FFFF

[X] The Configuration for Progress and the Communion's new government are both revolutionaries, so it's no surprise they found common ground. Not quite a union, but a strong alliance that might, one day become a human-alien state. Echo Chamber and the People-of-the-Shallows are now the Chrysanthemum's bailiwick against alien powers. It's a little bitter to see this conflict still exist, if only at a low level, but it might be the best thing for the People-of-the-Shallows, who will now receive all the aid that the Chrysanthemum can give them to hold against the Communion and the Nereidi, two sets of similarly temporary beings now joined together.


The cafe sits at the top of a slope, amid massive stands of cleyra and beech trees. You can smell flowers and the thick scent of sap. From the cafe's awning, you look down over a sunny valley of white rock and dark ruins.

The nine of you sit around a large wooden table with a silver cake stand in the middle. Rainbow-cored sponges, glazed fruit tarts that glitter in the light and heavy brown muffins stand atop it in profusion, together with small sandwiches and other savouries. Beside the food there are gleaming china plates, silverware and a pair of ornate carafes with a fussy crystal gleam.

"So this is what Hera is like, huh? Everyone always has fancy parties to eat?" Luyu still hasn't completely come off Nereidi fashion and has been wandering around the ships in short shorts and bikini tops. Currently she's occupying a pair of couches, draping over herself like big cats in the sun.

"It's really high up." Shenla says. "I always wanted to go to the mountains back home but they're mostly pretty unstable." The Communion insisted on joining you. Practically invited herself along, and managed to convince the others. You're still not totally sure about it. If she's killed, she'll die for real. On the other hand, she wants to, and that kind of courage could be useful. As could the ability to derail a firefight by shouting out her status.

"This is the countryside." Mirareki says. "I wanted to show off something that's not the Conurbation because that's all anyone ever thinks about."

The space you're in isn't actually that large.If you were to walk more than fifty metres in most directions you'd hit a wall, but the screens and airflow and acoustics have been carefully calibrated to yield the precise feel of this alpine cafe on Hera. Mirareki may dislike her homeworld but she's gone hard on replicating it.

The situation you have left behind on Nereid is tense but promising. The Communion-Nereidi axis was predicted by very few observers but has rapidly advanced into retrospective common sense the way shocking political developments so often do, and granted you the singular pleasure of a visibly irritated Mara in the aftermath of the revelation that the planet was moving away from, rather than into, Chrysanthemum influence. She and her colleagues have been reduced to the astropolitical consolation prize of becoming the protectors of the Shallowers - but while they're unhappy with that, it might be one of the better results the Shallowers themselves could have hoped for, surrounded as they are by far stronger local powers.But you didn't go to Nereid to get involved in Nereidi politics. You're now briefing on Hera. Chalita was seen there. Either she's still there, or something associated with her was there, and she left somehow. Either way it brings you closer to your old self. Closer to the confrontation that's been building up, sometimes unnoticed, since you came out of the tank.

Mirareki, Heran native, is the centre of all this. Her usual jacket and one piece ensemble has been replaced by an elaborate confection that made you stop and spend several seconds taking a mental inventory when she walked in wearing it.

The outfit has a long train of white cloth and a high collar of living flowers, ornamenting a bikini-esque core with a short bustier and insubstantial lacy drapes. Everything is white but decorated with colourful jewels. She wears an opera glove on one arm and a thigh high on the opposite leg, both hooked over a digit rather than actually covering them. Her feet are suffering in vertiginous gladiator heels. Small bands and pieces of jewellery, flowers and lace decorate strategically exposed skin to fetching effect, even if it does seem like it's an attempt to see how you can wear the most technically separate pieces of clothing as possible. Certainly you couldn't really manoeuvre in it without losing the train or having your breasts pop out of the top.

It's not like anything you've seen Mirareki wear before. She even has full-body makeup subtly (the only subtle thing) shaded to play her skin into the outfit. You wonder what toolkit she used to apply it so elegantly.

"Did you really get to this point just by institutionalising a fashion competition?" asks Shenla, who is having trouble concealing her combination of disbelief and ogling.

"Have you ever read about the evolution of the peacock?"

"What's a peacock?"

"Nevermind. Anyway, not all meals are this fancy, no. Normal day meals are kind of boring. But if you're at a social event you're supposed to put in something like this. Even if it's just a small party. If you're in the day it's supposed to be light and fuel you up for activity. It's either a competition, or it's fuel for one."

"So people never have informal social meals?" Atet is wearing her white medical skinsuit. The silvery diplomat mask still attached to her face gleams in the sun. Your anti-glare system neutralises the shine.

"Not anymore." Mirareki says. "I mean, they claim to, but you're always watching the board."

"So basically." Reizay says. "It's more about positive than negative reinforcement?" She has a deeply thoughtful expression you're unsure about.

Mirareki makes a face. "They come to the same thing in the end, as we all found out quickly enough." she pushes her hair up and sighs. "But we're going to have to live with it if we want to operate there."

"Is it really that important?" Luyu asks. "We've got a deep ship. Our own major production hub. Surely we can just buy our way through any scarcity issues that have been created by the social credit system."

"The system doesn't really let you do that." Mirareki selects a cake and begins to cut it into neat slices. Reizay watches her, her hands twitching through the same motions, perhaps guided by a teaching program. "That'd just lead to unlimited private accumulation and nobody wants that. Things that would be useful to us, like fast public transport are only accessed by fast credit scores or certain diplomatic visas which we won't be able to obtain. High social credit scores are also the only way to buy privacy. Supposedly because if you have a low score you need to bring it up."

Juketta, sitting opposite Luyu, sips at her coffee. She's still wearing her carefully cut robes. They'll probably pass on Hera. "So," she says. "In essence, in order to advance our social credit scores, we either have to appear like we're working towards some great work, or you have to be behaving with formal politeness."

"That's about the size of it." Mirareki looks around.

"And there's no chance of the protests succeeding?" Shenla asks. She's been most into the Heran protests. You get the feeling she is, even more than you, a total news hound. Not that you haven't been watching too. The story of Cerasea, a girl raised in an Outlier commune at the edge of one of Hera's mega cities, rising to triumph and then being denied her prize is simply too good to pass up.

Mirareki shakes her head. "No way."



Hera is, like most of the systems of the paradise zone, a trinary. Three stars looped together in a complicated orbit. It's unclear why the Precursors set things up the way they did, or how they made the orbits and goldilocks zones so stable. Gardenian astronomers have long logged tiny deviations from the predictions of successive theories of gravity and failed to find any explanation for them. The garden was perhaps not a place where the Precursors lived, but a great work of art, which explains why planets are used rather than the far more efficient megastructures.

Hera-B is currently the centre of civilization there. Hera-A is still mostly uninhabited, the Underwater War and subsequent battles with the River saw it heavily irradiated and filled with automated weapons. Hera-C has a population of only about twenty billion spread out across several worlds, including one which was xenoformed by another of the ancient civilizations that once lived in the Garden. It's a centre of development, but not a place where people actually live.

Hera-B, specifically Hera-B3, locally called Magrana is the place that most people think of when they think of Hera. Actually, what they think of is the megacity, old as the exile and partly ruined, which covers more than half of the primary supercontinent. That was where Chalita was seen. Mara's intelligence has her in several places around the Suspension Arcade, the great loop of electromagnetic lift train which structures human civilization in the megacity. She had meetings with local government officials, Chrysanthemum agents and various other assorted people. It all sounds fascinating. You just wish you could get there more quickly.

The Deep Ship journey from Nereid to Hera is about thirty days. The massive old ship is large and very fast over a long distance. Still, you find the wait interminable. Surely Chalita will have concluded her business and departed by the time you actually reach Hera. Will she have left a trail?

You long for the confrontation. To finally have it out with your old self. But until then you just have to carry on. Learning the lessons that Mirareki wants to teach and working on what data Mara gave you. While you travel there's nothing to do but train, and try to relax. The collective meal you're having now under the grey sky of FTL space was supposed to be both of those things but you're finding it excruciating. The dining garden is nice, at the very top of the ship, with the rolling storm of FTL space overhead and the vibrant green of carpet grass under your feet.

"Everyone should make sure to pass things around as much as possible," says Reizay. "Promptly passing dishes during a formal meal gives you social credit points. Actually, it'd be best if we set up the table so that things people wanted were as far from them as possible."

"The main thing is to just avoid being impolite." Mirareki says. She's kitted you all out in fussy frozen fountains like she was wearing before. You have billowy sleeves (not connected to anything else) that it's distracting trying to keep out of the soup. The entire outfit is like dancing in zero-G. It's not too difficult but looking good takes skill. "Don't be clumsy with your food. Imagine that there wasn't a force field between it and the air. Before each meal there's a prayer. It can really be to any goddess you like."

"It should be to Nike," says Reizay. "That gives more points."

"Once food is served, you want to eat each course in a set time and with the right tools. There's a ritual order to placement of cutlery so you need to get that down before you start. You can't just go outside in."

Luyu sighs and looks at her food. "You realise this is crazy right Mirareki? This makes the Sacred Band's ritual feasts look like a workday lunch."

"Why do you think I left?"

"We've got some company on our way," says Shenla. "I was checking ship spotter feeds and cross referenced them with the long range sensors. Both the fleet that was near Nereid and the stuff that was around Scythia have pulled out and are heading for the Chrysanthemum logistical facilities near Hera, to refit and rearm at the Chrysanthemum's expense.

"Huh." Luyu frowns. "Isn't there a big naval exercise going on around Hera too?"

"Yeah. Four Winds 23. One of the big Chrysanthemum combined training ones. A full Multi-system assault drill. There's probably a couple of thousand combat ships in the area right now. I wonder if they're worried about something."


You sit in your bunk at the train station and read. Pretty soon you're going to need to go and start building a wardrobe, but for now, you're still in a period of study, getting used to the history of Hera.

Hera is an old system. It's not the oldest in the central area of Chrysanthemum Space, The first four colonies remain: Themyscira, Lycastia, Chadesia and Libya. Hera was, by all history, one of the second wave. Slightly younger than Haraway or the Nerieae worlds. That ancient history is barely relevant now though. It's been almost six thousand years since the Exile.

But Hera has always been a rich core system. It wasn't quite the first to emerge from the chaos of the end of the Fifth Epoch, but it was among them, and considerable amounts of infrastructure was salvaged.

It was a natural place for something like the Heterarchy to emerge. Top worlds faced with losing status always go a little crazy. In Hera's case, it was the perception loss in the economic and social status compared to nearby worlds such as Athene and Aphrodite, and the growing, semi-Dark Rose aligned power of Thetis. Complacency had to be done away with, vigour and a healthy competitive spirit were needed. The Heptarchy set various parts of society to compete against one another, both at an individual and collective level in order to drive greater innovation and make people work harder. Success wouldn't, its advocates said, of course, create a hierarchy or artificial scarcity. It would just give people perks and esteem, all in the spirit of friendly competitiveness.

This social credit system was operated and judged by the then supposedly neutral church of Nike, which extended a version of the AI systems it used to judge the excellence of soldiers into civilian life.

However, in the century that followed, this method of competition grew increasingly stifling, as people were judged in more and more aspects of their lives. The massive availability of data also led to the growth of other institutions to process and utilise that data, and an increased bureaucratisation of society. Weighted voting power was also brought in, and many considered it to be even more of a corruption of the system. General surveillance, the routine use of data gained from it against dissidents and rivals, and the increasing levels of artificial scarcity imposed by certain prizes led to public disquiet and a gradual loss of trust in the church. But not enough to actually dislodge it. Too many people benefit from the system, or have just structured their habits around it, to go to the bother of actually replacing it, and so it stumbles on.

So much for the status quo. What is required is that you blend in, and that first of all means clothing. Mirareki and Reizay have spent a while prepping up one one of the manufacturing bays to produce a whole warehouse of different outfits for you to use. When you arrive you find a huge warehouse style space with hundreds of different outfits of various formality layered on articulated dummies that let their range of movement be tested, and Reizay and Mirareki not quite having an argument.

"I've reverse-engineered some of the algorithms." Reizay says. "You can get a minor boost to your social credit score by having five, twenty one or eleven buttons on your outfit. Then you can add a bit more from having certain ratios between elements, like this one between skirt and stocking hems…"

Miraeki sighs. "All this shit is so minor as to be hardly worth bothering with. We're not trying to win a competition, just be polite."

"Small numbers add up! If you can get the system to assess your clothing more often via route planning it will rapidly become significant."

Mirareki's fraying cool is saved by the arrival of the others. She rounds on them with a deeply pained smile. "Alright, you're here. Let's work this out. So we're going to need at least three outfits each, though I guess we'll have more. The Ettas can just wear their robes, those are always appropriate, but there's strict rules about dress formality on Hera. If you wear the wrong outfit in the wrong situation that's impolite and will cost you, and anyone who doesn't punish your impoliteness points. So you need to make sure to change into the right outfit at the right time. Fortunately there are changing pods in most places, but you should all know the rules so you don't get caught in the wrong outfit at the wrong time.

"Huh." Luyu says. "This might not be so bad after all." You don't know if you agree.

You spend the next thirty minutes getting a lecture on Heran fashion rules to go with the brain download skill package Mirareki has prepared, along with a whole set of optimisation notes from Reizay that you pretend you're going to read later.

It boils down to the fact that there are three "grades" of outfits. Formal, like Mirareki was showing off at the first dinner, semi-formal like Mara on the Yacht, and work outfits, which are mostly just bikinis or tunics.

Formal outfits are so rigid and complex that you only have a few choices, which you'll need to let Mirareki and Reizay game out.
Primary Colour
[ ] Mostly white, implying purity of intention
[ ] Mostly black, implying breadth of vision

Secondary Colour
[ ] Mostly red, implying passion
[ ] Mostly blue, implying reason

Living or not?
[ ] Mostly living flowers
[ ] Mostly smart silk

Semi Formal: For social events, education, and leisure.
[ ] Your cool living flower dress which you haven't been able to wear properly yet and now works only as semi-formal wear
[ ] A Liaison style super multi-piece dress, with two piece top, train, collar and hair flower, like cut down - and considerably more practical - formal wear.
[ ] A fountain dress, a single piece of cloth flowing loosely from collar to thighs. Usually backless.
[ ] A tributary dress, an intricate multi thread flow of cloth that begins at the collar and flares to a skirt at the bottom while showing a lot of skin at the top.

Informal: For informal situations, work and home wear.
[ ] A simple, sporty two piece. It's called a 'dirty pair' for historical reasons you're unclear on.
[ ] An Exomis, the common default among the Heran public.
[ ] A more skin tight one piece like Mirareki wears.

These will be your main wardrobe, though if the visit goes on for a while you might want to pick again. Wearing the same clothes for too long probably also costs points.

"Huh." Luyu says, looking into the air. "Someone just blew up a session of the Conclave of Nike on Hera with a swarm bomb. That's the second time this week. I bet their security feels like idiots."

Mirareki bites her lip and says nothing.


You and Luyu are stalking one another, unarmed, through one of the ship's main gardens. You've managed to get above her. One of her bodies stalking past under you as you prepare to drop on her like a panther. If you can take one of her out quickly, maybe you can get out before the other three can get you. She's just too good at camouflage to–

A window opens up in the side of your vision. You hit the time out flag as Shenla's image pops up.

<<Everyone. Major stuff going down on Hera.>> Shenla says.

<<Is it another protest?>> Mirareki. <<I told you to ignore those.>>

<<Well, they've got the main council building occupied.>>

The picture is from an overhead drone and shows a street full of protestors, waving banners and guns. Flags of unfamiliar political factions snap in the breeze, both in the crowd and from the windows of the ornate building below. A pair of riot control spiders lie outside the entrance, burning merrily as the crowd surge past them.

<<The civil guard will clear them out soon.>> Mirareki sighs. <<I know that this seems big Shenla, but we've– it's been done before. The civil guard are raised in virtual. They don't have anything to stop them fighting to the end. Unless there's something like a general strike, nothing will come of this. Certainly not over them snatching the Feast of Swans from some isolate girl.>>

On the bottom of the video the news ticker scrolls a new message: <<Magrana Commune Association call for a general strike.>>

You hear Mirareki swear and kind of laugh at the same time.

<<Are you okay?>> Shenla asks.

<<Yes,>> she says. <<I'm fine.>> She goes quiet. You're not convinced. Moments later, Shenla also goes silent. Probably, Mirareki needs her..


For the next few days you watch fights. Things get about as bad as things get in situations like this. The civic guard stride around the streets, attacking protestors where they can. They're strange creatures, machine women with gleaming of gleaming carbon and crystal, tall and digitigrade. They seem surprisingly alien to be enforcing order on a deeply Chrysanthemum World. The Protestors who meet them, militias really, are a much more varied bunch. Everything from arrays of pure white and blonde Chrysanthemum Hardliners to squads of cauldron-born, and dark blue Rose immigrants, their cybernetic combat arms gleaming below their flesh ones.

The HeraSec, the army, stays out. Nobody blasts a reincarnation facility, but by the end of the week when the delegate recalls come through and the old councils vote for various loosenings of the voting system and then resign, it's got to electromagnetic artillery and combat swarms.

One week out, the Heran government has collapsed. The civic guard have retreated back to their bases and are negotiating with the patchwork of new committees. Several of the old guard have been arrested for corruption. The seas are a mass of colourfull banners.

You're reassembled in the alpine cafe, watching together as robots bring you strong coffee flavoured with soluble cinnamon.

"Urgh." Luyu sits as a group. "This blows! We missed all the fun."

"You like stuff like this?" Reizay is giving her a vaguely horrified stare.

"Oh this stuff is the best. All the fun of a war but with none of the risk so long as it doesn't escalate. This kind of fighting is the purist strategic game you can ever play." Luyu grins.

"What if it does escalate?" Mirareki glares at her.

"Nobody on a core world is gonna go to full civil war." Luyu waves airily. "This is the Chrysanthe, not some Stone Cult infested periphery."

"So– all that social credit stuff is gone now?" Reizay looks a little panicked, like something has been ripped from under her.

"Yeah, I guess everything I taught you is useless." Mirareki is tight-lipped and wound like a Nereidi spring-bomb. She doesn't have the affective resources to react to the circumstances, so instead has frozen up. Shenla is kneeling behind her sofa, stroking her hair.

"You can't unlearn years of habit in a day," you say. An odd feeling of reassuring someone that the revolution they clearly supported won't be too immediately successful. "We do need to figure out how we're going to do this though." You're only a few days from the system and it's time to start formulating a specific plan.

[ ] Try to gain access to general local information services. This used to be a panopticon and the revolution might have made that data less private. Alternatively it might try to shut the whole thing down, in which case you can try some short-term data archaeology.
[ ] Use your semi-fame from Scythia and Nereidi to see about recruiting local allies who can point you in the right direction
[ ] Try contacting people Mirareki knows, such as the local firewall branch.
[ ] Surely Everdancing Flame had a cult here. Perhaps Alex knows someone who can help you.

[x] Try to gain access to general local information services. This used to be a panopticon and the revolution might have made that data less private. Alternatively it might try to shut the whole thing down, in which case you can try some short-term data archaeology.

[X] Mostly black, implying breadth of vision
[x] Mostly red, implying passion
[x] Your cool living flower dress
[x] A simple, sporty two piece. It's called a 'dirty pair' for historical reasons you're unclear on.

"The easiest way to find her would be to access the panopticon systems," you say.

"The main record hall in the Temple of Nike was burned down yesterday," Mirareki says. "The crowd threw a micronuke in to cook the whole place." Luyu gives a low, appreciative whistle. Mirareki continues: "It actually killed one of the rioters, she's now upset she lost the memories of storming the temple if you follow the story up. But anyway, they'll have a backup. Several in a system that vital. We'll need to get access to one of the data management systems and check routing. But I don't think we can do that before we get a look at the situation on the ground. I don't know whether the revolutionaries will be going around cooking every backup. Tempers probably cooled a bit after they made the main records unusable."

"With that amount of data there's always a lot left." Reizay says. "Probably even the priestesses in charge didn't know where it all was. You simply can't get rid of it. It's just a matter of finding it in time."

"Do we know about what kind of politics are emerging from all this?" Juketta asks.

"There's a few different factions."

"If the opposition has taken over then there's really four groups who I'd watch out for…" Mirareki says.


"The heck is Anti-Operationalism?" Luyu asks.

"It means that they don't think decisions should be driven entirely by data and analysis. Or even that the government shouldn't be allowed to do data and analysis." Mirareki says

"Fucking A." Luyu laughs.


Atet sighs. "I guess we'd better start learning local politics." Maybe she's the kind of person who complains endlessly about local committee meetings

It definitely sounds less fun than playing dress up.

"Justice in Vision will end up in control, at least for now." Mirareki says. "They just have too much power already and it doesn't look like they blew themselves up in the revolution. Nobody will be able to organise to overthrow them yet."


You leave the deep ship in the parking swarm near the systems edge, a curiosity for ship watchers and space nerds. You could perhaps gain some resources by letting people tour it, but given you know Dandelion has been active on Hera, it's probably not a good idea while you have no substantial guard force. Instead you take a shuttle in system, and after a few minutes erupt from the grey of FTL space into the blue sky of Magrana. The shuttle banks gently and moves out of the clear zone, to settle into the traffic pattern above the Suspension Arcade. A bottomless mosaic of building styles spreads beneath you. Gleaming summer period towers with rounded edges, spindle shaped megastructures from the lost period, even a few restored exile era steel and glass towers.

It surprises you how much green there is. Everything from window boxes to upper floor parks that have escaped their bounds into their own small eco-systems. Between the green and overgrowth, the city still sparkles. Glass and diamond glitters in the sun, and there are areas that are shockingly clean, maintained by still active automated processes. Others have gone fully cancerous, bubbling up like trapped liquid as self repair processes go out of control.

"So, what do we have to wear going through the port?" Luyu says.

"The actual port is controlled by the Chrysanthemum, so it's casual there. As soon as you hit the exit gate you want to be wearing your formals though. There's a little ritual of greeting outside." Mirareki says, then frowns. "Not sure if it's still going though."

"There's footage of them still doing it yesterday." Reizay says, perking up. "Though we could just skip it I suppose. It's not as if social credit matters anymore.'' She looks a little crestfallen.

You try to refocus her: "What about the data centre? Do you have a line on where we need to go?"

"Oh, yes." Reizay nods, more animated: "There's a large data interchange about five stops down the line from the station. If we can get in there, I've assembled the necessary software to trace down what we need."

"So are we attending the ritual or not?" Atet asks.

Luyu laughs. "Let's just dress up. It'll be a bit of fun now we're back at civilization."

"We're in for landing." Juketta reports from the cockpit. You walk over to the front and make a window, and take your first look at the Suspension Arcade itself. Seem from a distance it almost looks like nothing special. A monorail, as exists on many worlds. Then you realise the scale. This is a monorail that stretches over hundreds of kilometres, a monorail made up of hundreds of separate transit rails. The things hanging from it are not cars, but entire structures. In places graceful arcs of black megastructure reach up to caress the transit line, lights and windows gleaming across them. In others, the tube passes through even larger megastructures. You see a space where it passes inside an ever rearranging crystalline shape, which your overlay marks as an active posthuman core.

"One of the Choir." Alex says in your head. "Or maybe more than one. There are several nodes across the planet. The city sucks up power and excess computations from them."

"They're trading with the posthumans?"

"Not this deep in the core. Not really. The Choir is locked behind Gates of Heaven. They don't really find the universe outside that interesting anymore." You feel her contempt. "Fools." A slight pause. "The city is full of posthumans of various types. Both the Choir and the Old Machines still exist here."

You turn away from the view and head down to the shuttle's cargo bay where Luyu and Shenla are wrangling your baggage onto several cargo spiders. "There's a lot of these cases." Shenla sighs. "At least the dresses aren't that heavy."

"It's fine." Luyu waves. "It's a little dull when everything just comes out freshly fabbed. Nice to carry your inventory with you sometimes."

"We're on final. Everyone get secure." Juketta calls out. You and Shenla drops into a seat while the Luyus just grab onto security posts or sit down and attack themselves to the floor. There's a small bump as the shuttle lands, and you're on Hera.


The aerospace port is if anything overly normal. Like most Chrysanthemum side spaceports in the core, it's under direct control of the Chrysanthemum organisation itself. There's evidence of militarisation, drones in the air, security troops reinforcing the normal airport peacekeepers, a pair of Chrysanthemum combat hovers sat on the apron as you come to rest, but really it's light. This is not an outpost under siege. The usual mix of port amenities, cafes, sitting gardens and shrines are all seeing lots of traffic, and the security checkpoints function normally. There are no stacks of luggage or desperate evacuees in the long, long corridors. No distant crack of gunfire or rumble of artillery. Fortunately, this means iIt doesn't take too long to negotiate through the entry control.

After that there's the first real change. Rather than just heading out, there's a large changing room where you put on your most formal dress, do your makeup and check your hair and jewellery. Long practice helps you move in the thing, and the array of formally robed women at least tells you where to go.

The airport pads are hung off one side of the main rail, with a large amount of megastructure extending away into the city below. Towers step down and down through air that's vertigo-clear to the ground. Across the street is another massive building: High-Point station. Your overlay informs you that the vast black block is one of the largest transit interchanges in the city, and it certainly looks like it, towering up high above even the massive bundle of transit tubes, almost the highest object you can see nearby.

You can see trains radiating up out of it towards the rail that crosses around the entire suspension arcade. A white high speed passenger service rockets away as you watch, rattling the air. There's a large square between it and the airport, with an empty plinth in the middle and a broken statue. A bunch of militia, slouching around in nothing like tactical order in the middle.

To the sides of the gates seems to be an ongoing protest. A series of signs and hanging floats: "What about the mould?" "No Revolution Against the Black." "General Action Needed! Conflict Specialists Not enough!" Context tags take you into an obscure catalogue of local politics about some kind of contamination affecting communities in the city's lower parts.

On the airport side, a Chrysanthemum direct fire drone is parked outside, with its gun carefully pointed at air. Meanwhile a line of Chrysanthemum troops, some in armour, others in their black and white uniforms stand around watching in a much more orderly fashion. It's not really tense, with most people just walking past, but as you get closer you see that the two groups are settling their differences in a more or less equitable fashion: surrounded by a crowd of cheering onlookers, they're wrestling.

The Chrysanthemum champion is a husky, white skinned woman with gleaming silver hair and small horns, her opponent is a little shorter and darker skinned but just as muscular, a classic style human without any obvious extras. Both women glisten with oil as they grapple on a section of the street turned soft for the contest. There's a short exchange of holds then the Chrysanthemum lifts and throws her opponent, the crowd cheers as the combat goes to the ground.

Luyu smiles. "They should have known not to take the Chrysanthemum in wrestling. They're absolutely obsessed with ground game. Should have done MMA.."

The greeting ceremony is a little past the protests. It's not really much of a thing. You approach a trio of priestesses, skyclad but with a lot of jewellery, who ritually bathe your face and give a greeting kiss on the forehead. They manage not to look too bored by the process but you get the impression they might be doing something else at the same time. Task hedonism is a little unlikely on a Chrysanthe world like this.

"So we're heading for the train now?" Atet says, holding up her train carefully.

"No. We have to change into semi-formals first." Reizay says. "It'd lose us points if we walked around wearing these."

"Can't we just go inf-"

"No!"

Fortunately, there are at least a lot of changing rooms provided and you're soon safely back in your living flower dress. The design is a little different from most around here and you get some appreciative looks as you head towards

"Long live the revolution comrade!" Says one of the revolutionary soldiers on the station steps. She's wearing a tac-suit and still carrying a carbine and catapult, dressed for war, but with a garland of flowers around her that she'd have to remove to get good countermeasures.

"Cool dress." Says a dark haired girl with cool eyes and a liaison style dress. "Is it off-world?"

"Yeah. I got it on Haraway."

"Oh that's so awesome." The woman, who is as far as you can see entirely classic human, makes a rose sign at you and darts off into the crowd. You head up into the station and board a train, sort of trying to absorb the street life around you. Two women in black fountain dresses talking about a literary prize while leash loads of harem girls shift and preen behind them. A group of militia in full power armour laughing with a pair of blue robed street poets. A woman with a strange, tall instrument is playing a tune that sounds both mournful and amused. A crew of children in overalls standing in a protective group and dragging a mass of project equipment. The air inside the station is full of noise, and flitting drones, and the smell of a hundred types of spicy food. It's an effort to fight through it all and find your train and get on it, but you also kind of love it. This is a proper city.

The train interior is old and luxurious, it reminds you a lot of the Deep Ship, all vibrant whites and blacks. It's also packed and very loud, with everyone talking at once. You hadn't reconned with how diverse Hera was just by the space port. A lot of border Chrysanthe worlds don't have much going on in terms of mods but it's different here. You find yourself wedged in next to a large group of Gynoids having a quiet political debate with a trio of blue haired clones in skimpy white feather harem outfits. You think the clones might be from one of the first born clone lines, survivors of one of the initial dark ages. More surprising is the gynoids. You've heard Gynoids are low narrative, but they seem animated here, talking quickly with fast hand motions. The sight of them causes a feeling of contentment to bleed over from Alex's mind.

Across the cabin you tag a couple of conflict specialists out of uniform and a white skinned Cauldron Born, who glances your way and gives you a cruel, sharp toothed smile, then chuckles as one of Luyu steps forward to chat.

From up here you can see the structure of things better. It's a series of buildings stepping higher and higher as they close with the rails. Large skyscrapers rising up to the actual megastructure around the rail. A big Chrysanthemum enclave hangs like a wasp nest in the near distance, and there are a few other tall buildings in the distance.

On another track, you see a line of APCs and other vehicles rocketing along in suspension clamps, heading towards a downward line. The armoured carriers are decorated in bright, old style camouflage and the words "KINETIC LOGIC" in a cool font.

Shenla picks at her exomis. "This is weird. It's really loose."

"Are you okay wearing it?" Mirareki asks.

"I think so." The communion forces a smile, letting the cloth drop back. "It's certainly not as suffocating as I thought it'd be. I'm glad you don't have to wear anything under it."

The data interchange is on its own platform above the rail. Most data traffic here still goes through hardlines. The interchange is a large spike where the trails loop and combine, allowing them to be fixed, maintained and rerouted.

"Local news feeds say there's some kind of dispute going on here." Mirareki reports, checking her feed. "Apparently some local militia group took the interchange over during the revolution and now they're not letting it go. For some reason there's a Clock committee and their militia surrounding it. I'm not sure why it's them rather than the proper government.."

"Do you think it'll be a fight?" Reizay asks.

"Probably not? It seems like they're just yelling at one another." Mirareki shoots you all the video. "The question is, how do we approach this?"

[ ] Head straight there and try to talk your way through
[ ] Stop a station along and infiltrate back along the pedestrian lines atop the megastructure,
[ ] Head down and do a death defying infiltration up the side of the megastructure.
[ ] Try to contact the militia inside and obtain entry
[ ] Try to contact the Clock militia outside and see if you can work out something with them.