Eternity RPC Board
10-09-2020, 12:21 AM
(This post was last modified: 10-09-2020, 12:22 AM by Seperallis.)
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>> Listen to the super cool opening song every Gundam anything needs to have that Sal picked out <<
L.U. Elevator Spaceport, Venius, Krinis - late evening (local time)
A muggy, overcast, late spring day in Krinis had just come to an end with the last setting rays of the sun painting the blanketing clouds a deep crimson from beyond the horizon, by the time the convoy of trucks had finally arrived at the Venius Spaceport. A sprawling complex adjacent to the Port of Venius, the spaceport served as the hub for cargo from all across the Union, most of which arrived via the nearby seaport for inspection, before being loaded upon one of the several dozen round-the-clock maglev trains to the Space Elevator. Orderly stacks of crates lined the yard beside their relevant rail lines as, even at this twilight hour, dozens of semi-autonomous cranes moved to a clockwork rhythm as they lifted and set specially-designed transport canisters onto and off of their sleek transports to and from space.
The truck convoy was large, at least two dozen and more stragglers that had joined in with their line as they rolled down the Arkianian highway, but the facility was meant to handle much more traffic than this: as the trucks approached the spaceport, a system of gates and lane markers directed them to just as many check stations, open and ready to receive them.
A tall set of bollards blocked the lead truck as its driver pulled into his assigned station, and the inspector leaned out of the guard shack, nodding a greeting. In response, the driver lowered his window.
"Evening, can you turn on your cabin lights, please."
"Oh yes, sorry," came the reply, a deep voice with a heavy Near-Eastern accent. A second later, the cabin light came on, illuminating a sun-leathered man of middle age, hair closely cut around a sharp, hawk-like face and carefully manicured beard. He smiled a friendly, crooked smile.
"Please don't smile; it throws off the scanners."
"Oh yes, sorry."
"Don't worry about it, it's...nothing personal," the inspector shook her head in dismissal slightly as she glanced between the driver and her screen. "It just makes this take longer. Your credentials, please?"
"Of course," said the driver, handing over his card. The inspector took it, tapped it against her station, and handed back the card as the driver's manifest and personal information came on the screen.
"Your name?"
"Shapur Rostami. And you?"
"And what are you hauling?"
The driver shrugged his shoulder, head tilted slightly and his crooked smile returning. "Specifically, I was not told. My manifest says 'construction supplies' for the habitats?"
"It does indeed. One moment," the inspector noted, replying to a question that really needed no response. Apparently fine with the man's answers, she pressed a prompt on her monitor, and several sets of external lights illuminated the entire length of the freight truck and its cargo in the recently receded evening light. "You have been selected for a random search. Please wait a moment, this should only take a couple minutes."
"Of course."
Inspectors had the tools to perform their duties from within the comfort and safety of their shacks, but this one was different. She liked getting up close and personal with the cargo, trusting her eyes better in person than against a computer monitor. Some of her coworkers had chastised this "old-timer" for her habit, but she persisted, undaunted: she knew what worked for her and she wasn't about to rely upon technology as a crutch, no sir. With the inspection lights now on, she drew her scanner from its hip holster and donned her "SeedSys" hat as she approached the seals on the "universal cargo canister;" a container specifically designed to be loaded upon and go into space with the elevator trains, it was also designed for use with special electronic tamper-proof seals. All designed by and only compatible with SeedSys...well...systems, the entire process of loading materials onto and sealing the containers was designed to be highly secure and proprietary, to minimize risk to the elevators.
As part of that proprietary process, the inspector lifted her scanner to each of the seals in turn, and the data returned exactly what was on the manifest: construction materials, with no evidence of tampering since being put in place. Taking a few steps back, she paced several laps around the container and truck while on the lookout for other suspicious signs of tampering, checking in several places beneath the vehicle. Seeing none, she walked back around to the driver's side.
Her heart stopped in her chest for a second. The driver was gone. She knew for a fact he had been watching her at her task the entire time, having made split-second eye contact multiple times. She looked behind her, then doubled the turn frontwise again as the white-knuckled grip on her scanner grew icey. She chanced a look beneath the truck; no driver.
Returning upright, she nearly had a heart attack when she came face to face with the man in the window of his vehicle, unlit cigarette in his mouth and dark eyebrow raised.
Sighing away the tension, she smacked the side of the vehicle. "You're all clear. I'll open the gate for you."
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Smoke from the cigarette puffed from his hooked nose as Shapur Rostami watched the crane's methodical movements, picking one container from a waiting truck and placing it upon the waiting train before tracking to the next truck and doing the same. He marveled at the speed and efficiency: within the span of a few minutes, almost half the trucks had their cargo removed and replaced with a new container for transport off site. His truck sat last in line, delayed slightly by the surprise inspection; no doubt the crane would get to him in only a few minutes more.
As he waited, a couple of the other drivers gathered and he gave them an appraising look-over as they marched over to him.
They were an odd sort, such as most truckers were, but almost exclusively not native to Krinis - or certainly not Arkiania - by looks alone. A couple had the dark skin of the distant Skathian continent, while two others were clearly from South Ostara and the Near East, respectively. The tallest was a man he recognized, a long-haired, tattooed, pot-bellied, bearded caricature of a trucker who called himself "Lukas," and the only one of the group passably native in both appearance and speech, and it was he who spoke as he glanced shiftily into the starkly shadowed corners of the well-lit cargo yard.
"I don't like this."
Shapur didn't react immediately, drawing in the last long drag before tossing the spent butt to the ground, amongst many more like it. "We're not here to like it, we're here to do it," he commented with a long exhale while pulling out another cigarette from his pack.
Thinking a second, he offered the pack to Lukas, who waved it away in polite refusal while clarifying, "Not this, the job; this, the…this." Lukas gestured vaguely to the area at large, pointing out everything and nothing at once. "It all went too smoothly."
"I was absolutely dripping the entire time, I was sure they would get one of us," commented one man, eliciting snorts and chortles of amusement from a couple of the others. The man seemed confused for a moment before realization hit him. "With sweat.”
Shapur shrugged, as much at the refusal of his offer as at the mens' concerns. "When have I steered you wrong? You must have more faith, my friend."
Lukas huffed. "Maybe I'll have some of your faith when we get out of here," he said, glancing upwards at the undercarriage of the crane as it tracked above them, continuing about its work. "I don't know how you keep pulling it off like this."
Shapur didn't respond as he lit up once more, following Lukas's glance upward into a long gaze. The crane floated above the truck in front of his, paused a moment, then lowered its telescoping claw upon the container; latching automatically at designated points above and below the container, the claw raised, its cargo secured, and tracked swiftly yet carefully to the next empty train truck and reversing the process. Once in place, magnetic and mechanical clasps secured the precisely-placed container upon its truck, holding it against the acceleration of the train's imminent departure, and the zero-gravity environment of the elevator's higher reaches.
"I should go take a piss," he responded as the crane's claw rose again, and it made its way towards his truck, "before I run out of time to do so."
"Yeah," said Lukas as he looked back at the others, "we should get ready to go. Octitania lives forever, comrade."
"Sure, yeah," Shapur dismissed with a wave as he left for the port-a-toilets.
>> Listen to the super cool opening song every Gundam anything needs to have that Sal picked out <<
L.U. Elevator Spaceport, Venius, Krinis - late evening (local time)
A muggy, overcast, late spring day in Krinis had just come to an end with the last setting rays of the sun painting the blanketing clouds a deep crimson from beyond the horizon, by the time the convoy of trucks had finally arrived at the Venius Spaceport. A sprawling complex adjacent to the Port of Venius, the spaceport served as the hub for cargo from all across the Union, most of which arrived via the nearby seaport for inspection, before being loaded upon one of the several dozen round-the-clock maglev trains to the Space Elevator. Orderly stacks of crates lined the yard beside their relevant rail lines as, even at this twilight hour, dozens of semi-autonomous cranes moved to a clockwork rhythm as they lifted and set specially-designed transport canisters onto and off of their sleek transports to and from space.
The truck convoy was large, at least two dozen and more stragglers that had joined in with their line as they rolled down the Arkianian highway, but the facility was meant to handle much more traffic than this: as the trucks approached the spaceport, a system of gates and lane markers directed them to just as many check stations, open and ready to receive them.
A tall set of bollards blocked the lead truck as its driver pulled into his assigned station, and the inspector leaned out of the guard shack, nodding a greeting. In response, the driver lowered his window.
"Evening, can you turn on your cabin lights, please."
"Oh yes, sorry," came the reply, a deep voice with a heavy Near-Eastern accent. A second later, the cabin light came on, illuminating a sun-leathered man of middle age, hair closely cut around a sharp, hawk-like face and carefully manicured beard. He smiled a friendly, crooked smile.
"Please don't smile; it throws off the scanners."
"Oh yes, sorry."
"Don't worry about it, it's...nothing personal," the inspector shook her head in dismissal slightly as she glanced between the driver and her screen. "It just makes this take longer. Your credentials, please?"
"Of course," said the driver, handing over his card. The inspector took it, tapped it against her station, and handed back the card as the driver's manifest and personal information came on the screen.
"Your name?"
"Shapur Rostami. And you?"
"And what are you hauling?"
The driver shrugged his shoulder, head tilted slightly and his crooked smile returning. "Specifically, I was not told. My manifest says 'construction supplies' for the habitats?"
"It does indeed. One moment," the inspector noted, replying to a question that really needed no response. Apparently fine with the man's answers, she pressed a prompt on her monitor, and several sets of external lights illuminated the entire length of the freight truck and its cargo in the recently receded evening light. "You have been selected for a random search. Please wait a moment, this should only take a couple minutes."
"Of course."
Inspectors had the tools to perform their duties from within the comfort and safety of their shacks, but this one was different. She liked getting up close and personal with the cargo, trusting her eyes better in person than against a computer monitor. Some of her coworkers had chastised this "old-timer" for her habit, but she persisted, undaunted: she knew what worked for her and she wasn't about to rely upon technology as a crutch, no sir. With the inspection lights now on, she drew her scanner from its hip holster and donned her "SeedSys" hat as she approached the seals on the "universal cargo canister;" a container specifically designed to be loaded upon and go into space with the elevator trains, it was also designed for use with special electronic tamper-proof seals. All designed by and only compatible with SeedSys...well...systems, the entire process of loading materials onto and sealing the containers was designed to be highly secure and proprietary, to minimize risk to the elevators.
As part of that proprietary process, the inspector lifted her scanner to each of the seals in turn, and the data returned exactly what was on the manifest: construction materials, with no evidence of tampering since being put in place. Taking a few steps back, she paced several laps around the container and truck while on the lookout for other suspicious signs of tampering, checking in several places beneath the vehicle. Seeing none, she walked back around to the driver's side.
Her heart stopped in her chest for a second. The driver was gone. She knew for a fact he had been watching her at her task the entire time, having made split-second eye contact multiple times. She looked behind her, then doubled the turn frontwise again as the white-knuckled grip on her scanner grew icey. She chanced a look beneath the truck; no driver.
Returning upright, she nearly had a heart attack when she came face to face with the man in the window of his vehicle, unlit cigarette in his mouth and dark eyebrow raised.
Sighing away the tension, she smacked the side of the vehicle. "You're all clear. I'll open the gate for you."
----- - ----- - -----
Smoke from the cigarette puffed from his hooked nose as Shapur Rostami watched the crane's methodical movements, picking one container from a waiting truck and placing it upon the waiting train before tracking to the next truck and doing the same. He marveled at the speed and efficiency: within the span of a few minutes, almost half the trucks had their cargo removed and replaced with a new container for transport off site. His truck sat last in line, delayed slightly by the surprise inspection; no doubt the crane would get to him in only a few minutes more.
As he waited, a couple of the other drivers gathered and he gave them an appraising look-over as they marched over to him.
They were an odd sort, such as most truckers were, but almost exclusively not native to Krinis - or certainly not Arkiania - by looks alone. A couple had the dark skin of the distant Skathian continent, while two others were clearly from South Ostara and the Near East, respectively. The tallest was a man he recognized, a long-haired, tattooed, pot-bellied, bearded caricature of a trucker who called himself "Lukas," and the only one of the group passably native in both appearance and speech, and it was he who spoke as he glanced shiftily into the starkly shadowed corners of the well-lit cargo yard.
"I don't like this."
Shapur didn't react immediately, drawing in the last long drag before tossing the spent butt to the ground, amongst many more like it. "We're not here to like it, we're here to do it," he commented with a long exhale while pulling out another cigarette from his pack.
Thinking a second, he offered the pack to Lukas, who waved it away in polite refusal while clarifying, "Not this, the job; this, the…this." Lukas gestured vaguely to the area at large, pointing out everything and nothing at once. "It all went too smoothly."
"I was absolutely dripping the entire time, I was sure they would get one of us," commented one man, eliciting snorts and chortles of amusement from a couple of the others. The man seemed confused for a moment before realization hit him. "With sweat.”
Shapur shrugged, as much at the refusal of his offer as at the mens' concerns. "When have I steered you wrong? You must have more faith, my friend."
Lukas huffed. "Maybe I'll have some of your faith when we get out of here," he said, glancing upwards at the undercarriage of the crane as it tracked above them, continuing about its work. "I don't know how you keep pulling it off like this."
Shapur didn't respond as he lit up once more, following Lukas's glance upward into a long gaze. The crane floated above the truck in front of his, paused a moment, then lowered its telescoping claw upon the container; latching automatically at designated points above and below the container, the claw raised, its cargo secured, and tracked swiftly yet carefully to the next empty train truck and reversing the process. Once in place, magnetic and mechanical clasps secured the precisely-placed container upon its truck, holding it against the acceleration of the train's imminent departure, and the zero-gravity environment of the elevator's higher reaches.
"I should go take a piss," he responded as the crane's claw rose again, and it made its way towards his truck, "before I run out of time to do so."
"Yeah," said Lukas as he looked back at the others, "we should get ready to go. Octitania lives forever, comrade."
"Sure, yeah," Shapur dismissed with a wave as he left for the port-a-toilets.