Dumarest
Vaquero de Alta California
- Joined
- Jan 20, 2018
- Messages
- 15,721
- Reaction score
- 34,448
"Welcome to Sinharaja Sector! From the orange skies of Saffron to the golden sands of Rajasthan, from the azure seas of Serendib to the warm tropical climate of Xenochrophis, there's something for everyone in Sinharaja Sector!"
So reads the travel brochure angrily discarded by one of your fellow travellers aboard the Princess Priyanka, a long-haul cargo freighter hastily converted for passenger transport with no eye toward creature comforts.
After the stalemate, after the ceasefire, none of the belligerents had much desire for large numbers of combat veterans--seasoned, ready warriors, walking wounded or otherwise--to be dropped at the very doorstep of civilization to remind them of the barbarism of modern warfare and the limitations of modern medicine. Thousands upon thousands of restless men, cool under fire and accustomed to violence, presented a threat to the solace of the status quo and a burden on the conscience of their leaders. Better to unload the discharged servicemen on any number of backwater worlds on the fringes, where, if they stirred up any trouble, it would be someone else's problem requiring someone else's solutions.
Even though some of you may have fought for different reasons in the War of Secession, you find you have more common cause with your fellow veterans than you do with your own distant governments that you had sworn to uphold and defend. Being dumped at a starport on Xenochrophis in Sinharaja Sector (where?!) rather than returned to your homeworld is just the latest in a series of broken promises, nullified agreements, and rescinded guarantees you've suffered at the hands of ignoble civilian politicians. They called it pragmatism. Some called it dishonorable. Either way, here you are aboard a chartered free trader with dozens of men and women like yourself, making a turbulent entry into the atmosphere of a world you know only by its name: Xenochrophis.
From the viewport, all you can see is a lush and verdant jungle valley as the freighter descends and you approach the only city of any size on the entire planet, imaginatively named Tropicana by its founders.
At least you got to keep your retirement benefits and pensions. Apparently they couldn't find a legal--or at least popular--way to weasel out of that! And what a war: no actual treaties signed, merely a cessation of hostilities with hard feelings on all sides despite the fact that it was tantamount to impossible for the Federation to govern, police, protect, or secure a territory where it took years for communiqués, directives, and laws to travel from the Federation Commission to the outer worlds, and where it often transpired that by the time the news reached the far-off colonies it purported to effect, orders had been countermanded, statutes had been rescinded, and decisions had been overturned on appeal, resulting in galactic confusion and borderline chaos.
As the Princess Priyanka makes its final approach to Sivananda Saraswati Memorial Starport, you can see the sprawling city on the piedmont overlooking the enormous jungle valley. After a rough landing on the pockmarked tarmacadam, the large cargo ramp opens and lowers to the ground for disembarkation. Customs officials wait in the scanty shade provided by canvas shelters. A number of heavily armed guards seem ill at ease. Beyond both groups, you can see the electrified riot fence that secures the perimeter of the landing field and separates it from Lowtown. You know from experience that nearly every world has its own Lowtown at the edge of its starport, the rundown section of the city where poverty is entrenched and everyone is on the make or on the mend. Just feet from the exterior of the electric fence a large number of people loiter near their squalid pup tents with mosquito netting, their communal vegetable garden planted on disused city land, and their portable oil stoves where putrescent meat burns and noxious stews boil; all appear to be waiting to panhandle and beg charity from new arrivals to Tropicana. Too poor to buy passage on a departing starship, they exist in a civilian no man's land.
Even from here, you can see Lowtown: the hostels and fleabag hotels, the dive bars that have the nerve to style themselves taverns, the cardrooms that have the gall to call themselves casinos, the pawn shops, the whorehouses, the employment agencies that offer little more than a subsistence wage to people who amount to little more than slaves. Beyond and uphill from Lowtown is obviously where the more affluent live and work and look down their noses at Lowtown: the shiny new high-rise apartments and office buildings speak to the inequities of life in Tropicana.
Lines form in the sweltering heat before each of the customs officials, who wait for you to present your identification and state your business on Xenochrophis. Blood-sucking insects the size of hummingbirds flit and buzz about you, landing on whatever exposed flesh they can find, seeking out a meal.
You overhear a customs official laugh after she mentions something about disease carriers, but you're not sure if she is referring to the insects or the unfortunates living outside the perimeter fence.
So reads the travel brochure angrily discarded by one of your fellow travellers aboard the Princess Priyanka, a long-haul cargo freighter hastily converted for passenger transport with no eye toward creature comforts.
After the stalemate, after the ceasefire, none of the belligerents had much desire for large numbers of combat veterans--seasoned, ready warriors, walking wounded or otherwise--to be dropped at the very doorstep of civilization to remind them of the barbarism of modern warfare and the limitations of modern medicine. Thousands upon thousands of restless men, cool under fire and accustomed to violence, presented a threat to the solace of the status quo and a burden on the conscience of their leaders. Better to unload the discharged servicemen on any number of backwater worlds on the fringes, where, if they stirred up any trouble, it would be someone else's problem requiring someone else's solutions.
Even though some of you may have fought for different reasons in the War of Secession, you find you have more common cause with your fellow veterans than you do with your own distant governments that you had sworn to uphold and defend. Being dumped at a starport on Xenochrophis in Sinharaja Sector (where?!) rather than returned to your homeworld is just the latest in a series of broken promises, nullified agreements, and rescinded guarantees you've suffered at the hands of ignoble civilian politicians. They called it pragmatism. Some called it dishonorable. Either way, here you are aboard a chartered free trader with dozens of men and women like yourself, making a turbulent entry into the atmosphere of a world you know only by its name: Xenochrophis.
From the viewport, all you can see is a lush and verdant jungle valley as the freighter descends and you approach the only city of any size on the entire planet, imaginatively named Tropicana by its founders.
At least you got to keep your retirement benefits and pensions. Apparently they couldn't find a legal--or at least popular--way to weasel out of that! And what a war: no actual treaties signed, merely a cessation of hostilities with hard feelings on all sides despite the fact that it was tantamount to impossible for the Federation to govern, police, protect, or secure a territory where it took years for communiqués, directives, and laws to travel from the Federation Commission to the outer worlds, and where it often transpired that by the time the news reached the far-off colonies it purported to effect, orders had been countermanded, statutes had been rescinded, and decisions had been overturned on appeal, resulting in galactic confusion and borderline chaos.
As the Princess Priyanka makes its final approach to Sivananda Saraswati Memorial Starport, you can see the sprawling city on the piedmont overlooking the enormous jungle valley. After a rough landing on the pockmarked tarmacadam, the large cargo ramp opens and lowers to the ground for disembarkation. Customs officials wait in the scanty shade provided by canvas shelters. A number of heavily armed guards seem ill at ease. Beyond both groups, you can see the electrified riot fence that secures the perimeter of the landing field and separates it from Lowtown. You know from experience that nearly every world has its own Lowtown at the edge of its starport, the rundown section of the city where poverty is entrenched and everyone is on the make or on the mend. Just feet from the exterior of the electric fence a large number of people loiter near their squalid pup tents with mosquito netting, their communal vegetable garden planted on disused city land, and their portable oil stoves where putrescent meat burns and noxious stews boil; all appear to be waiting to panhandle and beg charity from new arrivals to Tropicana. Too poor to buy passage on a departing starship, they exist in a civilian no man's land.
Even from here, you can see Lowtown: the hostels and fleabag hotels, the dive bars that have the nerve to style themselves taverns, the cardrooms that have the gall to call themselves casinos, the pawn shops, the whorehouses, the employment agencies that offer little more than a subsistence wage to people who amount to little more than slaves. Beyond and uphill from Lowtown is obviously where the more affluent live and work and look down their noses at Lowtown: the shiny new high-rise apartments and office buildings speak to the inequities of life in Tropicana.
Lines form in the sweltering heat before each of the customs officials, who wait for you to present your identification and state your business on Xenochrophis. Blood-sucking insects the size of hummingbirds flit and buzz about you, landing on whatever exposed flesh they can find, seeking out a meal.
You overhear a customs official laugh after she mentions something about disease carriers, but you're not sure if she is referring to the insects or the unfortunates living outside the perimeter fence.
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