The archipelagic world of Fontvieille lies between two spread legs of a galactic crossroads. Its system, Lavoisier, holds the one planetoid, alone in its orbit save for its single moon. A statistical anomaly. Immeasurably lucky.
What used to be a frontier stopover, aquaculturally focused, low-yield, was redeveloped with vigor. Wry smiles decorated the gangsters’ faces when the planet was renamed, reclassified to economic designation. Photos were taken, advertisements distributed, shown off to the public in a flashy, exuberant fashion, like a jackpot.
At her outset, Fontvieille was to be a special zone, as she lies on the cusp of multiple remnant empires, their warlords and boundaries growing and receding in the tumultuous dances of conflict. A neutral planetary system of self-governance and non-intervention. One of few, granted galactically recognized independence.
She was papier-mache’d with illegally collected bills. Built upon foundations of stolen bullion. Platted with parasitic intentions, her enticing exterior an asset like that of a succubus. Since the first gangster shot his loaded dice across her surface, every bounce has sprung another city-state casino, cults to chance that burst atop the planet’s hydrosphere. From baccarat games bloomed bureaucracy, and roulette wheels the right to rule. Gangsters became gentlemen, an inversion of the natural order.
Her founding treaties were to be negotiated yearly, regularly, declared at her birth to be a fleeting footnote in galactic history.
But, as a testament to chance, Fontvieille lives today.
Whatever laundering occurred at the outset pales compared to the criminality of the present, where the fortified sovereignties sit as mirages against the tides, their siren songs drifting through vibrationless space, enticing the untold amounts of visitors willing to cough up her fee.
And so, the General Authority waits in line at the customs checkpoint, thousands of kilometers above Fontvieille’s surface. It’s night beneath the Orbitale-XCVII intake office. The planet is alight with polka-dots of light pollution, lighthouses between the calm seas where criss-crossing yachts tie themselves together for months on end. Golden, temporary bouquets of Sodom visible from orbit.
You linger near the cargo bay, prepared for the customs deputy’s arrival. A normal intrusion, or so you’ve read. Cursory inspections are mandatory for all visitors. You’ll be tractor-beamed into yet another airlock, the vessel passively prodded by miniature sensors, looking for heartbeats, electrical discharge, unexpected weights, searching for rogue bodies or unlisted imports. Shaken down, as all travelers are throughout time.
But if anything is out of place, nothing will be done.
You’re already within open space, not at risk of arrest. That’s the appeal of Fontvieille. She’s an intergalactic neutral zone, the final one in existence, free from outside law enforcement or meddling.
For those who can afford the fees, it’s a caged freedom. Carefully watched, policed internally by the tentacles of authority that rise from the planet’s depths. Sated with opulence, pacified with paltry gifts that never compare with safety from foreign enemies, emancipation from off-world obligations.
But, inside every clutch of luxury yachts that drift along the waves, subcontracted accountants crunch numbers. They quantify expenses. Wonder, on behalf of their employers, just how long they can manage to remain within Fontvieille’s freedom and enjoy her sweet nectar of protection. Or, when the financing will finally dry up.
Unlike those nervously sweating auxiliaries, Ø lingers atop her bedside promontory. Her Kanapaha-4 Disintegration Rifle hides out of reach. Its lightweight frame is cradled from view behind a scarred thigh.
The mare’s disheveled from another cycle of shuteye. Her mane sticks sideways, cow-licked, scraping against the berth’s low ceilings that threaten to crack her skull at the slightest bit of atmospheric turbulence. Like you, she’s dressed for the official’s arrival.
Really rolled out the red carpet, still covered in cigarette ash.
Sans bodysuit, bare thighs and legs on display. Her tail is knotted, as she does to avoid the hassle of styling. It juts over the top of her purple combat drawers. And above that is her thermal upper garment, which is white, stolen, and a half-size too small. Her sorrel fur strains against it to the point of being translucent in the bright lights that rotate through the portholes, either searchlights from passing inspection craft or advertising lasers, pinpointed into the lingering vessels as a form of quasi-legal guerilla marketing, one never allowed on the planet below.
Ø ignores your apprehension at her outfit. She’s once more languid with booze after a brief rest at New Taufiq. Your employer must be conscious of her penchant for beer runs.
“Just in case,” she tilts the rifle in your direction, her vantage point decisive.
At least you have the decency to put on pants.
The stench of alcohol lingers from the scattered nips that litter the floor, nearly floating against the lessened gravity, the General Authority too small to sustain its own for extended periods. Your mare is skeptical once more. Too sharp to let her guard down. An idle digit traces her rifle’s safety, latching it open and closed with each chew of her lips, killing time with impatience.
Maybe you’ll receive stern reprimand for her outfit choice, as you assume it will be an insult to your new hosts. Or, for a history of murder and acting as an accomplice, as your identities will no doubt be found within the hundreds of registries at their disposal. But, as per the automated instructions that print from the cockpit, every snide comment must be reported to a superior officer.
Because it’s an open world, one organized with civility in mind. The authorities of Fontvieille are only conducting surveys. Not policing, just gathering information.
Survey after survey. Measurements of total accumulated wealth available for spending. Ones meant for targeted advertisements and personalized inconveniences that seek to separate you from your assets as quickly as possible.
Should you be a slaver, you’ll be directed to the landing pad nearest the flesh markets. A married man, the courtesans. For someone like the late Counselor Lee, about whom the galactic authorities have no doubt already built a file comprehensive enough to run him bankrupt within one-point-seven cycles, the low-budget slot machine shanties dotting the shorelines, near the rest of the geriatrics, the penny-pinchers, enjoying the disinterested, forced nods of homely-looking, conversation-only companions for rent.
It should only take a minute or two for the deputy to build a file just as large on you both. He’ll scrutinize variables like the direction of Ø’s whorls across her exposed flanks. Your penchant towards windbreakers. The mare’s cup size versus the caliber of rifle hidden at her hooves, the weapon easily found through echolocation by the station’s many scanners, and somehow representative of subconscious insecurities. Ones to be remedied in exchange for cash.
You wonder where your recommendations will take you, too, as another light shines through the porthole, an advertisement’s laser refracted into a poor man’s rainbow.
From the cockpit chirps the automated notification from the General Authority. A new message has arrived. No doubt an additional “thank you for waiting,” shot from the Orbitale, followed by vague language imploring you linger longer, as the thousands of other vessels also do nearby, close enough to see you waving from a porthole. Pirates, politicians, polite society side-by-side, lingering patiently for descent orders.
But the message this time is different. Planetside coordinates. Customs inspection waived for M and Mme. Jean LeFlore, joint captains of the Zelmire II, formerly known as the General Authority, the both of you operating under Letters of Marquee issued by the Republic of Barataria.
It’s egregiously counterfeit. You feel the customs officers snorting with laughter at the manufactured credentials, rolling their eyes. Masking identities is a normal occurrence, one that happens thousands of times per cycle. And one the customs officers are grateful for.
There’s one less vessel to scrutinize. One more kickback wired for embezzlement, this one no doubt fronted by your shadowy benefactor. One among millions, you assume.
The Orbitale’s scanners investigate you nonetheless, waving you onwards, sending over a formal bienvenue. Your new identity profile is created. With these many irregularities, the time until your true profiles are unmasked may be instantaneous.
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And, like any other irregularity, they will ignore it in favor of hospitality.
You maneuver the ship downwards, feeling the General Authority cum Zelmire II’s lithe, beaten-up figure vibrate against your palm. As you descend, a falling star of many in the planetoid’s atmosphere, you watch as the heat blooms against the hull, white-yellow-red against a calm blue evening.
Ø has followed you to the cockpit, cramming next to you atop the shag carpeting. She commits her new identity to memory, tapping through the analog displays, researching your penultimate destination within the island chains. It’s one enclave of many, and possibly the largest. Punta del Muso.
“Hell of a place,” she whispers between a Keowee.
She’s right. It’s three and a half kilometers of caldera, the nearby atoll’s natural reef boundary reinforced, its lagoon filled and dredged with laundered cash turned to airdropped soil. Reclaimed, rightly, from the calm sea that laps the island’s edges.
Out the window, there, at the top of the extinct volcano’s skeleton, a Palladian compound shoots into the night sky like an eruption, a plume of light invigorating its frame. It’s The Croix-des-Gardes, the polished gem of this hemisphere, the Casino. One of the largest of all casino-cities that Fontvieille has to offer.
Your eyes glue to the ocean, littered with antiquated square-rigged hydrocraft, where Breton-suited sailors entertain their guests, chartered for months at a time. They heave from the water by coiled jute, real jute, luxury liqueurs left to cool in the sea’s placid waves.
The vessels linger near Punta del Muso’s rocky beach. It’s been extended, artificially. At the hands of public works officials who stylize themselves as artists, viewing every modified marina as sculpture, meticulously detailing their muses and influences to one another, cataloguing their own pieces against the others atop the planet’s watery surface.
Tonight, revelers load the beaches and boardwalks among the white sails, some stumbling, most politely chatting with the fashionably clad flâneurs about their evening walks, musing with fishermen who cradle brews in their hands, watching their loose lines with passivity.
All coastline buildings are of reasonable height. Not over-built, maintaining their steel-on-glass époque façades as per the authoritarian building codes handed down by the kleptocratic elite. Inside the many domes and arcades, locals chuff cigars that cloud the ceilings, designed with air channels to expel such pollution, tantalizing Ø as the scents, mixed with saltwater, drift through Zelmire’s open portholes, her frame adjusting to a new atmospheric pressure.
The locals’ suits are individually sewn. The wearers are royalty. Generations of criminals-cum-bureaucrats handing titles back and forth for hundreds of years. Some landed, most honorary. One wears a suit hand-spun by the Baron de la Rue Sabiani, the good Baron’s holdings comprising the cul-de-sac where his tailoring shop has sat for seven generations.
As the suited gentleman smells another cigar beneath the chandeliers of the arcade, he brags to the off-world visitor he entertains that his family, Chevaliers, knighted, all of them, has used the same tailor for seven generations.
“Bonjour et bonsoir,” announces the message over the console. Audio only. Your ears strain against the low-quality speakers, blocking out the wind whipping the Zelmire’s descent. “Welcome to Punta del Muso, Fontvieille’s brightest department of our southern hemisphere. Local time 23:57, temperature Sixty-Three Degrees Celsius and dry. Whether you visit us for business or pleasure, we hope you enjoy your stay. Following disembarkment, one of our associates will assist you with your arrival.”
Zelmire finds her place among the beachside landing pads. She’s sat within a square of apartments, magnetically guided to the metal surface with pinpoint accuracy, one that fits four vessels in the space of a single one. Out the steaming cockpit windows, you study the three-story buildings, yellow-white walls adorned with natural vines creeping from the volcanic earth. Intricately carved motifs of cherubs and wheat decorate the façades. Individual residences are open, and well-dressed families of natives, flanked by obvious tourists, share communal midnight meals, comparing liqueurs and desserts.
You turn from the cockpit to see the mare at the porthole, investigating on her lonesome. She’s slack-jawed at the surrounding ring of late-night cafes where smiling attends overfill glasses of alcohol, trays of cigarettes shimmering against the moonlight, like the meteor showers of new arrivals cascading across Fontvieille’s star-pecked sky.
“Can you get put on some clothes?” you nag.
“Shove off. I’m enjoying the view for once.”
A knock at the stern makes you jump. It’s a diligent one, no doubt from your welcoming party. Ø’s cigarette has nearly fallen from her lips, realizing that you’re once more under attack.
“The attendant’s already here, I told you—”
“Not a chance,” she hollers. The mare shuffles back up the ladder to her nest, where her rifle threatens to careen off the upper floor berth. Should it fall, it will discharge. It’ll shoot a hole large enough to prevent any space-borne transit, if not kill you both outright. You pray she left the safety on, but complain nonetheless.
“What’re you doing?”
“You know what I’m doing,” she chides, smoke billowing from her lips. “Overwatch. Or do you want to die flat-footed?”
“It’s an open planet! There’s no cops here.”
“Oh yeah? Read that off the uplink, right?”
“Yes, you know I read that off the uplink. You see everything I read off it!”
“Well, unlike you, I’ll believe it when I see it. And until I see it, some sort of security, I’m not letting my guard down. Unlike you, someone who—”
A second rap of knuckles vibrates off the closed cargo surface. It’s not impatient, by any means. Just a kind reminder of your impoliteness.
“Open the hold already,” Ø commands.
“Not until you put that thing down!”
“Not on your life,” she shouts in anger.
Her Keowee finally falls from her lips. She scowls as it hits the shag carpeting at your feet. Returning her scowl, you stamp at the lost cigarette, refusing to allow the Zelmire to go up in flames. After a firm bout of kicking, it’s no surprise when you return to the cockpit, flicking the analog winch, allowing entry to whatever entity demands it.
With your blessing, the rusted cargo hold opens. A waterfall accompanies its metallic groan. One of bottles, pocket-sized, emptied, that cascade down the downward sloping ramp, onto Fontvieille’s perfectly manicured landing platform. While some crack, splitting the glass, most jump and bounce, rolling away into the trimmed hedges nearby, acting as caltrops for your welcoming party.
Whether the attendant minds the nips at her hooves is irrelevant, as she dodges them expertly. The she-ass anthropomorph enters in a blaze of moonlight. At her collar, as expected, is an auto-translator. It nearly blends in with her gray pelt, one that encompasses her lithe form. Except at her shoulders, where a single black cross imprints her back, black as licorice.
But, most importantly, she’s in the same outfit as Ø. Sans-culottes. Pantless. A sympathetic mirror to your mare, thermal shirt designer, turtle-necked, grabbed in a hurry. Or meant to look that way. The attendant comes with an added feature. A windbreaker sashed around her waist.
You wonder how fast information can travel on Fontvieille, and whether it’s frictionless and instantaneous.
“Buona sera, Monsieur LeFlore. I’m your assigned local associate, designation ‘PM six-three-nine-six-two-six.’ But, of course, you’re welcome to use my informal name, Fervidora.” Her greeting spits from her neck in a firm cismuntincu accent, clearly enunciated, deliberate and blunt. “I hope your descent was peaceful?” She crams her sentences together, sprinting through her reception with an air of informality. “Personally, I would like to apologize for the delay above-atmosphere. My colleagues at orbit informed me that your paperwork arrived with some tardiness—an issue on our side, I’m willing to bet.”
Fervidora balls her fist, slamming it against Zelmire’s wall in a crass display of attention-grabbing. At once, another associate arrives, hustling through the cargo hold. He’s red-capped, like an old world courier. His usefulness is immediately apparent, armed to the armpits with welcoming gifts. Cigarettes and booze that shine against their plastic wrappings. Left bare to show their value.
Yet Ø’s aim hasn’t left Fervidora’s chest. Once more, the Kanapaha rifle’s hazy red laser-sight flashes against the ass’s sternum. Once again, you search her mind to make sure the safety is indeed on.
“Complimentary,” Fervidora proclaims to your skeptical mare.
Thankfully, the mare lowers her rifle. Behind her batting eyelashes, she adds up the total value carried by the attendant. The smokes and alcohol, added to the paltry credit-estimated valuation of the man’s life. It’s enough to make her flinch at the proposition of spacing them both.
The attendant sees the pirate’s curiosity, too, laughing with a sophomoric grin. He removes a cache of booze, setting it on the floor amongst the empty containers. Out comes a small bottle of sparkling wine, and bouncing his arm once, twice, in anticipation, he tosses it upwards towards a skeptical mare.
As one lands in her grip, snatched out of the air, one meets yours. They’re affixed with bows. Easy to open. Brewed locally, it claims, in a miniature winery forty feet from the landing platform. With your subconscious synchronization, you and Ø uncork at the same time, spewing welcoming alcohol across the deck. You’re joined by the two attendants, laughing with glee, all four corks bouncing atop Zelmire’s ceiling, threatening to tear through her metal canopy and let in the nighttime stars.
“À la chance,” Fervidora yells, flicking her fingers free of trailing bubbly.
What your tongue finds is light. Unobtrusive. Sweet, fruity, with hints of apricot and walnut. Its alcohol dulled, meant for those with lighter palates.
Yet what hits Ø is strong. Pungent through her nostrils, bubbling off her palatine. Bitter enough to keep her attention, high enough proof to give her entertainment.
You investigate the unmarked black bottle at your fingers. But whatever wandering skepticism you feel evaporates. Not because of you, but because of your mare, who is busy downing the drink in one hand, catching a carton of Keowee’s in the other. It’s tossed by the attendant, who cradles his bottle at his lips in mutual celebration.
“Alright,” Ø huffs, glaring from her promontory, proven wrong but never relenting. “I’ll get dressed.”
“Madame LeFlore, please!” Fervidora chokes between sips, obviously acting, playing up the excitement, “Don’t feel obligated to change on our account, especially after everything our officers have put you through. And the vast majority of your luggage has already arrived! It’s waiting for you in your suite.”
“When did that happen?” you ask.
“Yesterday. At dawn. In preparation for your original arrival time. Although you’re late for your reservation, we have ensured your suite is untouched, still organized to your specifications.” Fervidora finishes her bottle with a smile, tossing its carcass to her second, who drops it on the ground next to his, the refuse blending seamlessly with the others already littering Zelmire’s deck. “Would you like to see it?”