“Your optimism is admirable. A touch naive, perhaps, but admirable all the same. People will always find something to compete for. Some people more than others.” Senjen may not have noticed it yet, but Light didn’t speak like most QV. A long time on the road, mingling with all different species had made his ‘vocabulary’ decidedly more cosmopolitan than most.

“My view? This war isn’t about habitable space to live. Not really. It's about power over the people who live there. The power to control them, the power to choose who lives where. People’s lives are the ultimate untamed resource; some crave the chance to try and tame it. My advice to your people is to stay well clear.” If Senjen was perceptive, he may detect a note of bitterness in his employer’s voice.

When the Utaysi brought up the QV as a species, Light felt a pang of sadness, maybe even regret. He hadn’t been in a habitat his species would consider ‘natural’ for a very long time. He’d almost forgotten what being out of his gel suit felt like.

“It's not just our bodies that make the light down there. We’ve cultivated bioluminescent plants to do everything from living in, warning of danger and luring prey. Large Quelun-Vosh settlements are alive with a rich story of colours that you can see from miles away. There are no large predators to hide from anymore on the homeworld, so we lost any reason to hide long ago. On frontier colonies that is not true.” Light’s tone had turned nostalgic. Even though he couldn’t be a part of his civilisation right now, he felt pride at what they’d accomplished.

After a little while, the spoke’s residential tiers abruptly ended and the train entered an airlock. The train pressurised and filled with breathable air, though gravity remained low. In fact, they were close to weightless now. The Grand Concourse was at the middle of the station’s vast centrifuge, which meant it benefitted from its pull the least. Light fiddled with the small thrusters built into his gelsuit to make sure they were ready for when they disembarked.

“The drop is at the Guangzhou Cantonese restaurant, in sector 7.4. That means it's three whole segments away and on the opposite side of the tube from us. Stay vigilant for anything suspicious.” He whispered to Senjen.

A black-clad bipedal droid who’d got on at the same stop as the pair stood at the opposite side of the crowded monorail carriage. They gripped an overhead handhold and faced nonchalantly away from them while listening to every word they exchanged. Then they relayed it to their handler.

Well done - I knew something didn’t feel right. Follow them, try to find out if it is the access key. I’m sending back-up to that restaurant.

Copy that.

Once the airlock had pressurised, the blast doors opened and the monorail rushed out into the Grand Concourse. This was the fifty mile long cylinder that ran through all fourteen of the station’s rings and connected them to Korit’s space elevator. The Fourteen Factories’ designer had gone with an open plan space with maximum customisability and interoperability built in. Over the centuries it had evolved naturally like a living organism. Covering most of the internal surface area of the cylinder was a tight mish mash of different buildings suited to each of the species that used the station. There were rocky mounds favoured by the Tindrel, wobbly gel orbs for the QV, tall open aviaries for the Tekeri and monolithic skyscrapers for the Humans, with everything in between. Monorail lines snaked between them, and small flyers traversed the open space in the middle. At about a mile in diameter, the space was so large and so overwhelming that Light’s suit struggled to parse all the available data from its scan.

“We’re on the wrong line. We have to get off here.” Light announced after consulting the route map.

"We can either find another monorail, but who knows what the wait time will be like. Or we can hire a flyer, or walk, I suppose?"