Renaya was no sovereign, only the last and least of her mother's daughters. Sovereign was an imposing woman seated on a powerful throne, her hair cut short in twin shearing blades across the crown of her head. Sovereign was a woman who reigned over her brief afternoon audiences with the same cool ruthlessness as she exercised her talents in the hunt. Sovereign was Her Imperial Majesty, ruler and shaper of a hundred thousand worlds. She was not a frightened girl in her late forties, barely keeping her face resolute as she scurried after her protector, Lieutenant Cedri Mora.<br/><br/>"Halt!" a hard voice demanded, and she looked up to see a knot of Serilline in Royal Guard uniforms approaching at a jog. It was the leader who spoke, a seasoned woman in her third century. "Where are you taking Lady Brivine?"<br/><br/>"It's alright," the Princess spoke, gathering the fleeting scraps of her courage and stepping forward. "Cedri... I mean, Lieutenant Mora is taking me to a place of safety. Quickly, through the hatch! Your friends are-" She was cut short by a palm thrust firmly into her back and sent sprawling over the side of a terrace as hypersonic needles whipped through the space where she had stood scant seconds before. Behind her back the Lady's bodyguard had kept her hand blaster out and it shlumped viciously through the centre of the Guards. "For the Lady!" she cried, and flung herself into the midst of the others before they had a chance to respond.<br/><br/>When Renaya regained her senses and stood there was only Cedri, standing among the bodies of five uniformed Serilline and shouldering one of the weapons they would need no longer. "Quickly now," she said without giving her charge a chance to object or question what had just happened. "The Palace is overrun and the spaceport is compromised... we need to get you to the Capital, or maybe even out-system," she thought aloud. The brave guardsman couldn't hold for long, and she towed Renaya towards the orchard as a desperate plan occurred to her. "The slaveport!" "But-" "Later!"<br/><br/>Normally would sooner die than lead the sheltered highborn within a mile of the place, but the desperate situation meant that offending her senses was the last of her concerns. Not to mention the place didn't even appear on official maps of the Throneworld, so possibly it had been overlooked. "Quickly now my Lady, it's time for us to run." Behind them the side of the building gouted actinic fire from Lafren's last plasma grenade, but the two women were sprinting as fast as they could towards the slumping ridge that concealed the slaveport from the Palace's view.<br/><br/>Renaya supposed she had always known the slaves came from somewhere, but as she neared the structure she realised she'd never given much thought to where. "Where" was apparently a large oval-shaped building containing six landing bays, with customs and processing pens and slave quarters bunched to one side. The whole reeked of exhaust and misery, but from here came the polished and smiling slaves who worked around the Imperial Palace and her family. The girl struggled with the thoughts for a moment, then threw them aside as unimportant as a distant humming came closer and closer. What sounded like hoverbikes revealed themselves as a trio of silvery rocketforms that dipped towards the fleeing pair and only stopped when Cedri desperately scattered needles behind her from her appropriated rifle. The Serilline slowed to a walk and watched in shocked disbelief as the missiles kissed the earth and smoothly unfolded into robots that rolled up to their feet and spat rapid energy fire back at them as they strode quickly forward.<br/><br/>There was only one thing for it and Cedri waved for Renaya to proceed into the facility without her as she ducked behind a wall and began exchanging fire with the approaching synthetics. "Run, Renaya! Find a ship and get someone to take you out of here!" She fired another volley of needles, watching with dismay as they glanced off the thick metal frame. She couldn't hurt them, she knew it - even the blaster could barely warm their hulls between charging - but she could slow them and keep them from catching up to their target. At least for a while.<br/><br/>"Run you stupid bitch!" she insisted as she saw the girl hang back, and with a look of shock and a terrified glance at the approaching metal monsters, Renaya Brivine fled.<br/><br/>Not the first door nor the second nor even the third, Renaya was trying to get away from the image of her lonely protector and her doomed stand but finally some impulse got through to her and she darted in through the fourth door to find a hairy pink-skinned male standing by a ship of some kind. She slowed to a walk at the last second as he turned around, and with all the hauteur of a hundred generations of rule she addressed him, "You will take me off world. Now." She tried to give him the heated-iron expression she'd seen her mother give, but on the willowy redhead it came out more squinty and constipated.<br/><br/><a class="username" data-user-id="1092" data-username="@Oniy252" data-xf-init="member-tooltip" href="https://blackdahliaroleplaying.com/members/1092/">@Oniy252</a>