Higgs & Soap: Galaxy Delivery

Chapter 20

"I thought that was pretty convincing," said Higgs, as the two of them swung upside down by the rope tied to his ankle.

"It convinced me!"

Soap was clinging on to him, arms and legs wrapped round his body.

"Told you nobody would notice the rope. It's all about misdirection you see."

"Ya know, I'm not the best with heights Higgs. Not, like, phobia strength or anything, but I prefer to be able to see the ground."

"Really? I never knew that. How do you deal with flying in space then?"

"'Cos there's no 'down' in space, dummy."

"Well, whatever you do, don't look down. Well, up, technically. You know what I mean."

Soap took a few breaths to steady herself, then unwrapped her legs and let herself swing the right way up. With a few kicks of her legs she swung them towards the nearest support, and hooked her foot around it.

"Grab on!"

Higgs clutched onto the support and started climbing 'downwards' up it, until he was able to turn himself the right way up and dig his free foot into a gap to support himself. He untied the brand new hardware store rope from his ankle and shimmied down to where Soap was already leaping between beams towards a wider walkway next to a fence. By the time Higgs had (rather more slowly) navigated the beams, she had already forced open a security gate and they both quickly ducked through it.

After a detour through some store rooms, they found themselves in the Honsey Market area. It was a huge market, stretching as far as they could see in all directions from where they stood. This sub-level had about ten metres height between it and the one above, allowing up to three floors of buildings. And they were stacked tightly next to each other, with gangways and ladders leading up and down to hundreds of small shops and stalls. It was also busy, with thick crowds pushing through the narrow passageways. Soap immediately wished she was back on the top level again, then got distracted by the smell of street food and tried to locate the source with just her nose.

Higgs brought up his HUD and pinged the nanotracker. "It's three floors below us. Let's keep to the busy areas and keep our faces down, should be harder for CLARA to spot us here. If she's still bothering to look that is."

Soap nodded and they made their way down a wide metal stairwell, lined with street sellers trying to flog cheap toys. The further they went down, the more surprised they were to find people still here. The "Underlevels" of Varda City One weren't much known to visitors, but comprised almost one fifth of the total population. They were generally left alone by the security and killer robots as long as they didn't jeopardise the city structure or get into too much trouble. Also there were now too many of them to really do anything about, bar a huge, costly, and likely unpopular security operation.

Down here people lived on the rubbish from above, borrowed light from craftily placed mirror set-ups and hidden from radiation bursts in their own handmade shelters. They scavenged what they could from the city's giant rubbish skips, an ear always out for the alarm that meant they had thirty seconds to scramble to safety before the trapdoor was released and the contents were dumped into the tube below them. They had built outwards from the support frame, small ramshackle houses teetering over the abyss, held on by used bolts, cheap rope and a lot of luck. Some people have dreams they are falling which wakes them up, here it was a real world hazard.

They also had their own version of the Honsey Market, but slightly more illegal. It was here that Higgs and Soap finally found themselves, moving slowly through a rather more ragged looking crowd. Not that Higgs had noticed, he was too focused on his HUD.