Jane nudged the rapidly falling asleep Leonne, forcing her awake. The two women were sitting side by side in Jane's Vertigo as it slowly hovered towards the village, Mentuc keeping pace beside them, jogging at a ridiculous pace. Jane had given in to her urge to bully him slightly, feeling a lot more secure in her vehicle, and had sped up slightly, going to a speed that was more fitted for a sprint than some casual jogging. Get him back for being… well, for being him. She didn't have any real reason to dislike the man aside her mountain of suspicions that Leonne kept saying were groundless, but he still scared her. He was weird, visibly struggled to control his emotions and was terrifyingly violent. Making him exhaust himself through running seemed a reasonable excuse to bully him a bit.

Except the bastard just kept pace beside them, only a light sheen of sweat showing that he was actually putting in effort. Bastard had to be unbelievably fit.

'Huh?' Leonne mumbled at the poke, blinking the sleep from her eyes.

'Good morning sunshine,' Jane laughed, putting Mentuc out of her mind. She was in the Vertigo with her friend, who was visibly exhausted.

'Did you sleep that badly? I told you! You should have slept inside! I could've slept in the bed,' Jane chastised her.

'Slept well,' a drowsy Leonne responded, clearly out of it. 'Just not a lot.'

Realisation on what she just said dawned in a moment later and she jolted up, a lot more awake. 'I mean, well—'

Jane burst out laughing while Leonne turned an adorable shade of red.

The morning had passed quite peacefully, with Mentuc showing up at an ungodly early hour and politely but insistently shoving her out of the house, telling her to buy things for breakfast in the village while simultaneously delivering his list to the smith. Which was a really weird title for the bloke who managed the industrial strength fabricator. She hadn't been properly awake enough to question his motives or how they normally got their breakfast given that the village was a twenty minute Vertigo drive, which translated to several hours of walking. Her first reaction to him was being terrified. Questioning the logic of his actions wasn't really a priority.

It wasn't until she went to her Vertigo and saw Mentuc carry a very tired but very happy Leonne back to the house, blushing like a maiden, that she had started connecting the dots.

She had been held up for quite a while in the village, everyone and their dog wanting to know who she was and wanting to know vastly more once they knew she was the best friend of Leonne. All in all it had delayed her return by an hour and through some strange coincidence Leonne had been fast asleep in bed, only half dressed. Something she had been subtly teasing the woman with relentlessly ever since. Especially since Mentuc was surprisingly oblivious to innuendos. It had been fun to see him look at his wife with a frown from behind those sunglasses of his, wondering why she kept turning red or get stuck with coughing fits every so often.

After breakfast Mentuc had brooked no resistance on Leonne's part and had gotten her dressed, showing remarkably little care that Jane was present at the time. They were reasonably comfortable being naked around one another, courtesy of their long years spent as roommates, but with Mentuc there the situation was different altogether. Well, to her at least. Leonne either didn't care or was too out of it to do so.

Then they had gotten ready to go to the village, to do a lot of socialising on the girls' part and to go shopping on his. There Jane had run into the next surprise when Mentuc had vehemently refused to get into the Vertigo. She hadn't understood why and had been politely insistent whilst being secretly happy about it, but he hadn't budged an inch. Leonne had just stood there, swaying back and forth as her legs debated whether or not they wanted to keep carrying her, until Mentuc had simply picked his wife up, pushed her into the Vertigo and then had done the same with Jane, ignoring her shouts and attempts to break free. She had noticed he took care to not step onto the Vertigo. Then he had just taken off running.

'I don't blame you,' Jane laughed, looking at the supple form of Mentuc running alongside the road, his long legs somehow allowing him to keep pace with the vehicle. Jane had to admit that Leonne's husband, for all his flaws, did look good. She purred at the sight, earning her an angry glare.

'Hey! I'm allowed to look!' she protested. 'Besides, given the state you're in, I don't think touching is a good idea.'

'Well— No! I'm not talking about it!' Leonne began, before she realised the trap she was walking towards and clamped shut, causing Jane to chortle with dark delight. Then she became focused again.

'Why didn't he want to get in the Vertigo?' she asked, all business again. 'And before you make a reply, if you're going to lie about it again I'd rather you not tell me at all.'

Leonne looked at her friend, hurt by the accusation. She could see that Jane had been stung by it. They had promised to never lie to one another and now she had gone and broken that. She looked away, ashamed. 'I promised him,' she whispered.

'I understand. Somewhat. You're protecting him. That doesn't mean I like it and it definitely doesn't mean I approve of you lying to me. Or forgive you for it,' Jane said, her voice cold and harsh.

Leonne looked on the verge of bursting out into tears, the words hitting home and Jane relented somewhat, motioning her friend closer. Leonne crawled over the seats and almost crushing her friend with a desperate hug as she started sobbing.

'I'm sorry Jane, I really am.'

Jane gently stroked her friend's hair. She tried to remain angry at her, the lie had really pissed her off, but found herself unable to keep it up in front of the woman's genuine sorrow. 'You can make it up to me by telling me the truth about why he didn't want to get in,' she offered.

Leonne was silent for a good while, partially because she couldn't stop sobbing on command and partially because she was torn between her options. She really didn't want to lie nor did she want to hide the truth, but telling the truth wasn't an option either. In the end she chose to crawl closer to her friend, reminding Jane of the cat she had owned as a child, and mumble something that was probably an answer.

'What?'

'He's sensitive about his weight,' came the soft-spoken reply.

Jane's mind did a double take as she tried to process that answer before laughing sharply. 'Oh come on now! That's bullshit!' she shouted indignantly.

'It's the truth!' Leonne protested strongly. Then, weaker. 'Somewhat.'

'He didn't want to...' Jane began before trailing off. No, if Leonne told her that was the reason, then it had to be the reason. So, in the name of God Almighty, why would that bother the man? She rammed her mind against the thought, over and over again, and kept drawing up blanks.

'By the way, Jane?' asked a comfortable, very sleepy Leonne.

Jane sighed. Leonne was going to be falling asleep at every opportunity today. That would be fun.

'What?' she asked, her voice more prickly than she intended, unable to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

'What do you know about the Empire?'

Jane snorted. 'A lot,' she replied. She had written her thesis about them! Leonne knew that!

'In general,' Leonne sighed.

'In short? Genocidal, warlike nation that burned half the known galaxy in their pursuit for power. Unethical bastards that violently slaughtered everyone who resisted, including their own population until a civil war tore them apart from the inside out. You know that. Even now, centuries later, people hold witch hunts for any surviving family members just to be able to punish the genocidal fuckers.' Jane tasted bile in her throat. The Empire had killed countless trillions, driven entire species into extinction and had committed every atrocity imaginable in their reckless pursuit for power. The worst part of it all was, when they had finally been brought low, that they had never been able to find the Emperor, the man responsible for all the crimes against humanity in specific and life in general. Their complete lack of ethics had allowed them to push their biological sciences lightyears ahead and they had mastered genetical augmentation. At least for the rich and powerful, making them stronger, more beautiful, healthier and prolonging their lives. Their advanced military technology had allowed them to slaughter their allies with surprise assaults in acts of brutal betrayal that had shocked the galaxy. They were an interesting culture and a fascinating subject of study, as despite all their cruelty and their nightmare inducing actions, they had been efficient , frighteningly advanced to the point that even nowadays their technology dominated in many fields, causing many scavengers to scour the galaxy in the hope of finding relics. They sometimes found something and the smarter ones reported this to their respective government for a fair finder's fee. Others weren't content with that and went into the site, as even smaller examples of Imperial technology were sold for millions. As a rule those people disappeared. Even now there were several Imperial sites that just lay there, untouched, on account of the defences being alive and well and mercilessly slaughtering any fools that tried to enter.

'I know,' came a very sleepy answer. Something in the inflection of Leonne's voice sent a shiver down Jane's spine. ' 'S not true. Lies,' she muttered, drifting off to sleep.

Jane suddenly felt very, very cold. Because unless her imagination was playing tricks on her, which she fervently hoped it had, Leonne had been looking straight at Mentuc when she had said that.

Sheepdog was panting as he 'died', his armour registering the lethal shot and shutting itself down. He fell on the ground, slumping on top of Gutsy and a scant few metres away from their company lead, his favourite freaky friend, no longer called Testy, also very 'dead'. The war games had been going for a full week now and the different units had finally started getting a feel for one another. The first day had been a downright disaster, with both units completely misjudging the other's abilities. The normal humans had no idea what the supersoldiers were capable of and those guys had in turn completely messed up their estimates of what their fully human counterparts were limited to.

One very simple and stupid thing was endurance. Sheepdog prided himself on being able to run marathons with his gear in a respectable time, but after that he'd be dead tired. His men were slightly less fit, but still performing on peak human level. Special Forces standards were damn high! Of course, when compared to the superhuman bastards that meant exactly fuck all as those freaks simply seemed to ignore the concept of exhaustion. They ran and ran and just kept going, never slowing down, never tiring. So when the briefings had been given and objectives had been assigned, the freaks playing officer for the Special Boarding forces had completely failed to take this into account. Objectives that were supposed to be taken were completely out of reach, the distances simply too vast to cover. Once they had discovered that, the reforms had been executed on the fly but with both groups constantly either under- or overestimating the other that had gone as well as could be expected. At least the supersoldiers had lost the image of being perfect throughout the day.

One hilarious example was Chi-Chi telling one of the superfreaks in her unit to make the two enemies manning a machine gun nest to eat the dirt.

After that a short pause had been forced on all the participants and the global order was given to never give the freaks any order that employed figures of speech.

By the end of the first day the exercises had been suspended on account that the tactical situation had become utterly fragged, as the rogue kill teams, who were pure freak-power and had gone on to systematically wipe out every unit they ran in to, were the only ones who still were somewhat intact. Morale had been quite low amongst the lower ranks and the officers had pulled double time to plan a new set of exercises, vowing to do better. The freaks, who didn't suffer from such a pesky detail as morale, had been nevertheless incredibly frustrated by having failed to achieve their goals. It wasn't something they knew how to deal with so they had just bottled it up, causing the higher ups considerable concern.

Gutsy had managed to slightly restore morale as well as earning hate and love in equal measure when the subject of names had been brought on. The freaks responded badly to being called anything other than their designation, Testy being the sole exception to the rule, but the Special Forces had no way to tell them apart, let alone actually remembering their eight numbers long designation. So they needed a new calling name. But nicknames were serious business. The other problem was that calling them supersoldier, which they did acknowledge, was a mouthful. The alternative freak was something the Special Forces didn't want to use on account that the freaks could beat up tanks even while unarmed and the official term Project Genesis soldier was discarded before it was even brought up.

Then Gutsy had made history by drunkenly calling the supersoldiers Testies and the humans Humies. It was retarded, stupid, and typically for the military, had stuck like glue.

The rest of the week had been a slow, steady string of improvements. Testy, their Testy, as Sheepdog's unit liked to think of the bloke, had been a force of nature in that regard. Constantly amending strategies, updating his tactics, constantly communicating with the other Testies in his unit as well as everyone else, the freak had been working non stop in order to reach acceptable levels of cooperation and integration. On the evening of the third day the discussion about him needing a new nickname and callsign had broken out. He was the company lead, after all. He needed something appropriately awe-inspiring.

'So what are your goals then? I mean, we all have something we live for. What do you live for?' Evans had asked in the midst of the discussion that the Testies had been present for.

'To receive missions and to complete them,' the supersoldier had replied, earning him a set of nods from the other Testies. Then he had tilted his head, and almost as an afterthought he had added one more thing. 'And to survive.'

'That's it?'

'Yes. Right now I want to improve our coordination. I believe it is slowly improving.'

'Yeah about that,' Gutsy, ever the savvy socialite, had interrupted.

'How come you're the only one who, like, properly talks to us? I heard from other blokes that their Testies are silent as fuck and barely speak to them. Nearly all communication is done through their bloody computers!

The men around Gutsy subtly created some distance between themselves and him. Even in power armour you could see them throwing looks at the rest of the Testies. They didn't want to be in between them and their target if, or when, Gutsy would make one comment too much.

'I do not know. I know the silence is counter-productive. It hinders our units integrating, but I do not know why I am different.'

'He dreams,' came a female voice that nobody recognised.

The silence that fell over the group was deafening as over a hundred power armoured soldiers looked back and forth, trying to find the source of the sound.

'He looks past the objective,' the voice continued. 'He dreams.'

'Holy shit!' Sheepdog said, temporarily stealing Gutsy's title for social incompetence, as he turned towards the group of supersoldiers.

'You're a girl?!'

There was a pregnant pause as Sheepdog paled underneath his visor, realising just what he had said. Then the other Testy nodded.

'Yes. I am.'

The pause returned, even more laden than before as they suddenly realised that the Testies weren't an all male unit and actually had females amongst them, with everything that may entail.

Gutsy immediately made a move to reclaim his stolen title as he whispered 'Baby Testies' and immediately drew the ire of every man and woman around him for putting that thought in their head.

Evans banged the but of his rifle on a rock, demanding their attention.

'Guys! Guys! I've got it!' he shouted, proudly.

'X one two… fuck it, whatever your number is! From now on your name is Dreamer!'

He walked over to their company leader, grasped his hand and raised it high.

'All in favour?'

The ayes were deafening.

'So, Dreamer,' Sheepdog asked on the net reserved for dead soldiers. 'Do you think we did well?'

'We had no way to defeat the kill squad in direct combat,' came the reply. Those squads were thrown in here and there to add another layer of challenge to the units. The Testies mixed in with the platoons could be brought down with enough firepower, as they were operating as support for the Special Forces, but the kill teams were walking horrors that nuked any tactical plan drawn up against them. They moved faster, aimed better and were generally trouncing the units they encountered without much trouble, disengaging when the opposition grew too fierce. High Command had ordered Dreamer and his company to go and somehow take out the kill team haunting their flanks, allowing the rest of the unit more freedom of movement.

So Dreamer had obliged them. First he had inquired if they could rely on an artillery barrage. Then if they had heavy armour support. Finally he had inquired about heavy weapons. With all three being a solid negative but orders being orders, he had drawn up a new plan. Something daring. Something insane. Something that had horrified the other Testies but had lit a fire under the collective arse of their company.

The kill team had come in, burst through a weak point in the defence and launched a lightning strike against the company command post. Testy, Sheepdog and the rest of the men there had put up a valiant struggle, taking out two enemies from the ten man strong team, one courtesy of Dreamer and the men and the other courtesy of a series of carefully placed mines. Normally that would never work, the Muninn could see the energy signatures from well outside the actual threat radius, but the kill teams were moving around and throwing up a storm of blanket jamming, which was typically the only warning a unit had that they were coming. Targeting sensors went haywire, communications experienced static and radars became useless. Then the kill team struck and you were dead.

Of course, causing that much blanket jamming worked both ways and then mines became very dangerous again.

Still, the kill team had succeeded and had decapacitated the command post. Which was when the trap slammed shut and the eight surviving Testies found themselves surrounded on all sides as the platoons closed the net around them. The first break out had been met with a liberal show of grenades that covered the entire area, while the Testies on their side took potshots at the rest of the kill team that was still in cover. That had taken out another four, halving their strength. The grenades simply covered too much ground. They had lost sixteen men in that short exchange, but it had been worth it. The other four had been much more difficult to dislodge, but being surrounded on all sides kept them thoroughly pinned and unable to predict where the attack would come from. There were Testies on both sides, even if those on the side of the Humies were limited to functioning a officers and therefore couldn't go on the hunt.

In the end the company lost Dreamer, half of their command, twenty-eight soldiers, but kill team Gamma was destroyed in turn. The company called that one a big win and High Command agreed with them as their flank was now secure.

'So given that we still won? Yes, we did well,' came Dreamer's grin inducing reply.

The second week saw a remarkable improvement. Despite that a fissure seemed to form between Dreamer and the other Testies on account of his willingness to sacrifice Genesis soldiers to achieve victory , they did start copying his tactics as they proved to be damnably effective. They were not very innovative on their own, but they were driven, never made the same mistake twice and learned at a frightening pace. They adapted, improved and started fitting in with the units they were now a part of. Efficiency levels shot up like a missile and soon the combined squads found themselves beating previously set records. Between the highly experienced Special Forces, the superhuman skill of the Testies and the unreal processing power of the Muninn which assigned targets and gave orders almost instantly, the joint exercises were becoming such a success that morale soared and the members of the leading units were walking around proud as peacocks.

Dreamer, in turn, now easily recognised by the dream-clouds painted on his armour, really thrived in his role. He saw his brethren improve and copy his tactics and he responded to their growth by going the extra mile and thinking up new ones. He betrayed expectations, ignored conventional tactics, made himself bait. He knew how Testies thought and fought and used that knowledge to counter them, coming up with tactics they would never expect, taking them off guard. His company tore into the flanks of the enemy army, squared off with kill squads, laid ambushes, made tactical withdrawals, fought, bled and died as the days went by and the man somehow still found time to send detailed reports and equipment requests to Doctor Eisel.

Seeing his success the Genesis soldiers started copying him more and more. They talked more with the Humies and slowly but certainly the Special Forces started accepting the Testies as 'one of the gang'. More and more Testies ended up with nicknames as the Special Forces lured small comments from the supersoldiers and then promptly painted them on their armour, taking care not to compromise their camouflaging abilities but visible enough that they would be easily recognisable, which the superhumans narrowly tolerated.

By the end of the third week the results had exceeded Admiral Verloff's most optimistic expectations. His men had originally shared his apprehension of genetically engineered supermen, as if that could somehow create better soldiers than the millennia old method of hard training, but it was hard not to like the men who suffered alongside you. They were undeniably good soldiers, each and every one of them, even if they were socially awkward, to use the understatement of a century. The two groups had, warmed up was not the right word, but certainly opened up towards one another. The main goal of the joint training was to get the two units to develop a mutual understanding of each other's abilities and had been vastly overshot. The two groups were cooperating flawlessly by the end of the third week, integrating into one another seamlessly. The last great event of the exercise had been a massive, all out offensive from both teams, each having been assigned objectives well behind the established defensive lines on each side. The brutal battle that had followed had seen units get torn apart, after which the suvivors were melted together while the 'dead' were moved back, poured into a new unit and sent back in as reinforcements. Commanders and soldiers were shuffled about in a three day long, constant offensive, which finally ended when Dreamer had convinced half the army to do the one thing the enemy had never expected. The letter of the objective had been to take the point. Nothing more than that. So Dreamer had done exactly that. Strategical picture be damned.

Eisel's face when one of his perfect creations had convinced thousands of men and women to launch an overwhelmingly large frontal assault, Russian style, abandoning every other position along the line, would be a memory the Admiral would treasure forever. They suffered devastatingly heavy losses in the process but in the end the defenders couldn't establish a coherent command structure anymore and were just too late in realising that this had been Dreamer's goal from the get go. With their command structure gone and every goal on his side having at least five units assigned to it, the offensive army doubled down on their charge, taking a horrendous beating but simply absorbing the blows, reforming and continuing on.

In the end the blatantly simple tactic proved unstoppable. The defenders relayed on tactics too long to see the truth of the matter, only abandoning every other front to desperately rush reinforcements to their collapsing defensive line as the invaders inexorably approached their objective. Their own counter-assault came too late, the objective was taken, the flag unfurled and the joint exercises turned full on war games were called to an end. Even the Genesis soldiers had proven to not be totally immune to the emotional storm that had broken free after that and many of them had been suckered into going to the gigantic party thrown afterwards to celebrate their success.

Verloff had even become emotional during the speech. To see the thousands of men and women standing there, human and superhuman mixed in one solid, unstoppable army, was simply heart warming.

Soon they would all be put to the test, however. The schematics for the newly updated ships were coming along nicely and the Kra'lagh had run into a little tactical problem called the biggest minefield of the galaxy. Every ship that jumped in from the possible vectors was violently exploded out of existence. It had been a gargantuan undertaking and it served no other purpose than to delay them. The minefields were supported by countless ships that patrolled them, alert for any enemy attempt to dismantle the fields. Losses had been high, but morale was unwavering. The Imperial soldiers knew that they were buying time for a counterattack of their own, that new fleets were being prepped and that the Empire was getting itself ready to extract bloody vengeance on the enemy that had brutally murdered an uncountable number of souls. Of course, Imperial Command knew that the Kra'lagh were slowly but surely navigating a way around the minefields and the established defences. That would take time, however. Time the Empire was putting to good use.

Now, however, a new issue had come to the front. One of their erstwhile allies had betrayed the Empire. The Novic Confederacy, a relatively small nation with a military that was far larger than it had any right to be given their comparatively smaller size, had declared war on them. If they had simply broken off their existing treaties that would have been one thing. But no, they had to go the full disgusting mile and had launched a full offensive, hitting the Empire's lines while the majority of their forces were far away. Verloff had taken that news quietly and his command staff knew this meant he was absolutely livid. He had simply shot past being angry, furious, vengeful and all sorts of words that would utterly fail to describe the blazing inferno that was his mood.

He was marshalling a force that was significantly smaller than what the Novician Navy had at their disposal, but it would be enough. It would have to do. He simply couldn't spare anything more. Eisel would have to do without his Genesis troops for a while, he'd have to rely on the Special Boarding Battalions. They didn't have any other ground pounders nearby, even if they were, by technicality, naval infantry.

His officers were drawing up plans. The Novicians had numerical superiority but the Imperials had the advantages of technological superiority and personnel that was vastly more disciplined. Verloff was also planning on taking a note from Dreamer's book. It was time to disregard tactical sense and focus on doing a very simple thing. The Empire had to survive. Threats had to be eliminated. Destroying the Novician Navy was beyond what the Empire could do at the moment.

Crippling them, however…

Leonne's entry in the village was everything but quiet. Jane's morning trip had heralded her arrival and the list she had given to the smith had meant Mentuc would be coming along. Which in turn had spread like wildfire in the village. Not amongst the adults. The elderly liked the eccentric man well enough, but amongst the younger generation there was a fair bit of mistrust. Mentuc being rich, strong, handsome and seemingly very docile had made him a bit of an attraction to the younger women, which annoyed the younger men in turn. Him running off with Leonne, who had been the subject of a lot of courting, had further enhanced that. Him finally settling down with her had done much to improve his relationship with the older generations, as it meant they needn't worry about him running of with their own daughters in turn. He was nice enough, but he was a foreigner and rather strange. Someone you could easily call a friend when he stood you a round in the pub or needed some help, but not someone you'd want marrying your daughter.

Mentuc was immensely loved by the children and younger teenagers of the village, however, Cassy being at the forefront of that. The girl adored him and knew slightly more of him than Mentuc was happy with, but given that she was still a child, no matter her claims to the opposite, nobody would really believe her if she made some boast-like statements about her brother-in-law.

Within moments of them arriving the young girl came charging out of the school building, quickly followed by half a dozen other teenagers, all equally ecstatic to see him. He barely came to a stop in front of the smith, making a point of not seeing them coming, when Cassy leapt onto his back. The girl was used to him feeling more akin to a pillar of concrete than a human being and it bothered her none. She scampered around until she was leaning over his head, arms wrapped around it in an overly enthusiastic hug.

Leonne had to wait until Jane parked the Vertigo before she could go out and give her sister a hug, at which point her husband had been transformed into a tree with the kids being the fruit. He was walking about carefully, a kid on each shoulder, two clinging on his back, holding Cassy, who was standing on his head, ensuring she remained stable by holding her with his hand, and two more teenagers clinging to his legs. For people who claimed quite loudly that they were mature, they sure didn't act it.

He smiled sheepishly at Leonne. 'I was ambushed.'

Cassy waited patiently, hiding a predatory smile, until Mentuc came close enough to her sister, before she leapt off his head and onto her sister, hugging her warmly, nearly toppling her.

'Leonne!' she shouted. 'You didn't call! I know you never do but you still should!'

Leonne hugged her back tightly, seeing the shape of the miss Olva, the village teacher, standing in the doorway of the school. The middle-aged woman shook her head at the sight, but held a warm smile on her face. She went back inside, probably to call it a day. The kids often learned a lot from Mentuc, practical things that weren't in the school curriculum and she was very tolerant about it. He plopped his way back to the smith, who was laughing out loud at the sight. Sam waved at Mentuc, shouting that he was only halfway through his order and that he'd have the rest delivered later in the day. Sam, after having been bashed by his wife about it, had gone the extra mile to get in Mentuc's good graces, not knowing he had never been out of them. Leonne and her family had appreciated it though, and given that Mentuc was the man's main customer it had been a mutually beneficial relation, especially since he had the only heavy cargo Vertigo in the village. He often delivered concrete, rebar and other building materials at the farm, along with heavily reinforced tools. He was an elderly man who respected hard work and had a distinct dislike for city-slickers. He had been forced to adjust his opinion about the man hard when he had come to deliver the first batch of concrete and found that the man had established a long pulley system along the Wall to get all the heavy stuff up. Now they weren't exactly friends, but they had a mutual fondness and a deep respect for one another.

Leonne and Jane left Mentuc to his chores, the former giving him a long and deep kiss, before hugging him tightly. She was still feeling sore, but knew that Mentuc would be going through the mental equivalent of it. He really hated being separated from her. At least Cassy woud stick to him like glue for the most part of the day, even tagging along with him as he worked and helping him with minor things. She'd probably end up spending the majority of the day parading about while sitting on his shoulders.

'Are you sure you don't want to say hi to my parents?'

'I will do so at the end of the day. If I go now, it is unlikely I'll be able to resume working for the next several hours,' he said. She could read between the lines. He was already feeling the pressure from being in the relatively crowded village, being stuck in a room with Jane and her parents at the same time, with her mother's simultaneously endearing, for her, and unnerving, for him, hospitality would be too much at present. He'd deal better with in the evening, when his relief on being with Onoelle would counterbalance his unease at being around others.

'Take care, alright?'

'I will. You too.'

They shared one final kiss and then he was off, walking into the smithy, the kids remaining glued to him. Cassy stood in the middle, unsure of whom to follow.

'He'll be stuck with me for at least an hour, lass. I'll make sure he goes to pick you up if he leaves before that,' Sam laughed.

'Deal' the girl shouted, giving the smith a thumb's up, before sprinting after her sister.

Jane watched the entire exchange with confusion The way she viewed Mentuc didn't really merge well with how the kids were swarming him and clinging to him or how the old smith smiled warmly at him. He was strange, didn't behave entirely human and if even a fraction of her suspicions were true than Mentuc belonged on the gallows or the electric chair. Instead he was prancing about the village, if not loved then at least not hated.

Given what Leonne had mentioned earlier that didn't sit well with her. Her mind had taken that thought and had run with it. It made a frightening amount of sense. Inhuman strength. Wealthy. Physically attractive. Hiding from the world at large. The first three were major characteristics of Imperial gene-enhancement and the latter would be very easily explained if he actually was Imperial. Not everyone received the gene-therapy after all, only the nobility and higher ranks had been eligible for it. If Mentuc's ancestors were Imperials…

Jane paled just at the thought of it. The Imperials had been monsters! Inhumanly cruel! Demons straight from Hell! If Mentuc was related to them, he deserved to burn at the stake. Even after so long the galaxy was still recovering from the damage the Empire had inflicted. Every Imperial, their offspring and families included, had been declared personae non gratae by every governing body out there. Even peaceful nations had voted for the death penalty. That meant that Mentuc, if his secret came out, would be trialed, found guilty and killed. And Leonne, being his wife, would share his fate. Heaven above! No wonder they kept that under lock and key! She loved Leonne, with all of her heart. They were the best of friends, but could she really ignore the raw, pure threat that Mentuc was? The sheer vileness that he represented? She'd have to talk with Leonne about this. That damned girl! How could she do this? She knew better than this!

Just before she turned to follow her friend she caught Mentuc looking at her, his gaze all too knowingly. She froze as he caught her eyes. He didn't just look at her, he looked through her, into the deepest part of her being, and left her a message, unspoken, unsaid, but somehow transmitted with perfect clarity.

A warning with no room for misunderstanding.

Don't endanger the life we have built here.

Or else.

She didn't need any further explanation. She felt her skin turn pale as he turned and disappeared into the building.

'You coming?' Leonne asked, unaware of the exchange that just happened.

'Coming,' she mutely replied.

Oh Leonne, she thought to herself, shivers of fear running through her spine. What have you gotten yourself into?