“First time here?” the scribe asked as they waited for the green light. A pregnant local woman, she spoke in Yele rather than Phenish.
“It is, thank you.” Apama’s own Yele was good, drilled into her brain via various accelerated programs.
“It’s always everyone’s first time here, and their last. It’s pretty hush around here, d’y’follow?”
“I’m sure it’s lovely.”
As the scribe looked blankly at her, Apama racked her brain for any further compliments to make the anodyne comment sound less condescending. No need to create hostility, especially not when she was alone in unfamiliar territory. It wasn’t that the Karnos sector and places like Hellion Terminus were the enemy. They belonged to the empire, after all. But they weren’t imperial Phene either, not with those spindly two arms and stubby torsos and the impractical ways so many of them wore their hair. These people all spoke the common tongue of the hated Yele League as fluently as their local languages while mangling—some said deliberately—the Phenish taught in schools and required for administration.
She remembered the view from the courtyard where she’d just spent an hour waiting for no obvious reason. “The beacon aura is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“People say that all the time, but consider what it means for us. We used to be a busy and prosperous cultural hub on the main beacon route between Karnos and Yele.”
“That was eight hundred years ago.”
“Long before you Phene got here. We still tell stories about our glory days. Now we’re just the end of the line. You must be from one of the bustling central systems, eh? They say the party never sleeps on the Triple As. Isn’t that how the song goes?”
“I’m not from there.”
The scribe narrowed her eyes, examining Apama in the way of folk who feel you’ve overstayed your welcome now that you aren’t willing to accede to their demands. “Are you one of those shells? Pardon me. I’m not sure if it’s an insulting term, but the only other one I know is worse.”
Apama had run this gauntlet so many times in the course of her lancer training that she’d developed a special tone and a set of stock phrases. “I don’t have an exoskeleton. But my womb mother does. Why do you ask?”
“There’s a funny gleam to your skin. They say shells exude mucus constantly to reduce friction between the soft skin and the hard outer shell. Is your matron’s skin chitin, or keratin? Or something else?” She lifted her two hands in the gesture of submission. “Pardon. I’ve never had a chance to ask before, and you seem nice.”
What was taking the hells-bound clearance so cursed long?
“It’s complicated. A dual endo-and exoskeleton was one of the earliest Phene genengineering projects. That was a really long time ago.”
The scribe was nodding, the ribands and feathers of her triple-spined headdress waving in time to her head’s movement. “Having a hard shell would be good for certain kinds of dangerous jobs that need extra shielding like shipyard work and ground infantry for planet-side invasion.” Her gaze flicked over Apama’s four arms, the true mark of imperial Phene. “Surprised to see you down here. Military transfers come in via military transport straight to the orbital station. You getting picked up?”
Apama wasn’t sure if it was travel exhaustion that made her uneasy or the weird isolation of this dusty hells-scape of a moon. She of her own self with her humble origins wasn’t worth spit, but a fully trained imperial lancer pilot? That was another story. Ransom. Forced labor in a Hesjan cartel. Spiteful political murder by anti-empire insurgents. It wasn’t common, but it happened.
“Do transfers usually get picked up here?” She wasn’t going to reveal she had no orders beyond taking commercial transport to this town on this moon.
“I wouldn’t know. Like I said, we don’t get military transfers through this office.”
A flash of green signaled completion. Apama managed to clamp down on a yelp of joy.
The scribe frowned as she popped the chip out of the cube. “Here’s your scrip, Lieutenant. You’ll need to clear it for entrance.”
Apama pressed the scrip against the node embedded behind her right ear. The scrip initiated contact with a stream of new code from the security cube; her node recognized the official seal entwined with her individual cipher, and the link flashed on the cube. The scribe unlocked the barrier to let her through.
After the barrier closed behind her she set down her kit bag to get her bearings and roll down her jacket sleeves. There was no waiting area here, just two empty desks facing glazed windows along the front, and a lavatory off to the right.
She turned back to see the scribe still watching her. “Is there a base nearby?”
The scribe raised her eyebrows. “They didn’t give you a map? There’s a post at the east end of the port. It’s one klick down the road.”
“Is there a mobile connecting them?”
“A mobile? Oh, you mean a tram or a moving walkway. We don’t have those here. My cousin runs a lift concession. Reliable and inexpensive.”
“I’ll walk.”
Apama offered the hand sign for thanks and farewell and went out through the front entrance into the harsh light of day. There, she halted under the eerie aura of the infected beacon and the blast of a hot sun. The landing pads and stevedore platforms spread to either side behind the arrivals center, punctuated by drab warehouses and a squat control tower painted so dull a beige it was insulting. A hardworking gantry crane refused even a splash of color was at work unloading the Fake Vestige, the freighter she’d come in on. She shaded her eyes against the sun’s glare and tried to pick out the freighter’s crew—Captain Ann and her clan had been a lively bunch who’d welcomed her into their shipboard routine—but the crane blocked her view. They couldn’t help her with this anyway.
She started walking along what appeared to be a repurposed runway, glad the moon was big and dense enough to have close to standard 1 gravity. The adaptive fibers in her uniform absorbed and rechanneled the heat, but the light was intense and the air was like breathing inside a furnace. Unfortunately the town was dreary and ugly, with blocky, pragmatic buildings covered in solar soaks and not a scrap of decoration to suggest glory days of any kind. The place didn’t even boast a cathedral spire to enliven its torpor. Not a single soul was out and about.
Despite what the scribe had said, in older days this resource-poor system had probably been little more than a nondescript rest and refueling stop for ships on their way to far more interesting places, ones easily reachable across the immense distances of space because of the beacon system. Now it was one of the ends of the line in the extended lattice of the Phene Empire, a lonely military outpost built on an outcast shore of the Gap.
Why had she been sent via commercial freighter to the moon rather than being given a place on a military transport that would have gone direct to the main military orbital habitat where she’d be stationed? It was odd to be dumped down here. It almost felt like being abandoned. Like one last piece of nasty hazing for being a shell-born who had the temerity to think she could qualify as a lancer.
She shook off the thought. It was too expensive to train a lancer pilot only to discard them. Nevertheless, she licked her dry lips nervously as she reached the entrance to the fenced-off area. It was definitely a post, not big enough to be a base. The technician first class on duty sat on a tall stool pulled up to a counter. Apparently she was dozing, eyes closed, her chin resting on her cupped upper hands and lowers folded in her lap.