in the chair next to the window showing
her new home looming in space. The vision was breathtaking: Saturn
was taking up most of the view from the porthole, but the object
truly standing out was Desida Two, sunlight hitting the station
floating silently in space glittering like a precious diamond,
presently flanked by one of Saturn’s smaller moons –
Prometheus.
There was no longer any need
to keep
wearing her skirt suit to ‘look presentable’ now, but Tori decided
to get out of the prim outfit later. She had no idea how long it
would take for the spacecraft to dock at the Main Cargo Hold, and
she didn’t want to miss her opportunity to sneak out of this ship
unnoticed.
Tori shot a look at her baggage containing
lots of twentieth-century casual clothes that she’d previously only
been allowed to wear at home – and even that had been a source of ongoing dispute with
her parents. After all, Ambassador Weiss couldn’t have his servants
blowing the gaff on his daughter dressing in anything else but
standard issue Elitist attire. Having an idealist daughter with a
penchant for nostalgia was highly inappropriate for a man who ruled
the entire Northern Martian Hemisphere with iron fist and zero
tolerance.
“ Airlock closing. No more passengers
are allowed to leave the spacecraft. The next docking point is
Hydroponics,” the intercom droned on.
Tori sniggered softly. It was a true shame
she wasn’t there to see the reporters milling around, looking for
her all over the Boulevard, wondering what had happened to her. The
reason most of them were here was actually completely unrelated to
her – Commander Kelso, head of Desida Two, had recently discovered
a small wormhole close to Saturn, and they were sending in a probe
tonight. It was possible this would be a chance at first contact
with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Most journalists
assumed her presence here meant that Ambassador Weiss wanted to
keep an eye on everything by sending his daughter to the station to
report back to him.
“ Main Cargo Hold: final docking
point,” the robotic voice declared. “All remaining passengers are
requested to disembark. Please take your personal belongings with
you.”
As Tori rolled her suitcase out
of her room and down the hallway, she thou ght back to the few times she’d
visited her maternal grandparents in Great Germany. Back then, the
trains had still been safe to use for the Elite. She’d been on a
long-distance train running between Barcelona and Kiel, and she had
felt free and careless, despite the fact that she’d had to take her
personal belongings with her every time she needed the bathroom due
to petty theft running rampant on those trains. Nobody had been
there to tell her what to do – she’d been her own person. And
that’s what she intended to be once more on this
station.
When the airlock opened with a
hissing sound, Tori was the only one waiting there to get off the ship. She
couldn’t help but smile at her own ingenuity – with a little luck,
the swarm of pressmen wouldn’t even recognize her by the time she
got to the Boulevard with her friends. She’d change as soon as she
got to her quarters. Her hippie clothes would be her
disguise.
The click-clack of her high
heels leaped off the aluminum as her feet hit the floor, the wheels
of her trolley bag following in their wake. The cargo bay was
enormous. Tori looked around her, blinking against the cold
fluorescent strip lights shining down from the ceiling. Where was
she supposed to go? There were no signs or exits anywhere, as far
as she could tell.
When she kept walking, she
suddenly spotted three men in the left corner all the way to the end of the
hangar. They were busy processing cargo containers that had
probably arrived from one of Jupiter’s moons earlier that day. She
could read the Russian labels on the side of one of the containers.
After Russia had been dealt a crippling blow during the Great Wars,
most of the Elite
her new home looming in space. The vision was breathtaking: Saturn
was taking up most of the view from the porthole, but the object
truly standing out was Desida Two, sunlight hitting the station
floating silently in space glittering like a precious diamond,
presently flanked by one of Saturn’s smaller moons –
Prometheus.
There was no longer any need
to keep
wearing her skirt suit to ‘look presentable’ now, but Tori decided
to get out of the prim outfit later. She had no idea how long it
would take for the spacecraft to dock at the Main Cargo Hold, and
she didn’t want to miss her opportunity to sneak out of this ship
unnoticed.
Tori shot a look at her baggage containing
lots of twentieth-century casual clothes that she’d previously only
been allowed to wear at home – and even that had been a source of ongoing dispute with
her parents. After all, Ambassador Weiss couldn’t have his servants
blowing the gaff on his daughter dressing in anything else but
standard issue Elitist attire. Having an idealist daughter with a
penchant for nostalgia was highly inappropriate for a man who ruled
the entire Northern Martian Hemisphere with iron fist and zero
tolerance.
“ Airlock closing. No more passengers
are allowed to leave the spacecraft. The next docking point is
Hydroponics,” the intercom droned on.
Tori sniggered softly. It was a true shame
she wasn’t there to see the reporters milling around, looking for
her all over the Boulevard, wondering what had happened to her. The
reason most of them were here was actually completely unrelated to
her – Commander Kelso, head of Desida Two, had recently discovered
a small wormhole close to Saturn, and they were sending in a probe
tonight. It was possible this would be a chance at first contact
with intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. Most journalists
assumed her presence here meant that Ambassador Weiss wanted to
keep an eye on everything by sending his daughter to the station to
report back to him.
“ Main Cargo Hold: final docking
point,” the robotic voice declared. “All remaining passengers are
requested to disembark. Please take your personal belongings with
you.”
As Tori rolled her suitcase out
of her room and down the hallway, she thou ght back to the few times she’d
visited her maternal grandparents in Great Germany. Back then, the
trains had still been safe to use for the Elite. She’d been on a
long-distance train running between Barcelona and Kiel, and she had
felt free and careless, despite the fact that she’d had to take her
personal belongings with her every time she needed the bathroom due
to petty theft running rampant on those trains. Nobody had been
there to tell her what to do – she’d been her own person. And
that’s what she intended to be once more on this
station.
When the airlock opened with a
hissing sound, Tori was the only one waiting there to get off the ship. She
couldn’t help but smile at her own ingenuity – with a little luck,
the swarm of pressmen wouldn’t even recognize her by the time she
got to the Boulevard with her friends. She’d change as soon as she
got to her quarters. Her hippie clothes would be her
disguise.
The click-clack of her high
heels leaped off the aluminum as her feet hit the floor, the wheels
of her trolley bag following in their wake. The cargo bay was
enormous. Tori looked around her, blinking against the cold
fluorescent strip lights shining down from the ceiling. Where was
she supposed to go? There were no signs or exits anywhere, as far
as she could tell.
When she kept walking, she
suddenly spotted three men in the left corner all the way to the end of the
hangar. They were busy processing cargo containers that had
probably arrived from one of Jupiter’s moons earlier that day. She
could read the Russian labels on the side of one of the containers.
After Russia had been dealt a crippling blow during the Great Wars,
most of the Elite
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