Rene sucked in his breath, at the suggestion. Zatis was something of a special case in the sector, though there were other places in the Stellar Empire where making concessions was easier than crushing a planet. Sometimes the only thing that would stop the locals from shooting at each other was bringing in Imperial troops for them to shoot at. Bowie had been born on Zatis, or so he claimed, and if half the stories were true it was no place he wanted to take Solae. Rene opened his mouth to object but then closed it. Solae wasn’t a fool, even if she sometimes tended to underestimate risks, she wouldn’t suggest Zatis lightly. It had a PEA that was at least theoretically operational. They had no way to know what if anything the Duke had done, but it was a fair bet that he had people there, an Imperial Intelligence presence would be too much to ignore, but if nothing else the locals wouldn’t be in the Dukes pocket.

“Mia are there any records of who the PEA operator on Zatis is,” Rene asked.

“Unknown…,” Mia purred, as though it were some sexual secret she was looking forward to exploring. Rene sighed in slight irritation.

“Mia can you access the data dump from either of those two Freighters, do they have any information on the conditions on Zatis?” he asked.

“Neither vessel has touched at Zatis in the past year Sir Rene,” Mia informed him. Of course they hadn’t because no sane merchant would go to such a place, and if they did, they would certainly scrub the data from their automated systems. No sane person would go there. The thought lingered in his mind, perhaps this course was so unpredictable that it actually became an advantage.

Rene tried to juggle the different factors in his mind but he knew that it was an almost impossible task. There were too many factors, too much was unknown to allow him to do anything other than guess. At least this had the virtue of being a plan, a definite goal they could work towards. During his training Rene had learned the lesson that no decision was worse than failing to make a decision and that when in doubt attack. His heart twisted at the thought of putting Solae in danger, but then she was in danger wherever she went until they were back in Imperial space, or the Rebels were crushed. Feeling the weight of the decision he opened his mouth and said:

“I aggre with Solae Zatis it, is, set course Mia,” he declared. Solae made a small adjustment to their vector to align them with the jump point.

“Wait,” Rene said, “We shouldn’t jump while those other ships are in sensor range,” he said, indicating the glowing dots on the PPI.

“Mia set course back to New Concordia,” he instructed, “We can jump a light hour away then alter course, if they are interrogated it will look like we are doubling back.” Solae confirmed the course after Rene explained his logic and the ship leaped into jumpspace and away from Panopontus, leaving a shivering oily feeling in Rene bones. Almost as soon as it began the jump ended and they were dumped back into real space. They were now almost a light day from Panopontus, whose star was just a slightly brighter dot in the void. No ship sensor was accurate enough to track a ship out this far. Solae bought them onto the new heading and Rene flashed her what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Well M’lady,” he said with a grin pulling at the corners of his  mouth, “how many great ladies will be able to claim to have been to a place like this.” The jump drive engaged, hurling them towards Zatis and all the uncertainty. Rene reached and and squeezed Solae’s hand. Whatever happened, at least they would be together.

__________________________________

“I am beginning to dread these little chats General,” Duke Alexis Tan said with a scowl as the last of the courtiers cleared out of his self styled throne room. Since declaring himself Emperor the Duke had replaced the columns that supported the roof of the audience chamber with large columns of blue black spherite each treated with laser impingement to create tiny particles of phosphorescence within, mimicking the star scapes of important worlds in the Eastern Cross. The technique was designed to mirror the Celestial Palace on Cappela through the nods to individual worlds was a touch more egalitarian than the rendering of the Cappelian starscape that adorned the Empress’ Throne Room.

General Antigony Bhast, the Duke’s head of Intelligence and covert operations, was a practical woman who viewed such frippery as a frivolous waste of resources, though intellectually she could understand the value of a shared feeling of nationhood, her cold analytical mind tended to convert things to simple equations of force. It was hard to quantify a feeling, and so she found it hard to give them equal weight to numbers of men, ships and munitions.

“I regret that,” Bhast responded, her tone so neutral that not even a veteran political operative like Tan dould interpret it, though it's very blandness suggested something.

“I assume from the lack of an urgent message that you haven’t yet managed to capture our wayward Marquessa?” Tan asked, his tone light but the slight tightening around his eyes betraying his anger and frustration. The lack of instant communication had been a hindrance at the start of the Rebellion but it was rapidly becoming a thorn. When Imperial forces finally responded to events here, the lack of such communication would be devastating.

“We have not,” Bhast responded austerely. She lifted her forearm and entered a series of commands into a communicator around her wrist. The air around the Duke’s throne shimmered as an active cancellation field dropped into place from the outside the throne appeared a blur of color and no sound penetrated the field save for a soft buzzing of junk low frequency sound waves. Inside the pocket of silence a holographic projection sprung to life. Some were the familiar picts of Solae Falia, taken from surveillance footage and official Imperial archives. The remainder were of a tall rather striking man in grainy security cams.

“We have made some progress my Lord,” Bhast said, touching a key. A series of of new images flashed up. One was a post recruitment ID photo taken from a Marine Corp medical file. Another was a younger version showing the same man at a glittering gala with a woman on his arm.

“Our mystery gunman revealed,” the Duke said, leaning forward with interest that banished his former pique.

“One Rene Quentain, a private in the Imperial Marines,” Bhast agreed, then quirked a finger to enlarge the more glamorous image.

“As you know it is common for those enlisting in the marines to adopt false names, normally this to cover some petty crime, or escape some trouble on their homeworlds. In this case it's a little more impressive..”

“This isnt the Du Quentain who murdered a handmaiden is it?” Tan asked, enough of an Imperial aristocrat to be shocked by the scandal of it.

“The very same,” Bhast responded dryly.

“What are the odds of him ending up with her? It can’t be just chance can it? Some kind of deep cover imperial intelligence?” Tan asked, scowling at his intelligence chief.

“Something dosen’t add up,” Bhast agreed.

“If he is some kind of deep cover Imperial agent, why use something so close to his real name, there were some rumors about spies on New Concordia but as best I can tell he was assigned to a battery in the middle of nowhere. Hardly prime intelligence gathering duty.”

Tan glowered at the photos for a long moment trying to puzzle out what could have bought a disgraced former aristocrat and the most important noblewoman in the sector together.

“Reach out to our contacts on Zatis, see what you can find out….”