Penny

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

“Keep your shield up!” Matis shouted as he battered at the peasant with a length of fencing post. The wood clattered against the shield like slamming door as the wiry with hunter hammered his opponent with surprising force. The instruction might have been more helpful if he had remembered to speak Brettonian but the blow he delivered across the man's head when he dropped the shield was eloquent enough. Around him two double lines of peasants stood wailing away with their own wooden weapons while Leofric shouted at them to keep their shields tight.

Camilla sat upon a fallen statue watching the proceedings with a slightly pained expression. In the week since the Grail Knight had appeared word had spread of her alleged elevation as a religious figure, her small band of peasants had grown from a score to well over a hundred. There were enough of them now that she had felt some sort of training was necessary if they were to be effective. The decision hadn’t been popular with Beaumont and his men, who viewed the situation with growing alarm. What at first had been few homeless peasants was fast becoming an army and teaching them to use Imperial tactics was almost as bad as leading a rebellion in their eyes. Two more of the knights had deserted over the past week, uncomfortable with the perceived heresy or her arming and training of peasants. Even those who had stayed seemed uncomfortable and unhappy, though as yet their loyalty to Beaumont outweighed their disquiet towards her.

To make matters worse they had not encountered any of the undead in the few days since the battle by the ruins. A battle would have been good to pull everyone together, and it would have eased Camilla’s mind that she was on the right path. A gnawing sense of doubt had begun to grow that maybe she was on the wrong track, a discomfort that Renard’s blind faith that she knew what she was doing, made worse.

“They have a long way to go,” Matis griped as he climbed the hill to where Camilla watched, Leofric making up in invictive for the absence of the Imperial’s skill. Camilla did not answer immediately, if only Cydric were here, she was certain he would be able to whip these men into order far faster than Matis could. Try as he might the Witch Hunter just wasn't a man to lead others, except maybe by fear.

“Well we may not have to much more time,” Camilla said finally, the silence compelling her to say something.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t send to Bourdeaux for handguns?” Matis asked.

“Absolutely not! Bad enough you are training this rabble rather than trusting the Knights too…” Beaumont exploded. Camilla gave a weary sigh which cut of the night more effectively than a slap to the face might have done. She didn’t bother to point out that the gallant Knights of Brettonia were yet to do much more than squabble amongst themselves.

“This isn’t the Empire Matis,” Camilla pointed out, as she had the previous times he had raised the notion.

“The don’t sell powder at every trading post, we wouldn’t be able to keep them firing.” That was nothing but the truth. It was becoming hard enough to feed the men now that their numbers had grown to the point they couldn’t easily forage. The local lords had refused to allow trade with them but the outlying villages, perhaps encouraged by the nobles dislike for ‘Mademoiselle Aqua’ had showered them with gifts of grain and wine as well as offering her fresh recruits. Camilla needed more horses, more wagons, more things than she had ever imagined worrying about. Part of her felt she owed a great many quartermasters an apology for the complaints she had leveled against them.

“Riders!” a shout came from one of the lookouts. Everyone reached for their weapons but a moment later a second shout followed.

“Scouts returning!”

Everyone relaxed as their fears of a column of Knights bent on teaching peasants a lesson faded. The scouts, lean pinch faced men on wiry mounts cantered down the road, their horses heads drooped with exhaustion from the unusual exertion. The leader of the small group a hatchet faced man named Gaston whom Camilla suspected had been a bandit rather than a peasant, leaped from his horse and jogged up the hill to her, falling to his knees in the elaborate deference that all the peasants had adopted.

“Mademoiselle, it is as you say,” he gasped. Camilla passed a waterskin to the man who unstoppered it and drank deeply.

“At ze old Chantry on ze island in the river, we saw movement and strange lights,” Gaston confided in his heavily accented Brettonian. Camilla felt herself relax even though she knew that this meant they were in serious danger, at least she had not lead them off on a wild goose chase.

“Zere is more Mademoiselle, as we were creeping up, we met… an elf,” he breathed looking around as though speaking the words allowed would bring ill fortune.

“An elf?” almost everyone asked at once. Gaston nodded energetically.

“He came out of no where, said he had something to tell you and that you should meet him on the path to the chantry after dark,” Gaston explained.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

The sudden light of the sun was blinding. Junebug stood like a statue, unable to move or even breathe. She had the disturbing sensation that her heart wasn’t beating. They were on a dune, an almost shear wall of falling sand. In the distance smoke rose from the shattered mesa where, a second ago she would have sworn she stood. Two brass casings hung suspended in the air beside her ejection port, held in the air by nothing Junebug could determine. Saxon stood beside her, equally imobile, his wrist mounted cannon was frozen in mid muzzle blast, the small hyper velocity bullets frozen a few inches from the muzzle.

With a sudden crack the muzzle blast completed and the suspended bullets vanished, the casings fell to the sand below her feet and Junebug staggered her mind reeling. She had been shooting at someone, hadn’t she? But that had been inside a spacecraft? Recent memories were confused and garbled and she could remember little since being thrown into the alien ship. Taya fell to the sand beside her, a small pistol in her hand and her eyes wide and staring. No ne seemed able to move but after a moment Junebug’s hands moved on their own, mechanically stripping the half empty clip from her stolen rifle and replacing it with a fresh one. The action snapped shut and the sound seemed to free the others from their temporary paralysis. Saxon leaped to his feet, bearing his teeth and letting out a sibilant screech of rage. He really was quite attractive in a primal sort of way Junebug observed. Neil stepped into view and helped Taya to her feet.

“What happened…” Taya gasped, her eyes wide and terrified.

“We used the lifeboat,” Neil explained, he was calmer looking that Sayeeda felt he had any right to be. Whatever had happened they clearly weren’t in a lifeboat she thought mulishly.

“What lifeboat,” Taya asked, clearly desperate for something she could make sense of.

“I told you they had control over time,” Neil explained, looking a little uncomfortable.

“AID, replay past thirty seconds at 2x,” Junebug instructed, speaking only with a considerable mental effort. Her helmet obediently began to replay footage, she saw the doors blowing off their hinges and the muzzle flash of her own weapon as she opened fire. Saxon stepped from behind cover to add his fire to hers. Junebug saw herself reload, catching a glimpse of Taya, eyes squeezed shut, firing her pistol the direction of the door. Sayeeda leveled her rifle and opened fire, her view point rocking with the violence of the long automatic burst and then… she stood on the dune.

“It froze us in time, just for a second,” Neil was saying, “enough that the rotation of the planet bought us clear.”

Junebug’s mind shied away from the implication of the statement and she mentally shrugged, trying to fight her way clear of the mental apathy that whatever had just happened had induced. To the eyes of the enemy they must simply have vanished, although that might be hard to be sure of in the chaos and confusion of their attempted breach.

“Cyckali,” Saxon hissed, his Hexagallion mouthparts doing a better job of rendering her last name than either her given name or her nickname. She turned to see him pointing away down the trough of the june. Perhaps a half a kilometer away there smoked a metallic object that shimmered with heat. Her helmet magnified the view to show Canek’s tank. It lay on a pool of glass, its composite armor all but glowing with heat energy. The turret was completely gone, lifted by the force of the blast when one of the anti-tank artillery shells had found the fusion bottle. Junebug had seen the sight to many times to hold out any hope. Her mouth worked and she began to laugh. They had no money, no parts to fix the Highlander, their employer was a cloud of vaporized carbon, they were in the middle of the desert with no transport and an unknown number of well equipped enemies were certain to hunt them down as soon as they realised they weren’t hiding on the ship somewhere. The almost hysterical laughter echoed of the quiet dunes, broken only by the distant crack of fracturing metal as the stricken tank collapsed in on itself.

Via Stellarum

Kyra shook her head, although more to clear it than in any acknowledgement of Corporal O’Byrne. The sound of machinery tearing itself to bits and the distant hammer of guns made it difficult to hear anything from the dropship. She opened her mouth to say something when a sudden deafening crack nearly threw her from her feet. The dropship ran like an enormous struck bell and showers of sparks flew crazily skyward, incandescent red and white with traces of burning metal. A moment later a second strike and a third punched into the stricken dropship, filling the inside with ricocheting shrapnel that cut equipment and conscripts to pieces with equal indifference. Dirt and loam sprayed up in wheel barrow sized scoops, heated dirt and stone prickling and burning through the supposedly ‘flame resistant’ uniforms.

Kyra divided sideways and rolled into a nearby ditch cut by run off from the infrequent rains. She swung her weapon to bear on the threat, following the illuminated path of the tracers back to its source. On a distant hill top she could see the starburst muzzle flash of a heavy weapon probably mounted on a heavy vehicle. Although it was far out of range, she swung her rifle onto it by rote and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. The mechanical lock out was still in place, the conscripts weapons were locked before they were issued, to be unlocked only by their officers when the reached the ground. It was a polite fiction that this was to prevent accidental discharges during the drops, the truth was that the conscripts might otherwise find turning the weapons on those same officers too tempting.

“No one left alive,” some shouted, maybe Kyra. More weapons were firing, apparently the men who had come with O’byrne had unlocked weapons, though the range was still far to great for their weapons to be effective. One of O’byrne’s men grabbed her by the shoulder and shoved her backwards.

“Fall B..!” his words ended with a wet crack as a round cut him in half, spraying Kyra with hot blood and bits of fragmented body armor. The hot taste of blood was on her lips as she trembled, breathing rapidly as her body began to lock up.

“RUN!”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Characters:

Konrad Bowie (deceased) - Imperial Marine and a close friend of Rene. Killed at the Rat Trap.

Lt Van Heck (deceased) - Imperial Marine and commander of the Rat Trap. Killed at the Rat Trap.

Countess Marlene Elaine Lares (deceased) - Imperial noble and friend to Solae. Killed in the attack on the embassy.

Lord Armon (deceased) - A former romantic interest of Solae's. Owner of a manor on the outskirts of Armistice. Current evidence suggests he is dead.

Amellia - The noblewoman Rene was falsely accused of murdering.

Duke Alexis Tan - The self styled Emperor of the Eastern Cross and usurper of Imperial rule.

General Antigony Bhast - Senior military commander advising Alexis Tan.

Min Ho 'Demeter' Park. aka alias Hyun Tae Young - Former Imperial Assassin currently living on New Concordia under an assumed name.

Oanh Park - Sniper and wife of Min Ho Park.]

Damaris - Little girl from Panopontus, in line to be adopted into the Falia family.

Tychon - Damaris' father.

Julia - Damaris' mother.

Vitger - Merchant who attempted to capture Rene and Solae, currently being blackmailed to keep their visit a secret.

Gisella Chastain du Quentain - New wife of Rene's father, the Chastain family is an ancient one that fell out of favor some years ago

Lucretia du Quentain - Daughter of Alric and Gisella, Rene's half sister.

Ten - Kingpin on Zatis

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene gripped Solae’s hand in mute shock. Intellectually he had always known that is father might remarry. The importance of dynastic succession was drummed into aristocrats as soon as they were old enough to understand the concept. With Rene unable to inherit, and the likelihood he would die in Imperial service in any case it was natural that his father would seek to secure the family position. This might be done through adoption, usually of a promising member of one of the cadet branches rather than a commoner as Solae had promised to do with Damaris, or it might be done by the simple expedient of producing another child. It wasn’t so simple of course, the cost of producing a genetically modified child was enormous and there were lengthy and protracted legal implications for both the genetic donors, a point that made his father rapid remarriage all the more unusual.

The hologram projector whirred to produce a still image of Alric and an attractive younger woman, perhaps a few years older than Solae. She had raven dark hair and sharp features as she stood in an elaborate wedding dress of gossamer worm silk, clasped with a set of stunning fire sapphires. Alric himself was a taciturn looking man whose lips were pulled into the slight smile which was the most Rene had ever seen from the man. He wore a tailored uniform of an Imperial Captain, with a commodores stud on the right shoulder. The background was of the summer house on Capella, far to the north in the mountainous northern ranges. It was an idyllic place in the summer though Rene had loved it year round. Reaching into the hologram field touched the empty air at the corner of the picture and a box of text appeared below it.

Alric Perseus du Quentain, Baron of the Court, and Knight of the Companions, marries Gisella Chastain in a private ceremony. An icon appeared offering more information but Rene disregarded it, unwilling to read an article that would be more gossip than fact and doubtless mention how the noble Alric had been deprived of his original heir due to that heirs heinous murder of a handmaiden of the Empress.

“The Chastains?” Rene asked, they were an old family that had fallen out of favor during the convulsions of the last few decades before. The had enjoyed a reputation as loyal servants at the beginning of the previous regime and had been slow to abandon Phillipus Viatrente as he descended into madness and paranoia. Rene seemed to remember that they had gained considerably from the various confiscations and prosecutions of that time. It must have been rather a coup for them to land a union with the du Quentains, though it would by no means cause a scandal.

“Don’t the Chastains have connections to the Falias?” Rene asked furrowing his brow, trying to remember the tangled genealogies of the Imperial court. Like all nobles he was most familiar with his own house and their historical allies and antagonists, even genetic scholars couldn’t keep track of everything without the aid of computers. Fortunately Mia correctly interpreted this as a question for Solae and didn’t interject with whatever data she had on hand.

Rene touched another of the miniaturized holograms and it sprang into a full sized picture of Gisella cradling a newborn child. It was a stock pose that all noble mothers performed, in deliberate imitation of the Madonna of ancient legend rather than expression of actual maternal affection, something which would have been unusual in such highly designed children. Rene bought up the ledgend.

Gisella Chastain du Quentain welcomes first child, Lucrecia du Quentain.

A shiver passed through Rene, he didn’t know how to feel, certainly he had known his father would do something to ensure that the house did not pass to their distant and hated relatives but the intellectual knowledge and the actual fact were two seperate things. Could this be in some way related to the murder of Amelia and his framing for it. If so why? Certainly the marriage was a good one for the Chastains but that seemed rather a small reward for the risk of serious Imperial displeasure. Mercedez Viatrente was a good ruler in Rene’s opinion and that of his fathers, maybe a great one, but she was as hard and ruthless as a tiger shark when it came to the throne and her position upon it.

“I don’t know what it means,” Rene admitted feeling his heart thud in his chest. He wasn’t sure why he felt the way he did. It shouldn’t be dangerous to look at the files, after all, it was archival information, they weren’t actively penetrating any databases and it was hardly as though Solae could be in much more danger. Did he feel he had been replaced? His father had hardly waited to the ink was dry on his enlistment paper before he had begun the process of replacing him. Did this family have something to do with it? Or was he merely placing his anger at the situation onto a wicked stepmother.

“I don’t know,” he repeated blankly, squeezing Solae’s hand in a blind search for comfort.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

The sky lightened as the sun rose on another damp and dreary day. Camilla opened her eyes to the patter of rain on her canvas tent. For a moment she was prepared to dismiss the strange events of last night as a dream but as she peeled back the flap she saw the grail knight standing guard over her tent. Though he stood in the rain his armor was somehow bone dry, as though the rain drops refused to fall upon him. Camilla jerked her head back into her tent and swore in Tilean, a very un-enchantress like action. Perhaps the man really was insane, the Gods knew that times were hard enough to drive even the bravest to madness, but the reaction of Beaumont and his knights proved that most people wouldn’t see it that way. Pushing the possible problem from her mind, she dressed in one of her tailored blue riding dresses and her tooled leather armor before adding a waxed canvas cloak with hood to the ensemble.

The camp was quiet, cook fires smouldered under improvised covers and peasants huddled together in an effort to stay warm and dry. As Camilla stepped from her tent the Grail knight turned and went down on one knee with a whisper of ensorcelled steel.

“I am at your command, m’lady,” he declared fervently.

“Stand up and come with me,” Camilla said, more out of lack of a better option than real desire. Peasants fell to their knees as she passed and she cast irritated glances their way. As she passed through the camp she listened to the muted buzz of conversation. The members of her little band had long called herself Mademoiselle Aqua, or Lady Blue but the emphasis had shifted to make the Aqua into its root word for water, now the name the mutered was something closer to The Maiden of the Waters. The obvious allusion to the Lady of the Lake wasn’t lost on anyone. Under normal circumstances Camilla would have been on the first ship out of Bourdeaux, but the grey fatalism that had clung to her since Cydric’s death made the idea impossible.

Over the past few months the senior members of the little band, Camilla, Beaumont, Matis and Leofric, when he was sober enough, had developed a routine. Each morning they met by the central fire and discussed the plan for the day. All three men were already there when Camilla arrived. A sheet of canvas had been strong from spears butted into the wagon to create a lean-to to keep the rain off. All three men looked bedraggled and wet and Beaumont looked grim as death itself. Matis lounged on an empty wine crate, puffing at a pipe, while Leofric’s face shone with the same devotion as the other peasants. He must have been a handsome man once, even if time and a repeatedly broken nose had left him looking prematurely aged.

“Contessa,” Beaumont began with uncharacteristic directness.

“Sir Guillorme rode of during the night. I fear he has gone to spread word of this ...unorthodoxy,” The knight concluded with a glance at the grail knight.

“It is no lie Sir Knight, I Renard de Lucinion, swear it before the Lady,” the grail knight declared in a voice that throbbed with power. Renard, well she hadn’t gotten his name last night. Guillorme had been a taciturn man, more than usually vocal about her liberation of the serfs, it wasn’t hard to figure that the perceived heresy had put him over the edge. It was a shame Matis hadn’t shot him for desertion.

“Well there is nothing to be done about it now,” Camilla said wearily, accepting a cup of venison stew from Leofric. She sipped at it in the Brettonian fashion not bothering with knives and forks.

“Other knights will come when they hear what has been said about you Contessa, many have been willing to ignore you provided you only have a small band of vagrant serfs, but if they here you are impersonating Morgana L’Fey…”

“She is the Enchantress,” Renard declared in a voice that somehow wasn’t loud and yet had the clarity and carry of a trumpet blast.

“I have seen it, others have seen it,” he said with a scowl at Beaumont.

“Many will not believe Sir Knight,” Beaumont responded stiffly, “They will…” Camilla made a guesture with her free hand cutting off further discussion.

“If a host of knights rides out to crush me then I will have to hope they crush a few of the undead while they are about it,” Camilla responded harshly. It would be typical that they lords of Aquitane had ignored her warnings and the obvious signs of the undead only to ride out when their precious Knightly honor was tweaked.

“Contessa I..”

“Enough Beaumont,” Camilla said wearily. It was the first time she had used his name without a Sir before it and it obviously shocked him. His cheeks colored in she knew not what and he fell silent. Reaching into a leather satchel she withdrew a map of rolled parchment and spread it out on one of the empty crates. Each battle they had fought with the undead was marked with a charcoal X. At first they appeared to be randomly scattered over northern Aquitaine, but as she thought about it over night Camilla had changed her mind about that.

“I think we are finally getting somewhere,” she told the men, who looked puzzled at the confidence in her voice.

“We have, or at least I have, long believed that the undead are searching for something,” she began.

“Afterall, why spread out like this in small groups, why not use a large force and crush those who oppose them?” she continued.

“Because they are not strong enough,” Beaumont interjected stubbornly and predictabley. Camilla fixed him with an exasperated look.

“If you tally up the dead we have destroyed over the past three months, its easily over a thousand,” Camilla pointed out with a touch of acid to her voice.

“More than enough to overrun most small towns and hamlets, even some of the smaller castles.” Beaumont seemed about to raise another object but Matis forestalled him.

“And you said we are finally getting somewhere? Have you puzzled out what they are after?” he asked, puffing at his pipe. Camilla nodded and drew out a stick of charcoal.

“Not what they are looking for no but if you look at when we encountered these forces…” she started at the most recent encounter and drew a line back through earlier ones, then repeated the process with each of the recent engagements. The lines converged close to the edge of the forest of Chalons, on the border of Aquitaine.

“Thats where the bastard is,” Leforic grunted.

“I think it must be at least close to wherever sorcerer or fiend is lairing,” Camilla agreed, it was a testament to her acting skill that her voice didn’t quaver with raise. Whatever monster had been responsible for Cydric’s death. She rolled up the map and tucked it back into its leather case.

“I want everyone fed and on the road in an hour, we will have to back track post Quori Tre, then take the Rue de Magiste north until we lose it at Carasae,” she ordered. It was a long ride, but after three months she felt like she was finally riding towards something, rather than away from it.

~GRAY CELLS~ (Spy/Operative RP) (18+)(M or F)

God I love Burn Notice so much...

Via Stellarum

The hatch tore from the dropship with a screech of tortured metal, that might have come from some ancient depiction of hell. The sudden sucking rip of the outside air tore one of the sergeants out through the breach, his wildly flailing arms vanishing into the darkness. Everyone 121st Volunteers was screaming. Many were also puking. Kyra managed to keep herself out of the second category only by virtue of herculean will power and having not eaten anything in longer than she cared to remember.

The dropship hurtled downwards in a freefall that pushed Kyra back into her uncomfortable seat. That was actually a good sign because it meant that the cheaply built space to surface craft was still underpowered, which gave it at least some chance of not being a coffin for its reluctant cargo. Despite the name the 121st were anything but volunteers. Almost to a person they were revolutionaries, criminals, or in Kyra’s case, other undesirables who had been given a choice of enlisting or serving a prison term that started at life and ended at a considerable shorter, if not preferable sentence.

The emergency lights flickered on and off like strobes giving her brief glimpses of the terrified faces of her fellow recruits. She wondered what her own face looked like, blonde haircut to a military buzz, blue eyes wide with terror, fine features draw back into a rictus of horror that made her face hurt. She had accepted that death was a likely outcome of this mission, but in fairness she had expected to die plowing into the surface of Kyzon. The sudden flicker of a plasmabolt bathed the cabin in painful blue light, the near miss reminding her that she might die even sooner than that.

“We have to get out of here!” the conscript beside her shrieked as he ripped at his restraint harness. A massive crash shook the ship and something flashed through the man, transforming him from screaming recruit to a pile of ruined meat that sprayed arterial blood over Kyra as she squeezed her eyes shut. A better constructed vehicle would have been torn apart by a hit like that but the lander, little more than a thin steel box with for drive motors, was flimsy enough that the rounds punched right through it.

The kick of the landing thrusters slammed the deck into Kyra without warning, only three of the four engines managed to fire and the resulting misalignment pitched the lander end over end. The world kaleidoscoped in a cacophony of screams, rending metal and clattering equipment before a colossal boom snapped Kyra back in her seat. The emergency lights flickered once and died, plunging the interior of the ship into silence and blackness broken only by the drumming of distant gunfire and the sobs of wounded and dying conscripts. It took Kyra a long moment to realise that she was still alive, vertigo assailed her as she realized she was hanging upside down. The dropship had turned turtle in its frenetic tumble and come to rest on its back. Gingerly she reached down to her belt, relieved to find all of her limbs were still attached, and drew the short cutting bar from her belt. Lifting it to her shoulder she sawed at the harness that held her, feeling the woven plastic fibers begin to part. She didn't dare power up the cutting bar, as her hands were shaking so badly she was likely to cut herself. After a few stroke the harness gave way and she dropped to the ground with a painful crash. Enough light was spilling in through the gaping wound in the side of the ship that she could find her way out. Crawling on her hands and knees she collapsed to the ground outside the wrecked ship. Taking her first breaths on a new world.

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

“Is he touched?” Camilla asked bluntly. Beaumont looked shocked but Matis rewarded the laconic response with a snort of amusement. Several of the nearby peasants gasped and some went so far as to fall to their knees muttering prayers.

“Contessa, he has...he has tasted of the Grail, yet to say such a thing…” Beamont trailed off. Both he and his companions looked deeply troubled, torn between what they saw as a living embodiment of Knighthood and what was at best madness and at worst a lie.

“Sir Knight I am no enchantress, fey or otherwise,” Camilla protested quickly. Talk of sorcery made her nervous, it would make anyone who had spent time in the Empire nervous. She was glad that Matis knew her well enough to know that she had as little to do with the arcane as she did with the Imperial Family.

“Talking like that is a good way to get someone burned at the stake,” Camilla added a touch tartily.

“I believe our less educated cousins in Brettonia prefer drowning,” Matis chimed in unnecessarily. Camilla could feel the smirk behind the words without turning her head. She bent down to push the knights sword down but instead he waited till she touched the hilt of the weapon, then reversed it and kissed the jeweled hit.

“Then I am yours to command m’lady,” he exalted. Camilla cringed back as though she had just touched hot iron. The grail knight stood, he was an impressive man, tall even by imperial standards and his armor more intricate than anything she had seen humans wear. It seemed to combine the sophistication of the elves with the sturdiness of dwarven work. There was an astonished gasp from the peasants behind her and she spun to find several of them falling to their knees.

“I’m not an enchantress! Im a….!” she trailed off, she had been about to say she was a whore from Tilea but that wouldn’t do. Suddenly something hot touched her hand and she yanked it away, looking down to see the hilt of her elven sword radiating some kind of heat. She pulled her hand away puzzled and not a little alarmed.

“In our dreams we saw that you would conceal it, even from yourself,” the Knight told her serenely.

“In time you will reveal yourself,” he went on rhapsodically. Camilla shook her head in weary defeat, she turned to face Beaumont and his knights they had guarded looks on their face, though the beginnings of awe glimmered behind a few eyes.

“I am not an enchantress,” she shouted though from the looks of thing she might as well have been shouting into a hurricane. Wearily she deflated, suddenly feeling the futility of it all.

“Make camp, get a proper watch set, I doubt any Knights will trouble us here, the Baron of Angolem is old and poor and fighting another nobleman besides, but this close to the forest I worry about the undead.”

Exasperated she stalked away to where her tent was being erected and slipped inside. She sat down on her bed roll and put her head in her hands. These people and this country were insane. If she had any sense at all she would ride off tonight and take ship for… anywhere she supposed. But what was the point of going anywhere without Cydric. The dark forces that had killed him were here, so here she would stay, until she died, or they were utterly destoyed.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene sucked in his breath, at the suggestion. Zatis was something of a special case in the sector, though there were other places in the Stellar Empire where making concessions was easier than crushing a planet. Sometimes the only thing that would stop the locals from shooting at each other was bringing in Imperial troops for them to shoot at. Bowie had been born on Zatis, or so he claimed, and if half the stories were true it was no place he wanted to take Solae. Rene opened his mouth to object but then closed it. Solae wasn’t a fool, even if she sometimes tended to underestimate risks, she wouldn’t suggest Zatis lightly. It had a PEA that was at least theoretically operational. They had no way to know what if anything the Duke had done, but it was a fair bet that he had people there, an Imperial Intelligence presence would be too much to ignore, but if nothing else the locals wouldn’t be in the Dukes pocket.

“Mia are there any records of who the PEA operator on Zatis is,” Rene asked.

“Unknown…,” Mia purred, as though it were some sexual secret she was looking forward to exploring. Rene sighed in slight irritation.

“Mia can you access the data dump from either of those two Freighters, do they have any information on the conditions on Zatis?” he asked.

“Neither vessel has touched at Zatis in the past year Sir Rene,” Mia informed him. Of course they hadn’t because no sane merchant would go to such a place, and if they did, they would certainly scrub the data from their automated systems. No sane person would go there. The thought lingered in his mind, perhaps this course was so unpredictable that it actually became an advantage.

Rene tried to juggle the different factors in his mind but he knew that it was an almost impossible task. There were too many factors, too much was unknown to allow him to do anything other than guess. At least this had the virtue of being a plan, a definite goal they could work towards. During his training Rene had learned the lesson that no decision was worse than failing to make a decision and that when in doubt attack. His heart twisted at the thought of putting Solae in danger, but then she was in danger wherever she went until they were back in Imperial space, or the Rebels were crushed. Feeling the weight of the decision he opened his mouth and said:

“I aggre with Solae Zatis it, is, set course Mia,” he declared. Solae made a small adjustment to their vector to align them with the jump point.

“Wait,” Rene said, “We shouldn’t jump while those other ships are in sensor range,” he said, indicating the glowing dots on the PPI.

“Mia set course back to New Concordia,” he instructed, “We can jump a light hour away then alter course, if they are interrogated it will look like we are doubling back.” Solae confirmed the course after Rene explained his logic and the ship leaped into jumpspace and away from Panopontus, leaving a shivering oily feeling in Rene bones. Almost as soon as it began the jump ended and they were dumped back into real space. They were now almost a light day from Panopontus, whose star was just a slightly brighter dot in the void. No ship sensor was accurate enough to track a ship out this far. Solae bought them onto the new heading and Rene flashed her what he hoped was an encouraging smile.

“Well M’lady,” he said with a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth, “how many great ladies will be able to claim to have been to a place like this.” The jump drive engaged, hurling them towards Zatis and all the uncertainty. Rene reached and and squeezed Solae’s hand. Whatever happened, at least they would be together.

__________________________________

“I am beginning to dread these little chats General,” Duke Alexis Tan said with a scowl as the last of the courtiers cleared out of his self styled throne room. Since declaring himself Emperor the Duke had replaced the columns that supported the roof of the audience chamber with large columns of blue black spherite each treated with laser impingement to create tiny particles of phosphorescence within, mimicking the star scapes of important worlds in the Eastern Cross. The technique was designed to mirror the Celestial Palace on Cappela through the nods to individual worlds was a touch more egalitarian than the rendering of the Cappelian starscape that adorned the Empress’ Throne Room.

General Antigony Bhast, the Duke’s head of Intelligence and covert operations, was a practical woman who viewed such frippery as a frivolous waste of resources, though intellectually she could understand the value of a shared feeling of nationhood, her cold analytical mind tended to convert things to simple equations of force. It was hard to quantify a feeling, and so she found it hard to give them equal weight to numbers of men, ships and munitions.

“I regret that,” Bhast responded, her tone so neutral that not even a veteran political operative like Tan dould interpret it, though it's very blandness suggested something.

“I assume from the lack of an urgent message that you haven’t yet managed to capture our wayward Marquessa?” Tan asked, his tone light but the slight tightening around his eyes betraying his anger and frustration. The lack of instant communication had been a hindrance at the start of the Rebellion but it was rapidly becoming a thorn. When Imperial forces finally responded to events here, the lack of such communication would be devastating.

“We have not,” Bhast responded austerely. She lifted her forearm and entered a series of commands into a communicator around her wrist. The air around the Duke’s throne shimmered as an active cancellation field dropped into place from the outside the throne appeared a blur of color and no sound penetrated the field save for a soft buzzing of junk low frequency sound waves. Inside the pocket of silence a holographic projection sprung to life. Some were the familiar picts of Solae Falia, taken from surveillance footage and official Imperial archives. The remainder were of a tall rather striking man in grainy security cams.

“We have made some progress my Lord,” Bhast said, touching a key. A series of of new images flashed up. One was a post recruitment ID photo taken from a Marine Corp medical file. Another was a younger version showing the same man at a glittering gala with a woman on his arm.

“Our mystery gunman revealed,” the Duke said, leaning forward with interest that banished his former pique.

“One Rene Quentain, a private in the Imperial Marines,” Bhast agreed, then quirked a finger to enlarge the more glamorous image.

“As you know it is common for those enlisting in the marines to adopt false names, normally this to cover some petty crime, or escape some trouble on their homeworlds. In this case it's a little more impressive..”

“This isnt the Du Quentain who murdered a handmaiden is it?” Tan asked, enough of an Imperial aristocrat to be shocked by the scandal of it.

“The very same,” Bhast responded dryly.

“What are the odds of him ending up with her? It can’t be just chance can it? Some kind of deep cover imperial intelligence?” Tan asked, scowling at his intelligence chief.

“Something dosen’t add up,” Bhast agreed.

“If he is some kind of deep cover Imperial agent, why use something so close to his real name, there were some rumors about spies on New Concordia but as best I can tell he was assigned to a battery in the middle of nowhere. Hardly prime intelligence gathering duty.”

Tan glowered at the photos for a long moment trying to puzzle out what could have bought a disgraced former aristocrat and the most important noblewoman in the sector together.

“Reach out to our contacts on Zatis, see what you can find out….”