“Where do we go from here?” I asked my girlfriend. “Is it a long walk?”

“It would be a bit of a walk of 45 to 60 minutes, but we can take the hover tram instead. Unless you really want to walk.”

“Hmm, nah, I think we should take the tram instead.” I chuckled. “That way I can check another form of public transport from my list.”

Lauren smiled and squeezed my hand slightly. “Right, that’s also really important. I think by the time we get back to our ship, you should have seen most of them. What have we had? A taxi, a hyper train, a hover train, now a hover tram too.”

“And a shuttle!”

“Ah, right, back at the spaceport. Debatable to call that a mode of public transport, though.”

“Same goes for a taxi.”

Lauren nodded. “Fair enough.” She then made a step and looked back at me, waiting for me to step along, which I did of course. “Didn’t you use anything before we met, by the way?”

“Not really.” I shrugged. “I didn’t really need to. I had everything I needed at my little address, and that’s about it. Anything else I got delivered to the building.”

“Huh, then how did you get to the apartment?”

“I basically got teleported inside.”

“From space?”

“Mhmm.” I nodded.

“Then that must mean your ship was in orbit around Earth for a while, right?”

I nodded again. “Not that long, but yes.”

Lauren scratched her cheek with her free hand. “I wonder why no one picked up on that. I was fairly certain we had a good surveillance net around the planet.”

“Every net has holes, and if you know where they are, they aren’t hard to exploit.” I replied. Human technology is quite impressive for how young their civilization is, but if you have spies in tactical places… Really not that hard to find a gap. Even without the Empire’s cloaking technology.

Although I am certain that because of their encounter, humanity’s defenses are going to become a lot harder to infiltrate in the future. They are quite unparalleled in their ingenuity when it comes to defending themselves.

“Luna?”

“Sorry, I was thinking to myself. Did you say anything?”

“I was just asking if you knew when the first spy came to Earth.”

“Not sure.” I shrugged. “I know we had eyes on Earth for a while already, but not for how long, and definitely not how long in person. Cells don’t really know that much about one another. I’m pretty sure that’s how human intelligence networks work as well, right?”

“I think so.” Lauren shrugged back. “Although I have to say, I’m pretty much a layman when it comes to spy-work. Apart from that bit I did during the war. But that was more spec-ops work than anything else. But then again, that might not be very different either. Anyway, it would make sense to me. Can’t say anything that threatens other missions if you don’t know what the other missions are.”

I nodded, and we continued walking the short way to the hover tram stop in front of the station.

The tram arrived shortly after we did, and it scooted off just as we entered too. Lauren told me that because of the frequent service, if no one was waiting at the stop, a tram would just go past it, unless someone wanted to get off, of course. We both scanned our holo sticks at the ticket terminal at the front of the tram and then went ahead to pick out a spot to sit. As the tram was pretty empty, we were spoiled for choice.

“How long will the ride take?” I asked, sitting down on the bench on the front left-side of the tram.

“Hmm, five minutes or so. Unless we need to stop often, which I honestly doubt will happen.” She smiled and looked to the back of the train. Only an elderly man and a youngster in his late teens were our co-passengers.

“That’s really fast.”

Lauren nodded. “Hover trams have their own lanes. There’s nothing that’s in their way.”

We speeded through the city center, its buildings were a bit smaller than the ones in the Central European Spaceport City yet still a lot taller than in the little town Lauren lived in. Though the longer the tram went on, the smaller the buildings got.

Lauren signed for me to get up again as the tram started to slow down once more. “Are we already here? That was really short.”

“Yep.” She smiled and took my hand into hers and pointed out of the window with her other hand. She pointed straight towards a big white dome with the emblem of the federation stamped on its side in blue with a golden edge. It really looked a bit strange, seeing such a big building surrounded by all the small houses.

“That’s the cemetery?” I followed Lauren along as she guided me out of the tram. The older man also got off behind us, after which the tram zoomed off yet again.

“It’s a bit different from a normal cemetery, isn’t it?”

“I’ve not seen that many yet, but that does kind of defy my expectations, yes.”

We started walking in the direction of, what I presume to be, the entrance to the dome. “Cemeteries in the Arctic region are already a bit different because of the temperatures we get here, but this one is even more special at that. It was specifically designed to be a monument to those who died during the war.” She pointed at the houses around us.“You probably have noticed that there’s not a single building that even comes halfway to the height of the dome, right?”

“Mhmm.” I nodded.

“That’s actually by design. They forbid every building in the radius of two kilometers of the dome to be higher than six meters. So there will never be a building that dominates the landscape more than the dome itself.

“And why did they pick a dome shape?”

“It’s to signify the planet.” She replied swiftly. “Obviously, Earth is more like an orb, but those are a bit harder to build. Also quite a bit harder to get into.”

“Ah yeah. That makes sense.”

When we got to the entrance, the automatic doors slid open for us, and once we had passed through another set of doors, a wave of warm air hit me in the face.

“We can drop our jackets off at the lockers in one of the side-rooms. Otherwise, it’s going to be a bit too hot.”

“You definitely weren’t joking that it was going to be plenty warm here.”

“The government really insisted on letting people come to mourn in all comfort here. It also makes it a lot easier to maintain the flora they planted inside of the dome, too.”

I nodded and went along with Lauren to take off our winter overcoats.

We stashed away our coats, putting on our headwear as well. Lauren opted for her trusty beret, while I chose to go for my dress uniform hat.

“Am I looking okay?” She turned towards me to let me inspect her.

I gave her a quick look over and dusted some imaginary dust off her chest. “Yeah. You look great. What about me?”

“Picture perfect.” She said without even half a second of delay.

“You didn’t even look.”

“I did, I look at you all the time.” She winked.

I rolled my eyes. But then again, Lauren would have definitely said something if a part of my uniform was lacking.

She then smiled and held out her ungloved hand for me to take, which I accepted, and then she led me back into the entrance hall where we just were. “We need to take the elevator to the second floor.” She mentioned as we headed to an area around the corner of the wall that greeted you when you entered.

“Second floor?”

“Yes, that’s where civilians were laid to rest. More specifically, family members of serving military personnel.”

“Hmm.”

“There’s not really any hierarchy in it, if you were thinking that. It’s just that the math checked out like that. Civilians are buried on the ground floor, military personnel on the first floor and their family members on the second. Every spot gets the same amount of respect.”

“And what if they wanted to be buried together?”

“You mean if someone who served wanted to be buried with their family?”

“Mhmm.” I nodded.

“They also would get laid to rest on the second floor. Since there aren’t many cases where that happened.”

“I see.” I had a couple more questions, but I decided to ask those later at a more opportune moment and just let Lauren take me to the elevator. One ding later, together with another rounded corner, and we were standing in a grassy field with flowers and trees planted all around the marble grave monuments.

-Okay… when Lauren said they planted flora, I didn’t expect this at all… Seeing the outside of the dome, however, maybe I should have…-