Part 1 – Arrival
I tucked in to the landing pattern at Hugh Town, St Mary’s, just the way the groundstation control system told me. Naturally none of it was my own work, though I reckon I could have done a fair job if they’d let me. But no, the Ziggurat class persona at the port talked with Slate, the Stele loaded in to my spaceship, and it was all done properly. By the book.
I unbuckled, and waited while the two machines chattered for a while – a few nanos of content, a handful of bits of payment, and a gazillion security protocol bytes surrounding both of these. It didn’t take long, not really. Not when you reckoned it against a few weeks of low-gravity transfer.
My shore bag was ready. I grinned while I waited, having all the usual thoughts. If I closed my eyes to the look of the spaceport, my ears to the mechanical hum of the ship, and my memory to the stark vacuum of the asteroid, I could be a traveller from any age of Earth’s history, waiting to be allowed to set foot in a new port. Always the wait at the end of the trip.
The Ziggurat was satisfied with what it found out, and sent out one of the bubble cars from the dome. The click as the car interlocked resounded through the whole of my sloop, the Harbour Porpoise. It was designed to be excessively loud – you really wanted to know that a proper connection had been made, when there was all that airlessness just outside. No matter what your onboard Stele told you, or the groundstation Ziggurat confirmed, there was nothing like a satisfying metallic clank to reassure you.
Some people I knew still wore a suit for the bubble car ride. But you got derisive looks from the porters, and it wasn’t the image I wanted them to see. I left my suit and lid fastened in their clips, slung the shore bag over my shoulder, and cycled through into the bubble just in street clothes.
The car whined a little as it disengaged and started to trundle back to the dome. Electric then, standard model, probably older than I was. It looked weary, patched here and there, well serviced but with generic components that would have long since invalidated the warranty. Getting new equipment out here must be a slow task.
Far from the Spaceports Description:
Quick wits and loyalty confront high-tech crime in space
Welcome to the Scilly Isles, a handful of asteroids bunched together in space, well beyond the orbit of Mars. This remote and isolated habitat is home to a diverse group of human settlers, and a whole flock of parakeets. But earth-based financial regulator ECRB suspects that it’s also home to serious large scale fraud, and the reputation of the islands comes under threat.
Enter Mitnash Thakur and his virtual partner Slate, sent out from Earth to investigate. Their ECRB colleagues are several weeks away at their ship’s best speed, and even message signals take an hour for the round trip. Slate and Mitnash are on their own, until they can work out who on Scilly to trust. How will they cope when the threat gets personal?
