In the time that Rene spent watching the space battle unfold, Solae had been giving greater context and detail to Bouardine and Bel'sian of what she knew about the conflict. The Kalderi woman had been shocked, horrified, and distressed to hear the lengths to which an ambitious duke and his minions might go in a quest for power. The diplomat considered withholding or sanitizing the more graphic recollections, yet she knew it wouldn't her audience any favors to gloss over or prune the abhorrent facts. It was for their own good that she swallowed her trauma and clinically discussed what had occurred with a level of detachment her mother would have been proud of. Bouradine was more eager, not out of interest in the self-styled emperor himself, but because he was trying to digest the nuances of their situation. The coup affected more than his personal life. Every merchant with any connection to the Eastern Cross would be affected by the conflict. With no indication the rebellion could be squashed anytime soon, he needed to brace himself for losing his livelihood, and possibly needing to shift temporarily into a new career.

Rosaria tired of the conversation quickly and excused herself. She was, after everything, still a grumpy teen who had her sleep interrupted. Once she was certain that the decision had made to return to Ranal Pindi, she found the rest of the discussing boring, a repetition of things she already knew or was ambivalent about until she was better rested. Mia promised to provide her a precise transcript and/or recording for her review in the morning. Solae swore she heard a touch of disappointment when the girl turned the offer down emphatically.

Yarue and Dasin remained, though she honestly couldn't suss out why they were reluctant to find a reason to return to their private quarters. Undoubtedly they knew from her dress and posture that she was still injured, as did Bel'sian and Bouradine, though the Syshin had more attachment to her and would have been more bothered. Mentally she wondered if they were actually intrigued by some new facet of her story, if they were uneasy because of her injury, or if they felt some misguided guilt in what they perceived to be a failure to keep her safe. Twice now she had a brush with death- and both were because of her own weakness and foolhardy choices. It seemed that she was a greater threat to herself than anything else in the known universe. She might have joked with her bodyguards if she thought they might see the humor rather than expressing annoyance and frustration.

"So these P-E-A..." Bel'sian started, glancing to Bouradine and Solae to confirm that she had the acronym correct, "they are what this man seeks? And he can not use them without you?" The expression on her face was one of confusion, more than when they had described their other perils and problems. The duchess could empathize that the 'alphabet soup' could be confusing for a non-native speaker as she herself had struggled with slang, abbreviations, and other linguistic hurdles unique to foreign tongues. Though they had not spent terribly long on Ranal Pandi, she also suspected that their technology was very different in how it was designed and what uses it served.

"Yes, as far as we know. I'm no expert," she admitted with a soft, congenial smile, "but to the best of my knowledge, there's no way to 'hack' a PEA, though there's been no lack of trying. There are hard-wired fail-safes that I was told my embassy superiors told me would make it melt down irreparably if it was compromised in any way or too many access failures were detected. It could have been hyperbole or it might have been true. The Stellar Empire has been known to take drastic actions with expensive and crucial assets." Solae could remember how excited she had been when she was approved to use the PEA. At the time of Tan's assault, she was still doing what almost everyone considered 'grunt' work in translating correspondence and helping ensure that missives made it to the appropriate recipient. No one had truly anticipated how precious they would be the the looming coup.

"I do not understand," the Kalderi confessed, perplexed.

"Communication is vital, and a PEA is the only way for anyone to send messages from the Sector without using ships, which I am sure you can imagine take much longer. They chased us- or rather I should say they chased me- because if I was captured, they could prevent word from spreading of their treason," Solae elaborated patiently. The Syshin were all too aware of how crippling a broken line of communication could be. Their race had never advanced sufficiently with their technology to be able to correspond with communities on planets within the same sector, and with the empire being so guarded, they had never been able to rally in a meaningful way. Those oppressed on Zatis had no way of reaching out to those on New Concordia, which was one of the many reasons that Dasin and Yarue had joined the [i]Bonaventure's[/i] crew- so they would have the means to find and speak with those they had lost.

After a short pause, Rene still engaged with the terminal at which he said, the aristocrat inquired gently, "Is it not that way with your people? You mentioned they are slow to act?"

Bel'sian made a gesture with her hands that the others in the room intuitively understood to be akin to shaking the heads for humans to indicate this was not the case. "The Kalderi have ways to communicate with each other quickly," she said, purposefully vague since she was uncertain how much could be safely divulged. "Decisions are not so swift. Everything we do is communal, but there may be disagreements on what is best for our community, and so it takes much time to reach resolution. There are times when we are split evenly between choices and we must study an issue at length before a consensus can be reached."

"It is a different kind of bureaucracy," Bouradine added with a shrug and sheepish smile. "You see a bit of it with the art," he pointed out, so as not to make it seem he had gleamed a secret flaw of the Kalderi from Bel'sian alone. "Art's beauty is subjective because not everyone has the same taste. A lady might prefer a painting in muted tones, a gentleman impressionist jewel tones, and another only collect sculptures. If you have a husband and wife come to the shop to pick a decoration for their home, they have a different perception of what is best for their communal dwelling, and it's hard for them to articulate. Nuances, shades of grey where the right and wrong is less clear, or there isn't a clear right or wrong, gets them just as tangled up as us, they just aren't as selfish as our nobles, no offense your grace."

"I agree with you," Solae smiled, this time more genuine. "I take no offense because I know I am unconventional at best. I was born a marquise, but I honestly had never held the ambition to ever set foot in the Capella courts. Hopefully, this new station will afford me an opportunity to help the Syshin free themselves from the shackles of injustice." Rene stood at that moment and walked over to them briskly, his face betraying that something was very wrong, though only his lover seemed to notice the subtle clues of his anxiety. As he referred to matters to be discussed, she sighed rather heavily.

"We will rest. Thank you, Duchess Falia," Bouradine said with an awkward bow of his head. Taking Bel'sian's arm, he exited the room, whispering in her ear, perhaps trying to shed some light on the social insinuation of such an interruption or reassuring her. After the long day they had, somehow she felt that the Kalderi was the more calm one in the relationship compared to her human paramour.

"Are you healed?" Yarue asked pointedly.

"I need more time, but I'll recover," Solae promised with a charming smile under which she hid her pain. Yarue was dissatisfied and stretched his mouth into something akin to a frown but thought better of arguing. Without another word he and Dasin exited, the latter of which cast a concerned glance before they departed.

Rene summarized for Solae what he had learned, since neither of them believed it wise for her to watch the recreation of the battle itself. Proud and dignified as she was, she was still weak and weary from her ordeals, and the trauma was so fresh that they could not jeopardize her mental health spiraling further if she bore witness to the destruction of three battle ships. By the end of his synopsis, her shoulders sagged in discouragement, and she couldn't hide the despair that was painted across her delicate features. Since they first started running from the former Duke Tan, she had pinned all her hopes on getting to a PEA so that she could call the empress and be saved. The small flicker in her chest was snuffed with cold, dark reality that there was no one else that would be coming, no reinforcements, no one capable of raining retribution on the depraved, power-hungry man that had murdered everyone she ever knew and loved.

"We should consider staying with the Kalderi if they will shelter us," she finally said. There was no interest in the empress's locked correspondence. Whatever was sealed inside did not appeal to her in the present. She was no general, there were no soldiers, they had only enough arms to defend themselves, and their ship wouldn't win in firefight with a small, two-man fighter, much less anything more grand. It was hard to see how any information or advice the empress could impart would be of benefit. She had been buried alive hours ago, not yet a full day had passed, and now she was grappling with a future that was wretchedly bleak. "They are the only place we could be safe," Solae added softly. If Capella was compromised, there wasn't a world on which she could be confident they wouldn't face co-conspirators of Tan's.