The hatches cracked open and hissed down onto landing field of crushed gravel. The smell of baked lime, hot metal, and sea weed burned off during re-entry rushed in, mingling with the slightly cinnamon smell of the local jungle. Inez wrinkled her nose as she came down the ramp, her body stinging from the medical aplique that wrapped her from thigh to mid chest beneath the somewhat battered League arming vest she wore.

Lionel was typical of the out-worlds in the Pegasus Arm, an alien world habital by humans but as yet with little trade to entice the Merchant Princes of the League. It orbited an angry K-type star tha blazed at the high end of the sequence. Luckily the angry ball was far more distant, in relative terms, than Earth from Sol. The result was that even in the 'day' time a kind of eternal twilight existed. The ambient illumination of the nebula colored the light a greenish purple, which deeped during the night without significant decrease in luminosity. The local life forms bore a superficial similarity to ant forms from earth, though they primarily subsisted on the myriad varieties of local fungus which grew in vast, carefully managed forests. Their technological level was iron age without even the wheel, though like the Aztec of ancient Earth, this hadn't prevented them from raising monumental pyramids and other works of sacred architecture. Their society was based on a kind of religious clientage with varigated classes of priest serving as an aristocracy. The appearence of Captain Lionel of the Mars Engineering and Technical Consortium forty years ago had thrown them into significant agitation which was still working itself out.

Regardless of the native's feelings, the League had been able to set up a small trading post and an emergency maintaince depot for ships that got themselves in trouble far from more civilized worlds. The Arxregnum had spent the past six weeks gathering sea weed for the Solar Winds Trading Company, and had been doing quite well before what the crew termed 'The Kraken Attack'. The sea creature should not have existed according to the survey data which reported only plant life above the microbial, something some academic somewhere might someday write a paper about. The creatures sudden appearance, drawn no doubt to the warmth of the hull, had damaged several of the jump antennae that propelled the vessel into the supra-luminal band. She had taken a week to limp to even this out of the way place and would go no further until she was refited. Maynard had done well to get them this far, but they were short of crew and ready cash and it remained to be seen how repairs would be effected.

"Inez de Calabria," she declared to the bored looking Guild apprentice sitting at a table covered by a canvas shade. The apprentice scratched a red rash tha vanished beneath his doublet, a common reaction to exposure to proteins in non human biospheres.

"Good to meet you, frankly its good to meet anyone on this out of the way dung hill," he replied with a slight Martian accent.

"Your captain coming down, or is it hired guns only?" he asked. Inez laughed in response, a tired slightly bitter sound.

"I'm an indentured gun technically," she told him, "Captain Maynard will be down in a few minutes, as soon as he has the fires out in engineering im sure. Anywhere you can get a drink around here?" The apprentice, Walsh but the battered name tape, hooked a thumb towards a small pyramid a few dozen meters away.

"In there, that is where the other outworlders are too, if you care."
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