A
Ametheliana
[After Star Wasp 9]
Aashi had the wherewithal after the battle to bring herself to introduce herself to the newcomers to the planet, specifically one that had helped greatly in defending the I'ee. She was more than excited to get to know anybody coming aboard Uso's team and was even more excited to get the opportunity to work alongside them in the future. As such, she wanted to make the first meeting the best and had skimped on the crop tops and shorts she had started wearing on the planet and had worn the clothes she had arrived on the planet with, her violet dress and dark blue jacket that both reached past her knees. She wore tan ankle boots and her forty or so gold chains around her neck and her pale blue tattoos glowed as they peeked out from below her jacket's cuffs and the slits in her dress along her thighs.
As the White Lament hovered down towards the surface of the planet, she stepped back and raised a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the kicked up dust.
The new arrival who approached from the cloud was clad in a Voidwalker suit, which would have left her difficult to identify if it wasn't the only one worn by a 'spacer in this star system that had a pure grey-and-blue colour scheme, with no other accents. This on its own was almost enough to broadcast that she wasn't affiliated with the Free State, though the proof was a subtler message. She approached Aashi wearing a frame backpack, itself plain, grey, and stuffed full to capacity. It didn't seem like a light load even in the planet's somewhat lower than standard gravity, but 'Queenie' made no complaint about the lack of robots to carry it.
Even from just a few feet away, there was little to see inside the reflective visor of her Voidwalker suit but for a vague silhouette. She looked almost as tall as she stood in front of Aashi, her greeter, to size her up; horns not included. The 'Hmm' she reemitted through her helmet's speakers was almost under her breath. For an alleged diplomat, she didn't seem the type to be quick to make friends. "I'm trying not to be surprised," she finally tried, as a joke.
"Try not," Aashi said, a quick smile on her face as she stepped towards the Voidwalker suit-apparelled Freespacer. "On 188604, you don't have to try at all. Things sort of just... come to you. I'm happy to welcome you to the planet. Are you..." Aashi was afraid to ask if the civil engineer was comfortable, as the suit made it apparent she was in a grey area of comfort. After a pause, she said, "...happy to be here?"
A chuckle came from Queenie's visor, followed by a moment of stark silence, before she answered. "I must be desperate for work, if I'm looking for it on a planet. So it must be. I would still say this is better than optimizing a mining fleet, though we'll see how long that survives the blowing sands. I should not discuss much else of how things are proceeding, beyond that conditions are still within tolerance. Though, I would give more credit to the tolerances than I would to the conditions."
Knowing not about the mining fleet, Aashi instead looked to what she did know about, asking quite point-blank, "What is it you are going to be doing on the planet?"
"Construction work," Groundbreaker Eight-Four answered just as bluntly. "I learned that the local leadership still operates out of a ruined palace. That doesn't seem to send the right message." She observes another strict period of silence. "Regardless, I've been surveying the location. With the labour and materials, I should be able to start renovations, soon. It's a simple project to soak my socks, or however that saying goes. More likely, I should be working on infrastructural projects." She took a look at the horizon, but didn't seem to find what she was looking for, shaking her head before long.
"We have a lot of those," Aashi said, knowing there was a real need for a civil engineer around 188604. She was thankful to have Groundbreaker and said as much. "It's good to have you here. Want me to show you what you'll be working with?"
"Sure, why not. You might want to introduce yourself at some point, however, even if my reputation seems to have preceded me. It might also be worth mentioning, I doubt I can walk ten kilometers in these conditions, so I would hope your plan does not require that."
"It's not more than a quarter of a mile away," Aashi replied. "Shouldn't be too hard on you. Besides all that, I am Aashi Nath, a captain and creator of things such as the hotel on this planet. I'm trying to bring some Iromakuanhe technology to the planet and, thus, I wanted to see what you would need from me to make the new Palace all that it could be. The Freespacers have continually had a good relationship with the Iromakuanhe," Aashi said. "I'd love to see that relationship continue."
"As you wish. Let's start walking, then." Groundbreaker Eight-Four gestured for Aashi to show her the way.
When she had begun on her way, Aashi made mention of the Palace again, "When you get started on the Palace, what kind of help do you see yourself needing? For today I can help you design what additions need to be made, but there may be other things that will come up in the future that would be easier to go over now rather than later."
Groundbreaker trudged ahead with short steps, careful to balance her load. "Designs are simple. What I don't have is construction workers, or resources. It's not as though sun-dried mud bricks are suitable for a palace, and the original quarries are mined out. Whether it's concrete, green glass, or whatever other shoddiness one might concoct on this backwater, it still has to come from somewhere, and we need robots to lay it out. Rebuilding the palace to its previous state could take years by the means that are locally popular. Though, I've considered that glass and concrete designs might be rejected. You would know better, having lived here and met with the Empress before."
Aashi began explaining with a sigh and a shake of her head, "Well I have three molecular furnaces that can churn out just about anything, not to mention her fabricator. To expound on that, we also have a scaly race of diggers that punch holes in the planet and with the dirt they dig up, we can feed that into the furnaces and fabricator and get what we need. She has junkers that do most of the nitty gritty work and Ragnarok's men help out a lot. It'll take weeks, maybe months depending on what you're planning to do. Years? No, no. Not at all."
"Junkers and... mercenaries? Sometimes I shouldn't ask questions. I normally work with metal foams, ceramics, and polycarbonates. If those aren't a trouble for your fabricators, even for many tons of material, I suppose our bottleneck will be the labour supply, assuming our goal is to just put the walls up, again. Naturally, I haven't been given any details, I presume the Empress only expects us to rebuild the palace somehow. That was how it went with our last attempt at an alliance. I don't intend on doing anything fancy, like pressurizing the building and adding climate control. The locals aren't fond of airlocks, I know."
"Well why not add those things if we can?" Aashi asked quizzically.
"Increased cost to build, more safety tests, higher maintenance... and at some point we'd have to evacuate. Keeping things simple means the palace stays open from start to finish. If I had my own manufacturing plant, I could produce my own workforce. I wouldn't be concerned about blow-out or maintenance, then, though I couldn't say Uso wouldn't have any cause; in the long term the repairs are for her benefit, and come at her expense."
"The expense is nothing," Aashi said, knowing enough about Uso's finances to hand wave the problem. "Is that your end-goal, to have your own manufacturing plant?"
"Of course not. The purpose of a manufacturing plant is to produce things. I'd be producing construction robots, my goal is to build. There is no end to that goal in sight."
"I can understand that goal. Relate to it, even. Speaking of build, this is what I have created," Aashi said as they came much more into view of the Nath Tower. It was a many-multi-storied cylindrical shape that tapered to a point at the top of it. Shining panels of reinforced glass echoed the sun's shine towards them and outwards. It had a cool, metallic blue color to it and the windows wrapped around it so that they were each curving slightly, not set at perfect ninety degree angles, but ones much smaller and wider the standard that would make up a square or rectangle. At the base was a pair of double doors from which a foyer came sprawling out of, in the center of which was a clear, open space meant for a fountain or mini-monument.
"That's where we'll put a statue of Uso," Aashi said to Groundbreaker. "Please, come with me."
The innards were only bare insofar as the fish tank was left empty and there was a certain lack of smell to the air beyond the ones that come with a newly created building. Besides that, the place was busy with a concierge, a bellhop that came forward immediately to take Groundbreaker's extremely stuffed bag, and a front desk woman, who looked extremely disappointed when she came forward and Aashi spoke tersely to her.
"She's here on the house," Aashi said. To Groundbreaker, she asked, "What floor would you like?"
"...No, thank you," was the Groundbreaker's reply to the man at her backpack. "I'll unpack it myself." It was less her attachment to her toolkit and concern for her microbot hive than for the extra life support systems she'd rigged to her suit to process the local atmosphere. She didn't want to deal with a breach to the tubing right here in the hotel lobby. "Less medication for everyone, that way." She answered Aashi, "Whatever floor would best accomodate my pressure tent."
"I think the top floor would be where I'd most like to put you!" Aashi said ecstatically. "But, first, let's get to business. Follow me." Aashi took her through a hallway that gave a peek of the pool outside and then brought her through a large, formal room and into a back room. She entered a code into the door of that room and they were in a massive space, with overhead lighting, a large closed garage door to one far side, and where three molecular furnaces sat. She trotted over to them, happy to start a new project with them.
"So," she said, inputting a long series of codecs before finishing her statement, "this is what we have now." Out from the machine came a printed version of the ruined state the Palace was in currently. "What do you want to see happen to it? I can input what you desire into a machine and it'll spit out what it will look like. It makes the process smoother, in my mind. I hope it will help you."
The Groundbreaker walked around the device, examining it--or the fascimile of the ruins--very carefully. "I suppose it might help those without mindware. Mouthing is not a good way to convey building designs, however. Is there some higher-bandwidth interface I might have access to, to submit my designs as they are?"
Aashi handed over her data pad and hoped that that would be enough for Groundbreaker.
Queenie poked at the device for a few moments before declaring in a bored tone, "This is not compatible. I am not on any linked network, and they are all encrypted. Only to be expected, I suppose. We'll do this the hard way, it's that or go back to the White Lament. As I mentioned before, I'm not looking to do anything fancy. We can produce better glass than this world ordinarily has, so we could open up the facade with larger windows while restoring it. I don't see much point, I would just as soon fortify it and they could likely benefit from barred windows if they need them at all. I would rebuild the walls to conceal the old facade and add metal doors to the exterior."
Aashi drummed her fingers against the data pad that had been handed back to her and then set to work creating a miniature version of what she thought Groundbreaker meant on the molecular furnace. She held it up to the Freespacer and asked in a lilting tone if it was correct.
"Like this?" Aashi asked. It was a pyramid design of glass and fortifications that covered up the existing walls by having a solid bottom two stories of concrete, while the rest of the pyramid was built with steel piping and glass walls, with exposed floor joints and metal beams under each floor of the six-story palace. Each glass pane was triangular in shape and glossy, meticulously placed in the whole of the pyramid.
"No," Queenie replied. "That seems more like a grand expansion than mere rebuilding. Of course, that doesn't matter if the Empress approves the design. I haven't been given directions, after all. I suppose I could leave the architecture to you, seeing as I'm out of my element by many degrees, here. Freespacers don't build palaces, and we don't build on planets, or try to impress low-tech, baseline human aristocrats. It's quite out of my field of expertise, I would just as soon use the existing walls and lines to convert this 'palace' into a simple fortified bunker, with some allowances for the local urban aesthetics. Windows and an upper floor, those sorts of things."
"Well since you want to leave the architecture to me, we should go ahead with this design. We don't want to include local aesthetics, we want to include USO aesthetics. Which seem to be less bunker-ish and under-done and more sleek, over the top, and grand," Aashi said.
"Fine. For that, it's common to put the tallest possible tower on top, rather than simply a pyramid, but what cause should I have to complain? I'll get no satisfaction from this, but so long as the Hive profits from my service to our ally, that's all I can expect." The Groundbreaker turned back away from the new model to examine the original. "For future projects I will need a way to present my designs, if I must work with others instead of having my own labour force." She traced a finger along the foundation in front of the model. "I'll need to perform another survey now that the footprint has expanded, after that I'll start telling you how we can build this without it sinking, falling over, or spilling mud from the faucets. I'll leave it up to you to decide what all the new space inside will be used for before I work out the details of the plumbing and wiring."
"I'm ready to finalize these details with you soon, then. For now, I'm going to say that we've come to a conclusion on what this will look like and will wait for you to survey in order to know what it will take to build it." She outstretched her hand for Groundbreaker to shake it and said decisively, "USO thanks you."
Queenie returned the shake, in the manner of someone who'd never shook hands before. It was more like the motion one would use to drop a power tool onto a workbench. "We look forward to having the chance to thank USO. Shall I be off to the worksite, then?"
"Yes, yes. I'll show you the way there." Her Matai Skyfish dove out from behind her back and flew forward, out of the room as they exited the hotel. "That," Aashi said, pointing, "Is Osman City, where you'll find the palace nestled somewhere towards that area," she said, pointing again, this time to a more specific area in a sharp, jabbing motion. "There are street gangs and you should avoid Akemi's if you don't want to be roped in to-" She cut herself off by walking forward and saying, "Oh, I should just take you."
"Yes, I daresay the natives aren't likely to admire my countenance, otherwise. I have been to the palace, before, though with your Codebreaker, last time." Indeed, she could see the radio navigation beacon she'd set up there. It was not going to tell her much about roving gangs outside the palace, even if 188604 had a basic satellite network that wouldn't provide much comfort. "We're walking, then? Hmm, I'm sure we can come up with a reason to give the hotel and palace a train route."
"I think there is plenty of reason to undertake that venture," Aashi said, ankle boots hitting the ground as she walked forward.
Aashi had the wherewithal after the battle to bring herself to introduce herself to the newcomers to the planet, specifically one that had helped greatly in defending the I'ee. She was more than excited to get to know anybody coming aboard Uso's team and was even more excited to get the opportunity to work alongside them in the future. As such, she wanted to make the first meeting the best and had skimped on the crop tops and shorts she had started wearing on the planet and had worn the clothes she had arrived on the planet with, her violet dress and dark blue jacket that both reached past her knees. She wore tan ankle boots and her forty or so gold chains around her neck and her pale blue tattoos glowed as they peeked out from below her jacket's cuffs and the slits in her dress along her thighs.
As the White Lament hovered down towards the surface of the planet, she stepped back and raised a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the kicked up dust.
The new arrival who approached from the cloud was clad in a Voidwalker suit, which would have left her difficult to identify if it wasn't the only one worn by a 'spacer in this star system that had a pure grey-and-blue colour scheme, with no other accents. This on its own was almost enough to broadcast that she wasn't affiliated with the Free State, though the proof was a subtler message. She approached Aashi wearing a frame backpack, itself plain, grey, and stuffed full to capacity. It didn't seem like a light load even in the planet's somewhat lower than standard gravity, but 'Queenie' made no complaint about the lack of robots to carry it.
Even from just a few feet away, there was little to see inside the reflective visor of her Voidwalker suit but for a vague silhouette. She looked almost as tall as she stood in front of Aashi, her greeter, to size her up; horns not included. The 'Hmm' she reemitted through her helmet's speakers was almost under her breath. For an alleged diplomat, she didn't seem the type to be quick to make friends. "I'm trying not to be surprised," she finally tried, as a joke.
"Try not," Aashi said, a quick smile on her face as she stepped towards the Voidwalker suit-apparelled Freespacer. "On 188604, you don't have to try at all. Things sort of just... come to you. I'm happy to welcome you to the planet. Are you..." Aashi was afraid to ask if the civil engineer was comfortable, as the suit made it apparent she was in a grey area of comfort. After a pause, she said, "...happy to be here?"
A chuckle came from Queenie's visor, followed by a moment of stark silence, before she answered. "I must be desperate for work, if I'm looking for it on a planet. So it must be. I would still say this is better than optimizing a mining fleet, though we'll see how long that survives the blowing sands. I should not discuss much else of how things are proceeding, beyond that conditions are still within tolerance. Though, I would give more credit to the tolerances than I would to the conditions."
Knowing not about the mining fleet, Aashi instead looked to what she did know about, asking quite point-blank, "What is it you are going to be doing on the planet?"
"Construction work," Groundbreaker Eight-Four answered just as bluntly. "I learned that the local leadership still operates out of a ruined palace. That doesn't seem to send the right message." She observes another strict period of silence. "Regardless, I've been surveying the location. With the labour and materials, I should be able to start renovations, soon. It's a simple project to soak my socks, or however that saying goes. More likely, I should be working on infrastructural projects." She took a look at the horizon, but didn't seem to find what she was looking for, shaking her head before long.
"We have a lot of those," Aashi said, knowing there was a real need for a civil engineer around 188604. She was thankful to have Groundbreaker and said as much. "It's good to have you here. Want me to show you what you'll be working with?"
"Sure, why not. You might want to introduce yourself at some point, however, even if my reputation seems to have preceded me. It might also be worth mentioning, I doubt I can walk ten kilometers in these conditions, so I would hope your plan does not require that."
"It's not more than a quarter of a mile away," Aashi replied. "Shouldn't be too hard on you. Besides all that, I am Aashi Nath, a captain and creator of things such as the hotel on this planet. I'm trying to bring some Iromakuanhe technology to the planet and, thus, I wanted to see what you would need from me to make the new Palace all that it could be. The Freespacers have continually had a good relationship with the Iromakuanhe," Aashi said. "I'd love to see that relationship continue."
"As you wish. Let's start walking, then." Groundbreaker Eight-Four gestured for Aashi to show her the way.
When she had begun on her way, Aashi made mention of the Palace again, "When you get started on the Palace, what kind of help do you see yourself needing? For today I can help you design what additions need to be made, but there may be other things that will come up in the future that would be easier to go over now rather than later."
Groundbreaker trudged ahead with short steps, careful to balance her load. "Designs are simple. What I don't have is construction workers, or resources. It's not as though sun-dried mud bricks are suitable for a palace, and the original quarries are mined out. Whether it's concrete, green glass, or whatever other shoddiness one might concoct on this backwater, it still has to come from somewhere, and we need robots to lay it out. Rebuilding the palace to its previous state could take years by the means that are locally popular. Though, I've considered that glass and concrete designs might be rejected. You would know better, having lived here and met with the Empress before."
Aashi began explaining with a sigh and a shake of her head, "Well I have three molecular furnaces that can churn out just about anything, not to mention her fabricator. To expound on that, we also have a scaly race of diggers that punch holes in the planet and with the dirt they dig up, we can feed that into the furnaces and fabricator and get what we need. She has junkers that do most of the nitty gritty work and Ragnarok's men help out a lot. It'll take weeks, maybe months depending on what you're planning to do. Years? No, no. Not at all."
"Junkers and... mercenaries? Sometimes I shouldn't ask questions. I normally work with metal foams, ceramics, and polycarbonates. If those aren't a trouble for your fabricators, even for many tons of material, I suppose our bottleneck will be the labour supply, assuming our goal is to just put the walls up, again. Naturally, I haven't been given any details, I presume the Empress only expects us to rebuild the palace somehow. That was how it went with our last attempt at an alliance. I don't intend on doing anything fancy, like pressurizing the building and adding climate control. The locals aren't fond of airlocks, I know."
"Well why not add those things if we can?" Aashi asked quizzically.
"Increased cost to build, more safety tests, higher maintenance... and at some point we'd have to evacuate. Keeping things simple means the palace stays open from start to finish. If I had my own manufacturing plant, I could produce my own workforce. I wouldn't be concerned about blow-out or maintenance, then, though I couldn't say Uso wouldn't have any cause; in the long term the repairs are for her benefit, and come at her expense."
"The expense is nothing," Aashi said, knowing enough about Uso's finances to hand wave the problem. "Is that your end-goal, to have your own manufacturing plant?"
"Of course not. The purpose of a manufacturing plant is to produce things. I'd be producing construction robots, my goal is to build. There is no end to that goal in sight."
"I can understand that goal. Relate to it, even. Speaking of build, this is what I have created," Aashi said as they came much more into view of the Nath Tower. It was a many-multi-storied cylindrical shape that tapered to a point at the top of it. Shining panels of reinforced glass echoed the sun's shine towards them and outwards. It had a cool, metallic blue color to it and the windows wrapped around it so that they were each curving slightly, not set at perfect ninety degree angles, but ones much smaller and wider the standard that would make up a square or rectangle. At the base was a pair of double doors from which a foyer came sprawling out of, in the center of which was a clear, open space meant for a fountain or mini-monument.
"That's where we'll put a statue of Uso," Aashi said to Groundbreaker. "Please, come with me."
The innards were only bare insofar as the fish tank was left empty and there was a certain lack of smell to the air beyond the ones that come with a newly created building. Besides that, the place was busy with a concierge, a bellhop that came forward immediately to take Groundbreaker's extremely stuffed bag, and a front desk woman, who looked extremely disappointed when she came forward and Aashi spoke tersely to her.
"She's here on the house," Aashi said. To Groundbreaker, she asked, "What floor would you like?"
"...No, thank you," was the Groundbreaker's reply to the man at her backpack. "I'll unpack it myself." It was less her attachment to her toolkit and concern for her microbot hive than for the extra life support systems she'd rigged to her suit to process the local atmosphere. She didn't want to deal with a breach to the tubing right here in the hotel lobby. "Less medication for everyone, that way." She answered Aashi, "Whatever floor would best accomodate my pressure tent."
"I think the top floor would be where I'd most like to put you!" Aashi said ecstatically. "But, first, let's get to business. Follow me." Aashi took her through a hallway that gave a peek of the pool outside and then brought her through a large, formal room and into a back room. She entered a code into the door of that room and they were in a massive space, with overhead lighting, a large closed garage door to one far side, and where three molecular furnaces sat. She trotted over to them, happy to start a new project with them.
"So," she said, inputting a long series of codecs before finishing her statement, "this is what we have now." Out from the machine came a printed version of the ruined state the Palace was in currently. "What do you want to see happen to it? I can input what you desire into a machine and it'll spit out what it will look like. It makes the process smoother, in my mind. I hope it will help you."
The Groundbreaker walked around the device, examining it--or the fascimile of the ruins--very carefully. "I suppose it might help those without mindware. Mouthing is not a good way to convey building designs, however. Is there some higher-bandwidth interface I might have access to, to submit my designs as they are?"
Aashi handed over her data pad and hoped that that would be enough for Groundbreaker.
Queenie poked at the device for a few moments before declaring in a bored tone, "This is not compatible. I am not on any linked network, and they are all encrypted. Only to be expected, I suppose. We'll do this the hard way, it's that or go back to the White Lament. As I mentioned before, I'm not looking to do anything fancy. We can produce better glass than this world ordinarily has, so we could open up the facade with larger windows while restoring it. I don't see much point, I would just as soon fortify it and they could likely benefit from barred windows if they need them at all. I would rebuild the walls to conceal the old facade and add metal doors to the exterior."
Aashi drummed her fingers against the data pad that had been handed back to her and then set to work creating a miniature version of what she thought Groundbreaker meant on the molecular furnace. She held it up to the Freespacer and asked in a lilting tone if it was correct.
"Like this?" Aashi asked. It was a pyramid design of glass and fortifications that covered up the existing walls by having a solid bottom two stories of concrete, while the rest of the pyramid was built with steel piping and glass walls, with exposed floor joints and metal beams under each floor of the six-story palace. Each glass pane was triangular in shape and glossy, meticulously placed in the whole of the pyramid.
"No," Queenie replied. "That seems more like a grand expansion than mere rebuilding. Of course, that doesn't matter if the Empress approves the design. I haven't been given directions, after all. I suppose I could leave the architecture to you, seeing as I'm out of my element by many degrees, here. Freespacers don't build palaces, and we don't build on planets, or try to impress low-tech, baseline human aristocrats. It's quite out of my field of expertise, I would just as soon use the existing walls and lines to convert this 'palace' into a simple fortified bunker, with some allowances for the local urban aesthetics. Windows and an upper floor, those sorts of things."
"Well since you want to leave the architecture to me, we should go ahead with this design. We don't want to include local aesthetics, we want to include USO aesthetics. Which seem to be less bunker-ish and under-done and more sleek, over the top, and grand," Aashi said.
"Fine. For that, it's common to put the tallest possible tower on top, rather than simply a pyramid, but what cause should I have to complain? I'll get no satisfaction from this, but so long as the Hive profits from my service to our ally, that's all I can expect." The Groundbreaker turned back away from the new model to examine the original. "For future projects I will need a way to present my designs, if I must work with others instead of having my own labour force." She traced a finger along the foundation in front of the model. "I'll need to perform another survey now that the footprint has expanded, after that I'll start telling you how we can build this without it sinking, falling over, or spilling mud from the faucets. I'll leave it up to you to decide what all the new space inside will be used for before I work out the details of the plumbing and wiring."
"I'm ready to finalize these details with you soon, then. For now, I'm going to say that we've come to a conclusion on what this will look like and will wait for you to survey in order to know what it will take to build it." She outstretched her hand for Groundbreaker to shake it and said decisively, "USO thanks you."
Queenie returned the shake, in the manner of someone who'd never shook hands before. It was more like the motion one would use to drop a power tool onto a workbench. "We look forward to having the chance to thank USO. Shall I be off to the worksite, then?"
"Yes, yes. I'll show you the way there." Her Matai Skyfish dove out from behind her back and flew forward, out of the room as they exited the hotel. "That," Aashi said, pointing, "Is Osman City, where you'll find the palace nestled somewhere towards that area," she said, pointing again, this time to a more specific area in a sharp, jabbing motion. "There are street gangs and you should avoid Akemi's if you don't want to be roped in to-" She cut herself off by walking forward and saying, "Oh, I should just take you."
"Yes, I daresay the natives aren't likely to admire my countenance, otherwise. I have been to the palace, before, though with your Codebreaker, last time." Indeed, she could see the radio navigation beacon she'd set up there. It was not going to tell her much about roving gangs outside the palace, even if 188604 had a basic satellite network that wouldn't provide much comfort. "We're walking, then? Hmm, I'm sure we can come up with a reason to give the hotel and palace a train route."
"I think there is plenty of reason to undertake that venture," Aashi said, ankle boots hitting the ground as she walked forward.
