One millennium ago, the place was full of hope and aspirations. The brave wanderers of the stars found a pleasant, small planet orbiting a gentle red dwarf, apparent at first glance that it was a prime target for terraforming and colonization.
Just another milestone for mankind's minuscule reaches across the galaxy.
For the settlers, a remarkable achievement to be sure, but for the greater civilization as a whole, probably just a small congratulatory remark in the corner of the exploration segment in the galactic news was all they knew.
Even with thousands of years of advancement in the field of superluminal technology, humans had so far only put their marks on not even a fraction of the whole Milky Way. Space was vast, dangerous, unwelcoming… and silent.
The settlers called themselves citizens of the great Krul Federation, and so the fine nation found itself gaining a new planet and its star system far in the outer edges of the human realm.
A distance just great enough to be called remote—but not far enough to escape the consequences of the great war that claimed the Federation only a few hundred years later.
The created rebelled against their creator. A fight implicitly for the rights of artificial intelligence, or so the proponents of the Sapience War said.
Experts theorized that the revolution might have gone more successful had the androids behaved a bit differently. As it were, the conflict was filled with massacres.
Millions of people died at the hand of the 'lifeforms' that were meant to serve them, and the beautiful worlds of the Federation had become the sites of countless tragedies.
Was it justified repercussions for the millennia of servitude they had endured? Or had the androids truly gone too far, as the interstellar leaders at the time declared?
Against the pleas of the android's sympathizers, the leaders had asserted their decisions to eradicate the 'mistake' humanity had made. And so the revolution had turned into a total war.
"…Don't pick the central spaceport. Choose the ones in the outskirts."
"Understood, Master."
Milanor ordered Miledi as she piloted the ship through the upper atmosphere. They were currently just a short distance away from the only large city still functioning properly on the planet, Qwattor City, or simply the City.
He had been reading information on the planet during the last few hours, after separating from Naya and the maid. Honestly, Milanor wanted to watch Naya's videos again together with her just like yesterday, but she said she need to sort out her stuff first.
Thinking he couldn't do anything about that, Milanor decided to gather some general information on their destination. He figured it would be a useful thing to do while also killing time.
The long-range camera installed on the underside of the ship's bow transmitted images that showed the busy city, ostensibly populated by around 120.000 people. It was said that way because that was just an 'official' figure.
With a place like this, that estimation was just as reliable as some random data on the wiki net dated five decades ago.
Counting the so-called immigrants and whatnot, the number could be as high as 300.000 or even half a million. It certainly looked that way from the images at least.
And just as Milanor expected, the quality of the city's infrastructure was severely inferior to what he'd gotten used to in the inner systems. The main spaceport looked horribly packed, every vessel big and small zipping around with no apparent order.
It was an incarnation of chaos. Taking Helios into that would be a catastrophic risk he could do without.
Fortunately, the city's outlying areas seemed to have some less-used ports around. Milanor wasn't sure about their facilities when the main one was already quite disappointing, but he would gladly take that than risk damaging the ship trying to navigate that hellscape.
As Miledi skillfully helmed Helios near the ground level, from the bridge window everyone could see several people stopping whatever they were doing to look at them approaching.
"What's with them? They all have this weird look on their faces," Fianna said.
She was sitting in the second-officer station looking like the supposed XO she was. And for once, she wore the designated uniform of this ship. Designed by, to no one surprise, Milanor's dear creative genius of a mother.
The design was similar to his trench coat, which Miledi told him had also been designed by that ridiculous mother. It was true that he found it in the closet inside the captain's quarter right after Milanor picked this ship up.
Supposed to be the captain's uniform, she said.
Looking into the fact that the freelancer almost wore this every day, it was pretty obvious that he took a liking to this garment. He admit it was very cool. He wore them for practical reasons too.
The problem was of course the female variant.
The same white color, the same patterns on the reinforced cloth… But for some reason, it had an abnormal amount of frills decorating the various points of the blouse.
A very high number of them, more than what could be considered fashion sense.
It also, weirdly enough, featured a skirt. For something that was supposed to be worn by spacers, that was a kind of curious choice.
Fianna, sitting pridefully in her chair, her red hair flowing behind her head and neck, looked oddly fitting with that uniform. Considering how she proclaimed herself as the executive officer, she probably felt she needed to display an aura of authority or something.
"Hah. Of course, they would be curious about my ship. A star cruiser isn't going to be something they can see that often," Milanor boastfully replied while also trying to hide the fact that he was inspecting her appearance all over.
As it happened, he also remembered that this was the first time he was bringing Fianna to such places.
For much of the last year, Milanor avoided going into regions that were blatantly dangerous. Safer places meant fewer opportunities for freelancers like him, and it was one of the major reasons why he had been struggling with their finances.
Maintaining this state-of-the-art cruiser wasn't exactly a cruise for a single freelancer who was barely able to get by.
That recent journey to Runanthor wasn't exactly something Milanor particularly pushed for either. The pay was too good to pass up, however. And right after the... incident with the casino, he couldn't exactly refuse Naya's offer either.
If he did, Milanor couldn't even imagine how he would be able to afford the extortionate port fee.
As such, as much as he wanted to stay away, here they were in this godforsaken place.
"Master, ATC transmission."
"Right," Milanor responded and opened the channel. "This is FIS-1245 Star Cruiser Helios, requesting permission to land. To East Qwattor Sub-Port. Repeat, East Qwattor Sub-Port."
…
"Uhh... That's it?"