THUMP THUMP THUMP

"Oi. Wake up!"

"Nghh..?"

Aisling groggily opened her eyes.

"What is it?"

"Riiiise and SHINE!" yelled Rimjob's voice. "We're burning daylight! And we don't have much of it!"

"What time is it?" she asked, sliding out of the bed.

"655 hours!"

"Why are you waking me up at 7:00?"

"Because it's only a 22 hour day! Everyone else is awake already. I gave you a sleep in."

"Not really..." She moaned. "This is early morning on Brink."

"Aww, shut up," said Nathan from behind the door. "We've got to find a shuttle. It ain't gonna find itself."

"Anyway, I've got something to give you," said Rimjob. "Can I come in?"

"Sure."

Rimjob opened the door, came inside. "Okay, serious time. Me and Daniek were up at one o'clock last night, the Shikinami dropped us presents. Here's yours."

He handed Aisling a smart pistol, a universal holster and a few spare magazines.

"Hide it. Mags in your pockets. Stick the pistol in the holster and then strap it to your body. It doesn't matter where, as long as the pistol can't be seen through your clothes. Strap it to your legs, your back... to be honest, I reckon the back is the best. Velcro the strap around your stomach and ribs, stick the pistol on, shirt on over top. Easy." He left the room with a wave. "Dinner's downstai- I mean, breakfast. Come on."

Aisling shut the door, locked it, dropped her pajamas to the ground and looked into a mirror.

It's going to be hot outside. We're walking all day. And I have to conceal a pistol on me.

And then we find a shuttle. I go to Sorian with team E and steal a fleet for the IMC, like I promised to do. Then I take a shuttle back here and warp back home to Brink. Marvelous.

Why did I agree to this plan?

A knock on the door brought her back to reality. "Coming?" asked Nathan.

"Give me a minute!"

I could wear a skirt, put the holster on my thighs, she thought, touching her leg with the smart pistol. Pistol would be between my legs... ugh. I don't even like skirts, though. And if I trip or fall, someone might see the pistol.

I could tie the holster to my bra, and have the pistol hang under my boobs... She turned sideways, looked into the mirror. It's almost unnoticeable.

Wait, hold on. Or I could just strap it to my hips, under my cargo pants. Three-quarter pants... yeah, should be just high enough to be practical in this heat.

Yeah, lets do that.

She left her pajamas on the floor, found a pair of clean cargo pants. Strapped the holster to her side, over her panties, then pulled the cargo pants up over the gun. Hung a shirt over her shoulders. Sure, her hips might get a bit hot. But there wasn't anywhere else she could put it.

"Jeez, you take a while."

She flung the door open. "Happy?"

Nathan smirked. "About time. C'mon, breakfast downstairs."

"Ohayou gozaimasu, goshuujin-sama!" sang a maid, entering Sophia's room to wake her.

"Huh?" Sophia stared at the maid. "What does that mean?"

"Good morning, Ma'am! I thought you were from New Tokyo, so -"

"Oh, no. I'm just a contractor, I don't actually come from there."

"I see, Ma'am. May I ask where you come from?"

"I'm from a small planet, even smaller than this one. You probably wouldn't have heard of it."

"Oh, very well."

Sophia smiled. "It's lovely to be off the ship, though. The atmosphere was too thick there. Here, it's almost right."

"How interesting!"

"So... when will breakfast be served?"

"Our chefs are preparing it for you as we speak, Ma'am. How does bacon, eggs and croissants sound?"

"Fantastic. I look forward to it!"

She left the room and waddled down a corridor towards the bathroom.

"Oh, hey."

She turned. Saw George the Pilot leave his room.

"Hey..."

"You're up early."

"Well... I grew up on a planet like this. With smaller days."

"Oh yeah? Can't say the same, I was born on an exoplanet."

"Ah... then, you're up really early."

"It's my job to look after you guys," he said, smiling through tired eyes. Leaned in close to her ear, whispered. "I was up late last night intercepting a 'package'. Here's yours."

He slipped a smart pistol, holster and four magazines into her hand. The only things that Venice 3's customs would have raised eyebrows over.

"Strap it under your clothes. Keep it hidden, use it only if necessary."

"Yes! I mean, -"

"Good." He closed his eyes, stepped away from her. "Well. I'm going to sleep for half an hour. I'll see you later..."

"See ya." She walked past him, was about to step into the bathroom.

"Ms. Hammond."

She froze.

An hour later, Aisling, Nathan, Philip and the two and a half platoons of IMC soldiers were on the streets in plainclothes, struggling through the piercing heat. Venice 3 was so close to Solvenice that, despite Venice 3's thin atmosphere, the temperature still regularly hit 35 degrees Celsius (Author's note: 0 degrees Celsius is freezing, 100 degrees Celsius is boiling. 10 degrees Celsius is a cold day, and, where I live, 30 degrees Celsius is a hot day. 40 degrees Celsius is approaching Earth's highest natural temperature. 37.5 degrees Celsius is the average human's core body temperature and it makes for a sweltering hot day. Think, "damn, we might have to shut down schools for the day or else students might get heatstroke" level hot.).

The thin atmosphere made dehydration especially dangerous. Water evaporated at a lower temperature from normal. Sweat would evaporate easier and at a lower temperature, forcing people to consume more water than normal to keep themselves cool. This turned out to be the reason for the salty water at breakfast – if they hadn't have had salts and minerals with the water they would have lost all their salts through their sweat. Consuming salts and minerals at meal times meant they could drink unsalted water through the day.

"Ugh," groaned Philip as he emptied his water-bottle for the third time. "I'm out again."

"Pilots, do you seen any water fountains around?" asked Officer Bryan Macross over his radio. "Yet another empty bottle."

Daniek sighed from a nearby rooftop. "Affirmative, three hundred metres, two o'clock. Over."

"Thanks. We're sending someone over to fill his bottle up. Keep an eye on him, please. Over."

(Author's note: Wilco is short for Will Comply. Means "I will comply with the orders you have given me."

"Wilco. And, no problem. It's what I'm here for."

"That bloody sun, though..."

"You think you've got it hard? I'm in a cloaking suit!"

"Aren't the suits cooled?"

"Grunt rumor. Yes, they're cooled, but only while the cloaking is turned off. If you turn your cloaking on the suit starts insulating you to prevent thermal scanners from detecting you. It gets hot real quick."

"But not that qui-"

"Imagine running around in a sub-zero suit."

"Oh. Shit."

"Yeah."

"Quiet on the radio," said Jaggerjack, annoyed. "Keep the channel clear unless it's an emergency. Out."

"How do you know?" Sophia whispered to the man behind her.

"That's a secret," he yawned.

"It's my secret."

"It's safe with me."

"No, it's not," she hissed, spinning around, slamming and then pinning him to the wall.

"Woah," he said, eyebrow raised slightly. "You're a lot different when you're out of character."

"You tell me right this instant how you found out."

"Different accent, more aggressive..."

"How did you find out?" she snarled.

"Look, I'm not going to tell you. I can't. But rest assured, nobody else is going to find out, either by me or by the way I found out."

"I used a fake name, a fake age, I spoke with the accent. How can you be so sur-"

"Because I covered your tracks for you."

"Wel – wait, what?

"I covered your tracks for you. I know you want to stay hidden; you signed up for this voyage with a fake name. And from what I'd seen of you in basic training you seemed like a nice enough kid. I don't know why you're hiding, Sophia Louise Hammond, but there are three things you need to know:

One, that you aren't being careful enough,

Two, you can never be too careful,

and Three, I am your ally. I'll be keeping an eye on you. If you need anything, let me know."

She stood in silence for a moment, then,

"You're going to help me?"

"See, there it is. That's your normal accent."

"Yeah. This is how I normally speak."

"Well, yes. I'm going to help you. I have no reason not to, right?"

"Thank you, George." A single tear rolled out of the side of her eye. It had been too long since the last time someone who knew her true identity had been kind to her.

"My pleasure."

The Venice system sat in the middle of six other systems - Carlyle, Yuma, and Nexus were closest, with jump times of around 100 hours for a large enough shuttle while Leviathan, Hephaestus and Haven all stayed 350 hours away. The way that the six systems were all positioned relatively closely around the Venice system ensured that the Venice system was a trading hub. It's low gravity ensured that ships could unload their goods without having to burn lots of fuel to move it between ships or to the ground, and it's proximity to Carlyle meant that ships could easily refuel cheaply.

United Planetary Shipping had perfected the art of intersystem shipping. UPS freighters would loop around Solvenice, Solcarlyle, one of the other aforementioned nearby systems, then back to Solvenice again. Because their ships only ever slingshot themselves from star to star, they didn't ever stop and thus didn't ever have to refuel their engines, just their warp drives. Customers would request shipping for their items and the next UPS ship would drop out of warp for half an hour while the freight was loaded before re-engaging its' enormous warp drives again. After all, the mass of a large warp drive wasn't an issue if you didn't need to burn extra fuel to accelerate it.

It was only 8:00 AM, but the markets of Alpha were already hot and bustling. The low gravity encouraged the merchants to decorate their stalls with eye-catching signs towering high into the sky and the thin atmosphere forced potential buyers of said merchandise to walk slowly through the market.

Crossguard glanced at the stall in front of him through his sunglasses, tried to ignore all the bright colours and noise around him. If the atmospheric pressure had been normal this would have been deafening but due to the thin air the sounds of the market sounded muffled – almost blurred together – until you got close to what was making the noise.

"Excuse me," he asked, getting the shopkeepers' attention, "Aren't guns illegal at Alpha?"

The man smiled a gold-toothed grin. "Aye. Ye have teh ave a license teh buy one, an' then I wrap it up in a special box. Teh box'll tell meh if yeh open it, lad. Yeh can buy a gun, if yeh want, but I'll kno if yeh try teh use it."

"I see. How much?"

"50 credits, Sir."

"They're screwing team E over," reported Hilt from an alleyway 100 metres (Author's note: a quick stroll, for those readers who use the imperial system) away. "I can buy a carbine here for 50 credits."

"Holy shit," swore Ashley Stone from orbit. "You serious?"

"Yes, Ma'am."

"Jeez. Jzaque is trying to sell them for 150."

"Your orders please, Ma'am."

"Right. Proceed as we planned. Find unmarked probes, send them to Demeter, Outpost 207 and Brink, then lie low until extraction. If those probes are traced back to us, we're screwed."

"Copy that, Ma'am. Hilt out."

Stone sighed. "Captain, we're getting screwed over by the shiphoarder."

"Really?" Soryuu raised her eyebrows.

"By 300%, which is way too much. We won't be able to help the IMC forces on the frontier at all if everything is this expensive. I'm going to tell them to leave."

"That Jzaque isn't going to be happy."

"No, Captain. He probably planned to get rich quick off us, and now he's going to be in debt to some bank for the loans for his temporary mansion."

"Too bad. Proceed as you see fit, Mission specialist."

Stone pushed a button on her console.

"George, Stone here."

"Copy that.

"Long message. B team is at the markets right now, they say that Lucian is screwing you guys over with prices. He's got you in his mansion, taking your orders for our merchandise and then selling it to you with a ridiculous surcharge. Over."

"Roger so far."

Stone gave a brief pause to wait for any important messages to come through on the radio channel before continuing. "I've found a suitable inn for you guys to stay at. Get your team's bags packed and your soldiers to conceal their weapons, then move out to a location I'm about to disclose. You'll be buying direct from the markets from now on. Over."

"Awaiting coordinates, Roger so far."

Stone paused again, then, "31 degrees, 29 minutes, 22.2448 seconds north, 6 degrees, 24 minutes, 53.5813 seconds west. Saying again, 31 degrees, 29 minutes, 22.2448 seconds north, 6 degrees, 24 minutes, 53.5813 seconds west. Over."

"So, not the same inn as the other teams? Over."

"Negative. I've booked some rooms for your team. Move your bags over there and set up camp. Over."

"How do you want us to send the merchandise to you? You want us to buy guns and ammunition and food and fuel. How can we send them up to the Shikinami? Over."

"Still working on that, Pilot. We're thinking about using the container accelerator cannon just north of your position. Over."

"Wilco with your orders concerning moving the team to the inn. Out."

With that, George put his radio transmitter into his pocket.

I should tell the team to get ready to move first, Lucian could get angry when I tell him that we're leaving.

He saw the physicist John in a corridor in front of him.

"Oi, John."

The man turned. "Oh, hi, Sir."

"Get ready to leave this place. We're going to the markets after all."

"Really? Okay then."

An hour later E team was ready to go. There was only one last thing to do.

George knocked on Lucian's door. "Jzaque? You there?"

Jzaque flung the door open. "Indeed, friend! How does the day treat you?"

"Fine. Listen, I've got something to tell you."

"Oh? What is it?"

"You're screwing us over. That carbine we ordered, the one that you sold us for 150 credits? It goes for 50 at the markets. Same goes for the ammunition and the supplements."

"But... the registration!" Jzaque cried, nervously. "The guns in the markets won't be registered! A – aaand the ammunition! Uh... the ammunition costs extra to have its quality checked! Then the-"

"Sorry Jzaque. We'll be trying our luck at the markets. Orders from above."

"Wait, please!" he ran out of his room. "I'm begging y-"

And then he tripped over his robes.

"Lets go, E team," George said over the radio.

"They're gone?"

"Yes, Sir. Gone."

"Damn. How did they know?"

"I'm not sure," Lucian said into a radio, "but I think they had spies in the markets. They are not who they seem."

"Odd for a trading ship to send a trading party down in secret."

"Indeed, Sir."

"You've done well, Lucian. What did you say they purchased?"

"A carbine, Sir."

"Very well. Thank you for this information, Lucian. You will be rewarded."

The man on the radio turned.

"Follow that trading team," he ordered to a woman behind him. "I want to know where they go and what they buy."

"Yes, Sir." The woman faded into the background as if she were wearing a cloaking suit.

"And Bish. Get me the camera feeds of the markets. I want to know the name and face of every person to have purchased a carbine over the last three days. We're going to find that secret trading team."