The heavy air-powered mid-air of the military mag-lev transport hissed with a release of white-hot steam as the armored train locked into the raised end-post of Platform 9. Through the heavy viewport, the skyline of Mega-City 02—Aethelgard—unfolded like a royal castle of white granite, polished chromium, and towering anti-gravity pylons. Floating pavilions drifted between the spires, tethered by shimmering strands of moving holding cables, while light-projected banners billowed across three hundred meters of open air: INTER-CITY College CRUCIBLE: STAGE II VANGUARD TRIALS.
Arthur Vance rested his hand on the composite butt of his ARC-7 Mag-Carbine. That let his eyes track the aerial traffic lanes. High above the passenger concourse, high-born private sky-cruisers parted the artificial smog, their hulls etched with the golden heraldry of House Valerius, House Frostholme, and House Moros. Down below, however. There, the white granite pylons sank into the bedrock, thick heavy-duty exhaust vents belched gray sulfur plumes into the maze-like undercroft known as the Sump-Basins. The contrast was deliberate and brutal: wealth floated on magnetic fields above the clouds. Meanwhile, the labor that powered those fields breathed sulfur down in the dark.
“Look at that shiny monstrosity,” Toby Mallow muttered, wrestling a heavy light metal flight case down the passenger aisle. Toby had grease smudges across his forehead, a pair of multi-spectrum test goggles pushed up onto his messy brown hair. A sheaf of stamped supply order manifests stuffed into his tactical vest. “A single private docking berth in the Upper Spire costs four hundred thousand…
