Oh happy birthday to me. Once I am done with my brain clearing morning exercises this morning I will have my coffee and run amuck on a personal day off. Then tonight I will have ice cream cake and champagne. For now, the morning prompt.
Going to have to add a few more notes. I only started to see where this was going just before the timer went off.
Friday, June 27th: It was a long drop to the surface.
It was a long drop to the surface even if she took the ladder all the way down. ‘No Choice,’ Laura thought. She knew asking Hank to go lower wouldn’t do any good. This was likely as close as he could get.
‘He isn’t Luke,’ Laura thought for the millionth time. She had gotten lucky with Luke. He could pilot one of the cargo ships like it was his own personal cruiser. Not that any of them were allowed their own personal cruisers. Personal transpo was reserved for the elite.
Laura smiled to herself as she lowered the latter and prepared for the climb down and the drop to the plant’s surface. Even though only personal transpo was only for the elite, those with money and title within the Gretan Empire, they often couldn’t operate the machinery, at least not without damage to both the vehicle and to themselves. So they hired those who couldn’t own the vehicles because the Empire’s laws deemed the vehicles too complicated for those with pout education and training to operate them.
Luke spent a childhood working on the illegal racers in the flats, when he was old enough he took a job driving some elites who often needed quick escapes. She was never quite sure why he ended up in cargo transport. It wasn’t a place anyone with options ended up. She assumed that either the people he worked for fell out of favor, or crossed one line too many or he angered someone too badly to forgive him.
She hadn’t asked. No one asked those sorts of questions here. But Laura appreciated his skills. ‘More so now that he is gone,’ she thought as she reached the bottom of the ladder. She clipped the safety link to the bottom. Took a deep breath and launched herself away from the ladder. She watched the safety line unspool and braced for her own landing. She snarled insults at her replacement driver as the safety line pulled taught, leaving her a good two feet above the surface.
She grabbed the weighted line from her pack and clipped it on the extra ring of the safety harness. She then unclipped the safety line and dropped the last too feet. Still clutching the extra weighted bit, she moved to the secure grounding loop. She attached the weighted extra to the grounding loop. She hated using the extra but it would work. She kept all her gear in good condition she just didn’t’ like adding to the safety line.
Everything secure she went to the one small building on the planet’s surface. Like many planets in this sector surface buildings were rare. It was less hazardous to have one outpost on the surface and the rest of the buildings below. While protection from attacks was given as the reasoning, it also allowed those below to live lives not as closely monitored by the Empire. Many of the places below were their own little kingdoms only looking Empire on the surface and some, only in the places the Empire could see.
Ten til Midnight 