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  However, the woman’s outfit and equipment were not the most interesting features. Though the woman’s face appeared normal—albeit rather pale—her head was topped with a ridged, steel cone. She looked as though someone had put the pointy end of a very large egg on her head.

  From what Katrina could see, it wasn’t a helmet or a hat; it was the woman’s head. Her IR overlay showed that it was a few degrees warmer than the woman’s skin, and had a large glowing red triangle on the front that matched the one on her uniform.

  Modded that much to work the docks? Katrina wondered. And with a mod that appears to be the property of Tsarina, as well.

  A glint of silver around the woman’s neck caught Katrina’s notice, and she realized that the woman was wearing a steel collar.

  Her research while inbound had shown that many of the people in Bollam’s World were indentured servants—some even slaves. Perhaps this woman is amongst their ranks, and the collar is the sign of that status.

  All these thoughts raced through her mind in the time it had taken the woman to make her comment about Katrina’s ship.

  Katrina looked down her nose at the woman and gave a disdainful sniff. “Its configuration isn’t that strange. Provided one gets out of this backwater from time to time.”

  The woman glanced up at Katrina and shrugged. “Yeah, well, that’s not an option for me.” She looked back down at her datapad. “Need anything? Fuel, refit? Antimatter to declare?”

  Katrina shook her head. “No. I just need storage for a few days.”

  “Storage, got it. I have your token on record here. It’s seven-hundred credits a day if you want to keep it on the cradle, or two hundred if we rack it.”

  Katrina had already reviewed the options. As much as she wanted to keep the pinnace ready to go, the station’s bank had only granted her a forty-thousand credit on the bond for her pinnace. She couldn’t have storage fees eating so much of her finite funds.

  “Rack it,” Katrina replied.

  “You got it, the woman said. “I’ll just need you to pass me the auxiliary codes for the pinnace so we can make sure engines and the like stay offline.”

  Katrina nodded and connected to the dock’s net, seeking out the woman before her, and passing the necessary data.

  “There you are,” Katrina said. “Do you require anything else?”

  “Nope. Dock security’s already scanned you, so you’re good to go.”

  “Very well,” Katrina replied.

  As she walked across the dock toward the broad passageway on the far side, she noticed that about half of the Tsarina employees seemed to have visible modifications, and most of those with the larger, less agreeable mods also wore collars.

  Katrina connected to the broader station net and pulled up the locations of companies listing repair and upgrade services for a ship like the Voyager. She was hoping to find one with its own shipyard, or a mobile service vessel. Nothing good would come from bringing the Voyager insystem to one of the stations here—even if they could get around the grav drive issues.

  Four results matched her query, and Katrina selected one that had a good mix of reviews. The company’s sales office wasn’t too far, and Katrina overlaid the route on her HUD as she walked out of the bay.

  The corridor out of the docking bay had a designated lane for foot traffic, and Katrina walked slowly on the right side, studiously observing the other passersby in addition to the haulers floating through the center of the passage on their anti-gravity pads.

  She couldn’t help but marvel at the incongruity of such amazing technology as artificial gravity, while also seeing people with visible, and highly inefficient, mods built into their bodies.

  More than a few of the people she passed even possessed un-skinned artificial limbs, ill-fitting poly-skin, and even metallic, non-organic-looking eyes.

  It was like the worst sort of slum back in Sirius; one where the people would take whatever work they could to keep from being sent to the Noctus mining platforms.

  After one hundred meters, the passageway emptied out into a wide boulevard that swept around the station—the curve visible far in the distance on both sides. Here she saw a higher percentage of people with fewer unappealing mods.

  What she also noticed was that her dimly glowing outfit was both not tight enough, and didn’t glow nearly bright enough for her to be taken as upper class on Tsarina station. It also lacked the requisite light shows cascading across her body.

  It really is just like Luminescent Society. How is my past waiting for me this far in the future?

  Katrina knew that in a society this stratified, her clothing meant as much as her money—especially when it came to negotiating for the work on the Voyager. Her current outfit painted her as middle class at best. Nowhere near where she needed to be.

  A quick check of the station’s layout showed her where the more expensive shops lay, and a ten-minute walk followed by a five-minute maglev ride took her to a wide boulevard lined with high-end shops.

  It had always amused Katrina that while most people professed to believe that living in space was better than living on planets, they always strove to make their most pleasant spaces look like they were planet-side.

  This place, proclaimed as Lourmis Boulevard by a tasteful sign nestled amongst some low bushes, was no different. Above the wide street, there was no ceiling: just a blue expanse with white clouds and a bright yellow sun. It was almost good enough to fool Katrina; but her newly augmented eyes—courtesy of the rejuv—could pick up on irregularities, and the excessive symmetry told her it was a holoprojection—which was obvious, anyway, since they were inside a station 47 AU from the star.

  Below the blue sky, the center of the boulevard was lined with tall oaks, and each of the quaint little shops was nestled amongst more trees—all of which was backed by a holographic forest that seemed to stretch on to the horizon.

  The people here, clearly the upper echelon of the station, possessed no visible mods whatsoever. Katrina wondered if they were vanilla, or simply had access to better, more discrete technology than the working class down at the docks.

  She let out a long sigh and drew herself up. It was time to fully embrace the thing she hated most. The trappings of Luminescent Society.

  An hour later, the woman who walked back to the docks no longer bore any resemblance to Katrina. She was now Verisa, through and through.

  Her body was adorned in a gleaming black skinsheath with red accents that had a bight, yet somehow sinister glow to them as they traced patterns across her body. Periodically the red accents would widen, and appear to expose raging fires within.

  The outfit covered her right up to her chin, with a cutout above her breasts that appeared to be a hole into some hellish dimension.

  The effect made it look as though her body was actually made of flame, with a glistening black covering twisting and writhing in an attempt to cover the inferno beneath.

  To further enhance the look, the salesperson had dusted a powder filled with tiny light projectors in her hair. Now her red locks sparkled and glowed, periodically appearing to burst into flame.

  Her lips were also a deep red, with light dancing across them, and her green eyes glowed eerily, courtesy of a simple alteration Katrina made with her own nano.

  All of that was difficult to see with the large black hood pulled over her head—something that Verisa loved, as it added mystery to her appearance. It shrouded her eyes, but showed her sparkling red lips all too clearly.

  Even Katrina had to admit that the outfit was astounding. It had better be, for the fortune it had cost her. But the impressive effects were nothing compared to her new boots.

  Jet-black and ending just above her knees, the boots possessed no heel, but held her feet pointed straight down. Had she actually been walking in them, Katrina was certain the footwear would be both excruciating and ungainly.

  However, tiny—yet powerful—antigravity generators in the boots held the tips of her toes t
en centimeters off the ground, while evenly supporting her legs within, as she took her lazily floating steps along the boulevard.

  She had told herself that the expensive purchase was necessary in order to research the small graviton emitters in the boots, should negotiations for upgrades fall through.

  It wasn’t a complete lie; it would be interesting to see how the tech was miniaturized—but Katrina knew she probably would have bought the boots anyway. The opportunity to walk on air was simply too fascinating to pass up.

  The incredible outfit and the ability to simply glide through the air made it easy to maintain the Verisa persona. She was a powerful and dangerous woman; she could afford to spend more on whimsical clothing than most people earned in a month.

  When she reached the maglev platform, a train was pulling up, and she drifted aboard. She wanted to stand, but knew that a woman of her position would not do so. She settled into a seat, forcing herself not to idly bounce her feet on air in front of her, when a conversation a few seats away piqued her interest.

  “…last of the ones from that ship are up for auction soon,” a man in a gleaming purple and blue skinsheath said to another man who was wearing a Tsarina uniform—though his stripe was golden rather than yellow, and no collar encircled his neck.

  “I heard about that,” the second man said. “Just the dregs, I expect; though I’m amazed there were so many people aboard. Usually ships coming through the streamer are a lot smaller.”

  Katrina had searched the records multiple times for mention of the Intrepid; though once she saw the level of technology in the Bollam’s World System, she was certain the colony ship had not exited the Streamer here.

  However, the mention of a ship with a lot of people aboard piqued her interest—even though it was unlikely to be the Intrepid.

  “Yeah, wasn’t a good selection to start with,” the man in the purple and blue said. “They were refugees from the wars in the Pleiades—that place is practically trashed right now. Not a lot of anything of value coming out of there.”

  The man in the Tsarina uniform nodded. “True, but I did get two new dockworkers from one of the lots. They’re collared and earning their keep now.”

  “Good; probably the best thing that’s happened to them their whole miserable lives.”

  The conversation sickened Katrina; the way the two men talked about other people as though they were of little more value than furniture.

  She felt for the refugees. It wasn’t so long ago—in the grand scheme of things, at least—that she had been a refugee, along with everyone else aboard the Hyperion.

  I’m not far off from that status, now.

  The two men continued to talk about the tech pulled from the ship from the Pleiades, and what the hull would sell for, while the maglev travelled to the commercial section of the station.

  When the train reached her stop, Katrina rose and exited, and the two men followed after. She could feel their eyes on her, a fact she confirmed with a few nanoprobes that she released to watch them.

  One of the men was openly staring at her ass, his eyes never wavering for an instant as he talked to his friend. Katrina was wondering if she would have to fend off more than just their eyes, when they turned down a side-passage, their voices lost in the crowds on the platform.

  While Katrina didn’t care for their behavior, Verisa couldn’t help a small smirk. Verisa moved as though she was in command of everyone around her, and they existed to serve at her pleasure. That those two men found her irresistible meant that Katrina was playing the part properly.

  From the maglev station, it only took Katrina a few minutes to reach the sales office of the company she had selected before her excursion to Lourmis Boulevard.

  A blue and purple holodisplay above the entrance proudly displayed the company’s name to all passersby: ‘KiStar Interstellar’.

  KiStar specialized in onsite work, and had a fleet of service vessels, which was perfect—if she could secure their services. There was one thing that Katrina still didn’t have a plan for: how she would pay them.

  The Voyager possessed no small amount of technology that she could trade—from its superior fusion drives, to its advanced neural computer, stasis, and stealth systems. However, Katrina wasn’t entirely certain that empowering anyone in the Bollam’s World System with the Voyager’s advanced tech was the best course of action.

  She wondered for a moment if her dislike for the people of Bollam’s World was due to their heritage, or to how they operated with indentured servants and allowed slavery.

  Probably a combination.

  They were all really just one step above pirates, as far as Katrina was concerned...maybe not even that. Pirates, for the most part, owned up to what they were.

  Even if she did want to trade technology, the difference between possessing a piece of tech, and having the ability to reproduce it, were not even close to the same things.

  And that was a problem.

  Neither she nor Troy had base design specifications for most of the technology onboard the Voyager. She had reviewed her options a dozen times, and the best she could come up with was to sell a number of the stasis pods in exchange for the upgrades.

  Negotiating that, however, would be a delicate business.

  She drew in a deep breath and strode through the open doors of KiStar Interstellar.

  Once inside, she took special care not to marvel at the displays hovering above the deck on a-grav plinths. The incongruity of her amazement almost made her laugh aloud. She too was hovering above the deck.

  Katrina ‘walked’ amidst the displays of engine components and scale models of ships until she spotted a woman who was sheathed in a glowing white outfit, complete with multiple instances of the blue and purple KiStar logo moving across her body. The logos grew, shrank, merged, and faded in and out. The effect was rather mesmerizing.

  That’s one way to liven up a uniform.

  The KiStar employee was speaking with a woman who wore none of the local styles. Her body was covered in long, dark robes, and Katrina was surprised to see a sword hanging from a strap slung over her shoulders.

  Perhaps Katrina, too, could have opted for some sort of outsystem attire—though she suspected it would be too hard to pull together enough information on cultures beyond Bollam’s World to create a convincing disguise.

  “May I help you?” a voice asked from behind her, and Katrina turned to see a man approaching. He was dressed in a uniform that matched the woman’s, though his neck bore a silver collar.

  “Yes,” Katrina replied in Verisa’s measured and dismissive voice. “Find someone who has the wherewithal to possess their own person. I do not speak with chattel.”

  As she spoke, the lines of fire on her skinsheath widened, the angry red glow around her intensifying.

  The man took a step back and she waved her fingers at him as though she were brushing a piece of lint off her shoulder.

  “Milady,” the man said hurriedly, and she turned away, assuming he had withdrawn.

  She waited, standing stock still save for a slow bounce as she hovered above the floor.

  After a few minutes, the woman in the black robes left, and the other KiStar salesperson approached Katrina. Her eyes widened briefly as she took in Katrina’s outfit.

  “Ma’am, I’m Uriah. I understand that you wish to speak with me?”

  Katrina turned and looked the woman over. Her blue hair matched the KiStar logos racing across her body, and her purple lips and eyes stood out from skin almost as pale as the white skinsheath she wore.

  “I suppose you will be sufficient,” Katrina said. “I wish to discuss a refit of my ship’s grav systems. On my latest FTL jump, they suffered a failure and taxed my ship’s reactor. The ship is old, but dear to me, and I wish to modernize all of its grav systems.”

  “How unfortunate!” Uriah exclaimed, her concern appearing very genuine. “Thankfully, you’ve come to the right place. KiStar specializes in grav systems, a
s you can see,” the woman gestured to the many starship components hovering around the showroom. “May I ask what manufacturer and model your ship is?”

  During the three-day approach to Tsarina, Katrina had researched the most obscure ship models she could, while still finding one that resembled the Voyager in some fashion. There were no good matches, but she had made the best selection she could.

  “It’s a Jasepsce Imperial 3110,” Katrina replied, as though it were the most common ship in space.

  “I’m sorry, a what?” Uriah asked, her delicate features registering consternation.

  “The manufacturer is Jasepsce. They operate out of the Femier System. It’s on the far side of the Genevian Alliance. I assume you’ve heard of it. I was told that your establishment had extensive expertise. That you were the best.”

  Uriah flushed, purple no less. Even when someone wasn’t owned by their employer, it seemed that the companies took many liberties with the bodies of their staff.

  After a moment, during which Uriah’s eyes darted left to right several times, the woman nodded. “Ah yes, I have their information on file. Jasepsce. The Imperial model appears to be a light touring cruise ship, just under two-hundred meters long, and sixty-thousand tons, yes?”

  Katrina nodded sharply. “The 3110 is a touch longer. But its tonnage is less. Only fifty-six.”

  “And you want a full refit of all grav systems?”

  “I want you to tear out what’s there and install your best model of graviton emitters. I want the works: drive, shields, dark layer transition field, dampeners. I’m not going to rely on three-hundred-year-old systems any longer,” Katrina replied.

  Uriah’s eyes widened. “That is quite the undertaking. Is the ship in dock, Madam…?”

  “You may call me Verisa. And no, my ship is thirty AU from here. While I quite admire your people’s fashion, I am not prepared to bring a damaged ship into your system.”

  Uriah sighed, and Katrina wondered how many other people felt the same way about Bollam’s World.

  It was a relatively isolated system, with no other G-class stars within ten light years. However, it was situated at the intersection of several major empires—in a sort of no-man’s land that no regional power wanted to enter, lest they disrupt the peace they shared with their neighbors.