The virgin & the bad boy (Gravity)

B2/chapter 33/CutCity

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Everyone seemed deviously pleased to come and we packed up for some secret practice in the Kimyard hills. Marko and Bennie didn't agree but we made them come any way. We ended up in CutCity an historic city near the cut. Vaderman aka the resistance had find some empty hotel apartments there. Like my experience on FirstFootPrint city, Vaderman found people were very happy to support the revolution in little ways. Free hotel rooms was one.

I had heard of CutCity it was in a shortish tributary in the Crack aka Valles Marineris. If the Eye had tourism ( three years round trip 9 months like a Thanks Giving Turkey via hypersleep from Earth) this would be a great tourist spot. Except there was no tourism so it wasn't or as some future guidebook would say 'authentic'.  It had been built by English settlers on a budget. Instead of building a dome like any rational person would, they glazed over a box canyon. So they go 2400 meters( 1.5 miles ) of vertical rock. Under a tiny amount of glass. Cutcity was in an east-west canyon, so It got sun for about half the day. The English settlers had felt smug about getting a large volume of air for a tenth of the cost of a dome plus getting some fabulous radiation protection for free. The city itself was in layers cut into the rock or stuck out from it like someone had glued a house to the side of the rock for Lols. CutCity was famous for three things ( four if you included descendants of smug English cheapskates), a diverse bird population, weird vertical city and the best pressurized climbing you could get.

We had three days to practice before the storm hit. Day one would be in pressure on the inside walls of CutCity. Day two we would practice climbing in sports-eva suits but still in pressure. Day three real vacuum climbing and day four rest then weapons check and the attack. 

 Many of the FirstFootPrint city parkour crew had turned up. Open vacuum climbing was the kind of thing we had done in the old days. While you could fall about 10 stories and live in an dome, falling 10 stories in a pressure suit was lethal. The slightest tear in your suit on the way down would kill you. Fortunatly for us CutCity was full of unemployed climbing instructors. The instructors were all fully tracked but very happy to help a 'bunch ofYA's to practice their climbing' nudge, nudge. We visited the nearby shops and got donated a choice selection of gear, especially the super lightweight and tear resistant sport-eva-suits complete with EVA harnesses and bolt bags. Yes my winning smile is that good or Vaderman had it all organized who knows.  

The first day had created a new byword for exhausting. Marco and Bennie had struggled. In one of the sports shops we had discovered some self-powered lightweight winches. These used Kevlar-based tactical cord little figure than sewing thread. In the worst-case we could climb them winch then up with the other package and oxygen packs. I had found climbing easy, I still had a lot of my old earth strength left so climbing in martian levels of gravity sometimes felt smooth like swimming up rock. Even after years of pressure, growth, other climbers and most of all birds the rock was still rough with good hand holds.  

That night I was staying at the midway hotel. It was about one Kilometer up and we had climbed up to it all day. I had done more than climbed up to it. I had abseiled back down to Bennie and Marko and gone up with them again. Was safe to assume that I time I got back to the hotel I felt my entire body was made out of jelly.

Hotel midway looked like ancient Lobe coral growing out of the side of the rock. Each leaf was one or two rooms connected to a set of passageways dug deep behind the rock. I was desperately trying to recover my muscles by laying in a clamshell like bath looking out at the city at night. The far side of the city was spread out in the deep walls beyond. I noticed a small tail of white lights move on the side of the canyon below like a determined caterpillar. For a while, I watched as a white lights slowly moved up.  

"It's nice here," I said to Kentro. "If I live through this I'd love to honeymoon here with Dante". 

"I thought Deimos was the preferred honeymoon location? That or the artificial moon known as 'the other one'.*  The brochure says the time to come here is the spring when the trees near the roof shed blossom and it takes many hours sometimes days to flitter down the canyon floor." said Kentro. Vaderman had even got his speech fixed. 

 I wondered for awhile if the small white light was a bird of some sort. Then I noticed it slowing down and I realized it was the spiral railway cork screwing it's way up and down the city. 

It was at this precise moment  I heard a voice.

"Pajamas" it came.

I jumped up from my half sleeping reverie in the bath.

"Pajamas" it came again.

It was getting near sunset my side of the valley was still in sunlight. I drifted to the edge of the bath then looked through the glass railings. Below I could see a lone figure clinging to the rock.

"Is that you? bud" I shouted. I was half afraid at that moment somewhere on mars he had died and his ghost had come to say good by. 

"Of course it's me, who else would be dumb enough to climb after you" came back in familiar voice. My heart leaped it was Dante a very living Dante which was the best possible Dante to have. 

"Hang on" I shouted. I got out of the bath then rush back to the edge wearing a soft bathroom robe "don't go away" I added.

I  rush to the climbing pack and pulled out a claw gun. For 'real' climbers this was technically cheating but useful in an emergency.  I went along the corridor and took the elevator down to the level where he was. I fired the harboon end to the rock near him. And soon Dante was sliding down a wire rope wrote to join me. Then we were in each others' arms.

"I thought they had imprisoned you?" I said.

"yeah" Dante held me in his arms "they finally guessed I had helped you. Someone did a security sweep on access to the implant system. Found I had been looking at it for weeks. Fortunately, I already had already got the details out to a certain mutual friend of ours. I going  back in looking for some weakness."

I skipped pulling him to the elevator the hotel.

"I couldn't find one,  well before they caught me " Dante continued "I was imprisoned. Bentham likes me living. But it turns out, one of the walls in the prison cell was actually a robot working for this man called Vaderman. We couldn't escape but the wall who had been there since the building had been built in there years,  ago hid me. So it looked like I had.  Then after they discovered I had escaped, it was easy to actually escape. The wall robot helped me."

"Sounds like Vaderman." I said.

The more I learned about the anonymous army the more I realized the real resistance was out there and very very prepared. I knew our attack was risky and so slightly insane but I knew it had the potential to save millions of lives. I suspected that Vaderman was actually a myth. A fictitious person behind him some group of Generals hi. I was happy not to pry, I hiding behind the mask they were able to operate against the robot occupiers without being targets themselves. They had implants like everyone else once the robots knew who they were there would be instantly killed.

"I'm going to come with you," said Dante. As we got out of the elevator. "know how a massive amount about of these bases work. Who knows, we may get lucky and I might not yet have been wiped off the security system."

I looked at him, I could see the resolution's eyes. I had spent so long without him and somehow with him near me, I believed everything was possible.

"There's no one I would rather die with" I said to the intruder was honestly. I looked around "Good for you they gave me a double for the price of a single" 

*In addition to the mirror ring Mars now had three moons Phobos, Demios and 'the other one' home to a declining high gravity college/schools. 

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A/N Sorry for the lone chapter - University pressures. Join us next week as we start the big ending. Thanks for your votes, comments and reads - you're most generous. RK+Reb.