Arrivals
June 2024
--m(^0^)m-- Wot, no sig?
June 2024
Quote:Frigga was huge inside.________________________________
The few who disembarked from the transport were swallowed in the vastness of the landing bay, made small by the kilometre-long bay. Dozens of small vehicles and spacecraft had been parked, chained down to the floor by their owners.
Then Dave saw the helicopters.
"A Hind D, what's a Russian Gunship doing here?"
It wasn't unique, Markas saw. There were at least 5 Russian attack helicopters. Three with a pair of coaxial rotors, and two that looked almost normal. There were a couple of Bolitho's in the mix - one marked as belonging to the Militia proper, various BAT products of various age, including an A-Wing that seemed to drip cuteness and a number of mundane combat aircraft given the wave-treatment.
And cars. They went in for cars in a big way.
"Well, this is different," he said aloud, taking a big deep breath of dry, cold air.
"Oh wow!, somebody actually waved one of those!"
Skippy, was already running towards the collection of parked cars., zeroing in on what looked like a genuine old DMC-12. Still in stainless steel.
Yume' sighed, slowly shaking her head. "He's going to have a cargasm."
Kay was busy struggling with three wheeled suitcases, cursing to herself as she pulled them across the ground. She was already starting to sweat, panting. "How far is it up to the accommodation block again?"
"Ten kilometres," Markas said. "I think."
She looked around, eyes scanning the parked cars. "There has to be some sort of shuttle?"
Yume' clasped her hands behind her back, stretching herself after the long journey. She took a long deep breath, closing her eyes for a moment and trying to imagine she wasn't somewhere where the paint on the walls was being slowly eaten by rust.
"Reminds me of home," she said. "Old home, back on Earth."
The transport was still being unloaded behind them, a few other passengers taking their first steps into their new home, while cargo carriers towed loaded pallets down a loading ramp. Above, a freshly painted sign on a restored gantry crane welcomed them to Frigga.
It was busy.
It still felt dead in a way Markas couldn't put his finger on. The noises of life around the transport seemed to get swallowed into the cavernous landing bay. He couldn't even hear Yumeko's footsteps, despite her walking right beside him
Skippy was busy admiring the DeLorean.
Markas thought he heard the roar of an engine in the distance
They all knew what they were supposed to do on arrival at a new settlement. The local administration knew they were coming - all they had to do was register their arrival and pick up their apartment keys, either from the departing owner, or the city itself. It was a well known procedure - anyone who'd moved between Crystal Cities had gone through it - but they had no idea how they were expected to do that when the usual arrivals office wasn't waiting for them.
He glanced around, relieved to see that they weren't the only ones feeling a little confused. The dozen or so passengers who'd made the trip with them
"Bus stop," said JD, pointing towards one of maybe a dozen hatches. "How quaint."
Someone had even restored an old diesel transit bus to go with it - of the sort that exploded when the speed dropped below fifty miles an hour. The aluminium skin had been polished to a shine, marred only by a patina of grey dust collecting along the seams. 77 Frigga Arrival Road Transport Service was proudly painted on the side.
Only Skippy laughed.
Yumeko scowled. "Juvenile."
The others could barely suppress the smirk on their faces as the bus squealed to a halt in front of them. A pair of doors folded open to reveal the driver.
"Hey all. Free bus up to the main block, unless you want to walk."
The driver was grinning at them, leaning possessively over the steering wheel. He wore a garish blue hawaiian shirt and a pair of shorts, matched to a pair of sandals and a peaked cap with polished brass eagle at the centre.
It was Yume's turn to giggle.
It'd taken less than 6 months for the newest entry to the Crystal Millenium to gain something of a reputation. Nehallenia was home to the Gillespies - under supervision, while Azubajuban was for people who just wanted to live somewhere quiet and out of the way. Frigga was the halfway house between the Millenium and the Gearheads of Mars - the place where the hotrodders and gunbunnies had the space to really indulge their passions.
"Thanks man," said JD.
"No bother," He grinned at him, giving the dashboard a gentle pat. "Any excuse to drive the beast."
Taking a bus should not have been as surreal experience as it was. An old American transit bus - restored - way out in the main belt. It boomed through the tunnel, rock walls flashing by outside the windows. The whine of a blower mixed with the humm of the tyres on the road and the squeaks and rattles of the suspension underneath the floor. It smelled of hot rubber and diesel fumes, mixed with pine disinfectant and somebody's feet - like all buses. It clattered over imperfections in the road, bumps sending shockwaves through hard suspension and up through the back seats they'd claimed for themselves. A poster on a bulkhead carried an advertisement for the movie Speed.
It felt so completely out of place, so far out in space.
A motorcycle screamed past at full throttle, drowning out the bus' engine. Two more followed it, punching past before disappearing into the darkness ahead.
"This is awesome!" Skippy giggled. "How much does it cost to ship one out here?"
"More than you could afford, probably," grumbled Kay.
"We're going to need some way of getting around," said Markas. "If our job's parked in the landing bay."
"Car Pool," suggested Yume.
"I want a bike," said Skippy. "Lighter to ship, for one thing." A grin split his face. "They have that land speed bike here. Of course, I was working Motorcon weekend...."
"Too dangerous," JD cut him off. "For me anyway."
"Expensive," Sighed Kay. Unfortunately..... It looked exciting. The whole place looked so exciting.
The bus began to slow, driver user the gearbox and engine to coast. A crunch of gears caused everyone to wince in sympathy. The driver fiddled with the gearstick, knocking it back up, then gave it a shoeful of diesel before finally slamming it down into gear with a shudder that caused the windows to rattle in their frames.
They came to a halt with a squeal of brakes in what seemed like a small carpark. The motorcycles had been parked up, chained to a rail that'd been freshly installed to the wall. The concrete setting it in place was clearly fresh.
There was also a car wash. That had to be tough on the filtration system. Beyond that, stacks of StellOil drums and pumps for petrol, diesel and kerosene. A small card reader took parment.
They were parked alongside a dirty replica of a Warthog, two crates in the rear cargo bay sealed with red PEPPER export labels. Someone was selling weapons.
"Here we are!" The driver called out "Accommodation block."
The doors opened and thy gathered their luggage. No cash made leaving tips a little difficult.
"Thanks," said Yume, offering a bright smile. The others just gave their thanks before stepping off the bus. The looked around, the smell of petrol and exhaust fumes tickling the inside of their nostrils before sliding down and coating the back of their throats.
There were no signs, no obvious offices, no directions explaining where to go beyond the car park.
Markas turned back to the driver. "Hey! Where's the residents registration office?"
"There isn't one," he smiled back at him. "Nobody bothered to do it. Go up a level to ops, someone there will sort you out."
"Thanks man,"
They shared a bewildered look with each other, wondering what sort of people would've prioritised fuel over something as basic as residential offices. Not only that, but seemed vaguely proud of it.
"They certainly earned their reputation," said Yumeko.
Markas sighed "Whoever finds ops first sorts it out for the rest of us - then we meet up somewhere obvious in an hour."
"I found a map!" Skippy announced.
"This is stupid," said Kay, watching the Attacked Mystifaction Police's sole Police cruiser burble past. It was an old American machine, a Ford with crash bars on the front and spotlights attached to the wing mirrors. It was an utter anachronism... it wasn't even an anachronism, it was almost a parachronism.
It came from another world, already a decade distant for all five of them.
Around the crystal cities, they used more modern electric vehicles, suited to some of the tighter passages and limited ventilation capabilities. While that cruiser violated clean air regulations in most mundane cities.
The Warthog behind them roared to life, it's driver not really sparing the petrol as she backed it out of it's parking space, before roaring off down the tunnel trailing sweet petrol fumes.
All five of them exchanged dubious looks, wondering for a moment if it hadn't all been some sort of poorly executed candid-camera prank - a big long expensive joke with a terrible punchline
"I'm Jet Jaguar. We've a lot to talk about."
They all turned to face the source of the voice. She was smiling at them. And she definitely did not look like another woman in sculpted Stingray armour. It didn't take long for Markas to realise that no human would ever fit inside that suit.
She offered him a metal hand to shake.
He gripped tight. She didn't. Blue eyes seemed kind, but they failed to hide the strange tension in her body - as if standing there was terribly difficult.
"I guess we do. Like where we're all supposed to stay."
She nodded. "I'll show you up so. "
-----
It was hers.
According to the tablet, the apartment was officially hers. It seemed excessive in a way Lun couldn't quite put her finger on. She was forced to wonder what she'd done to deserve it all. She was forced to wonder what was expected of her in return.
No society gave anything for free. Communism or Capitalism, nobody got anything for nothing.
The good Communist was expected to give according to their ability, and take according to their need - but no more. She'd been handed an equipped kitchen, living room with furniture and television, a fitted bathroom and a single bedroom, with a single bed, waiting for her. It was large enough that her footsteps on the tiled floor echoed off the walls.
And more than that.
It wasn't the property of the People of Frigga. It all belonged to her.
It seemed wrong somehow. At least, it felt wrong. It felt like being asked to wear a style of dress that she just didn't like. Even when it'd been explained to her that it was their duty to give her the best potential start in life, it still felt woefully unfair.
It was almost insulting.
She'd offered to crew the ship. That was, after all, what she knew how to do. She was a pilot and a sailor. Her uniform was carefully stored in a wardrobe in a plastic bag, telnyashka and all. They'd also asked that she contribute to general maintenance as needed.
It still seemed somewhat easy.
There were no committees. No commission. No party. No-one to ask what was expected, or what had to be done. No self-serving nomenklatura bureaucrats. No empty decorations. No Apparatchiks.
Nobody really seemed interested in running the place at all.
She recalled how the new civilisation that was the Soviet Union had been eaten alive from the inside by human nature. It'd been doomed the moment the goals of the party ceased being the promotion of communism, but merely the protection of the party and support of it's privilege.
And so Lun lay in a dockside for 20 years - a microcosm of the Soviet Union built out of aluminium and steel. The passion and belief that fuelled her initial creation, swallowed up by politicism and nepotism and petty posturing bureaucrats, by grift and graft and old men whose vision didn't extend beyond empty medals, certificates and Party Politics until all that was left was stagnation and decay.
She thought a great deal on the subject, taking the time to note her ideas down, forming her manifesto overnight. Her mind was far more than human,
But she knew not to speak out loud yet. First, she would test her ideas.
She would start with a pick-axe. And her passion.
-----
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