Transference Station Read Online Free Page B

to the air on the other side. Transference had low traces of methylene in its atmosphere, the station running their environmental systems just like mamma had baked below. It was about the only sweet thing spacers found in Transference Station. They walked through a thin cloud of dust filling the corridor, decontamination nano – imperceptibly testing the visitors’ blood and DNA to make sure their health matched the ship’s pre-arrival check-up data. Pity the authorities never scrubbed the billions living in the station. Lana was more likely to catch something from Transference’s citizens rather than the reverse. After the decon cloud, they passed through the entrance into the habitat. Transference Station’s main ring was divided into six levels, if only to give the property realtors something to justify their price differentials. Anyone buying bottom on six didn’t need a mortgage, they needed a laser fence to keep the locals out. Lana found herself on one of the midlevels, a plaza scattered with fountains and public art taking up the full volume of the chamber. It was a good attempt to make the station look civilized to visiting eyes, but the station cops in twenty-foot high exo-armour couldn’t be mistaken for modern art, even with the fountains’ water foaming into all sorts of creative rollercoaster shapes under focused gravity compression. There was a glass-viewing gallery in front of Lana, aluminium rails to clutch onto while watching the spin of the world below. She glanced down. It was just as she remembered it. Transference Station locked to its parent planet’s spin, a circlet set above the oceans. Nobody in the Edge had the money and resources to build space elevators – that was strictly alliance tech – so cargo and passengers shuttled between ground and station the economic way, little motes of light exploding across the seas below as craft powered their way into orbit. Engineless craft, little more than water-filled cones riding beams from super-lasers up to space. Going down it was heat shields and gravity brakes and biodegradable parachutes. The fortieth century and steam power – albeit liquid reaction mass under laser ignition – was still going strong. You had to hand it to humanity; no good idea went to waste. Everything ended up being recycled – metals, plastics, technologies, politics. No wonder near-immortal sentients like Zeno ended up jaded. The merry-go-round of history just keeps on spinning. Lana’s thoughts turned to Dollar-sign Dillard waiting for them in his office. Some people cling to the ride just a little bit tight . Yeah, everyone deserved to meet him once. Trouble was, for Lana, this visit was once too often for her taste. There were benches on the other side of the viewing gallery, a gaggle of women in colourful dresses gossiping there in a language she hadn’t learnt. A Brazilian derivative, maybe, if their dark features were any guide. They had children playing around their feet. Lana felt a tug of conflicting emotions as she observed the kids enjoying themselves. Forget it, girl. A starship is no place to bring up a toddler. You’re living proof of that. Your whole family dead on a foreign world, leaving you to be raised by a ship’s A.I and an android.
    Lana watched her navigator head off to church, while Zeno slipped away to do whatever the hell her secretive android did during his shore leave. ‘Come on,’ she sighed. ‘Let’s go and see DSD.’ And let’s see if I can walk away without being pooch-screwed this time.
     
    ***
     
    Polter was approaching the temple of the Unified Church when a gang of young humans stepped out from a break between two living units, blocking his path. Polter was the only one walking along the pavement at the moment. A few automated transport pods moved up and down the street, but their windows were mirrored, no doubt displaying entrainment feeds so the inhabitants wouldn’t have to notice the low rent neighbourhood they were