Routine
The timer on their alarm clock went off as it hit 0800 Pandemonium time. Unlike on Torwen, Earth, or Mars, the days on Pandemonium were 29.4 hours long by Terran measurements. To compensate for the longer days people worked longer and slept in later, generally conforming to the hours of daylight. There was a lag as the body adjusted to the different schedule, but Terrans and Torweni were very adaptable and adjusted after a while. Alwen knew that she would personally miss the extra hours to work and still sleep in. Even Gato had relaxed his strict schedule a little to enjoy the mornings more.
Gato grunted and rose to turn the alarm off, and Alwen stretched her arms as she also got up. They fell into their morning routine with ease, Gato made the bed while Alwen brushed her teeth, Gato then stepped in to brush his pearly white fangs and Alwen stepped out of the bedroom to mix up two protein shakes for them. When he was done, they downed their shakes and slipped into their jogging clothes and exited their apartment, walked through the familiar twisting halls of the pyramid’s interior, and began their morning jog. Despite being 0820 Pandemonium’s sun, Perdition, was only just starting to rise over the horizon, and most of the city was still obscured in the cool mists from lake Doom.
As they jogged for a minute alone until they came up on a pack of other joggers and joined up with their typical jogging group made up of Marines, Deck apes, the more athletic Snipes, and some local health enthusiasts who could keep up with their pace. They ran across the cool moisture slicked bricks of the step pyramids, across a high arching bridge that connected two pyramids and spanned over the water of lake Doom, and around a sleepy little shopping plaza.
Temple city was not a city built by any species still alive in the current day, it had been built by a long gone hyper advanced alien civilization. The city was only still around because the stone used in the Temples construction was indestructible. Despite not being made for Terrans, they had moved into the strange city and worked hard to make it theirs. Pandemonium was a secret from the galaxy, and people couldn’t emigrate to it easily, but those who found their way here were happy with the clean air and picturesque views and took great pride in the community they were building from scratch.
Terrans weren’t the only inhabitants, lately more and more of Alwen’s people had been finding their way to the secret world and were working to integrate into the Terran culture. The Torweni immigrants worked to tolerate the Terran coffee that was abundant in Temple city, learned the Terrans preferred language of English, and even adopted the archaic Japanese robes worn by the people of Pandemonium.
Their integration was very similar to Alwen’s own transformation while aboard the Astaroth, but unlike Alwen they were successful in introducing Torweni culture to the Terrans. The wide plazas used for shopping during the day were converted into outdoor dance halls at night, there Terrans and Torweni taught each other their different dances. Torweni tea shops appeared next to Terran café’s, enticing patrons in with a calmer atmosphere than most cafés. A few basic temples to Torwens various gods were established, and some Terran restaurants began serving popular Torweni dishes like Gushto and Hadall.
Astarte, Alwen’s captain and one of ther Hellworlders leaders, had recently finalized a deal with the Torweni navy, selling them the planet’s southern continent and its surrounding islands. She could only sell it to the Temple of the war god Torwen since the alliance between the Hellworlder’s and the Torweni was still a secret. It would be some time before the landmass was properly explored, and even longer before any colonists could arrive. But that didn’t stop the Torweni navy from secretly moving personnel and support staff to Temple city.
The Torweni were only one of the non-Terran species to move to Temple City. A few years ago a Terran exploration ship came across a deathworld whose native species had nearly destroyed themselves with nuclear WMD’s, the Kunan’ai. A deal had been negotiated with the leaders of the remaining subterranean communities to sell off a chain of islands just east of Temple city. Many of the Kunan’ai had since moved to their new home of Greveir’ai, the capitol city of their nation Fawn’kari.
The Kunan’ai were long slinky six-legged mammals, with small lupine faces. Alwen’s Terran friends often related them to wolf-weasels, which made Alwen wonder how the Kunan’ai responded to seeing actual Lycanoids or Mustilaniods. The few who had moved to Temple city were very friendly, they seemed to treat each day as a gift and acted like a stroll through the park was some divine luxury.
While they bared a striking resemblance to other Terran Mammaloids their sensibilities were very different. It may have been because of their culture, the depressing state of their world, or their alien thought processes, but Alwen felt that they were more alien to her than the Terrans. Logically Alwen knew that the Humans and the other Terran Mammaloids were just as alien, but the extremely similar physiologies of humans and Torweni allowed for some deep instinctual understanding of each other. And since the Mammaloid species of Earth had been genetically modified to think and act like humans they also shared that connection. The Torweni didn’t have that instinctual connection with the Kunan’ai, and their emotions and thoughts were still very alien to them.
Terrans had been exposed to galactic culture and other races for much longer than the Torweni, and they had somehow picked up the skills for interpreting alien body language. They connected with the furry Kunan’ai much easier than the Torweni did.
Their jogging group reached the end of their route at the base of the Central Temple, the main administration building for the city, as well as the planetary headquarters for the Hellworlder fleet. The group broke up for a few minutes as people wandered off to find water or catch their breath before they would gather back up for the return jog. Alwen walked over to the edge, leaned against a stone barrier, and looked down at the lowest level of the Central Temple. It was just a few meters above the water level and had several piers jutting out into the water. Fishermen and small produce ships pulled into the docks to off load their supplies to the market vendors.
There weren’t any grocery stores or supper markets on Pandemonium, and processed food was still more expensive than the fresh produce cultivated just north of Temple city. The strange city was at the center of a flooded super volcano, the lake alone was 190,000 square kilometers. The horizon within the caldera was taken up by the mountainous rim of the volcano, similar to the circular mountain ranges around Martian craters. To the north of Lake Doom there was a large gap within the circular rim of the super volcano where the Acheron River had eroded away at the caldera walls to form the Acheron pass and fill the caldera with fresh water.
Up the Acheron River small farming, ranching, and lumber towns worked the virgin land and shipped their products south to Temple city. No sapient species had cultivated Pandemonium for millions of years, and there was a great deal of work necessary to tame the wild land. Industrious pioneers had arrived in Temple city to travel up the Acheron River to strike their claim to the region’s fertile soil, tempered only by the planet’s growing wealth of preserved wild lands. Terrans had left the desolation of Earth to explore the wild beauty of an untouched world and were apprehensive about making the same mistakes that had ruined their cradle world. Teams of botanists, biologists, geologists, and cartographers were regularly sent upriver and into surrounding lands to catalogue and map Pandemonium while also identifying keystone features in the planet’s ecology. Some sacrifices were made for progress, but much more was saved and cordoned off as park land. Pandemonium’s government was still very young, but the department of wildlife and environmental protection was the fastest growing department on the planet.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Alwen had been very busy since arriving on Pandemonium, but every spare chance she got she spent exploring the natural beauty of Pandemonium.
Gato joined her at the stone railing and sucked in a huge breath of moist air. “You know, when we fought with Greyson and took Temple city I was almost incapable of focusing on the battle. I was too distracted at the smell of fresh unpolluted air, nearly got me killed.” He mused.
Alwen glanced towards him and smiled at how relaxed he looked. This planet was more than just a base for the Hellworlders, it was hope. It was what they fought so hard to protect. “What was it like, the Battle for Greyland?”
His face darkened a little, “Tough. We only had Astaroth and Lucifer to bust through the defense sats, and they only had time to send out some drop pods. We landed outside of the city’s air defenses and had to swim several klicks before we could take out some powerful pulse cannons that kept our ships at bay. After that it was a lot of running, seizing this city temple by temple.”
Alwen winced and instantly regretted her question, “sorry-“
“Don’t be. The battle was tough, and the days before it were as well” his tone was neutral, but his body language was sad. He perked himself up “but the days after were different. Greyson and his crew treated this place as a hide out and repair stop. They stashed their riches here along with all the poor people they had stolen away in raids. The people who weren’t in slave pens were used to a lawless and predatory rule. For the first few days they feared us, but after a while they came to accept our presence and even praised us. It was the first time in my life I ever did any good for someone. We liberated a whole city from brutal pirates and brought stability. When I look at the happy peaceful crowds, I feel a sense of pride. I need to focus on the good parts, and not on the bad.”
Alwen smiled, before Alwen came into Gato’s life he had been depressed and maybe even suicidal. As much as she regretted taken advantage of him in a moment of weakness, she was happy to see him improving. She tried to subtly steer him in the right way and force him to look at the good he’d done. “How long before you leave again?”
He tilted his head up as if calculating something “Another day or two to give them a chance to recover.”
After the retreat that had nearly destroyed the Astaroth and pushed the crew to their limits, many people retired early. Broken by the constant stress and fear of the ordeal. Even more had been promoted and moved to other ships as the fleet expanded to spread their experience to the freshly hired crews of newly built ships. This left it up to the remaining crew to train up their own recruits to a satisfactory standard. Young barely grown rookies from the vet clans of Earth had arrived on Pandemonium just as they finished their basic training. Most had come in cocky and sure of themselves, confident they were ready for life as a Marine, but Alice and Gato showed them otherwise.
“Will you be back in the mountains or are you changing it up?” Alwen asked. For the first few months they had been drilling the rookies in Temple city, but as they continued to push the new recruits, they began to spend more and more time away from the city. The last three weeks Gato had been pushing the new members of Sin squad up and down the narrow game trails of Mount Doom. While Alice had forced her the Virtues to swim from Island to island up the Aedonian chain.
“No, were swapping it up now. We’ll be swimming while Alice gets the mountains.”
“Correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t do so well in higher climates, and Alice hates swimming.” Gato was an uplifted Feliniod like Alice, but both were from very different species. Gato was a Jaguar, his short fur great at wicking off sweat to cool him down and his body was well adapted for swimming. Alice on the other hand as a snow Leopard had thick insulating fur with bigger lungs to breath higher altitudes. During one beach excursion Alwen had learned that while Alice could swim, she hated water.
Some of Alwen’s Marine friends, Gabe and Limey, had taken offense to Alice coming to a beach but refusing to swim in the warm waters. They had dunked a bucket of water on her and tried to escape her wrath by fleeing into the ocean, only to be dragged under and pummeled by an enraged Alice.
Alwen had been swimming with Gato, teaching him how to surf on a Torweni surfboard, when she heard cries for help. She had rushed over only to find Limey and Gabe being dragged ashore by a soaking wet and unamused Alice.
“Yeah, but it’s a mind game thing” Gato said. “We’ve got humans, Wolves, a Gorilla, and a Grizzly bear in our groups. There’s a wide gap in natural ability between them. It’s our job to point out their weaknesses and bring them up to each other’s best, or as close as we can get them. We just spent a couple weeks trekking around the rim of mount Doom where I don’t have a genetic advantage, and throughout the whole week I out preformed all of them in every category. Now they get to see me in my element.”
“And they’ll see Alice in hers.” Alwen surmised. “that’s clever. I never considered how the different physiologies would compare to each other, I’ve never really noticed the humans falling too far behind.”
Gato grunted “That’s different, all the human Marines are augmented with artificial muscle tissue, while most of us uplifted don’t get what the humans get.”
Alwen frowned “I have access to all your medical records; I know that’s not true.”
Gato turned to her. “the records tell that there was augmentation, not the quality of them. Those artificial tissue implants are very expensive and have decades of development behind them, but they aren’t a one size fits all deal. More time and money has gone behind the human ones so they get the best ones.”
“That doesn’t sound fair.” Alwen remarked, she had spent enough time amongst the Terrans to know that the uplifted were often shafted or not given the same consideration as the humans got.
“From an economic view it makes sense, there are more humans than all the uplifted put together so there’s a wider market for the human ones. They also have to develop them specifically for one species, its difficult enough to make them compatible between tigers and jaguars, let alone tigers and bears.”
“I’ve seen you bend I-beams, are you telling me yours are second rate compared to a humans?”
He Scoffed “No, a good portion of our Marines are Feliniod, Astarte had the Toy man speed ours along. But for a while in the early days Gabe and the Cap’n could out lift me.”
“Still, that’s a pretty smart approach to take with your recruits, might have to borrow that.”
He glanced to her curiously “Still having trouble with your old friends.”
“Not really. They listen, but it feels like they only listen because I’m telling them to do stuff they were already going to do. I don’t feel like I have their respect, not like your recruits do.”
“That’s not surprising, my recruits had the fear of rank beat into them by their parents and drill-sergeants. You went to school with these people, and from what I hear you weren’t exactly most dominant person of your friend group. Is it an issue?”
“Not yet, but I can feel like it might become one.”
“Hmm” he hummed as he thought, “You’ve mostly been just teaching them over at Temple of Thoth right?”
Alwen nodded. She had borrowed one of the classrooms from the newly founded Temple City University, or the Temple of Thoth as most people were calling it. No city planning committee had been formed to set out hard names for all the pyramids of Temple city, but sometime after the Hellworlders took over people began naming the ancient buildings after ancient Terran gods. She and Gato lived in the Temple of Ares, along with many other active Hellworlder sailors and Marines. They were currently standing on the Temple of Pele, a Terran volcano goddess resembling Torwen’s own Moshta, goddess of fire and creation. Alwen wasn’t sure how the names were chosen, or how the residents determined which pantheon to choose from, but it made giving and receiving directions much easier. Though there was a debacle when someone had tried to call one of the pyramids the Temple of Astarte, but a personal visit from Astarte had convinced them to change it to Ishtar instead.
Gato looked thoughtful “That might be your issue, the classroom atmosphere might be too lax to properly build respect.”
“That was my thought as well, but I can’t teach them without a classroom. I might just have to wait until the Astaroth is ready to ship out. Unless I can convince some of the other ships to let us tag along.”
“Not likely, you’d be more trouble than your worth.”
Alwen sighed in exasperation. “Thought so, how long will you be at home this time?” Alwen asked to change the subject. The first few weeks on Pandemonium she and Gato got to spend a lot of time with each other, but his training regimen took him out of Temple city for weeks on end. Alwen felt very lonely during his absences, especially since all her friends were also Marines and left with him. This morning wasn’t the only time she had nightmares, but it was one of the few times Gato was there to calm her down.
Gato tilted his head in thought “A few days to let the new guys recover, why you ask?”
“I’m wondering if that’s enough time to get a reservation, I want to show you some authentic Torweni cuisine.” She said with a smile as she leaned into his mountainous physique.
He made a noncommittal noise and nuzzled into her. While the gesture was intimate she knew him well enough to know he wasn’t really interested in dressing up for a fancy dinner. Try as she might; she couldn’t really get the big man excited for any nonphysical dates, the idea of being idle for a whole evening was not his idea of fun. He would still go for her sake, but it wasn’t fun knowing that he wasn’t having a good time.
Alwen looked out and saw their jogging group was reforming and she gently pushed Gato back, they stretched out their limbs one last time and hustled back to the main group. Five minutes into the run all thoughts of fancy dinners went out of Alwens head as she huffed in damp morning air. They ran across the bridge connecting the Temple of Pele to the Temple of Chang’e, and for a few seconds Alwen got a good view of the Central Temple where the Hellworlders housed their center of operations and kept a vast network of Piracy hidden from the Union.