She gestured out the windows at the flat rocky terrain various shades of orange with a bit of red underneath the pinkish Martian sky.

“I wasn’t given a choice,” she complained. “My parents took the offer from MarsCorp to move us all to ‘greener’ pastures. Well, ‘redder’ pastures. Packed me up too like I was luggage. I never wanted this. If I was a few years older, I’d be where I really should be. Earth is home, even if it's a toxic dump with a runaway greenhouse effect.”

Gurminder smiled. A funny little Earther, this one. Despite his earlier assessment of Tory, he decided he was starting to like the girl. She was pretty honest about what she thought, and that wasn’t so common among most newlanders he’d ever encountered. If only more Earthers were like this girl. The clans would have Mars back to themselves, and the planet would belong to who rightfully had conquered it.

The rig reached The Hole around thirteen hundred. As with most older Martian habitats, it had been built into a crater, with most of the living areas far enough beneath the Martian regolith to keep the inhabitants safe from radiation. On the surface it didn’t look like much, maybe a hundred meters across and a few stories high. The Rig drove down through the opened entrance gates into a central circular area where several other vehicles were parked and pulled up beside the original landing tower in the center of the crater that hadn’t been used for its original purpose once the old nations pulled out and left them on their own. They’d put a big gun up there, for security, but if MarSec really wanted to take it down, it wouldn’t take much effort. Indiclan had big old guns as well, and MarSec just threatened to bomb from orbit.

There were a few vehicles parked around the dusty floor of the crater, a few of the folk in p-suits walking about, some armed, some not.

It looked a lot like the places he’d spent most of his life in, old military bases fallen into disrepair after the pullout when the Earthers decided to fight their last world war, and reclaimed by Clans who cleared out the booby traps left behind. here it was the Rusclan, who had been pushed out of their old territory by ColCorp as was happening all the time now. It wasn’t exactly Gurminder’s kind of home anymore, but it did make a decent enough rest stop if need be. And then there was Mina, who had hooked up with him the last time he’d been here.

But this was where he needed to deliver his cargo, so this was where the rig ended up.

Since Gurminder could rely on the rig’s autopilot to handle even driving that required finesse, he spent the last few minutes before it drove down into The Hole on finishing fixing up Tory’s p-suit. It wasn’t a big job checking the seals sealing the arm and leg folds, but, with his nanna’s warnings forever in his head, he was going to make sure she never accidentally cutout her suit’s integrity. He’s seen the results of that more than once. Not pretty. Still, there was no way she was going to pass for a Martian of any clan so there was no point in pretending.

So, he’d spent some time with her making sure they got their story straight, well as it turned out the truth.

“They’re probably going to have to prove what you said,” Gurminder told her. “Coding and that. But you cannot say you saw what was in the cargo. If you do, I promise you, Varlamov’ll have you shot in the head and dumped in a sinkhole. Guaranteed.”

He’d repeated that enough to get the predicted response.

“Okay, okay,” she’d told him. “I won’t say anything about the weapons and explosives. I’m not stupid, Gur.”

“Don’t call me that,” he told her. “Just use my name, no silly nicknames.”

He didn’t wanted to be reminded of the last girl who called him that.

“You’re so gruff and grumpy,” she told him. “I think it works for you.”

“Keep it up and I’ll shoot you myself,” he warned her.

It was clear, however, that she knew that wasn’t a serious threat. It was like she thought she was his kid sister or something.

The minute they walked up to the receiver, Soshnikov, the tallest man around, he saw what she was immediately and gestured rudely she wasn’t one of them.

The tall man called over a couple of his fellow Rusclan, both of whom were sporting decent quality rocket rifles despite the patched up condition of their orange-dusted p-suits. Strange. He was bringing weapons, and didn’t expect they’d already be so well and heavily armed. One of the others was someone else he recognized, The Hole’s third in Command, the attractive, blonde and hard-looking but hard partying woman about ten years older than him, Mina Varlamov, Rus Patriarch Ivan Varlamov’s eldest daughter. Despite the larger size of the two men, Mina usually came across as the most intimidating, at least in public. She was different in the sack, he’d learned the last time he’d been here. Still, he’d considered it a good idea not to mention their hookup to her father. And he wasn’t expecting to many favors either. It was always best not to try to push things with the Rusclan. They had the nastiest reputation among the bornhere’s, but occupied the land of least worth. Two reasons why MarsCorp hadn’t wiped their stations off the map as they did Usclan and Indiclan.

Mina activated her radio link with his.

“What’s going on Kalsi.” she asked over the radio, gesturing at Tory. “Who is this midget?”