Maybe they were hacking into Orbital’s networks. They were all that sort of smartass.

“Stormtrooper 13, please surrender your weapon,” one of the golems said.

“It’s deactivated anyway,” I said.

“Nonetheless, protocol dictates that you surrender it to us pending inquiry.”

“Oh, now you are worried about me hotwiring the thing.”

“Please surrender your weapon.”

It’s not much fun arguing with golems. They would just keep repeating the request until they bored me to sleep or someone upstairs decided to let them shoot me.

I handed over my weapon. It was either that or hit them with it and I had done enough damage for one day.

I stepped through the shimmering perimeter and walked toward the shuttle. I had marched back all the way back from Jihadi territory. It was impossible for them to send anything to pick me up. It might be seen as provocative to invade Aryan airspace.

The shuttle door opened, and the golems followed me in. I was given the regulation 30 seconds to strap in then the shuttle accelerated smoothly into the sky. The vertical takeoff allowed me to take a look at the city as it slowly came into view. It was not the most prepossessing of places.

A froth of hab bubbles lined the streets between the massive concrete towers, temporary housing for refugees that had ceased to be temporary ten years ago. Most had that burned-out look that warzones get. The wreckage of haulers and ground cars strewed the streets. Snow covered everything. If you wanted to call that polluted, sooty mixed stuff snow. Somewhere off in the distance I caught the faint flash of a firefight. At least they weren’t aiming at us during liftoff.

Ring after ring of the city dropped into view. The sectors had their buildings painted in militia colors. Black and gray for the Jihad. White and silver for the Radical Orthodox. Green and brown for the Temperance Legion. The whole spectrum of civil war was splattered there in luminescent paints. Ruined smokestack factories raised single-chimney fingers to insult the alien sky, testimony to the colonists’ effort to recreate the industries of an earlier era they considered paradisiacal.

The shuttle nose tilted up. I did not feel anything as the artificial gravity kicked in. The world rotated, leaving my brain to cope with the cognitive dissonance between eyes that said things were moving, and an inner ear that told me everything was rock steady. I felt a faint twinge of vertigo.

The sky darkened as we gained altitude, reaching the edge of space in less than fifteen minutes. The shuttle could have done it faster, but it was aiming out past the boundaries of the city before it went hypersonic. It wouldn’t do to upset the citizens with our sonic booms. There are laws about noise pollution in civil areas.

Yeah, I know. Fed Gov is worried about noise abatement while its citizens are blazing away at each other with automatic weapons. Go figure.