[color=#FF2E00]“‘Truant officers’, right. That’s something I can pretty much guarantee we won’t have to worry about. At least I’ve never encountered any, but I doubt that has changed.”[/color] She laughed before her usual straightforward cynicism returned, [color=#FF2E00]“Tranbir-IX, our destination, is one of over eighty moons orbiting the sole planet in Epsilon Theta. It’s a class K shithole. No water, unbreathable nitrogen atmosphere, seven-odd meters per second squared gravitational acceleration and a surface colder than an ONI agent’s heart. All of the habitats are former copper mines bored deep into the ground, split into several strata, or levels, in turn divided into sublevels, kept more or less at 20 degrees celsius. Alpha level is the spaceport, we’ll face the sternest security there on our way in. Only place that gets better cops is Foxtrot at the very bottom, but we won’t be going there, so that’s a non-issue. We’ll be bypassing Bravo, that’s rich people country and entry is restricted to people who live or work there. Charlie through Echo are housing, think The Galactic Bazaar, but slightly poorer and more cramped for Charlie and it gets poorer and more crowded as you descent. Prewar population was just shy of 25 mil, and I suspect that being on the other side of Ascendancy Territory from the conflict made it an attractive destination for refugees. Foxtrot is full of ruins, both human and structural. Below Foxtrot is Golf, though only unofficially, it’s… I don’t really know, they told us at school that it’s regularly checked by geological teams because the weight of the whole city rests on it, but other than that it’s a dumping ground for the city’s waste, requiring closed-circuit environment suits to traverse it. Urban legends speak of tunnels dug by black market traders and smugglers to move stuff from habitat to habitat, but I can’t verify that. We probably won’t go below Echo, but too much information never hurt anyone”[/color] Avelyn shrugged, her brain firmly in briefing gear.

[color=#FF2E00]“We’ll be going down to Delta, the border between middle and lower class, Sublevel 12/28 to be precise, the very bottom of what you’d call middle-class. ‘Top of the shit pile, yet still a way to fall.’ I heard someone say once. I can think of three places to start: Our apartment, since even if mother and father moved, the new tenants might be able to tell us something. A couple levels above is the Broken Bit, a music club of sorts where mom used to perform and the owner was a good guy. He might still remember me, I spent a lot of time there after school when I was very little. Third is the spaceport, arrivals and departures.”[/color] She counted on her fingers, then she paused, and alarm bells went off in her head. Her father was a freighter pilot. What if he was out of the system when they arrived? How could she have missed that? Idiot! Her brain quickly recovered from the stall, hopefully fast enough that nobody noticed anything, [color=#FF2E00]“Fortunately for us, Longannet sits right on a huge subterranean ravine, about fifty meters wide, practically bisected in two parts from Bravo to Echo. Despite being underground and sealed from the surface, it’s big enough that temperature differences at the ends can be big enough to cause the air to move, so cloaks and scarves are normal to keep the wind out.”[/color] She tugged on the red scarf draped around her neck, [color=#FF2E00]“Nobody should look twice if we’re covering our faces. Like I said, the habitat is an old mine, so mostly bored or blasted tunnels in solid rock, with the occasional natural cave modified to better suit whatever purpose. As with any indoors space, fires are terrifying and every gunshot will reliably deafen anyone without earpro for the next minute, so keep that in mind if we have to go loud. Law enforcement has no fucking sense of humor, and is tight with the Ascendancy, given how fast they shipped me out. A lot of the guards are K9 officers with Kell Hounds. I don’t know which corner of Hades they found those things in, but just in case you haven’t had the pleasure, it’s a forty kilo ball of concentrated hate, fiercely loyal to its handler and with enough teeth to put crocodiles to shame. And blind they may be, but there’s a reason people joke they can smell movement and hear colors, so let’s get in, do what we must and get out, shall we?[/color]