NOVEL NEXT Chapter 47: Earthern Transit
Our shuttle rumbled to a halt bouncing a little on the landing gear suspension as it touched down on the ground. We’d finally arrived back on good old planet Earth. A break from space most of us definitely hadn’t expected but welcome to many of us nonetheless.
The shuttle had landed on one of the landing pads that wasn’t directly attached to the terminal. They probably didn’t want us to be flooded by attention from other soldiers and the likes, which might not have been a terribly bad idea.
When we got out of the shuttle there was a little roofed structure nearby with a runway crewbot standing next to it.
“Your luggage is inside.” The crewbot rolled over to us and pointed its arms towards the little storage shack.
“Thank you.” I gave it a smile and lead our group towards the storage. The crewbot zoomed past me to make sure the door was open so we could swiftly collect our luggage.
It didn’t take long at all to find our stuff as the rest of the crew had apparently already collected theirs. What I did notice when we collected our bags was that it had clearly been opened, they had even applied a tag to every single one of our bags, indicating it as such. It made me happy that we’d made the right decision to keep our more… incriminating stash of devices aboard the ship.
When we had all collected our luggage we walked back outside, only to be greeted by a hoverbus that’d drive us to a remote part of the terminal, presumably.
When I talked to the crewbot it pretty much confirmed that fact.
“Where do we go from here?” Luna asked when we were seated in the bus. It didn’t waste any time to start moving when we were all aboard.
I looked over at Eva. “When we arrive at the terminal I suppose Eva will start making her way towards the maglev terminal.”
Eva nodded. “Yep, luckily the train ride isn’t that terribly long.”
“She lives pretty closeby.” I explained.
“What do you call closeby?” Luna asked.
“200 kilometers, give or take.”
“I will have to walk home from the station though. But from here the entire trip will only take 40 minutes or so.” Eva said. “The advantages of both living in Europe and having the main military spaceport here.”
“As for us…” I started. “We’ll be heading towards the hyper train terminal. That one will get to the Antarctic Region in about four hours. After that we’ll need to take a local train to get to my hometown though.”
“So, can we wait for a train together with Eva?”
“Sadly, no.” Eva laughed. “The hyper rail terminal is pretty much on the opposite side from the maglev terminal.”
“In actuality, it’s actually a cab ride away from the military spaceport to get to the hyperrail network.” I added.
“That… doesn’t make much sense?” Luna scratched the back of her head.
“One company built one network, another built the other. When the Federation took over all global transport networks they were looking at linking the networks better. But it was just way too expensive. The city had just grown too much around it to start shifting things back.”
“Oh….”
“That’s just the way things are in Cesc.” I shrugged.
“Is that the name of the city?” Luna asked.
“Well…” Eva chuckled.
“That’s just the acronym for Central European Spaceport City.”
Luna looked at me with a face that both screamed scepticism and bewilderment.
“Hey, I didn’t name it so, don’t blame me.” I laughed. “How did you not notice the name though, you flew to the moon through this hub, didn’t you?”
“I thought it was just some military pragmatism…” She pouted.
“If only…”
“I do think the francophones among us call it Cesque now though. So it at least sounds a bit more city-like.” Eva said. “Language always finds a way.”
The hoverbus arrived at the far end of the spaceport terminal and let us disembark. There were still a couple of crewmembers there who didn’t belong to the officer corps, one of which was Gunny who was leaning against a pillar eating a hamburger.
When he saw us he waved and came walking towards us. “Took you long enough, Commander.” He took another bite from his burger.
“When were you dropped off here?” I asked in return.
“Couple of hours ago.” He replied. “Don’t really have anything to do so I decided to wait up to see how you all were doing.”
“That’s very nice of you.” I saw Luna’s eyes keep returning to Gunny’s burger. “Also, could you tell us where you got that burger? We only got some small snacks on the space station.”
“I’ll point you to it.” Gunny smiled. “But first, how did it go?”
I continued to tell Gunny what we had experienced aboard the space station while he kept eating his burger all the way through. Even though I gave him the abbreviated version, it still took me a couple of minutes to go through it all. “...and that’s about it.”
“That’s definitely a lot more thorough than what we went through. Even though the only thing you really did was talk.” He nodded, wiping his mouth with the tissue that came with the burger. “We were just told the chain of events and then were asked to confirm or deny that. As a group.” He shrugged. “Didn’t really see the point in that but hey, it’s good that you made it through good and whole.”
“I’m glad for that too.” I nodded.
“It was nice seeing you Gunny.” Eva smiled. “I’ll be seeing you back on board?”
“If they let us, definitely.” Gunny nodded.
“Good, if you don’t mind though, I’d like to catch the next hover train if that’s possible.”
“Sure, go ahead.” I gave her a handshake. “If you ever want to hang out while we are still on Earth, just give me a call.”
“I will.” She smiled and then ran off towards the hover train terminal.
“Now, I did promise to show you the burger place.” Gunny grinned. “Follow me.” He beckoned us along. We said goodbye to the other officers first, as they were all starting to head out as well, one of which was Yuki who went in the same direction as Eva. If she was fast enough she might catch up to her, but then again, Eva is definitely no slouch when it comes to running. She practices a healthy body equals a healthy mind both as a doctor and personally after all.
That led us to a bit less healthy stuff in the form of a good old street food stand, practically next to the parking lot outside.
“The stand might not look like much but I can guarantee you that the food is great.” Gunny said as we were looking at the stall. “And at least it’s human served for once.” It’s true that that has become increasingly rare in the last couple of years. Even most street food stands were starting to get taken over by bots. Probably not a bad thing for hygiene but it did lose quite a bit of its charm that way.
That said, Luna didn’t really seem repulsed by the street food cart, on the contrary I’d say. She almost started drooling at the sizzling meat on the grill.
I decided not to let her wait for much longer and walked up to the stand. “Two hamburgers, please.”
“Alright chief, comin’ up.” The man behind the grill replied.
“Gunny, you don’t want anything anymore, right?”
“Nah, I’m full.”
“I sell drinks too, y’know.” The guy said, not even looking up from his grill.
“You heard the man.” I laughed and looked back at gunny.
“Just a beer then.”
Still not taking his eye off the grill, our street food chef casually grabbed a can of beer from the little fridge that was worked into his street food unit and handed it over to me. I quickly handed it over to Gunny.
“That’d be 7000 federals.” He quickly flipped the patties in a bun together with some greens and sauces. Also handing them over to me. Luna accepted them for me as I did need to pay.
“You sure? That’s not a lot.” I took out my holostick and held it out to him. Transferring 7000 federals just like that.
“Just love doing it, chief.” He smiled. “Ain’t need no more to live.”
“Hmm.” I chuckled and transferred him twice the amount. “There you go…” I read the name of his food stall. It was called Scott’s Burgers. “...Scott. This way you can love doing it more comfortably.”
“Thanks, chief. Much appreciated.”
I walked off to go and collect my burger. In the meantime Gunny had taken it over from Luna as Luna couldn’t wait to get started on it.
“She was really starving, huh?” Gunny laughed.
“Yep, and so am I. Let’s quickly eat our burgers before we take a cab.”
Luna just nodded while she breathed in the burger.
-Calm down there, Luna, at least take your time to enjoy the taste.-