Penny

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

The elation she felt at seeing Cydric kept Camilla on her feet for nearly an hour. She talked incessantly in a liquid mixture of Tilean and Reikspeil, trying to convey all that had happened in the weeks they had been separated. They moved south as fast as they could, though it seemed the shimmering cloud grew closer by the minute. At Dietricha’s urging they drifted east, she glanced frequently at the stars, although given the clouds veiled the stars Camilla didn’t see how she could be using them to navigate.

“She isn’t looking at anything. Just makes it all up for theatrics,” Yantz volunteered unexpectedly as Camilla followed the red heads gaze skyward. Camilla gave the Imperial a stunned look but before she could respond her strength gave out. She fell towards the rocky ground and was saved from smashing into the ground by Ivan’s grip on the back of her neck.

“Woah,” Ivan grunted and set her on her feet with as little difficulty as one might lift a kitten. Camilla scrabbled weakly at the Kislivite’s grip.

“I can walk,” she protested weakly through her legs felt like sausage. After a minute she managed to get her feet under her again, though she would have fallen without aid. Cydric waved a hand for a halt.

“I’m not a porcelain doll,” she protested weakly. Ivan grunted and let go of her shirt. Camilla pitched to the rocky dirt in a heap, her fingers managing to grip the hilt of the sword weakly. Skaldi stomped forward and picked up Camilla with as little delicacy as one might show for a sack of grain, slinging the former courtesan over one broad shoulder. He turned to Cydric, about to say something when he paused and turned back to the rock. Ignorning Camilla’s weak blows to his back.

“There was a river here once,” the dwarf rumbled, scuffing at the dirt with his boot to reveal striations in the granite.

“Moved underground I’d say,” he glanced towards a shadowed rocky area off to the east and then back at the pursuing storm of warpstone.

“Would you put me down!” Camilla demanded tartly.

“Quiet now lass,” the Dwarf responded pleasantly, “I was just about to say there might be caves where it went underground. Id bet my beard on it.”
@POOHEAD189

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Sayeeda laughed in spite of herself and clinked her bottle against Neil’s. The glass tonked unmusically but she didn’t let that stop her from taking a mouthful of the smoky liquor. Neil might have had a point, the fancy of aristocrats was nothing to play with. Granted Aiden didn’t seem the sort to have them all impaled on a whim but… well they had risked enough they deserved to get paid.

“It is a date,” she declared with a throaty chuckle. And may the stars save us if it goes sideways she added mentally.

It seemed that the red carpet that the Highlander’s crew had previously enjoyed was well and truly rolled up. When they arose the next morning they found that while the doors were unlocked armed guards politely but firmly turned them back to their quarters. They were able to establish contact with Lonney, who to Sayeeda’s horror, seemed to be developing a taste for the news feeds. Somehow, and she had her suspicions, footage of last nights events had been leaked to the press. The prevailing narrative seemed to be that while Alexander had tried to usurp his brother, most of the death could be chalked up to the ‘foreign killers’ who Aiden had generously, but foolishly, bought to Dar’mond.

“Nice,” Neil griped, “we save his ass and now this.” Sayeeda could only shake her head. That was the way it was sometimes. Politicians needed mercenaries but they were rarely welcome once the cold calculus of victory started to grind away. If nothing else they were a reminder that where one regime could be toppled by hired guns, so could another.

“I’m just mad I missed my chance to be swept off my feet by prince charming,” Sayeeda grumbled mostly in jest.

“You just make a terrible damsel in distress,” Taya observed, swiveling in her plush leather chair to face Neil and Sayeeda as they sat at the table playing cards for the few small denomination credit chips they had.

“Plus I don’t think Aiden is much of a dashing Prince. I mean he says all the right things but you should have seen him last night. He was terrified,” Taya disagreed. Sayeeda snorted as Neil took the pot with a particularly unlikely play, she peered suspiciously at her cards.

“That makes him human, only an idiot wouldn’t have been afraid,” Sayeeda declared, tossing a card half heartedly into the play area. Taya arched an eyebrow.

“You two didn’t seem afraid, I wasn’t or I mean not totally terrified,” she protested. Junebug grinned without humor.

“Maybe we are just dumber than we look?”

House arrest aside the day progressed more or less as normal. Instead of travelling to the Royal Seamstress the entire department came to their room, dividing the space up with mobile partitions so they could be dressed appropriately. Sayeeda strenuously overrode every attempt at a traditional court dress, settling instead for a black top made of a leather like material and accented with gold. The thing had a breastplate like appearance and pinned over only one of her shoulders leaving the right side of her from throat to armpit, with a generous scallop of bosom, bare. For her lower extremities she selected a black on black slashed skirt that fell nearly to the ground and long leather boots of matte black leather with high but sturdy heels. Around her waist she hung an intricate belt of woven gold strands which gathered and expanded from a central clasp consisting of a gold rimmed saphire the size of a lemon. At the right hand side of the belt hung a platinum chased holster which held a unadorned 20 mm pistol. The choice to go armed horrified the dress makers but they lacked the authority to prevent it. Her hair she wore pinned up on one side, held in place by long pins of polishe electrums, accented with small sapphires. As a final touch she added a small pin to the shoulder clasp of her top. It was a small shield bearing a raptor spreading its wings, dark blue against a silver field the formal sigil of Andor’s Armored. Over the bird stood two golden captains bars in simple bas-relief.

Most of the clothing was run up by computerized fabrication units and sophisticated material printers, though the final tailoring was done by the team of clucking women, each eager to put their own stamp on the project. Junebug looked into the mirror with satisfaction as the final laces were pulled tight on the corset like breastplate. The effect was almost ascetically slimming and pleasing to her eye. Maybe there was something she would miss about this place afterall, she never looked this good in her pt gear.

“Are you ready Neil or are you going to primp all evening?”

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla floated in darkness, above her strange stars wheeled on unknowable courses. She tried to groan but no sound emerged from her lips. All around her was the familiar elven ruin, although it as spectral and distorted. The tower, only a stump when she had seen it, speared towards the heavens. The other structures too were no longer ruins. The temple reared majestically, a tall figure in marble gazed sternly down from the columaded entryway. Unsteadily she rose to her feet. The sword she had taken from the temple was till in her hands, it was the only object that seemed to have any solidity, the long slightly curved blade sported runes she had not noticed before, elegant elven characters burning like pale moonlight on the blade.

Far to the north across the spectral mountains a great fire blazed heavenward. Somehow she knew that if she went that way she could cross the mountains, pass through the crystal forest that lay beyond and reach the vale of mirrors. Once there she would find the altar of Ashen-Sughai. It was clearly visible in her mind, a beautifully carved piece of purple veined obsidian, wrought into the ten thousand pleasures of Slaanesh, each scene blending into the next to allow the devotee to follow the path to exultation. She could take Gorn there, lay with him atop the altar and walk the tenfold path. She saw herself writhing atop the reaver as she experienced pleasure beyond that which any mortal could comprehend. She saw the blade in her hand plunging into Gorn’s chest at the moment of exaltation, the bright arterial gush coating her naked body. She could feel the mystical strength of Slaanesh coursing through her, raising her above all others. Black armor encased her body as the blood congealed, she would no longer have to fear age, she could remain young and beautiful forever. There were pleasures she could experience, she saw herself leading armies, saw herself standing upon a great seal as wings burst from her back and her skin changed, her form flowering into a being as immortal as the stars and as beautiful. All she needed to do was…

The blade tugged in her hand, gentle but insistent. She glanced at it as she might a sudden stinging insect, enraged to have her attention taken from the raptous vision of her future that as so clearly laid out before her. Gorn, his body spectral and translucent lay on the ground as she had left him maimed and broken, defeated in a duel that had pitched her skill against his and named her the greater. The blade seemed to throb with approval at the thought but still it tugged. A purplish light pulsed within Gorn’s forhead, somehow the coin he had placed there was clearer than anything save the blade the beautiful elven woman’s features glowed back at her in hateful perfection. The weapon in her hand twitched again and she glanced into the fountain beside the sticken reaver. To her surprise there was water inside of it, though she remembered it being cracked and dry. In the water shimmered a reflection.

“Cydric?” she thought/spoke though no sound existed within this place. It was beyond her comprehension how such a thing could be. Surely there was no way he could have followed her to this accursed place but there he stood, holding his sword close to her, lips moving silently. Resolve filled her instantly and she felt something dark and seductive coil away in anger. With sudden intuition she turned towards the statue beside the temple, the armored figure looking sternly down at her. In a smooth motion she raised the blade in salute and then spun, stabbing the point of the blade down at the coin that screamed in Gorn’s head.

“It dosen’t look like its vorking,” Ivan rumbled, his hands wringing against each other in uncharacteristic concern. There crippled reaver laughed raspingly, almost silent from the effort of it. One of the Kislivites let out a feral growl and took a step towards the bloodied Norscan, hefting an axe to deliver the death blow. Dietricha stepped between the two men, planting her hands stubbonly on her hips. The grizzled warrior snarled in anger.

“Get out of my way witch or ill…”

“Look everybody just calm down we can get her to a healer,” Yantz began his eyes locked on Cydrics. There was a sudden surge of energy and Yantz’ hand jerked the pistol from his belt of its own volition. The big weapon boomed and Gorn’s forhead exploded in a spray of blood and brain matter. With a sound like a cannonball hitting a bell something metallic flew skyward in a glittering arc of gore, pinging off the side of a building with a sound nearly as loud before they lost sight of it against the background of stars. Yantz stared at his smoking pistol with a look of astonished horror. Dietricha only nodded in self satisfaction.

Camilla convulsed on the ground, her eyes snapping open wide and staring. For a moment her body arched silently and then with a wracking gasp she sucked down a tortured breath of air.

“Cydric,” she croaked and then rolled onto her side and vomited.
@POOHEAD189

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene bowed his head and held his tongue, resolving to leave the talking to Solae. He wondered what bonded implied in Syshin society but supposed that it held enough truth in any case. There was a bond between them that went beyond fellow refugees. He wondered if it implied servitude as a liegeman an woman might define the term, or an emotional connection as between lovers. Again both held enough truth.

The interior of the starship/habit was surprisingly quiet. Normally a star ship was a nearly overwhelming symphony of pumps, motors, and electrical equipment. The subtle subversion of his unconscious expectations bothered him but he kept it from his face. The ship hadn’t been operational in many generations and the vast bulk of its internal machinery had been either salvaged or repurposed. The metal walls were still visible in some places but in others the Syshin had constructed their own internal walls from plant matter and red brown adobe. The resulting effect was not unlike the inside of a wasps nest, with dozens of small freestanding chambers constructed in what would have been holds and maintenance decks.

The technique had the added effect of making the space much cooler than it might otherwise have been in such a tropical environment, in places where the curvature of the hull as particularly extreme condensate dripped from the ceiling, often times into large pools fastened for just such an effect. Plants, some native a but mostly offworld varieties, grew around the fringes of the ponds with surprising profusion. Rene wondered if they would have been cave dwellers in their natural environment, or they had other ways besides direct sunlight to gather energy. The inside of the ship seemed almost disturbingly alive, more like a subterranean rainforest than a building as humans understood it.

Like most children Rene had gone through a phase of fascination with aliens. The reality was that despite the fact that a score or so of intelligent species had been identified, there wasn’t nearly as much interaction as one might imagine. Methane breathers from Hydax had colonized hundreds of worlds, but those worlds were so inhospitable to humans that competition for space or resources was virtually non existent. The same could be said of the majority of alien species known to man, with contacts existing mostly at academic levels and with tourism among the super rich. Only where metabolic processes were similar enough to allow the sharing of biospheres, did competition occurred. As with the Syshin, this usually didn’t go well for the non humans.

The Syshin watched them as they made their way down the long axial corridor of the ship. Many looked suspicious and others looked out right hostile, although they dropped their gazes as Nami swept them with her strange nonhuman eyes. There were a surprising number of them, adults as well as children, and they seemed to fill most of what Rene could conceive of as living spaces.

“They worry,” Nari explained when he mentioned it. Her words curiously clipped and with clicks deep in her throat that snapped off the end of her words. How Solae had managed to learn and speak the tongue was beyond him.

“With the..x-trouble, they worry humans turn on them, dangerous time,” the alien expounded. Her fears were probably justified, history was full of cases of minority populations suffering pogroms and massacres at times of turmoil and it probably wouldn’t take much for disgruntled workers to turn against the aliens when they were drunk on the equally potent intoxicants of alcohol and power. The Syshin had a strange smell to them, perhaps only noticeable when they were in close proximity, it reminded Rene of spice mixes from Xandar or Chem-hi, though neither was a perfect max. It wasn’t exactly unpleasant but neither could he have claimed to enjoy the scent.

“Damn,” Rene breathed as they stepped through a mud covered bulkhead. The space beyond must have once been the main hold, no other space on a starship permitted so much open space, and stretched at hundred meters in both directions. The ceiling was visible thirty meters above and hung with dozens of glow bulbs, each bulb dangled amid a field of green vines, some of which appeared to be fruit bearing. The floor of the large enclosure was equally verdant with green vines pouring out of opened ventilation shafts and trees and bushes of dozens of varieties neatly, if eccentrically, spaced. Older looking Syshin, many with colorful plumage moved amongst the trees, pruning and tending them with tools of recycled steel or reshaped stone.

In the very center of the hold stood a strange looking structure. It was nearly twenty meters tall and seemd to have been made on a frame of agricultural tubing formed into irregular pentagons which were then faced with the same adobe they had seen before. Unlike the earlier structures though, these surfaces had been polished smooth till they looked more like stone than mud. Many of the panels were painted with strange abstract art, mostly in greens and blues. The pentagonal panels fit together purposely but the lack of symmetry was unsettling to human eyes.

Nari paused and said something to Solae in Syshi. Rene kept his face studiously blank but nodded his head when Solae did. His skin was beginning to crawl and he tried to banish thoughts of what might happen if these negotiations didn’t go well. Would the aliens try to collect the bounty on Solae? Had they heard the offer. He resisted the urge to let his hand slip into the pocket where he held his pistol. For now he had to stay calm and hope that Solae knew what she was doing.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene felt a huge surge of relief when Solae relented. A tightness in his chest, something he hadn't been aware of until it departed, relaxed. He had only known her for a few days but he already cared for her more than he cared to admit. It wasn't a good idea to become emotionally involved. All of his training underscored that fact, but he wasn't able to stop himself. Solae's body trembled slightly and he hugged her close to him for a moment, offering what comfort he could. Instinctively he pressed his lips to her forehead for a moment and then released her.

"I could never regret keeping you safe Solae, no matter what it might cost."

The darkness and the pressure were unpleasant enough but the slightly sticky itch against his skin was worse by far. The truck rumbled along the rough dirt road, its heavy diesel engine snorting and snarling over the pothole pocked surface. Each jolt shifted the overburden of sugar cane atop of them, smearing the sweltering ponchos they wore with more of he sticky juice. They had left Oanh and Hyun Tae two hours earlier. Min Ho had provided them with a backpack full of supplies as well as some weapons and ammunition. As a Marine, Rene felt under equipped but it was hard to imagine a situation that extra firepower would solve.

They had said their goodbyes a few hours earlier. Min Ho, whose land produced sugar cane along with his other fruits and vegetables had arranged for a local trucker to pick up a load of the sticky stalks and take it to a mill outside the city. Because of the stink of the milling process the ramshakle factories were far outside the city and the one Min Ho had chosen was In the general direction of the Shyshin encampment. During the stifling ride the truck had been stopped twice at what Rene could only assume were checkpoints. Thankfully none of the Gids manning those stations had seen fit to give the truck more than a cursory inspection.

After a sweltering eternity the engine grumbled to a stop. Rene squeezed Solae’s hand and checked the pocket chronometer Min Ho had included with his gift of supplies. Two hours and eleven minutes of travel time. Twenty minutes more than the journey was predicted to take but reasonable considering the road blocks. Rene waited five more minutes before squeezing Solae’s hand a second time.

“Lets go,” he whispered and started shoving the stalks aside. It took a minute to shift enough of the crop to break free into the bright noonday soon. To Rene’s immense relief the truck was parked in a holding lot of hard packed earth, dusty and rough. A massive mill squatted across the lot, sending smoke and steam into the sky in slow lazy streams The air smelled of stinking steam and chemicals. According to Oanh, the driver would be waiting to negotiate the price with the factors a process that would take at least a half hour. There were a half dozen trucks in the yard, uniformly battered and all still loaded with piles of recently cut sugar cane. There was no one else in sight for the moment and Rene’s grip on his pistol relaxed.

“Looks like we are clear for now,” he told Solae as he helped her down. Both of them were covered in thin plastic rain ponchos, disposable garments now smeared with dirt and sugar cane sap. Rene peeled his off and shoved it into his pack before helping Solae out of hers. Across the lot there was a scrubby swale marked by unhealthy looking trees. They walked as rapidly as they dared across the dirt and slid down into the concealment of the low ground. An ancient railway track ran along the bottom of the swale but judging by the orange brown rust of the rails and the small sapling that grew up between them it had been abandoned for some time. Rene sank back against the embankment and sucked in a deep breath. He peered up over the edge of the swale but saw no sign that anyone was the wiser.

“Ok,” he said, mopping at the sweat and dirt on his brow. From here on out Solae, more familiar with the Shyshin would have to take the lead.

“Where to from here?”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene shook his head, partly in negation partly in wonderment. She was trying to protect him. Not only from the very real danger here but the future danger of entanglement with the nobility. He didn’t suppose anyone in the halls of power would be happy to see him again, he ran a very real risk of being shot on a trumped up charge of desertion if he showed up anywhere without Solae to provide an account of events. Hells, they might even decide he was a likely conspiratory and shoot him for treason. The irony of it made the corners of his mouth tug up into a grin that was wholly inappropriate for the situation.

“Solae,” he began and then paused trying to find the right way to convey what he needed to say. Things had been much easier when he had just been a grunt and needed to do little more than follow orders and endure the ire of whichever officer was unlucky enough to be cycled through whatever backwater they stuck him in.

“I’m not going to let you go on alone,” he said in a voice that had the calm certainty of an astronomical projection. Her hand was warm in his and he kept his pulse from raising only by dint of the training the Corp provided for operators who might be called upon to fight in vacumn suits where air was at a premium.

“What would my life be worth if I let you go off alone just to save my own skin?” he demanded. Solae was probably right in that, if they were caught, she would be spared and he would be tossed into a shallow grave or blown out an airlock. Even if that were true he might well be the lucky one. Rene had gone through the crushing loss of identity when he had been forced to enlist in the marines but at least his fall from grace had been political and not personal.

“It is my duty, to protect you Solae,” he paused for a moment and then forged ahead.

“My duty and my honor, after I get you somewhere safe… well we can worry about that if it happens.” It occured to Rene that if he took her up on her offer to lay low, and the Empire was eventually victorious, he might well be shot as a traitor for NOT accompanying her. If it came down to that, he would just as soon be shot by the enemy.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Min Ho lay a hand on the stunned marine's arm but Rene shook it off without malice. His insides churned with a confusing blend of emotions which aggregated out to a vague shock and the beginning of simmering anger and hurt. Had Solae really just attempted to toss him aside like an empty paper cup now she had had her fun with him. No, she had to be trying to protect him. With a sudden flash of insight he understood the anger he had sparked in her back at the manor when he had tried to protect her from her own decisions.

"You can't let..." Min Ho began but Rene cut him off with a curt gesture and started up the stairs, running his hand along the rough timber railing until he reached the top where he opened the door and stepped into the room they had shared. Solae's back was too him, as good as her word she was stowing the spare outfit that Oanh had provided into one of the travel packs. Though she must have heard him enter she didn't give any sign off it and he pushed the door shut. He wasn't under any illusions that a closed door would afford them any real privacy from the pair of retired spooks, but it was psychological comforting to close off the space.

"Have you lost your mind?" he asked in a quiet voice which telegraphed more of the hurt he was feeling than he had intended. The adrenaline in his system caused him to bite the end of his words and he forced himself to relax, trying not to make a tense situation worse.

"How in the void cares if I'm safer one way or the other. It is my choice to come with you Solae," he crossed the room as he spoke, taking her by the shoulder and gently turning her to face him.

"Even if it wasn't my duty, which, by the way, it most certainly is, you cant honestly expect me to hide here while you go off and put yourself in danger. I refuse to hide in a hole while you go off and face the Throne only know what all alone!" he realized that he had started to shout without intending too and deliberately lowered his voice to a more conversational level.

"Look, you said yourself that one soldier doesn't raise the threat level, but this is why they pay me the big Kay-Cee," he went on. The big Kay-Cee was a Marine corp joke. It refereed to a Kilo-Credit, which had once been the standard salary for a Marine. He gathered Solae into his arms, pulling the noblewoman close.

"I'd rather die than know that something bad happened to you and I could have prevented it," he concluded, raising her chin with his fingers to meet his eyes.

The ERP Discussion

smut between a human and a Ridley Scott xenomorph Alien.

@NuttsnBolts

Hey, whatever makes people happy, consenting adults and all that. Also the Sexual Politics of Xenomorphs would be an awesome article title...

The ERP Discussion

One or two is alright, I suppose, but when you see 'manhood' used in several sentences consecutively, it gets old.

@Hero

Using the same version of any noun repeatedly is always risky!

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

*Events of In the Rain*

New Concordia - Day 4

Oanh small fist rapped on the door, drawing Rene back to the waking world. It was early by any reasonable standard, the light of the new risen sun barely slanting through the room’s large window, but later than he would have been allowed to sleep at the Rat Trap. Solae stirred beside him, a shaft of sunlight lay across her aurite hair, blindingly bright in its refraction. For a long moment he ignored the insistant knocking and simply looked down at her marveling at her beauty.

“Some time before the Succession,” Oanh called, her voice muffled through the door but clearly intelligible. Muttering a curse Rene rolled to his feet and, with some difficulty, found where he had flung his pants the night before. He was still pulling them on when Oanh opened the door. She glanced from the half dressed marine to the naked Solae and raised an eyebrow.

“I see she took my advice about lowering her market value after all,” the woman commented. Rene felt his face go blank, muscles relaxing into neutral planes equally useful for ignoring the berating voice of a superior or for firing a round down range. He didn’t think Oanh had meant the comment as an insult but it stung nonetheless. Solae was meant for better than him. Oanh either read the expression on his face or realised what he might be thinking and cleared her throat. Rene wasn’t sure what reaction he had expected, but the disheveled bedding, and the noise they had made during the night were hardly going to go unnoticed by two intelligence operatives on watch.

“Min Ho wants to see you both,” she said directly, dropping her eyes in as close as she was likely to come to an apology. Solae was awake and sitting up now, still naked but unconcerned. The nobility as a rule were less prudish, at least in private, than many of those they ruled over. Oanh didn’t look directly at Solae and Rene felt a surge of affection as he imagined she was deliberately making the other woman uncomfortable in subtle rebuke for her comment of a moment before.

“We will be down in a second,” he told Oanh and politely but firmly shut the door before turning and crossing the room to the bed. He pulled Solae to his chest and kissed her lingeringly, it was only with reluctance that he pulled away to get dressed.

Min Ho was standing in the kitchen when they came down. The gray haired old man wasn’t wearing his tactical armor but was dressed instead in a simple farmers smock and trousers with boots of soft synthetic leather. Rene was amazed at the transformation of hardened assassin into nondescript farmer, though he realised he shouldn’t be. Min Ho had spent decades in a career where blending in was literally the difference between life and death.

“Ah, feeling better?” he asked, his eyes flicking between the pair. Unlike his wife he choose not to offer any comment on the previous evenings activity. Rene nodded, and to his surprise it was true. Whatever drugs Min Ho had passed him had restored him remarkably. The blackened bruises on his body were already changing to the bilious yellow greens he wouldn’t have expected for a few days and his body was markedly less stiff than it had been the previous day. Even for as little sleep as he had gotten he felt remarkably refreshed. Of course there were other forms of rejuvenation that had played a role.

“The Gids are on your trail,” Min Ho declared with characteristic bluntness. He spread a map of green acetate out on the table. Rene recognized it as the satellite composite the marines themselves had used. Min Ho thrust a finger at a junction of roads which Rene guessed, from the land marks he had seen, represented Lord Armon’s manor.

“They have some sort of specialized tracking unit, police forensics and some off world types, probably came in on that ship yesterday afternoon,” the old man explained. Rene frowned trying to figure out how the Gids had landed on the manor, had the looters found something? It seemed unlikely, nothing they were carrying was identifiable enough to telegraph Solae’s presence.

“Mia,” Rene breathed as the pieces fell together. He felt suddenly foolish and ashamed. Min Ho cocked an eyebrow. Rene shared a glance with Solae and then explained.

“The AI at the manor was shielding Solae’s CLTI,” he explained. Min Ho had doubtless heard of the trackers, probably even used them to track down nobles who he was contracted to surveil or remove.

“They must have deactivated her and got a ping off it. Stars I’m an idiot I should have smashed it,” he said with a shake of his head. He had considered exactly that when he had removed the thing but had decided against it. At the time he had planned to throw the thing in a river or hide it in a ground car so that its movements would lay down a false trail. The sudden arrival of the looters meant he hadn't had time to do anything but hope Mia could keep it shielded.

“I don’t like you moving about during the day,” Min Ho said soberly, “But I don't see that there is any choice.”