Penny

The All Dawi Party - A Warhammer Fantasy Adventure

(and little known Dwarf expert) @POOHEAD189

@Jbcool

But not completely unknown!

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

“Solae…” Rene began, taken aback by her reaction to what he considered to be a brilliant success, but she had already left the bridge, heading down the access corridor towards the hold. Rene stood up to follow her but the door slid shut and refused to open. Suspiciously he glanced at a nearby optical sensor. Was the computer telling him to leave her alone.

“Mia, open this door,” he ordered. The locking mechanism flashed green indicating it was unlocked. Rene pressed a thumb to the access stud and it slid back with a hiss. If it had been Mia’s intention to give Solae a few seconds of privacy it had worked, she was already out of sight, perhaps in the captain cabin. Shaking his head he took a few steps into the corridor and pulled the lever that operated the main hatch. The hydraulics squealed and there was a distinct grinding of metal. The rough landing had evidently torqued the ramp so that it bound in place. The problem was a common one in ships that had to make hard and fast landings. Marine dropships had explosive kickers to force a ramp down in an emergency, lest the men inside be massacred while they tried to disembark. Fortunately there were other options. Rene sprang into the air and let his eighty kilos act as a trip hammer, driving both his feet into the ramp as close to the end as possible. The impact broke the friction weld and the ramp deployed in a slow grinding decent.

There was an instant spray as wind whipped water blew into the gap, soaking his boots and trouser legs with surprisingly tepid fluid. He caught hold of a stanchion and rode the rap down. The metal ramp vanished into two or three feet of water that gutted and edited around it as the winds changed direction. Tiny dots of blue white phosphorescence danced in dark green water. Rene took a few more steps down the ramp and looked out over the Caldera. It was an impressive sight even though there was very little light. Whether it was day or night he couldn’t tell, the mass of whirling storm clouds above rendered everything in gray green. They sat a little off the center of the caldera. During normal weather it was probably dry, but rain and the wind swept sea had filled it to the level of Rene’s knees. Great walls of compacted and ossified volcanic rock rose around them in a near perfect circle, although off to the east there was a semi collapsed section that gave access to the rest of the island. Here and there small saplings, they looked more like coral trees, no thicker than Rene’s thumb poked up out of the rain swept surface of the water. Doubtless the Bonaventure had smashed some flat when she had come down, but such minor growth was insignificant compared to the mass of a starship.

The entire surface of the temporary lake danced with blue white light. Tiny algae, probably normally invisible save for when they were disturbed by the wake of boats or creatures, light with tiny flashes of light every time a raindrop hit the dimpled surface of the lake. Waves of light rose up, reflecting the wind and rain in eerie lockstep. It was somewhat akin to being amidst the sweep of an aurora. Rene looked down at his own legs already spattered with motes of flashing light and turned his hands over to discover more such dots dancing on the back of his hands.

“Stars…” he muttered in quiet awe. Rene considered himself to be a worldly man, perhaps even something of a cynic but the glowing lake, beneath the swirling masses of black cloud and howling winds, was enough to stun him for a moment. He should get Solae. There was duty though. Sighing he waded into the water, sinking to his knees in places as he made a circuit of the ship. The Bonaventure was sunk into the silty muck that had been the bottom of the caldera, but it wasn't as thoroughly mired as he had feared. When the ship had struck the layer of water must have absorbed a considerable amount of impact. In his mind's eye Rene could see the vast sheet of water flying upwards as the ship struck, raining glowing motes of light in a vast artificial geyser. The water impact meant that the ship had taken less damage when it hit the muddy bottom. The aft landing skid was bent unnaturally and leaking hydraulic fluid into the water, and some of the rear hull plating was clearly buckled. To Rene’s considerable relief all of the plasma motors appeared to be intact, although he couldn’t tell in the driving rain if any of the nozzles had been warped or cracked.

Thoroughly soaked Rene clambered back up the entrance ramp, pausing to swap his face clean with an arm. Rough stubble scratched at him and he was reminded that he hadn’t shaved in nearly a week. He snorted in amusement at himself. Shaving seemed rather low on the list of priorities and it wasn’t as though the pirates were likely to have a razor. He squelched back along the gangway, the glow on his body fading slowly as the algae metabolised their energy in quick strobe like flashes.

“Solae? Solae you need to come and see this.”

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

“I can’t tell for sure,” Junebug declared as she shimmied back into concealment between the two towering buildings. On the Smugglers Moon it was impossible to tell how many stories up you were, there was no objective ‘ground’ by which to judge. From Sayeeda’s position they appeared to be about three stories above the street across from the hangar where the Highlander was berthed.

“But there must be fifty of them out there,” she concluded. The three of them were in a gap between towers that must have once held cabling or plumbing, but had rotted away to an open semi cylinder of ancient concrete. Water, or at least fluid, run off had pitted and slicked the channel, but not to the point that it was impassable. Saxon crouched beside Neil his lips pulled back into a snarl that might or might not have been contempt.

“Why do they not storm the hangar and take the ship?” Saxon spat. Junebug exchanged a look with Neil. The Pilot had a lot of explaining to be do once they were safe, but it would have to wait. The tactical situation was fairly simple, the longer the gave Gnorlac’s goons to hunt for them the worse their chances of escaping became. Unfortunately charging through fifty armed men resulted in even worse odds.

“Judging by the heat signatures coming from the hangar, Taya is running the plasma motors so they cant get in,” Junebug supplied. It was a smart move, burning the thrusters at low output would fill the hanger with plasma discharge at a temperature of several hundred degrees. The hangar was built to survive such abuse, but lightly armed gangsters would not fare so well. Unfortunately the Highlander didn’t have fuel reserves to keep up such a trick forever. Even if the hydraulic lines were still connected, the thrusters would cut out eventually. The EM discharge was also blanking the comms.

“Let us tear our way through them!” the Hex snarled, flexing his clawed fingers menacingly. Sayeeda arched an eyebrow. It was difficult to judge if the suggestion was a serious one, or merely and expression of frustration. Gnorlac’s men had certainly taken Saxon’s ship already and there seemed little reason to hope they could take it back.

“We have two pistols and twelve rounds between us,” Junebug pointed out. The weapons they had brought to the meet had been for emergencies, not to fight a running battle in the streets. Saxon’s own weapon might have made such an attack practical, but it was hopelessly jammed and would require tools to repair.

“Also, I don’t have anyway to let Taya know to cut the thrusters, also even if she did the concrete is going to be heated to several hundred degrees, more than we can stand without more battledress than we have.”

“What do you suggest then?” the lizard spat.

“We need weapons, and we need to get a link to the Highlander, either laser or microwave, maybe if we could get onto the hangar roof?”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

The roar of the plasma motors died instantly as Rene cut the feedlines with a quick slash of his hand, chopping the engines before mud kicked up from their landing sight could clog the feed ports and convert the thrusters into bombs capped with indigenous clay. For a long moment there was the whine of stressed metal seeking its natural state and then nothing but the persistent hiss of a tropical downpour on a metal surface. Rene blew out a long breath, and gingerly removed his hands from his controls as though afraid that some slight motion might spell disaster. It had been close, the gale force had been worse than the ships sensors had predicted, but close only counts with horseshoes and hand grenades.

“Solae, that was absolutely amazing,” he breathed, loathe to disturb the silence but unwilling to risk that he might actually be dead. It had been an insane piece of piloting even with Mia’s not inconsiderable assistance. The Noblewoman clearly had a knack for the job that Rene could only envy. Unsteadily he slapped at the release plate that held the X shape of his harness together and pulled himself to his feet. The pressure of the semi crash had bruised his chest but hadn’t done any permanent harm. He staggered over to one of the control boards and threw the toggle for the external ventilation hatches. Half a dozen of the hatches returned red tell tales, indicators that they had failed to open, but enough turned green that the sound of pouring rain intensified. Along with the rain came the native air.

After almost two standard days cooped up in the Bonaventure they had gone somewhat nose blind to the stink of it. The reek of the slave ships past life, had not been improved by the eviscerated shot torn bodies of the former crew. Even the cleaning chemical Rene had used to try to salvage the place had simply added to the effluvia that circulated and recirculated through the ancient atmosphere processing unit. By contrast the air of Panopontus smelled fresh and clean, it carried with it a hint of salt from the worlds vast oceans although it lacked the iodine tinge of Capella. Sand and plantlife tinged it as well , although the scent was queer and alien to Rene’s nostrils, as though the biosphere were very slightly alkaline. It washed over them like a cool breeze, the cyclonic winds were blocked by the caldera but there was enough current to kick up dust from hidden recesses. The fact that air was a fluid was rarely better illustrated then by feeling the old stale air of a space voyage washed out by fresh natural air. It smelled heavenly.

“We made it,” Rene said stating the obvious more to reassure himself than anyone else. HIs face split into a broad grin. Unless they were supremely unlucky, they should have arrived unnoticed and any pursuers would find them nearly impossible to detect. They needed to get out and see what damage the ship had suffered, but for the moment he was happy to ride the high of simply being alive.

“That. Was one hell of a landing.”

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

Sayeeda picked herself up out of the rubble. Powdered concrete clung to her perspiration giving her a diseased grey look. Irritable she wiped at her face and then pulled a pair of shooters goggles from one of the pockets cunningly sewn into the hip of her skin tight leather bodysuit. The pressed them to her face and fastened the strap before powering them on. The system was far inferior to her helmet but it was better than nothing. A low level static charge kept the drifting concrete dust from settling on the lenses and the googles were capable of providing basic targeting information. Unfortunately the device didn’t illuminate any hidden exit from the situation. They were trapped in a dead end alley behind a two story pile of rubble. Somewhere beneath that rubble was forty million credits worth of rare minerals. It was nearly physically painful for Sayeeda to think about it, but one of the first rules of mercenary life was that no payoff was worth dying for. With a reluctant sigh she turned away.

“Ok snake, do you have any breaching charges?” she asked the Hex. If they could cut through the building to either side of them there was a fair chance they could get free before their pursuers could get organised. Gnorlac’s goons certainly thought that the Hex’s attack was a doublecross and even if they could have convinced him otherwise there wasn’t going to be a chance to clear things up.

“I am no snake, woman,” the Hex hissed in irritation. The whine of drive fans spinning up briefly overpowered the slackening gunfire. It appeared that even idiot gangsters could reach the right conclusion eventually.

“Uhhh… Captain, this is Saxon,” Neil said by way of introduction.

“Saxon, this is the Captain, err Sayeeda, or Junebug,” the pilot went on haltingly. Saxon looked around in confusion, nostrils flaring and contracting in what might have been an expression or might simply have been a reaction to the explosive residues in the air.

“Well which is it?” the Hex demanded. Sayeeda hissed irritation.

“Can we do the social thing some other time please?” Junebug shouted over the rising roar of the fans. Dust billowed around them though her goggles kept it out of her eyes. The charge kept the googles from clouding, but the air a millimeter beyond was opaque with dust. She tumbed a selector on the side of the googles and switched to millimetric radar. The simple processor in the googles through up a rough wireframe based on the radar returns.

“Breeching charges? Yes or no!” she shouted over the howl and the dust storm blowing down the alley from the back blast. Saxon barred his fangs and pulled a torn belt from his armor. Several smoke grenades dangled from the severed ends of the bandolier but nothing more substantial.

“Sssomeone blew it up,” the alien snarled.

“Ok, you really dont want to play the who fucked who the worst game today,” Sayeeda shouted. With a deafening roar an air cushioned jeep lifted above the rubble. The engines were redlining to carry the load of gunmen that had been crammed into it, far exceeding the safe lift capacity. Unless they had better optics tha Junebug credited them with the hired killers couldn’t actually see them through the smoke. They probably couldn’t even be certain that the trio had survived the blast. Sayeeda settled into a shooters stance and fired three rounds in quick succession. The car was above the rubble, exposing its underskirts to her fire. The first round sparked off the body work but the second and third rounds punched one of the nacelles to scrap. The sensitive mechanism seized for a moment and then blew one of the hydrogen cells in a flash of white fire visible even through the storm of grit. The concussion flipped the car like a tiddly wink, spilling gunmen and loose items a moment before the inertia of the blast drove it out of sight and into the ground with a rending boom that seemed unimpressive after the world ending crash of the fuel air charge.

“If we cant go through we will have to go up!” she shouted, shoving the pistol into her hip pocket. The leather smoked and charred from the waste heat of the barrel but the garment was already a write off. Without waiting for any further discussion Junebug grabbed a hand ful of bundled cables that ran up the side of the building in a loose conduit and began to shimmy her way up. If they could get high enough they at least had a chance of getting out of this mess. The smoke still billowing from the rubble pile as well as the dust that hung in the air provided concealment if not cover. Unfortunately the force of the blast had snuffed any secondary fires before they could break out.

“What are you doing?!” Saxon demanded, “If they have optics they will pick you off like Sindaran flies!” Junebug already ten feet up the uncertain ladder, looked back over her shoulder.

“You’re right we should probably stay here were it is safe,” she said sarcastically before taking another handful of cable and hauling herself another few feet towards the roof.
@POOHEAD189

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene chuckled as he took a seat to the side and slightly behind Solae. He reached a hand forward and squeezed her shoulder.

“I don’t suppose I’m much in the way of arm candy right now,” he said with a grin, catching a glimpse of his grease stained face in the view screen. Dirt and grit caked his arms and most of the front of his tunic. Dirt was a constant companion to an infantryman, the only more frequent companion was mud. Rene hadn’t previously given it much thought but spending time in Solae’s company made him more self conscious, as though the woman's presence was triggering his mind to slip back into the older more fastidious patterns of an Imperial nobleman. He wondered if that was entirely a good thing.

Although Solae’s decision was unexpected Rene was pleased that she had chosen to take the controls. During the escape he hadn’t had time to worry about it, but afterwards he had begun to worry about his performance. He had done well enough during that panicked flight, but it had been a simple powered lift without nuisance. He had spent a little time on simulators in training, but he didn’t have the right instincts for it. At his heart Rene was too aggressive, the same characteristics that made him an effective combatant on the ground were a disadvantage when it came to the subtlety of flight control. Doubt had begun to gnaw at him, doubt that had gotten worse with the sight of the storm.

“I’ll do what I can to keep us stable,” he told Solae. A slight shudder began to run through the hull as they reached the upper atmosphere. The rattle of the plates and the ping of the heating hull metal began to set up an unpleasant vibration, something that rattled at the back of the teeth, or like the whininging of inistant insects. The friction heat slowed the ship with a series of increasingly violent shocks, Rene could see trails of smoke and steam peeling back from the nose of the vessel in long greasy ribbons. Solae worked the controls carefully, following instructions from Mia that Rene couldn’t see from his vantage points.

“I think I’ve found a landing site,” Rene said, watching the sensor data in a quarter of his view screen while the remaining quadrants displayed pitch and velocity graphs. The stresses on the hull were displayed as highlights from green to red. Rene was uncertain how far he could trust the sensors but it wasn’t as though he was spoiled for options. With a series of swift key strokes he bought up a grainy image of a storm tossed island, perhaps ten or twenty square miles. The surface of Panopontus was covered with such islands, but this one was unique for containing the remains of a volcanic caldera. The crack in the crust that had spawned the island was gone but the twenty foot high walls of compacted cinder ash remained. It was what the Marines called ‘keyhole cover’ a depression steep enough that a satellite or orbiting vessel would need to pass nearly directly overhead.

“Sir Rene,” Mia said with the coy protest which was the closet she could come to active disapproval.

“Those coordinates take us nearly through the center of the weather system!” The hull began to slew as they dipped through the ionosphere and into the upper reaches of the sucking malestrom below. Even though they were a few thousand meters above the black storm front the air was still swirling at the top of the cyclones funnel. Rene began to fire the external maneuvering jets attempting to balance out the yaw so that Solae could focus on the decent without worrying abut the wind. It was a difficult and taxing task and it was several minutes before he felt he was able to answer.

“That is the idea, no one is going to be watching sensors in this hash, if we can get to the ground….” The Bonaventure pitched sideways violent as it hit an unexpected wind shear, dropping several hundred meters in a fraction of a second. Solae, grim faced adjusted her controls and they smoothed out. Rene put up a landing track on her screen with distance and vector information, trusting Mia to display it in a useable form.

“Once we make it to the ground, no one will know we are here,” he concluded. The external visual sensors went black as they hit the clouds, even through the pressure seals the cyclonic howl of winds was deafening. Rene furiously tried to compensate for the wind as Solae continued her grim duel with the controls. The island he selected was less than thirty miles from an inhabited island but showed no signs of settlement. The screens lit up again as Rene tumbed the display to millimetric radar. A stark black white picture but intelligible nonetheless.

The hull ran with impacts as the descended further towards the surface. Small pieces of vegetation or shells picked up by the winds hissed off the hull like a squall of hail. On the scopes Rene could see the dark greenish seas heaving in colossal waves fifty or a hundred meters tall under the lash of the winds. There was a metallic twang as something carried away on the outside of the hull, maybe an antennae or a poorly secured hull plate. Rene clung on grimly whispering encouragement to Solae as she took both their fates in her hands.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

unebug lay in the pile of garbage. The leather coat had saved her from being torn to rags against the rough concrete. Nothing seemed to be broken but she would be a mass of bruises in a day or so. Assuming she survived of course. The pistol and the case were both lost in the detritus for now. Screaming civilians were pouring out of the club from which gunfire continued to boom. The Hex might had had a particular target in mind, but firing off into a crowd of which dozens were armed criminals was a recipe for disaster. Unsteadily Junebug pushed herself to her feet and then took a running dive at the Hex. She hit him between the shoulder blades, staggering but not knocking him from his feet. Her arm wrapped around his neck, in what, for a human would have been a choke hold. THe scaly flesh felt like she was trying to throttle a concrete pillar.

“Damnit bitch this is nothing to do with you!” the Hex snarled, raking back at her with its claws. Junebug coiled herself around its shoulders, fouling its attack with her legs and arms. She elbowed it in thead in an awkward blow that did little more than irritate it.

“The hell…” she began before the Hex whirled, smashing her against the wall. Breath exploded from her lungs but she held on, clinging grimly to its neck and upper back.

“It dosen’t…” she wheezed and reached down and plucked a grenade from the creatures belt. It was a dull gray cylinder with a red and grey stripe. Familiar to Sayeeda as a bunker busting fuel air model. She clicked the arming switch but held down the fuse release. The grenade would spread a mist of hydrocarbons through the alley before igniting with a secondary explosion which would probably be sufficient to bring the buildings on both sides down on the jellied remains that the initial concussion would leave.

“Now we are going to talk about this like civilized people…” There was a howl of drive fans from the end of the alley and a screech of metal on asphalt. A hover jeep screeched into the end of the alley, trailing a sheet of orange yellow sparks as friction killed the forward momentum against the roadway. The back of the jeep was packed with gunmen, all wearing Gnarlac’s colors.

“Its them!” one of gunmen screamed and began to swing a pintle mounted plasma cannon to face down the alleyway. The blast of the weapon would cook them all in a heartbeat and there was no way to dodge the bolt of ravening plasma. Even an incompetent couldn’t botch the shot badly enough that it would matter. The Hex growled his muscles bunching beneath her. Junebug tossed the grenade overhand, still clinging to the aliens back. One of the gunmen, a human with greasy blond dreadlocks caught the bomb in one hand, the other cradling an EM slug thrower and tried to throw it back. The gunman had seen too many holos, the internal accelerometers registered the attempt and the bomb went of with a crump, followed a half second later with and apocalyptic flash of heat and light.

Things were confused for a time. Junebug tried to put the fragments of the last few seconds, minutes, back together in her mind but was rewarded only with nausea and fragmentary images. Looking down she saw she was straddling the Hex. The alien’s tongue lolled and yellowish liquid, maybe blood, leaked from one of the things four nostrils. Her mind filled in a blank of tumbling through the air, still entwined with the Hex, smashing Neil to the ground like a bowler picking up a spare. The end of the alleyway was a collapsed heap of rubble and thick black smoke rose in an opaque pall. For a moment everything was silent save for a pattering rain of falling masonry, like ferroconcrete hail. A chunk the size of a fist hit the hex and the creature flinched, its slitted pupils irising wildly as it attempted to focus. She saw Neil brining himself unsteadily to his feet.

We have to get out of here. Junebug thought/said. The effort of communicating made her nauseous and she sneezed violently from the settling dust f the explosion. The air reeked of petrochem and the products of incomplete organic combustion. Gnarlac doubtlessly thought that this was some attempt to double him. A reasonable enough suspicion and one she had just reinforced by blowing a jeep load of goons into their constituent protein strings. The gangsters knew where they were and they knew where the Highlander was. It wasn’t a pretty picture.

“Taya,” Junebug thought, her mind forming the name with crystalline precision. There was a crackle in her mastoid, perhaps a response but nothing she could decode. The Hex was rising unsteadily. Gun fire thrummed froom the end of the alley, idiots emptying weapons into a two story tall pile of crumbled masonry. They would do better to lighten the load and send some jeeps over the top but then, if they were professionals, they wouldn’t be hired muscle in the ass end of nowhere.

“Taya we have trouble, seal the ship and let no one on board,” Junebug said, still unsure if she was transmitting. The Hex shook like a dog beneath her but she kept her balance with the unconscious grace of a veteran tanker. She should stand up or roll away but even the idea of such a radical change in motion made her vision dim. She dropped her jaw and breathed out equalizing the pressure in her ears with a painful pop. At least nothing vital seemed to be broken They were in a dead end alley with no obvious way out. Junebug looked upwards, it was a long climb even if the smoke provided a screen from shooters on the other side of the obstruction, an impossible one if they had optics that could pierce the smoke. She looked down a the Hex she still sat astride.

“Like civilized people,” she repeated, trying to figure out how to deal with the Alien if he didn’t see reason.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

Camilla gave Cydric a wink and a smile as they were whisked through the gothic architecture of the palace. Unlike the Empire, where a degree of sophistication and the widespread use of gunpowder had turned palaces into something more on the lines of fortified manors, the Kislevite castle was built for defense first and lived in only as an afterthought. Although the walls were hung with rich tapestries, there was no disguising the numerous blind turns, sally ports and chokepoints which would make taking the citadel room by room a bloody business. Camilla didn’t doubt their were murder holes and other defenses that she didn’t recognise.

In Tilea sieges were rare. Few mercenaries, who made up the majority of Tilean armies, were willing to take on such long contracts and few captains wanted to watch their men dwindle away to disease and disorder. Paying for men to sit around wasn’t good business particularly when those men were just as likely to strike a new contract with the besieged and march off to attack their previous employers. Worse still if your mercenaries were off besieging another city, your other rivals, and all Tilean city states were rivals, were liable to seize on the moment to attack you. Other City States might attack the besieger simply to prevent them from gaining an advantage.

For all the brutal austerity of the palace, the throne room certainly had a barbaric splendour. Great fireplaces carved to resemble great stone gargoyles flanked either side of an immense hall. Dozens of pillars, each engraved with images of either history or myth, it was hard to tell in Kislev, reached towards the massive vaulted ceiling. Decorative bunting drooped and fluttered in the erratic breeze. The prince, a very austere looking man with grey hair at his temples sat on a throne which was raised two or three feet above the floor where dozens of nobles mingled around a great table. Although there was no shortage of food, it wasn’t quite the cornucopia Camilla had expected. Roasted geese and vegetables steamed on platters and fresh fruit was laid out as garnish. Clearly the prince was taking the prospect of the siege seriously and was using only the most perishable of fare for his feast.

As Camilla and Cydric stepped onto the floor bells began to chime. Remembering the wizard warning Camilla looked up to find the woman sitting in a corner, she was dressed in a fine ill fitting gown but her hair was frazzled as though she had run her feet through a rug to many times. The Celestial wizard met her eyes and looked immediately relieved, though she made no move to join them or speak to them.

A livered footman stepped forward and lifted a iron shod staff into the air before driving it down onto the stone floor with ceremonial precision.

“The Graf and Gravine of Estabrook,” he announced. Camilla leaned close to Cydric.

“Are those our titles? Im a grapevine?!”

The Sunday Group

Me too @ihinka

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

The junction box flexed and cracked as Rene heaved against it. His muscles bunched and strained. The ancient plasteel began to fracture like spiderwebs spreading across ice. With a final snap the ancient work hardened joint gave way and the junction box came free with a puff of dust. The box, a grey cube about a foot on each edge snubbed up against the nest of varicolored wires which fed into it. Rene blew a breath out from between his lips. In theory the box should have unclipped easily, but, like every other box they had checked, the attachment groves of this one had been cold welded by years of hull torque and neglect.

“Got it,” Solae said, reaching her smaller hands over his and popping the burned fuses, identifiable by ancient charing, from their housings and replacing them with two fresh units. Then, with economy of motion, she applied three beads of adhesive to the unit. Rene pressed the box back into position. It felt momentarily greasy before the powerful chemicals set and locked the unit into place. Rene carefully withdrew his arm from the duct, taking care not to crush Solaes. The had been at it for hours, both of them were filthy from the task but Rene was not sorry for it. They had talked why the worked, speaking of their families and their pasts. Of small things mostly, the sort of minor adventures and anecdotes that had seemed important before the chaos and bloodshed of the coup. Rene could imagine they were on a date.

“I estimate you have increased servo efficiency by 2.6 percent,” Mia purred, filling each syllable with sultry suggestion just shy of scandalous. Almost Imagine it anyway. Given the state of neglect a few points of improvement was actually a fairly impressive accomplishment. It gave Rene hope that the Bonaventure might one day be a real vessel, rather than a travelling coffin. It seemed to Rene that Solae had a real talent for it, whereas he was just a useful pair of hands. He wondered if the diplomatic corp taught a course on electronics, perhaps for the installation of listening devices or some such. Perhaps it was simply an innate talent, the way some men were artists without ever attendinging a school, or became crack shots after only a days on the range.

“Alright,” Rene responded, drawing the back of his palm across his forehead, smearing grease and grit across his tanned skin, “What is the next best gain?” They had followed a simple procedure for prioritizing repairs. Mia decided which repair would yield the largest improvement and they attended it. Then they moved onto the next largest problem, moving down the hierarchy of the Bonaventure's dozens or hundreds of minor infirmities.

“Chips 22a and 19b on board 210 are non functional, but I do not project you will have sufficient time to effect repairs.”

“What do you mean sufficent time?” Rene asked, realising the moment after he spoke the answer to his question.

“We will be exiting jump in a little under twelve minutes,” Mia crooned, “I estimate replacing the chips will take twenty one minutes at current speed.”

Rene straightened, working the kinks from his back induced by spending too much time controlling himself to reach into the various access plates and maintenance ducts. An irrational resentment filled him at having to return to the universe where he had to think and act. There might be rebel warships on station above Panopontus, or troops on the ground. They might just as easily be completely unaware of the rebellion. Either way, he didn’t want leave this idyllic respite.

“Alright,” he said with a heavy sigh, “lets strap in.”

Extracting from Jumpspace was almost as unpleasant as entering it. The Bonaventure snapped back into the sidereal universe with the suddenness of a rubber band released from an unimaginable tension. Rene had the sudden sensation of his individual atoms dispersing through his harness and out into hard vacuum. He squeezed his eyes shut to banish the hallucination, his vision momentarily pulsing red.

No rebel warships hung in orbit around Panopontus. According to the Bonaventure’s admittedly crude sensors, the only other ships in the vicinity were a trio of freighters, two inbound and one in the final stages of atmospheric accent. Rene sighed with unconcious release as he cycled the sensors through the various bands of the electro-optical spectrum, double checking the ships conclusion as best he could.

They were several hundred thousand kilometers from the planet, a dark greenish orb on the central display. Rene had expected it to appear blue, as Cappela did, having subconsciously associated ocean with the seas of his youth. More impressively a vast cyclonic storm seemed to cover two thirds of the distant globe. Rene turned up the gain on the sensors, rolling the magification up several hundred fold. In the close up image they could see vast whorls of black storm clouds thousands of miles long. Lighting flashed in syncopating cascades like distant artillery fire.

“Uhhh is this storm activity normal Mia?” Rene asked watching the monitor in wide eyed wonder. Worlds varied in their habitability, there were worlds where vast electrical storms danced in the atmosphere or tectonic activity rent the crust into canyons of bright magma, but in general Imperial terraforming tamed the worst of natures excesses.

“Previous records suggest that it is not,” Mia supplied with unusual austerity, “there are also emergency broadcasts on seven hundred and twelve local frequencies which I can detect.”

It seemed that Rebellion was not the only disaster plaguging the worlds of the Eastern Cross.