—

The Rio metro network took her to the international hub, from which it was three hubs to Bangkok. That was where it started to get more interesting. She had to take a civic radial out to Prawet, where the Utopial embassy was situated. As she walked through the interminable portal doors with her bagez trundling along behind, Zapata checked her neurochemical balance, which was perfectly level. She breathed calmly into a Zen state. Ready.

A minute later she was walking up the embassy’s broad steps with fountains playing on either side. A Utopial called Kruse was waiting for her at the top, just in front of the main arched entranceway. Sie looked about thirty, with a mane of chestnut hair in which rainbow jewels glowed discreetly. Hir fawn tweed suit was very formal, with a skirt that came down over hir knees. Kandara had to tip her head up when they shook hands; Kruse was an easy forty centimeters taller than she was. But the omnia’s smile seemed genuine enough.

“Investigator Martinez, such a pleasure,” sie said.

“Likewise, and it’s just Kandara.” Being called Investigator threw her slightly, but if that was the way they were going to deal with her, so be it.

“Of course. This way, please, Kandara.”

Kruse showed her through a smaller door at the side of the main entrance. A short hall led to a single portal door. Kandara stepped through. She knew immediately they were on a space habitat; her inner ear could detect the subtle difference of rotation-induced gravity. Zapata confirmed the change, linking to the local net and questing its metadata.

“This is Zabok,” it told her.

Kandara had been expecting that. Zabok was the first large self-sustaining habitat built by Emilja Jurich, one of the founders of the Utopial movement. It was still an important center for them in the Sol system. There were several portals facing the one she’d just come through.

The ever-formal Kruse gestured to one. “Please.”

“Nebesa,” Zapata informed her after she’d stepped through. Details splashed across her lens. The Nebesa habitat orbited 100,000 kilometers above Akitha, a terraformed planet, itself orbiting Delta Pavonis.

Her inner ear detected another change, a slowing of the balance instability. Understandable. Nebesa was considerably larger than Zabok, making its rotation ponderous by comparison.

They walked along a brightly lit passage that opened out on a broad paved square. Kandara looked up, smiling as she took in the habitat’s interior. The massive cylinders always engendered sensations of awe and reverence. Most people considered terraforming to be the greatest technological wonder humans had achieved. Nature had taken a billion years to produce multicellular life on Earth; now the human race could duplicate that process on a barren planet in under a century. But Kandara considered that a cheat; simply spreading microbes and seeds across sterile rock plains was merely carrying nature’s banner forward. The habitats, however…Ripping asteroids apart, forcing their raw metal and rock into cylinders the size of some of the old nations on Earth, bringing new air and water to the interior of these defiant islands in space—that was real engineering, combining all of scientific history’s knowledge into a victory over the most hostile environment possible: the empty universe itself.