Chapter 25: 25. Surprises

"When you said it was the economic capital of the sector, I assumed it was another tech world," I said as I stared out the windows. "I pictured it like our last stop, but bigger or busier."

Piper grinned, "Nope. If you believe their propaganda it's because this was the first world in the sector to be colonized."

After a second she added, "I don't know if that's true or not, but they do throw a hell of a Founders Day party every year to celebrate."

Ecclestone's World had only one large continent, the rest of it was mostly ocean and a few much smaller landmasses. That big continent was almost completely coloured with the browns and greens of an agricultural world. It actually reminded me of my home-world. The shape of the continent was wrong, but the colours were right. So was the lack of big cities.

Like my home-world, there was only one large city on the whole planet. It was both the planetary capital and the main port. It was located in the middle of the continent.

Finding out that the so-called capital of the sector was an agricultural planet was only the first surprise.

When we came out of jump and started our approach I was expecting this to be like the last world in terms of dealing with the port authority folks. Considering this world was basically in the middle of the sector and supposed to be the economic capital, I knew the port would probably be really busy. I expected us to waste a couple hours in holding patterns and awaiting permission to advance to the next slot in the descent queue.

At least I got part of that right, the space around this world was busy. There were several dozen ships and a couple dozen orbital platforms encircling the world. The most impressive were a trio of massive bulk freighters in low orbit, each being serviced by about a dozen tenders.

Each freighter was bigger than the biggest military ships I'd seen. They could easily dwarf a frigate like the Hammersmith. And there was a steady stream of orbital lift ships hauling big cargo containers up to fill the giant freighters' cavernous holds.

Sarah and I both just stared speechless at all the activity going on out the windows. Jenny was quiet too as she stood watching from the back of the cockpit.

The Demeter was already closer than high orbit and we hadn't spoken with the port yet, which was another surprise.

We were flying past and around other ships. We took a detour around a couple derelicts, a pair of wrecked ships surrounded by a cloud of debris. That wasn't very reassuring, as a very clear and obvious reminder that collisions in space were messy and usually fatal. It was also another surprise that nobody bothered to clear them away.

In fact nobody attempted to contact us at all until we passed within about a kilometer of one of the huge freighters. The comm came to life and a young-sounding male voice called, "Inbound light freighter, you're heading towards a protected zone. Please identify."

Our captain altered course slightly away from the big freighter and its tenders. She also handled the communications, since she didn't want anyone on this world to know about me and Sarah and Jenny yet.

"This is MV Demeter inbound for Port Ecclestone. Would appreciate a landing assignment."

After a few seconds pause the young man responded, "Confirmed, MV Demeter. Pad two-twelve should be available, it's all yours. Avoid the exclusion zones and have a safe landing."

That seemed to be the extent of their interest in us, which was another big surprise. No holding patterns, no landing vector, not even a clearance to land. Just a landing assignment that 'should' be available, and a vague warning to avoid some areas.

I glanced at Piper, but she just shrugged and said "Welcome to the frontier."

After that she nosed the ship over and started taking us down.

As we headed into the atmosphere Sarah asked, "What are the exclusion zones? What happens if you enter one?"

Piper replied, "Just like they sound, they're demarcated areas we're not allowed to fly into or through. As for what happens if you wander into one, that depends."

"Depends on what?" Jenny asked warily.

The captain shrugged, "Depends which exclusion zone, how fast you enter it, what direction you're going, and how bored the planetary defence operators are at the time. You might get a warning, you might get a fine, or you might get targeted by an orbital rail gun. Nothing like a hundred kilo sphere of tungsten through your cockpit at hypervelocity to ruin your day."

"Oh..." The AI didn't sound any more reassured than I did by our captain's answer.

Our drop into the atmosphere went about the same as it did at the last world. Maybe a little worse, since we were in a steeper descent. When we hit the atmosphere the ship shuddered and bounced, and there were all the same groans and creaks from the old craft. It was basically a white-knuckle ride all the way down for me, till we finally levelled off and started flying a few hundred meters over crops and fields.

Despite pulling out of our drop I remained on edge, between the whine of the ship's engines and the occasional shudder or jolt that still rattled the deck every now and then.

And at one point we passed by a large crater surrounded by blackened, scorched ground. It was obvious even to my untrained eyes that was the resting place of a ship that didn't quite make the port. And I couldn't help wondering if it ended up in that state because of mechanical failure, pilot error, or a bored planetary defence operator with an itchy trigger-finger.

The fact that the crater and burned ground seemed relatively fresh wasn't very calming either.

"How do you know where to go?" Sarah asked. "Without an assigned landing vector, I mean?"

Piper replied, "Experience. I've been here often enough over the past few decades, I've pretty much got the port layout and exclusion zones memorized. Now and then the city changes things up, but that's where experience comes into play."

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She added, "You can get them to transmit a landing vector but they charge extra for that. It's actually cheaper to buy some flight plans and port data on the black market and program it into your nav system. Or just memorize it."

By that point the city was looming large ahead of us.

There were some tall buildings towards the middle, but on the whole the urban centre was more of a wide sprawling layout rather than a tall tightly-packed design. The port was itself a large area to the south of the city core. Even from this distance I could see dozens of ships of various shapes and sizes on the ground. Further south were some large buildings I took to be warehouses rather than a passenger port facility.

As we neared the edge of the metropolis I could see what looked like a chaotic mess of air traffic. Most were grav-sleds of every shape and size, but over the port there were ships launching or landing every now and then. There was even a squadron of fighters flying in formation over the city.

The most common ships I saw launching and landing in front of us were the orbital cargo lifts. Unlike us, the lift ships were going straight up and down from the port to the waiting freighters in orbit. They seemed to have an entire quarter of the spaceport reserved for them. They'd land and take on cargo and fuel, then lift off again as soon as they were full.

"The main exclusion zone is over the city itself," Piper mentioned while she remained focused on flying the ship. "The whole planet's economy relies on selling food to the rest of the sector and importing tech and other goods from the people they sell food to, so the airspace over the port is reserved for those cargo lifters. They follow tightly-controlled flight plans, which is why they can operate in close proximity to each other without risk of collision. Any other ship that's not part of that operation has to stay clear, and if anyone strays too close they risk getting shot down at worst, or heavily fined at best."

She continued, "Airspace over the rest of the city is also restricted, ships have to come and go from orbit out over the plains well away from the city. Mainly because they don't want to have some neighbourhood obliterated because a ship had a malfunction or bumped into something else."

Sarah asked, "Surely some of those problems could be solved by having better port control? Rather than just warn people away by threat of orbital rail gun. They didn't have problems like this at Rolandan-2."

Our captain shrugged, "They'd have to hire more port controllers to administer that sort of thing. That would eat into somebody's profit."

She added, "That's the same sort of philosophy they use when it comes to law on the ground. There are some laws, mostly around property and theft. And the folks who enforce those laws tend to be on private payrolls, so they're only concerned with protecting the rights and property of the people who pay them."

I glanced at the captain and asked, "How's this planet governed? I'd be asking if it was governed at all, but there must be some form of authority organizing the defences and administering the port, right?"

Piper replied, "I think it's what you'd call a plutocracy? There's a governor, but ultimately it's ruled by a handful of rich folks. Or their corporate proxies. Bottom line is, the people who make the laws and the people who enforce those laws all work for the same group of rich folks. Money keeps it all rolling. If you get in trouble with the law in some way that doesn't involve dying, getting out of trouble involves paying the right bribes or 'fines' to fix things."

That was the end of the conversation for now, as we got closer to the port our captain had to really focus on what she was doing.

It looked like the port was divided into different sections. A passenger-facility was in the 'one-hundred' section that was closest to the city, but we were landing in the 'two-hundred' area which was towards the west end. A 'three-hundred' area was on the east side, and the 'four-hundred' section was entirely taken up by the cargo lift operation.

Piper guided the ship into a tight circle over the west end of the port, and I spotted an area with the number two-twelve marked out on the ground. The landing area wasn't even paved, it was all just hard-packed dirt.

Our engines kicked up a dust storm as the ship settled onto the ground, then I felt the soft jolt through the ship as we touched down.

We spent a minute or so going through the landing checklist, then finally the four of us left the cockpit and gathered in the ship's mess.

Piper was in her 'work' outfit again, with the military boots and pants, a tight top and black leather jacket. And like at the mining colony her pistol and knife were both hanging from her belt again, along with a couple spare magazines.

This time Sarah and I were both similarly dressed.

The cute engineer wore a pair of grey pants and boots that were sort of military-inspired but a little too fashionable to be actual military. She had a loose white t-shirt on top, and a large grey jacket hanging open over than. A matching grey cap on her head kept her long blonde hair out of her face. And she wore a black nylon belt with her pistol and spare magazines at her hip.

I was wearing tight black pants and black leather ankle-boots, a grey scoop-neck top and a black vest over that. And like the others, I wore a belt with my pistol and spare magazines. I had no confidence I'd be able to use the gun, or that I'd be any good with it. I was only wearing it because Piper said so, and I hoped she was right that it was meant to be a deterrent.

"I don't expect to be too long," our captain said. "A couple hours perhaps. I want all of you to stay up here, avoid the holds. I'll have my commlink with me, Jenny you know the frequency. I'll call if anything comes up."

She added, "Once I've taken care of business, then we can talk about some shore leave. Assuming I haven't managed to talk you out of leaving the ship entirely, there's some nice areas that are safe to visit."

Sarah smiled, "I'm still interested in having a look around. Though I think I'd prefer to do it with the two of you, rather than wandering around by myself."

Piper responded, "All right. I'll go deal with the customer, then I'll take you two on a little tour of the place."

She got about two steps before Jenny spoke up.

The AI had a worried look on her face as she said, "Er, captain? There is an armoured grav-sled hovering outside near the cockpit, and six men armed with submachine-guns are taking up position in front of the cargo ramp."

"And you are being hailed," she added a half second later. "Someone named Mr. Lebeau is demanding you lower the ramp and open the airlocks."

Our captain sighed, "Crap."