"Huodan", Rene echoed, "I like it."

"[i]Huodan[/i]," Dasin corrected, placing the emphasis on slight different syllables. Rene chuckled but didn't make a second attempt to pronounce the Syshin word. It really was going to be a whole new sector if, when, Solae took power.

As the trek progressed the grassy savanah gave way to light scrubby woodland. Rene was no biologist but he recognised some Terran standards. Other plants though showed signs of many generation of basking in the slight radiation of Huodan's atmosphere. They passed a pine tree with spines protruding from its trunks and needles that dripped with sap that Rene suspected was venomous. An oak that depended tentacle like vines which might once have been strangler figs but had fused with their victim to choke out smaller trees, creating strange almost conical trunks as the various offshoots grew together. It would have been difficult to keep a sense of direction as the trees grew thicker, but Solae's improvised relay provided them with updates whenever they turned too far of course and as early afternoon approached they climbed a slight ridge to look out across another of the shallow valleys that spread like fingers from the foot of the mountain. On the far side of this one the delapidated ruins of what had once been a human settlement glinted in the rosy light. More to the point, a pair of escape pods were on the valley floor, within a hundred feet of each other, the burnt out patches of their landing thrusters still black against the greenish carpet. A small stream ran across the bottom of the valley, running high with recent rains well. Fern like plants and other succulents seemed to crowd its banks, fronds reaching across in the fashion that reminded Rene of a military honor guard at a wedding. 

Gesturing the others down Rene took a pair of binoculars from his pack and focused in on the escape pods. One was a standard civilian model exactly what Rene would have expected a freighter like the Corsica to carry. Canvas awnings had been rigged from the side of it, giving it the appearance of an open seed pod and crates of supplies had been stacked around it in an orderly semicircle that would also serve as a wall to provide shade and a wind break. The second pod though. Rene zoomed and focused the binoculars, his thumb spinning the wheel from x32 to x64 and engaging the gyroscopic stabilizer. The pod seemed to jump closer and the image steadied. Rene cursed quietly under his breath and turned to look at Solae.

"The second pod is a military model," he explained, "according to the ledged it's from the Zandi Tremane, an Imperial destroyer that wasn't assigned to the Eastern Cross when I got here." Rene didn't know the deployment orders of every ship in the navy of course, but marines were routinely briefed on fleet movements in their area of operations. At the Rat Trap the briefings had been kind of a joke: on this day, nothing happened. Rene didn't know what the presence of an escape pod from the Zandi meant but whatever it was, it was unlikely to be good news.