April 5, 2013

Immigration was surprisingly easy, there was a bored bureaucrat who looked at her unforged health screen, looked at her almost forged skills listing, recommended a place to store the half cargo pod she listed as “housewares and sundries,” put an electronic approval to her passport, a real approval seal on the physical counterpart, and gave her a chip. “This has a map, a list of cultural idiosyncrasies, and some 'verts for local businesses, banks and lingo labs and the like. You'll want to get local scrip if you're planning on leaving the Trade Quarter, and you'll certainly want to get local clothes if you're planning on staying here.”

She looked at her clothes, the pocketed vest and pants weren't bright colored, she'd picked them to blend into the background almost any where, and the cuffed over her issue boots. “What's wrong with what I got on?” She wasn't even showing any skin aside from head and hands.

The boredom fled the bureaucrat's face and he chuckled. “Just read the cultural section, and get a wig.”

#

She parked her 'pod in a bonded warehouse, paying more for it's first local month than she figured wise, but the place had monitoring, secure locks, and looked maintained. She took the name of a transitory doss from the warehouse clerk, noticed it jibed with one of the places the bureaucrat and figured either the place spread the local scrip where it'd do the most good, or it deserved the recommendations.

The transitory was cheaper than the warehouse, and a common room offered a tethered portable reader. After she took possession of a key to a room, Zinka put the chip in, fired up the reader and flicked it to the section on the colony's history.

Dinc was on its third century as a colony. It'd been settled by a cult, called the Pachem, an offshoot of the Midgrathan settled world Bindleshift, claiming perscution.