A sense of dread starts to pass over me. If the kid's never heard of either Enki OR Tau Ceti e then, well that's not a good sign. I mean, yeah Enki is basically a backwater, but Tau Ceti e is a tourist hub; it's hard to believe anyone that's not on an Ark world wouldn't have heard of it... which would be a problem, seeing as I'd get in a heap of trouble for messing with an Ark world.

Oh, ah, yeah Ark worlds... see, they're like hidden refuges where pockets of humanity are put in secret, with their civilization artificially put at some arbitrary tech level to start and some made up history- they're a kind of fail safe to keep humanity going in case the Legion ever falls. Knowing where they are can get you in enough trouble, but rumor has it that talking to the locals without clearance carries the death penalty...

Best I can do is hope I'm not on an Ark and keep playing along I guess.

"Yeah, sure I've got I.D. Show you mine if you show me yours." I reach a shivering hand into my breast pocket and retrieve a silver square sized to fit comfortably in the palm of a hand. My frozen fingers slip on the millimeter thick computer, dropping it into the snow. As I hastily kneel down to retrieve it the kid says something about some kind of force. "Never heard of it." I say absently, wiping snow and sand off the fingerprint scanner. I look up sharply at his question, seeing him contemplating my stunner. "Careful with that, kid. If you shoot yourself you'll wake up with a hell of a headache."

"Let's call it a stunner and leave it at that. I..." I'm interrupted by a roar vibrating up through my boots, and my military experience kicks in. Now, contrary to what you might think, there's no official training that tells you what to do when an earthquake happens and you're already out from under anything that might fall on you. There is, however, an unofficial school made up of experience, hearsay, and what old soldiers teach young soldiers, and that school DOES say what you should do in case of an earthquake, or really any situation where something you can't really do anything about is happening, and that is to swear profusely. Having been a soldier who'se picked up odds and ends from more languages than I'd care to name, I can keep up a steady stream of profanity for quite a while, but as the roar dies down so does my voice, turning into a kind of angry mumble before finally petering out.

I shakily raise myself from the defensive crouch I found myself in. "Ok, so what the #$%^ was that?"