Astrophysical (completed)

Chapter 14

Simera was a beast of a world. Filled with large towers of concrete, billowing smoke in every direction, not a trace of visible life seemed to exist anywhere on the planet's surface. The atmosphere was made up of carbon monoxide and heavy nitrogen, forcing the inhabitants to wear specially built headgear to pump oxygen into their systems. Much of the mining planets had this problem in some sort of way.

Only three types of residents lived on mining planets as she had learned. First, there were the government guards and supervisors who ran the actual mining processes and kept the slave force in line while they completed their tasks. They resided in large machine-like structures where the gases were converted into breathable oxygen particles. The satellites that rested on top of them were to communicate to a nearby space station or monitor incoming ships as their portion of the planet was only for government work.

The slave force, which was humans cast aside because of their unfortunate luck to be born here, were kept in small houses, often many families residing in a singular home. They too had oxygen being artificially created for them, but with the overpopulated status of the world, the smell and dirty living conditions were more apparent when they entered. No other outside force could penetrate their living units as the government officials had been strategically placed outside them and the mines, they worked in.

Located on the opposite of the planet was where the third party lived and worked. These were merchants, trading and dealing the leftover supply of the mines to outsiders who could then make their deliveries to the outer rim. Kept together in a small village of plain concrete housing units, these merchants wielded and dealt with each other and their clients who could dock just alongside the village. The government officials would occasionally patrol and pretend to keep them in line, although that didn't seem to stop the merchants from trading in front of them. But the outsiders had more to fear from these patrols than the locals.

Cassie sat in the passenger's seat listening to all this information that SA was telling her. She had asked to be further prepared for what was to happen once they landed on Simera. In the back of her mind, a small voice was yelling at her to give up this foolish plan because of the threat, but once she had awoken from a long sleep, she knew this had to be her next step and she couldn't hesitate.

Simera's atmosphere was a mix of dark reds and purples streaking across it with dark green clouds orbiting beneath it, shielding the actual ground plane from vision as they entered it. Once they had successfully penetrated this layer there was nothing but a brown ground service covering the entirety of the surface. There was a large crate off in the distance that Cassie deduced must be where the mining was taking place, but their arrival would first have to be the merchant area so that she could learn more about how to break into the Government section.

While they were in landing mode, Cassie quickly went through the small closet on board and put together a mix-match of SA's master's clothes. This consisted of a plain white dress shirt and cape-like blanket to cover her chest and a tuxedo scarf in tan, to cover her head and wrap her mouth and nose so that only her eyes were visible. She had briefly begun to attach the oxygen mask thing when they landed, SA coming to assist her to make sure she got it right.

The door to the ship had then opened and the ramp began to lower. Cassie glanced at SA and nodded to him as they made their way onto the planet's surface.

The atmosphere felt harsher than anything she had experienced, but considering nothing around even remotely felt welcoming, it wasn't that surprising. She looked around and saw many people out and about doing their daily trading. All she knew about Channing was that this is where his home planet was said to be. She didn't quite know if that meant that he was a slave, but she hoped she could maybe find out what she needed without having to resort to sneaking into the Sovereign compound. In fact, the further away they were the better.