Editing Story:ROAD TRIP! (Warhammer High)/Part Two (section)

===Onwards!===

Several days of tourism passed, as Venus and company explored Nocturne.  Venus traveled alone to Ignea, to meet several of the nomad tribes that lived there.  They were more reluctant to acknowledge their Princess, but Venus came away from it satisfied.  She had made a point of meeting all of her people.  That was what she wanted.

As they slowly acclimated to the heat and gravity, the rest of the party found their time better and better spent.  The cities of Nocturne may not have had the incredible artistry of Macragge or the magnificent architecture of a Forge world, but their mixture of rustic durability, skilled crafting, and pragmatic design were beautiful in their own way.

Venus had been hoping to show her companions the individuality of the cities.  In this, she succeeded; the lovingly-crafted buildings of Aethonion, settled against the edge of an ash waste the size of one third of the continent, were as distinct as the magnificent, half-mile-tall walls of the Jewel City of Epithemus, set as it was in the middle of an ocean of acid.

When the group toured the Merchant Sprawl of Clymene, they nearly had to drag Venus and Freya away from the colossal markets that surrounded the system’s largest spaceport.  Restrained only by the knowledge that they would have to load their cargo for the trip home, both girls came away with armfuls of Nocturnean artwork and gadgets, and even Jake found himself sorely tempted by the selection of wares in the city’s exotic art and book stores.

In the entire duration of the trip, Alex didn’t hear from his father’s ship at all.  As they were aboard the Thunderhawk that was taking them to Skarokk for the final leg of the stay, he finally relented and called his father himself.  Raising his voice over the din of the engines, he reluctantly dialed the Corundum Star.

“This is the Corundum Star.”  A voice on the other end finally picked up.  “Who hails?”

“This is Lord Alexander Carlin, calling Trade Lord Joseph Kimball-Carlin,” Alex said.

“Alex!  Hey, kiddo, your father just left,” the voice on the other end said.  “Sorry about that.”

“Left?  What?” Alex stared into space as the rest of the group pretended they weren’t listening in.  “Where is he?”

“He’s on his way to speak with some merchant or other in Clymene, as long as he’s here,” the vox officer said.

“Oh.  Great.  What’s wrong with the Star?” Alex asked.

“Void shield projector shorted out in a horrible accident involving some escaped cargo,” the vox officer sighed.

“Uh huh…he’s not going to come find me, is he?” Alex asked apprehensively.

“You couldn’t be mad at that, could you, Alex?” the vox officer asked in surprise.

“Oh yes I could,” Alex grumbled.  “This is MY vacation.”

“Oh…I have no idea,” the vox officer confessed.

“Great.  Fantastic.  I’ll see you around, Max.  Bye.”  Alex turned the vox off and nearly slammed it down on the deck of the Thunderhawk.  “Damn him!”

Venus reached across her seat and squeezed his shoulder.  “Say the word.”

“No.  There’s a chance he isn’t here to bother me.  I’ll let it slide until he does something stupid.”  Alex sank back into his chair and looked over at where Venus was tapping away at a slate.  “So…anyone going to write home before we leave Nocturne?”

“I am!” Freya excitedly proclaimed.

“Me,” Jake said.

“I think I will too.”  Venus contemplatively tapped her slate.  “Dad said not to worry about the Underground and the violent immigrants.  I guess I won’t.”

“Good.  So…tell me about Skarokk,” Jake said.

“Well, it’s called the Dragonspine because of its location.  It’s built into a massive mountain range, which is essentially one colossal block of volcanic rock over a hundred seventy kilometers wide and two klicks high,” Venus explained.  “The air pressure and temperature will be lower here.  Much lower.  The mountains back up to a sea on one side and a huge volcanic delta on the other, where meltwater from the polar glaciers and Time of Trial snowfields pour through pumice fields and into the ocean.  There’s a tunnel under the mountains, I should show you.”

“You had me at ‘less air and heat,” Jake emphatically said.  Venus grinned and settled in to wait.

The Thunderhawk shook a bit as it descended through the clouds to the city below.  Arranged through and in the massive spires of rock from which its name was drawn, the city was home to massive plateaus that had been hacked from the craggy mountains, and leveled with Mechanicus technologies to serve as foundations for the city’s buildings.  Landing pads and void shield generators dotted the massive sprawl of buildings, which covered the entire center region of the massive mountain range.

Venus stood and grabbed a few of her possessions as the Thunderhawk Transporter settled down on the plateau nearest to the Dragonspine Castle.  Aptly named, it had been built by boring directly into a steep vertical mountain; the structure plunged deep into the mountain and high into the sky above them.  It was bristling with defensive turrets, reinforced windows, and landing pads that jutted out from its side.

The ramp hissed open.  A small honor guard of serfs and a single Salamander from the sixth Great Company stood at the bottom of the ramp.  Sixth, Venus had explained, had long held a connection with the city.  The group disembarked and waited as Venus and the Salamander underwent their, by now accustomed, ritual.  When it concluded, he led them into the castle proper, while the serfs behind them directed the cargo servitors to move their luggage.

The rooms they received were more sparse than they had been in the other cities, but this was the most isolated surface community on the planet, and had few visitors.  Venus and Jake settled into the Imperial Suite, while Remilia and Freya and Alex found their own rooms on the floor.  Meeting up after offloading, the group headed into the city to get lunch.

Jake slid his sunglasses on and breathed deep in the mountain air.  “Mmm…it’s cooler here than anywhere else on the planet.”  He looked up and saw the heat waves emanating from the rooftops of every structure around him.  “I mean, relatively speaking.”

“Heh.  I know.  It’s almost tolerable,” Alex said.  He shook his thermoreflective clothing free of water droplets and sealed his water container shut.  “So…who’s up for what?”

“Something simple and quick, so we can go see the mountains,” Remilia said.

“I’m up for that,” Freya chipped in.

“Okay…should be a small café down the street, then,” Venus declared.  She led the group down the roadway, taking care to avoid the deep drainage slots.  The mountainous slabs of rock upon which the city was built were so hard that the creation of a modern sewage system and power grid had been something of a technological miracle by the Mechanicus, and its maintenance was difficult.  Outside the Castle, the sewers were only a few feet below the surface, and the drains were deep and imposing.  Fortunately, the drain pipes weren’t physically connected to the sewer lines anywhere pedestrians could smell them.

In the more pedestrian parts of the city, the roads were a bit broader, though not by much.  Towering metal lights illuminated the streets in the lower tiers of the city, fading to darkness near the higher ones, presumably where the richer people lived.  The roads cut laterally into the steep mountains, sometimes straight through them in the higher areas, and where cargo moved.