"Hrmmm," Rene pondered as they moved through the intricate steps of another dance, each placing their palms a few milimeters appart without actually touching while making an elaborate series of graceful turns. It was bemusing to think of so domestic a concern as vacation plans. To Rene's surprise he found it was a topic he had never given much thought.

"You would love the Summer House on Capella," he told her, thinking of the northern mountains in which the Du Quentain's maintained their ancestral seat. Capella had many large urban centers, mostly strung like beads around the Crystal City which served as the palace of the Empress and the effective capital of the Stellar Empire. By ancient decree, no settlement could occur that could be seen from the top of the Diamond Spire, the tallest point in the imperial city. The edict created a wide belt of carefully tended woodland that was more like a garden than a forest in which citizens could theoretically wander and gaze at the Crystal City from outside its walls, the closest a normal citizen of the Stellar Empire could hope to get to the Emperess. Beyond the horizon were cities which housed the countless offices, dwellings, data storage facilities, starports, bars, markets and other structures required to support the millions of administrators who labored to keep an Empire of thousands of worlds running. 

The noble houses of Cappella no longer depended on their fiefs for their power base, having shifted to orbital shipyards and off world possessions centuries ago, but there was prestige in maintaining a seat, and profit in some cases, especially in the rich agrarian centers on the west coast of the principle continent. Here peasant farmers worked the land on vast estates, some of which would have been considered small countries in a previous epoch. Rene's family held its lands in the rugged mountains of the northern continent far from the capital. Thousands of hectares of alpine crags, interspaced with fertile valley clad with Terran Pines and Capella Ka trees with their dark bark marbled with bright metallic pigments. The Du Quentain's had always based their power in Imperial service rather than on the wealth of their lands, even so many valleys maintained thriving communities which produced a surplus of food, wine and other small goods. Most of the space though was undeveloped wilderness, remote crags that mounted to the crown of Capella's northern arctic tundra to the north, and shallow hills which sank to the azure waters of the straits of Tindalos.

As a boy Rene, mostly in the company of his families Master of Arms who had instructed the boy on the arts of hunting and woodcraft as well as more martial subjects. Latter he had taken to trekking alone, exploring and spending days in solitude. The Summer House itself was a small palace, located in a remote and sheer valley high up the in the mountains. The building crowned an impressive array of terraced gardens witch spread almost a kilometre down the side of the valley wall to the river valley below. The name, The Summer House, denoted its ancient origins as a seasonal lodge, something which successive generations of Du Quentain's had added to until it reached its current level. As affairs of court kept the family busy much of the time, its occupation was none the less seasonal, although servant and armsmen lived their year round. Rene had fond memories of watching vast blizzards roll down the valley like a wall of on rushing ice during mid winter. He wondered what Solae would think of it, in the unlikely event they were ever able to visit.

"You know it is strange," he mused as they danced on, the rythym having grown slow and intimate as the dance changed. It seemed to Rene that Kalderi music had a story, even if there were no words, a progression from the frantic excitement of a meeting to the slow contentment of fulfilled desires.

"I had never been of Capella until.. until everything happened," he explained. It was likely that if he had followed the path that had been laid out for him and taken a position in the Imperial Guard, he might never have left Capella save for the Empress few of planet excursions.

"I cannot say I would recommend Kestra," he went on with a grim smile. The planet of Kestra IV, usually just referred to as Kestra served as the main training base for Imperial Marine recruits. The planets severe and unsteady axial tilt made it all but uninhabitable, with scorching summers, freezing winters and what amounted to monsoon rain most of the rest of the time. Terra forming wasn't an ideal process and in some cases the natural barriers proved too much for human technology to overcome. Recruit's sweated in summer, froze in winter and were up to their elbows in mud or dust much of the rest of the time. Everywhere else he had been had been transfer orders, little more than starport districts if they were allowed to disembark from the troop transports at all.

"My mother traveled quite a bit before she met my father," Rene continued, placing a hand around Solae's hips to pull her close to him as they swept along the watery walls of the dance hall. The Kalderi passing lifted the tips of their wings to brush the shimmering walls, drawing bright highlights across the surface and attracting darting fish to the disturbances. The humans opted not to copy this techqniue, there were limits to how much they could imitate the aliens, and soaking their formalware was not a price they were willing to pay for what seemed an idle enjoyment rather than an intrinsic part of the culture. Rene's mother had died from complications during child birth but years later he had read journals which she had kept. Disappointingly they said little of her life after her marriage to Alric, his father, but in her younger years she had traveled widely.

"There is a world called Eleni out spinward of Capella near the Gulf of Chalcedon, humans attempted to terraform it during the first wave of expansion and then gave up when they encountered setback," he explained. Most first expansion worlds had been barely habitable even with successful terraforming and many had been reworked centuries later when technology had improved.

"When it was rediscovered after the collapse, the biomes had hybridized with the local life, mostly types of phosphorescent algae analogies. When it was rediscovered after the collapse, they found that Terran life there had eventually gotten started, but it had spliced itself into the local environment. There is breathable air and temperate climate but the slow rotation means the nights there are weeks long. At sunset you are in a rain forest and as the lights fade the chloroplasts in the leaves begin to luminescence. Some of the animals too, as a camouflage strategy," Rene trailed off, realizing he had been drifting into a reverie of his child hood reading.

"Anyway, I have always wanted to visit it. Apparently access is pretty tightly controlled," he told Solae. Hybrid biomes were exceedingly rare and were a perpetual source of fascination and study by scientist seeking to understand how the remarkable results could be duplicated. Rene grinned and leaned close to Solae to whisper in her ear.

"Luckily I know a Duchess who might be able to put in a good word for us."