Systems In Chaos: Dissention

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

Galvin kept his eyes on the ever growing glow in the distance, he could see the bright lights of Khaal Garr starting to rise into the sky as he drew closer. As he travelled to the city in an air-taxi he once again took note that between the spaceport and the capital, there really wasn’t much for him to look at and occupy his thoughts. Farmland, water, desert, ice or grasslands were among the many different landscapes that were clashing against each other for dominance in the space between Khaal Garr and the port. It was dark, they had landed during the planet’s early twilight hours, which made it difficult to see anything as the taxi zoomed its way through the night towards the large beacon of colourful lights up ahead.

Galvin wasn’t travelling alone instead he shared the taxi-bus with a few others, six to be exact. He could have used a private taxi, but it seemed like less of a hassle to simply get on the first taxi-bus to Khaal Garr he saw. Three of them were crewmates of the ship he had been serving on over the last few weeks, and the other three looked like they came from less appealing lines of business. One looked like a small time frigate captain, probably dealt in the transportation of goods and people from station to station and Galvin guessed that her enterprises were not always legal. The other two looked like a pair of smugglers, or thieves; the man and woman had a very gritty look to them and Galvin had no doubt that they were criminals who took what they needed and wanted when they wanted it, and he assumed that they had no issues with killing anyone who tried to stop them.

Galvin never did like taking taxis, buses or any other kind of public transport. Not because he hated public transport itself, he just hated when he had to sit across from another and when they had to face each other. He found it awkward, and weird, and didn’t like having to look at someone because of how he was sitting. Not that it really mattered in the end, he had to endure it from time to time and that was a burden he was willing to bear with.

“Ten minutes until we reach the city, and maybe another five after that to hit the stop off point,” the pilot yelled back to the passengers from his driver’s seat. The announcement caused everyone to shuffle a bit, perhaps causing them to realise their own impatience to reach Khaal Garr or maybe it was the eagerness to walk its streets.

Galvin broke his gaze from the horizon and turned towards the city, he could see the buildings and other tall structures quite well now and knew it wouldn’t be long before he got there. He looked around the cabin, at all the other passengers, and noticed that the three Salem crew members were all checking their pockets, and bags, making sure they had all their belongings and were set to head off to enjoy their shore leave in any way they possibly could. No doubt the rest of the ship’s crew would be following suit and would be travelling to one of the two capital cities on Europa.

Galvin noticed that the smuggler was watching him, she was trying to look inconspicuous but he saw her gazing at him. It made him become cautious, but instead of making a thing out of it Galvin just returned to watching the city grow ever closer; however, he made sure that he kept his senses on the smuggler.

In twenty minutes the passengers were finally walking off the taxi-bus and into the bustling streets of Khaal Garr. Galvin looked up, he was always amazed when he came to the capital of Europa. There were only a handful of cities in controlled United Alliance space like it, its sister city of Bastion for one, as well as Mars’ Talon City, Earth’s Tokyo, Beijing and Los Angles were among them. In all, maybe, eight or nine cities were of comparable glamour and marvel to that of Khaal Garr. But this city had something all the others didn’t: it had a massive criminal and thuggish underground, despite the presence of the Zeuti.

Holographic video strips lined the bottoms of the elevated walkways or in the windows of nearby shops; some of the strips were advertising products or services for local stores or large corporations; others were video streams, airing live or near live footage of sporting games from around the system or showed news coverage. News on the war with the Hadi Empire was the most prominent piece to be airing on the streams, much as it had been for the past three or four months. In the stream to Galvin’s right he could hear the news station anchors chatting or arguing about how the war was progressing, about how it was going to end, how it was affecting people’s lives and what the United Alliance was planning to do about the Imperials.