On the embarkation platform she crossed towards the loading area for the three massive interstellar ships which were docked nearby. The whole ceiling was a transparent canopy looking out on the stars. It was the first time Amelia Ramsay had ever stood before open space.
She crossed towards the loading area with nothing more than the new body she had been given, and a crisp blue uniform on her back. There was a desk set up nearby where a couple of crusty old colonels sat talking to each officer about their assignment as they came through. One of them had an old fashioned looking mechanical arm and he waved her over with it as she approached. “Lieutenant,” he said. He looked like he was getting information from a lens he was wearing in one eye. “Ramsay, is it?”
“Yes, sir,” she said.
“Well, Ramsay,” he said, “it looks like you have the pick of the litter. The three ships through those doors are splitting up, heading out to our far holdings in the Colonies. One’s going to our Watchtower out on the edge of Deadspace; one’s heading in galaxy to that far flung fucking den of depravity, Luminescence, in the far nebulas; and the other’s going in the other direction, out along the rim, to Pebblestone Cluster.”
She was feeling rather melancholy for some reason, even though she knew she was about to embark on a great adventure. She might have chosen the Watchtower, it would have probably meant a minimum of bullshit since the place was known for its almost monastic character; or she might have chosen Luminescence, stories of its grandeur even having reached down into the Corebound areas where she had grown up; but when the colonel had said Pebblestone Cluster she had felt a tug of emotion from somewhere she couldn’t identify.
The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that she couldn’t make any other choice.