Junebug was already striding out of the Level when the alert started pulsing over the public alert channels. The palm sized computer clipped to her waistband began to chirp with some similar variation on the global alert. The crowd in the streets seemed to pause as one, looking up with fear, concern or annoyance at the overhead speakers blaring the warning. Sayeeda pulled her rain poncho back on and adjusted the sling on her submachine gun so it slung muzzle forward rather than hanging point down. It was unlikely that the weapon would save her in a sudden stampede of pedestrians but you used the tools you were comfortable with.
“Lonny,” Sayeeda said, queuing her comlink to the ship's AI. She had finally given in to the nickname due to the need to differentiate her helmet AI from the ships much more elaborate unit.
“Better button up the ship, there is some sort of navigational anomaly and we don’t need panicked civilians trying to seize the ship.”
“Cap’n, there be men here a loadin’” the AI responded unexpectedly. Sayeeda chewed on her lip for a moment, weighing the options. If the stevedores were loading the coffe there was little to be gained by interrupting them.
“Roger that, let them finish the load but seal off access to any areas other than the cargobay. Six Out,” she concluded breaking the link before the AI could respond. Just for fun she tried to query port control on her wrist mount, but the link was beyond swamped. No doubt every captain was calling in regarding the anomally and half of those trying to get emergency clearance to leave. Darkspace was a catch all term for disturbances in the RIP, particularly violent eddies and back draughts which rendered all computed solutions impossible to execute. They were unusual but there were documented cases of systems being engulfed for days to weeks. There were even a few cases where entire systems had been cut off and contact was yet to be reestablished.
“Maybe we should lift without clearance,” Sayeeda said as they pushed their way through gathering crowds. They were moving up levels and here and there a large public vidscreen blared the news to enraptured crowds. Darkspace Anomaly Engulfing Formax. Uncharted Darkspace Threat, Duke to Comment at 8 Local. People seemed agitated, here and there men in rags ranted about the end time. One man was collecting money and slicing himself with a knife in a vicarious absolution of sin, his bloody footprints standing out starkly on the bare concrete. The workers were a superstitious lot, perhaps because of the monotony of life forced them to look to omens for meaning.
“No good Capatino,” Neil responded, snatching a fruit from a vendor's cart and flicked a small denomination credit coin to the dirty old woman who owned it. For all her apparent frailty she snatched it from the air with the grace of a magician. Neil bit into the fruit and continued around a mouthful of dark purple flesh.
“They’ll have canned the beacons for the duration, no point frying expensive sensors with the Darkspace rolling in, and the RIP will have changed too much for us to use the old data if its bad enough that they can detect it,” Neil explained, forestalling her next suggestion. By the Goddess she didn’t want to be stuck here even an extra day if she could avoid it. The run she had planned was tight on the timing as it was
“Well I’m open to suggestions,” she rejoined tartly. They were crossing into the upper sections of the city now. Purple and Black the colors of the house of Cho-Lan, the noble house whose fractious members controlled Formax and several other worlds in the sector, were much in evidence, both on buildings and in the clothing and ornamentation of the more prosperous looking citizens. These areas were associated with shipping and thus with an order of magnitude more wealth than the poor damned factory workers could dream of.
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