"Just remember to be confident," Solae reminded Rene as she engaged the safety protocols that would effectively keep the [i]Bonvanture[/i] parked even if an unscrupulous individual managed to board. The marquise didn't doubt Mia's abilities, but she wanted to make certain that if anyone had the expertise to disable the artificial intelligence they would have difficulty stealing the spaceship. It was rather hypocritical of her, who had committed felony larceny to obtain it in the first place, to take more precautions to keep another thief from doing the same. The metal groaned as locks slid into place on the underside of their vessel. The smugglers who previously owned their home-away-from-home hadn't bothered to use the safeguards since they needed speedy departures on the regular, kept it hidden, and undoubtedly had a reputation for murdering anyone stupid enough to cross them.

Before opening the hold door, which was now connected via a large tube to the port terminal at which they had parked, she pulled out the scarf that had been gifted to her. Solae carefully pulled back her hair, twisted it into a silken rope, and tucked it into the back of the scarf as she pulled it over her head. Satisfied every golden strand had been tucked away she also shrugged on an oversized men's coat. The sleeves were long enough to cover half her hand and the bottom seam was past her hips but it disguised her figure. On Zatis a lady with her physique was not as rare as on Panopontus, but she didn't want to be associated with a woman in the profession that it would be naturally associated with. The hood of the coat was layered on top of her scarf to complete the look. On close inspection she would still stick out like a sore thumb, but she looked far more inconspicuous for Zatis dressed this way, and it was immeasurably better than strolling out there without any outerwear.

"We should take our weapons just to be safe," she told Rene. He already knew, of course, and was slinging a pre-packed bag over her shoulder as she made her observation aloud. Her paramour gave her a slightly nervous, yet handsomely roguish smile. Solae steeled her nerves. They would be fine because they had to be fine; failure was not an option. With her own butterflies in her stomach she kissed his cheek.

The terminal was manned by a bored security guard who was not there to ask questions or investigate in any capacity; his sole directive was to keep anyone from parking that could not or would not pay the fee. He didn't even so much as glance up from his sparse, worn down desk littered with discarded snack containers. One could only surmise what he was watching on his personal screen. Because he knew Solae and Rene's ship had arranged payment before they docked, accomplished via a wireless credit transfer, he wasn't motivated to let their presence interrupt him any further than it already had.

"Mia gave me directions to the location of the PEA," Solae whispered once they were out of earshot. "We can visually gauge what we're up against, walk past it a couple blocks, and discuss some options. I don't want to try to fashion a plan before we see the building itself. Obviously New Concordia's was housed in an embassy of stature but we can safely assume the one here on Zatis will be quite different."

The fringes of the city were unlike any other metropolis she had visited. Biodomes obscured the sky, giving everyone on Zatis the impression it was constantly overcast, or they were all trapped below a cloud of fog. Filtration units pumped impurities out of the bidomes and into the atmosphere of the terraforming planet but the air did not feel clean necessarily. Solae did not feel as if she was choking on pollution, but it feel comparatively stale to other worlds, and there was a faint taste of chemicals when she breathed. With each passing minute she became more accustomed to it and thus less aware of it, but that did not make it any less present.

Scraggly trees and hedges lined the streets but none were the blooming beauties found on worlds favored by aristocrats. Rene and Solae had set foot in one of the business quarters, rather than a pleasure district, and thus everything around them was more pragmatically utilitarian. Buildings were fabricated of sturdy material that would withstand the test of time but was not pleasing to the eye. Signs and ads were on every corner, and many in-between, advertising all the services and goods that were forbidden elsewhere. In front of an antiques shop (which was most certainly a smuggler's operation) was a holographic woman dressed to seduce talking about a night club in the adjacent biodome. This was the subject of most the ads she spotted, but there were also brightly lit ads for bars with 'special cocktails,' venues with dancing individuals of both sexes, dens encouraging experimentation with 'the sciences,' and one corporation that pledged it could make any dream come true. Solae doubted they knew the substance of her dreams.

Zatis residents either walked with confidence that bordered on arrogance, passively asserting themselves as they passed, not sparing a glance to anyone because of their self-importance, or they scuttled along half-hunched, as if trying to hide from absolutely everyone in proximity, the very stereotype that children's tales had of rogues. The marquise suspected these were people in disguise like she was or were struggling with shame, guilt, and/or poverty. Regardless of their situation no one truly looked at Solae or Rene. They caught an errant look here or there but they were mentally dismissed just as quickly as they were inadvertently spotted. No law enforcement or soldiers were looking for anyone- and that worked in their favour. With thousands of criminals all about them, and people with almost as much coin traveling here every day, they weren't as special.

Except for one woman who surreptitiously picked up their trail at a distance.

"I think we're being followed," Rene noted to her in a low tone just as she was noticing herself.

"Just keep walking," Solae said nervously without an inch of conviction. "Maybe we can shake them when.."

"It's dangerous for you to be here," a man whispered to her as he seemed to melt out of the shadows on the other side of Solae. He pushed her into Rene roughly just as their tail, a middle-aged veteran mercenary, withdrew her pistol and took a shot from the hip at the pair. The stranger's intervention forced Solae into Rene, doing him no favors, but made the plasma burn graze her side rather than penetrate a valuable section of her torso that would have caused significant trauma.