better perhaps given the way they banded together to pull survivors from the rubble, but few people would resist the kind of reward the Duke was offering for Solae’s capture. The common people had no way to know that the Duke was, infact, a traitor to the Empire, so far as they were concerned turning Solae in was an act of patriotism, not betrayal.

Rene sat in the rear corner with Solae on his lap to give Tychon room to operate the controls. He was trying to plan out what their next move should be but Solae’s question back in Vitger’s shop had wormed its way into his mind. What did he want when this was over? Assuming they survived and got out of the Eastern Cross of course. Much depended on how things went in the coming days. If they warned the Empire and foiled the rebellion the Empress would certainly shower Solae with glory. Whether and how much that largesse would extend to Rene was an open question. Amelia’s murder, the murder of one of the Empress’ handmaidens, was tantamount to raising arms against the Empress herself. WIthout evidence to exonerate him, evidence that might not even exist, he couldn’t be certain that he would be pardoned. Worse yet, making the request might be considered to be violating the custom of taking a new name when enlisting in the Marines. Simply asking the question might make him Renard du Quentain again, subject to all penalties proscribed by the law. It was possible that he might asked to be raised to the nobility under his new name but that meant forever turning his back on his family title and estate. Two weeks ago that wouldn’t have been a problem but being with Solae had reminded him of who he was and what he was. It wasn’t fair to her to approach her as an upjumped commoner, she was a noble daughter of an ancient house and as such deserved more than that. Rene’s mouth twisted into a grin. Solae looked up at him questioningly.

“I was just thinking,” he said, squeezing her gently in his arms for a moment before gesturing back over the frothing wake of the vessel to the pale smudge of land that was San Roayo. By now the land was indistinguishable from a bank of fog or distant rain. Over the bow the island on which they had landed was visible as the peak of the half collapsed caldera. It was remarkable how much faster the trip went when you had a real boat and not a retrofitted wreck to make the journey.

“That our world, must seem needlessly complicated to people on the outside,” he confided. Rene  knew that the sentiment was at least somewhat illusory. There were many things in Tychon or Julia’s world which were alien to his way of thinking as well. He squeezed Solae to him.

“I don’t know what is going to happen,” he confessed as the caldera grew larger on the horizon. The sky was beginning to lighten and the first rays of sunlight could only be a few minutes away. There was so much uncertainty. The odds were that they would be dead in the very near future, if she was lucky in Solae’s case, it was hard to imagine for a future much beyond that.

“Whatever happens, I want to be with you,” he told her, his voice caught with emotion and he forced himself to smile.

“Even if that means I have to be your gardener,” he joked, though it stuck a little in his throat. Solae deserved someone who could be her real partner, a true equal. Rene Quentain of the Imperial Marines could never be that to one of the great Nobles of the Empire.