Penny

Dogs of War: Old World Mercenaries

“Ware!” Mattis shouted unnecessarily as the spectres flowed from their sarcphaougai, “Sigmar Lord of Men, Abjure the darkness!” The familiar Sigmarite battle prayer seemed to have little effect on the oncoming wraiths but Camilla felt the supernatural dread that had seized her abate slightly. With a running leap she vaulted onto one of the now empty tombs and launched herself towards the litch. A wraith reached out with its insubstantial arms but she flexed her body to avoid its touch. The Litch’s skeletal maw widened in what might have been amusement or surprise as she landed on the platform beside in, breaking the fall with both feet and one palm, keeping her sword arm straight and swept back behind her. The creature lifted one hand and an orb of darkness gathered around its fist before streaking towards the Tilean. Stone exploded from the ancient floor as Camila rolled away from the blast, turning the momentum into a savage upward flash that bought her to her feet, a long stilleto appearing in her off hand. The litch staggered backwards, barely avoiding the point of the elven blade as a sword of obsidian seemed to appear in its taloned fist.

“As ze fire burns the brush let my faith burn…” Mattis chanted his sword whistling through the thick air. Camilla put the Templar out of her mind, focusing instead on parrying the ebony blade that thrust at her. She pivoted inside the Litch’s guard and raked its belly with the point of her dagger, but it seemed to pass through the thing like a bullet through smoke.

“Foolish mortal,” the Litch mocked as it cut viciously at Camilla’s head. She ducked the blow and lashed out with her elven blade, aiming for the creatures legs. An invisible force struck her and hurled her back against one of the stone wall, shaking aged grave dust from the ancient mortar and driving the breath from her lungs. Gasping in pain she leaped to her feet, elven sword hot in her hand, the oddly curved runes on the blade seemed to gleam with some faint inner light as she gathered herself for another assault.

“Where did you find the blade girl,” the Litch sneered, tentacles of black smoke seeming to erupt from its back like great feathery wings.

“What gives you the right to wield the flame of the Asur?”

Rather than answering Camilla let out a string of invective that would have made Cydric proud and charged. She flicked the stiletto at the thing mid rush and than leaped, putting the full weight of her body behind the razored point of her sword. Black tentacles snapped out grabbing for the weapon but they exploded in showers of purplish sparks. The Litch shouted something in a foul language she didn't comprehend and time seemed to slow down until it seemed she hung in mid air, the tip of her blade a foot shy of her foe. The tip of her sword blazed against the reaching tentacles etching harsh shadows across the ancient crypt. The foul taste of sorcery filled her mouth as she struggled to force the point of the sword home. For a moment it seemed like she might hang in an endless moment forever, unable to break the dead lock and then, with the majesty of a comet a ball of silvered lead swept lazily across her field of vision, the twin tailed comet of Sigmar wreathed in a trail of powder smoke. The pistol ball struck the Litch in the hip and suddenly her frozen form seemed to leap forward, finishing the thrust. The tip of her blade punched through the creatures sternum like a lance, the Litch toppled backwards shrieking vile imprecations but before it could hit the floor its form exploded into a million specks of inky black darkness, revealing a wizened aged skeleton beneath. Camilla crashed atop of the bones, snaping them to powder beneath her slight weight.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

“Well,” Rene said, leaning over to give Solae one more kiss before shaping course for Ten’s compound.

“That sounds like a place to start.”

The townhouse was one of several that Thorne owned. A pyramidal structure with rooftop gardens faced with a black reflective finish. Rene found the effect strikingly ugly but he was beginning to notice the way Zatis wore on him. The omipresent confinement of the Dome, the garish lighting, it made him feel cramped, the thought made him laugh.

“Sir?” the driver of the nondescript delivery van asked. He was a balding heavy-set man in utility coveralls that didn’t quite conceal his over developed muscles. Ten had recommended him as a dependable man, but he seemed to have little to nothing in the way of personality.

“I was just thinking that I have seen starship crashes in hurricanes that I like better than this place,” Rene told him, thinking back to Panopontus.

“Yes sir,” the driver responded, though without context he couldn’t possibly understand what Rene was thinking. Rene returned his attention to the townhouse. A pair of guards stood before the wrought iron gates. They were dressed in a semblance of noble livery of red and green with gold piping around the seems. Thorne obviously styled herself as a noble, though the gaudy livery was more suited to holodramas than the way servants of the noble houses were actually attired. The contrast with their brutally functional carbines made them look even more ridiculous, though it made them no less lethal.

“Rene?” Solae’s voice sounded through the communicator clipped to his lapel. Rene had exchanged his bodyguard disguise for gray battledress of an unfamiliar pattern. Zatis was a center for mercenaries as well as spies and hardware and surplus gear was not hard to comeby.

“I’m here my love,” Rene responded. He wouldn't normally have spoken so informally in public but he didn’t like being seperated from Solae, particularly when she might be in danger. Ten had agreed to set up a meeting between her and Alayla Thorne but he had made it clear that no security, on either side, would be allowed to attend. He also pointed out that the two of them appearing together would make it instantly obvious that they were the pair of wanted fugitives. The reasons might be good, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

“We are about to head to the meeting,” she told him.

“Then we will get started here, good luck,” he replied. The plan was a simple one, but it depended on rather exact timing.

“To you as well, and be careful,” she responded. Rene smiled and closed the link on his communicator. The driver, Sykes, Rene thought his name was, gave him a questioning look.

“Lets get started,” he told the man. Sykes nodded and shifted the truck into gear, trundling up the road toward the townhouse. With most of Zatis’ traffic either pedestrian or by air car, the streets in this upper class area were fairly deserted. Another delivery truck was pulling in to a compound further up the street, but other than that they had the place to themselves. Rene checked his equipment one more time and then opened the door, climbing out onto the running board of the moving vehicle, the bulk of it shielding him from the view of the liveried guards. Sykes slowed to a stop and wound down a window.

“Where do you want it dropped,” he called to the guards in a disinterested voice.

“What are you talking about,” one of the guards snapped irritabley in response. Rene circled the rear of truck and crouched down to peer under the wheels. He could see the polished boots of one man close to the drivers door, while the other remained at his post.

“Look I don’t know what it is I just deliver it to the address on the file,” Sykes wen’t on, warming to his role of underpaid delivery driver. Rene stepped from behind the truck and leveled his modified sub machine gun. The gate guard’s mouth dropped open in shock as Rene squeezed the trigger. The weapon spat out a half dozen stun needles in the space of a heartbeat with a sound like a monstrous insect beating its wings. They stippled the chest of the guard and he dropped to the ground spasming uncontrollably. The guard by cab tried to swing his gun up but Sykes kicked open the door, smashing the man to the floor and sending the carbine clattering across the street. Rene shot him twice in the chest before he could rise.

“Clear!” Rene called and sprinted towards the gate. It was locked but the intricate wrought iron wasn’t difficult to climb and Rene boosted himself up and over in a few seconds. Behind him Sykes swung the unconscious bodies of the guards into the truck, one of the carbines laying across the driver's seat. It was possible that no one had seen the brief attack, but speed rather than stealth were the key to getting this done.

Beyond the gate lay a narrow strip of ornamental gardens, predominantly phosphorescent fungi of some sort. Rene darted to the door and tried it. Unsurprisingly it was locked and he pulled a small breeching charge from his equipment belt, fastened it to the lock plate and flattened himself to the wall.

“Fire in the hole,” he called, a useless reflex seeing as he was on his own, and thumbed the detonator. The charge went of with a sharp crack and the door bounced open as it recoiled off the frame. Beyond the door lay an elegant marble floored foyer the center piece of which was a grand stair case with a carved banister. Paintings and other items had been knocked to the ground by the blast and a pair of ceramic vases were shatted on the floor, scattering their burden of dirt and flowers across the shining marble. A plump woman gaped at him in shock, Rene suspected from her black and white clothing she was a servant.

“Where is the girl!” he snarled, pointing the sub machine gun at her. She gaped in terror and he waggled the barrel of the gun in emphasis.

“The girl, where is she!” Rene demanded.

“Sec.. second floor,” the woman stammered pointing up the stairs. Rene shot her once in the chest. He regretted the necessity, but he had bought a non lethal weapon for this very purpose. Clearing a building was a tricky business under the best of circumstances, and for a single gunman, there was less than no margin for error. Marble chips exploded from the floor beside him as a shirtless man carrying an automatic carbine burst from a door on the upper level and opened fire. The panicked fire shattered a cabinet and sprayed Rene with fragments of glass and shattered timber, wreathing the upper story with the smoky discharge of burning propellent. Rene pivoted smoothly as he sank to one knee before stuttering a short burst into the gunman. The thug convulsed spastically and tumbled over the ballistrating, falling to the marble floor with a crack of breaking bones. The body continued to twitch spasmodically as the stunner needles discharged the remainder of their energy.

Rene let out a breath as his hands mechanical stripped the magazine and dropped it to the floor, replacing it with a fresh one with quick economy of motion. Pushing himself to his feet, he raced up the stairs and started pulling open doors. A fire alarm began to whine as the vapors from the breaching charge reached the sensors inside the house. The third door he opened revealed a large hall like room. The floors were padded with soft foam mats and a variety of equipment put him in mind of gymnasium. The initial impression was somewhat belied by various other stations scattered along the walls, a formal dinner setting, a reader, a large four posted bed with a screen displaying pornography. At the rear of the room two figures stood. One was a teenage girl in a tan one piece sleeveless leotard, her tear streaked face was heart stoppingly lovely, as close as nature could come to the the sculpted perfection of the aristocracy. Red welts lined her arms and probably continued beneath her clothing, older injuries were black and blue discolorations against her pale skin. She cowered in the corner with her hands up toward the other figure, as though to ward off further blows. The second man was tall and almost skeletally thin, he was completely hairless and dressed in an expensive tunic of natural leather. He held a switch in his hand, and glared at Rene with the hatred of a balked predatory in his eyes. He had obviously heard the gunfire, but seemed to have a natural arrogance that prevented him from associating the sound with any danger to himself.

“What is the meaning of this,” he snapped in a surprisingly nasal voice, taking a threatening step towards Rene.

“Mistress Thorne will have you flayed alive for this,” the man, or maybe a woman, the timbre of the voice made it hard to be sure without the usual visual cues, snarled raising the switch and touching a control on the handle of the weapon. Powerful electrical currents sparked at the tip of the switch, designed to inflict pain without leaving obvious damage. The gesture was evidently intended to be intimidating, though what the bald figure intended to accomplish against an armed man more than ten meters away Rene couldn’t begin to guess.

“Friend, I have whole star systems after me, Miss Thorne will have to wait her turn,” Rene replied, giving the figure another second to step clear before he opened fire. Stunner needles struck the figure in the chest and arms, throwing them to the floor in a spasming heap and sending the switch clattering to the padded floor. The girl screamed and hunched in her corner as Rene slung the sub machine gun on its patrol strap, the muzzle shimmering slightly from the heat of rapid fire. He crossed to the girl and knelt down beside her though she cringed away from him in fear.

“It’s all right,” he told her in what he hoped was a comforting tone, “It is going to be all right.”

Rene helped the girl to her feet but she pulled free and rushed to where the neural switch lay. Picking it up with both hands she began to thrash her unconscious instructor.

“Solae,” Rene said, activating his communicator. He lifted a small camera and beamed several seconds of video to his paramor. Proof, if Thorne needed it, that they had her slave. Rene winced as the switch slashed a bloody gash atop the fallen jailors bald head.

“We have the girl.”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene shook his head. He wasn’t the person to make this kind of decision and it felt intrusive to look at the private data so soon after it had come into Solae’s possession.

“Ten did give me a couple of possibilities,” Rene explained. Under normal circumstances the kingpin himself might have been the right man for the job, but his recent antagonism to Ralch meant that the Duke’s flunky was unlikely to trust anything that Ten told him, plus it laid him open to retaliation before Imperial Forces could arrive. Ten’s compound was only a few minutes away and the air was growing more cluttered as the afternoon traffic began to increase. Even with his desire to steal a few more minutes with Solae it was time to return to Ten’s compound.

“One was a woman named Alayla Thorne,” Rene told his paramour, his hands tensing sightly on the controls.

“Apparently she control most of the trade in Syshin slaves. I think Ten is a little afraid of her,” Rene went on, his stomach twisting slightly in the memory of the hold of the Bonaventure when they had first captured it. The idea of blackmailing someone involved in such a vile trade was an appealing one, but he was reluctant to let his personal feelings dictate an important tactical choice. He knew that Solae’s feelings were even stronger than his, with her greater familiarity with the aliens.

“Ralch apparently does some business with her,” he added evenly.

“Is there anything in the files that we could use to force her to cooperate?”

It was foolish to think that they could right the wrongs of the Eastern Cross single handedly, but if they were going to put someone in danger of Duke Tan’s retribution, Rene would prefer it was someone who actually deserved it.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

“Solae, it changes nothing,” Rene assured her.

“You are the Marquessa Falia, whatever is in those genetic records it dosen’t change who you are. A wonderful, brave, noble, woman,” he told her, squeezing her tight.

“When this mess is over, we will deal with whatever is in the vaults, but whatever is there hasn’t been discovered by Imperial Intelligence yet, so either it is hidden so well that it is unlikely to be found, or not shocking enough to shake the pillars of creation.”

The air car began to bank as it approached the far side of the dome and the navigation unit blinked querying Rene for a destination. Touching the controls he turned them back over the city in a slow graceful curve.

“Speaking of which, while you were in the vault we found out that Duke Tan’s troops have reinforced Ralch and his mercenaries at the PEA. While it sounds bad, I think if we can move quickly we might be able to turn it to our advantage.” Rene was far from certain his plan would succeed but it was the only thing he could think of that might give them a chance..

“I think our friend the Duke is probably at the end of his patience with Ralch, and he is probably smart enough to know it,” Rene explained. While Solae had been in the vault he had made some preliminary arrangements with Ten, though he had no intention of taking Solae to any facility controlled by the kingpin until she had a chance to sort through her data and destroy anything that might prove compromising.

“What we need is someone who has had dealings with Ralch, enough for Ralch to take them seriously, but not friendly enough that anyone would question it if they sold him out,” Rene explained. For this to work they were going to have to play things very carefully, and get rather lucky as well, but the mistrust between Ralch and the Duke was the best weapon they had. Ten had made it clear that he didn’t have enough troops simply to storm the PEA compound, and even if he did, there was every chance the Dukes troops would choose to destroy it rather than let it fall into Solae’s hands.

“I know it's pretty vague,” Rene apologised, “but if we can find just the right person, we might be able to get Ralch’s men shooting at the Dukes, and slip in during the confusion.”

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

@Habibi359@trashcann@DJAtomika

Your goal for the first post should be to provide a little bit of insight into your home life. You receive the email from Ellie and can head into work. The Office of the Sunday Group is in Chicago and is an old brown stone building.

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

The first storm of the Autumn rattled upon the triple paned windows as the winds blowing off lake Michigan drove the droplets against the glass. Eleanor Tregellan twisted in what passed for her sleep, wrestling with the dark premonitions of dreams and half remembered nightmare. It was almost a relief when the dark of the bedroom was violated by the screen of her cell phone lighting up a moment before the familiar strains of Warren Zevon that served as her ringtone blasted out from the phones small speakers. I was in the house when the house burned down. Ellie sat up and grabbed groggily for the phone beside the bed, fumbling for it as she wrestled to throw of the somnolent haze of sleep. She was an unremarkable woman to look out, perhaps pretty a few years earlier but now fighting the anonymity that came on with the onset of middle age. Awakened at four in the morning her heart shaped face was drawn and their were bags under her eyes. Reddish brown hair hung lankly to her shoulders awaiting its daily battle with the brush.

I stood on the bank as the river rose up. She grabbed the phone and swiped her thumb upwards on the screen to answer the call. Beside her, Emmaline’s lean athletic form shifted beneath the sheets, muttering something unpleasant in German. Ellie lay a comforting hand on the other woman's hip and slipped from her bed moving across the room and slipping through the door into a large room that opened off the bedroom and closed the door behind her. The ritual room had once been the apartment's second bedroom, but it had been extensively remodeled. Black marble floored the room save for where a silver inlay scribed the surface in a perfect circle. A server rack on one wall hummed quietly, the various LEDs casting a dull greenish glow across the room. The other wall was given over to a large shelf of polished wood which had once belonged to a post office, now the various drawers were given over to a variety of phial, pouches and boxes, containing substances which ranged from the mundane and prosaic to the rare and illegal. A samsung galaxy tablet, serving as an index to the collection, hung in a cradle affixed to the front of the shelf. The room smelled strongly of the polish that had to be routinely applied to keep the silver in the floor from tarnishing, and several bottles of silvo lay in a waste basket in the corner.

“Tregellan here,” Ellie said in answer to the voice on the other end of the phone.

“Yes, I’ll be right in,” she replied and hung up the phone. A shudder of weariness ran through her as she stepped back into the bedroom and quietly gathered up her clothing. Emmaline continued to mutter in her sleep, though Ellie couldn’t make out the words. The long limbed Austrian opened a sleepy eye and cast her startling blue gaze in Ellie’s direction. Emmaline smiled and sat up, stretching both arms towards the ceiling in a way that pressed her teutonic assets distractingly against the threadbare UCLA shirt she wore as a nightgown.

“Arbeit? Brauchst du mich?” she asked sleepily. Eleanor shook her head and smiled at the other woman. Though Emmaline spoke almost perfect English she reverted to German in private moments, it was endearing, and over the past few months Eleanor’s own command of the tongue had grown in leaps and bounds. It was fun to have a more or less private language they two could speak in public, other than Aklo or Enochian with their accompanying risks. Emmaline’s efforts to learn Gaelic had been less than satisfactory as her tendency towards guttural consonants made the fluid Celtic tongue almost unintelligible.

“No, stay in bed dear one, I’ll call you if we need you,” Ellie told her. Emmaline nodded and snuggled back under the covers falling asleep almost instantly. Ellie sighed enviously. She didn’t sleep well and when she did her dreams were dark and disturbed. Though Emmaline had seen some of the same things that kept her awake, she hadn’t done the sort of things that weighed on Ellie Tregellan’s conciounce. Dressing quickly she opened the safe and collected her silver plated Colt 1911 and the slender silver pin that served as her athamae and slipped them both into her handbag. It was time to go to work.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

To:[e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail]
BCC: [e-mail]
From: Elanor Tregellan <[e-mail]>
Subject: Urgent - Client Meeting 10/7/19 - 8am

Hello All,

Apologies for the late notice but I need you all in the office at 8. We have a new client who wants us for a case in Washington State. Estimated time minimum of one week, pack accordingly.

Sincerely,
Ellie Tregellan MD - Operations Manager

_______________________________________________________________________________________

The Sunday Group - Paranormal Detectives

To any last minute prospective characters: Dont be intimidated that the IC has started, I will write you in when approved.

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

Rene let out a low whistle, his mind reeling at the import of Solae’s words. There were many good reasons, both medical and political for the blanket prohibition on outright cloning. The potentially destabilizing effect of noble families that no longer needed to make alliances through marriage was incalculable. In a matter of a few generations the upper echelons of Imperial society would atrophy into a few increasingly powerful families. The lower level nobility, forever locked out of advancement and faced with a regime of increasingly genetically unstable masters, would naturally seek to redress the scales with violent revolution that might bring on a second Collapse. Even when Emperors had been fools, or insane, they had maintained the ban with ruthless efficiency. What a family with the power of the Falias might do with illicit technologies and their collection of black mail material was an even more staggering thought. Marriages could be broken, lines of decent questioned, wills undone, it would be easy to force other families, especially the middling ones, to their will. If they had been slicing DNA into their line a little at a time, they might one day claim a tie to the Imperial line. It wasn’t inconceivable that their might be a Falia Emperor or Empress one day. Rene looked over at the woman that he loved. She looked fragile, shocked, shattered. He reached over and took her hand in his.

“You are still you,” he told her gently, lifting her hand and pressing it to his lips.

“You are still you,” he repeated, wrapping his arm around her and holding her close. Neither of them were their parents or their families or even the Steallar Empire. They were just two people who loved each other. Rene was silent for a long moment, the closeness of his body conveying the fact that this knowledge changed nothing more eloquently than any words could have done.

Grim Galaxy: Shots and Chances

“I read… 62.16 microns,” Junebug called, peering down at the ring attachment point through her engineering goggles. The sensors in the headset reported the measurement faster and more accurately than a set of calipers could. The handy devices could also read voltage and current and diagnose the effectiveness of any chip or component in the Highlanders maintenance database. It also provided ‘helpful’ notations which had been added by Neil in the subjective year or so since they had taken over the ship. These ranged from notations about what types of tools to use, to less helpful notations like ‘is trash’, ‘kill that junk dealer when next in system’, and perhaps most perplexing of all, ‘do not lick’. Sayeeda was not a skilled mechanic, but she helped out on enough field repairs, and routine maintenance that she was beginning to be a little more help than an unskilled pair of hands.

“Good enough,” Neil mumbled around the bolt he held between his teeth. He plucked the fastener free and fed it into his bolt driver, then placed the tip against the ring a few inches from the end.

“Still good?” he asked and Sayeeda glanced at the figures.

“48.01,” she replied. Niel nodded and triggered the bolt driver, the device whired and there was the sharp smell of ozone and hot metal as the self welding bolt bored through the ring and into the Highlander’s hull, locking the last ring in place.

“58.83,” Sayeeda reported and Niel nodded with satisfaction.

“They will expand and contract with heat and cold anyway, anything under 100 microns is fine,” Neil explained, peeling off his own goggles and wiping at his sweat soaked face with one sleeve. Both of them were dripping, though Sayeeda’s darker complexion seemed to do better in the desert sun. It was nearly local noon and the sun was a hammer overhead, worse yet the hull radiated back much of the heat like the element of an oven. Still the job was done and Sayeeda wasn’t one to delay a necessary job just because it was unpleasant. Taya had arrived an hour ago, lenses in hand and looking very pleased with herself. The final tweaking of the installation was done, all they needed to do now was to calibrate the rings in space.

“Alright lets take a break,” Sayeeda declared, peeling off her own goggles with some relief. She didn’t care for anything that decreased her peripheral vision, no matter how necessary it was. With Indra aboard, trouble could erupt at any moment and she didn’t wish to be caught unawares. Throughout the work she had seen men watching the ship, but in a place like this it was impossible to know how many worked for Sven, reported to Sven, or merely gossiped which got back to Sven. Knowing the cyborg, he would want to keep an eye on the Highlander and Neil, if only because he knew first hand the sort of spectacular disruptions the group was both capable, and likely, to cause.

Neil and Sayeeda climbed up through the boarding hatch and headed to the main hold. Saxon stil seemed to be in his hibernation state, though Sayeeda noticed that the Hex’s coloration was subtly different and his massive musculature rippled occasionally as though his entire body was slowly respiring with his whole body. The Hex was and impressive physical specimen Sayeeda was forced to admit. Since learning that Saxon might be attracted to her she had, well maybe not interest, but a certain intellectual curiosity. She shook her head trying to clear it of such useless wanderings.

Indra sat with Taya at the table they had set up in the center of the hold. The space was less open than it had been now that the crates of weapons she had stolen from Canek were stowed and tied down, but there was still plenty of space. The woman looked casually stunning in some of Sayeeda’s cast of clothing and she chatted excitedly with Taya about some point or another to do with tracing noble decent. Junebug had forgotten that Taya was herself an aristocrat by birth, if not by fortune and position at the moment. It must be nice for her to have someone to talk to. Junebug wasn’t always the best at dealing with people and her own conversational skills were fairly basic. Even her education was narrow, consisting essentially of high school and then a hyper focused military academy. As for the rest of her education, well, it wasn’t that she hadn’t learned things, it's just those things you didn’t talk to other people about, not if you were sober anyway.

“Are we ready to go?” Indra demanded as Neil and Sayeeda approached the table. Rather than answering Sayeeda snatched up one of the canteens of water and drank deeply for several seconds before splashing some water on her face and neck to clean away dust and grit.

“Not yet,” Sayeeda admitted looking around in vain for something to eat. Indra looked indignant.

“But you said the repairs would be finished!” she snapped. Junebug nodded sagely, taking a deep breath and reminding herself that this woman was her employer and that she had been through alot in the past few days and weeks. To call what Neil and Sayeeda had done to the ship ‘repairs’ was also a bit of a stretch but the womans meaning was clear.

“Unfortunately no sane ship captain is going to let us just fly up and hook onto their freighter,” she explained, judiciously not stressing that no sane spacer would attempt this in the first place.

“There is a Megafreighter due to leave in about twelve hours, the Karma Hazu,” Junebug plowed on before fresh objections could be raised. “

Taya has put together a computer virus that will tell the Karma Hazu’s sensors not to report us to the ships AI or officers, they will technically see us, it just wont report anywhere. One of its cargo shuttles should be landing here in an hour or so, then all we have to do is upload it to the shuttle.”

Star Crossed: The Duke's Rebellion

The holo displays surrounded Rene on three sides in a concave arc. He flicked through screens calling up data and running analysis with quick flicks of his fingertips. Infra red sensors monitored the position of his fingers and translated the motion into the most likely command, occasionally he had to use a voice prompt to correct the computer but the rented car had a very high end computing system and its learning algorithm rapidly adjusted to Rene’s quirks. Natives of high technology worlds like Capella were immersed in technology from the cradle and were often able to get far more from it than their more provincial counterparts could.

Though he had never had anything like Marine OCS training, Rene had, as part of his education studied Imperial History. The records of the Imperial Guard, the men and women who defended the Crystal Palace and the Imperial Person, were filled with stories of coups and counter coups. Though the byzantine manuevurings that led to these were too peculiar to their own time to be interesting to a young Rene, he had learned a great deal from the accounts he had read, and while it was true he didn’t have any specific training in planning operations, it was impossible to participate in the months of training without getting some notion of how it should be done. It felt strange to sit and plan out an action. Since the attack on New Concordia it seemed that every action he and Solae had taken had been a reaction to some crisis or another. Becoming proactive was oddly uncomfortable.

The sensor Rene had trained on the public works building beeped and he blanked his screens instantly with a flick of his hand. Climbing out of the car he walked quickly across the access road and ducked into the building. Sure enough Solae was sitting up on the transport plate, shaking her head as though to clear it. Rene wondered at the fact that people as clearly paranoid and prepared as the Falia’s had been taken by surprise by Duke Tan’s sudden rebellion. It was certainly true that people who looked so many steps ahead sometimes fell victim to a simple, and apparently foolish play. Rene carefully helped his fiancee to her feet. She seemed a little disoriented, either from the drugs or whatever it was she had learned.

“Are you alright?” Rene asked in concern as he helped her across the street and into the car. Although he didn’t have a destination in mind yet he spun up the fan and lifted the car into the air, keying in one of the preloaded courses to the autopilot. The route was a standard one that would take them to the otherside of the dome, merely a placeholder to give them time to talk. According to the chronometer on the dashboard it was approaching local midday, though to Rene’s unpractised eye it looked little different. High above the dome the noxious gases of the half terraformed atmosphere swirled, and flashes of lightning began to light the distant horizon.