Spaceships and Magic, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Chapter 170: Planetary

I followed the girl deeper down the side street. 

It was quieter here, a lot quieter, and the bug-lamps that lit the way were becoming far and few between. 

<This could be some kinda trap, you know,> BB muttered sourly, it sounded like he'd gone straight from being drunk to being completely hungover. 

He was right though, it could certainly be a trap. Some random woman leading me down a street into a dark and seedy area? That certainly had all the makings of a trap. Nevertheless, I had to see it through. 

If this wasn't a trap and the woman was being honest with me, there really was some sort of underground movement to try and fight back against the aristocracy of the upper city, then that was where I needed to be. 

Besides, I could always punch my way out if need be. 

I felt the equivalent of a mental eye roll come from BB at that thought. Having a hangover seemed to make the AI pretty irritable. 

We turned around another corner into a pitch-black alleyway, thought hat darkness was quickly chased away when the girl's eyes lit up with twin beams of pink light, illuminating everything down the narrow stretch of pavement. 

That was a handy trick. 

"So where are you taking me, anyway?" I asked, still following closely behind the girl. 

"Secret meeting place, out of the way of watchful eyes and ears," the girl answered quickly. 

"I was told that the officers and their dranes didn't come down to the Furnace," I said, maybe that hadn't been quite as true as I had been led to believe. 

"They don't," The girl clarified, "But that doesn't mean they don't have agents left and right center down here. One one word in the wrong place at the wrong time and you're liable to just sort of go missing." 

Well, that wasn't ominous in the slightest. 

It was good information to have, though. While there weren't any dranes down here, other than the one that ran a bar for some reason, there was definitely something abducting people down here. 

Maybe that would be a good place to start. 

If I could capture the one that was capturing other people and making them disappear off the streets of the Furnace, then maybe I'd have a better idea of how those in control ran their racket. 

"And that's the same all over the city, is it?" I asked, "Because this place is big, really big, like so big I'm not even sure how big it is. That big." 

She tossed me an incredulous look, "Of course the city seems big, it takes up the entirety of the planet's interior. We've got the surface, which no one really uses, the topsoil that protects us, then the city and below the Furnace is the planetary core." 

That was a lot. 

I had assumed that the city was large, but I hadn't really considered that it would take up the entirety of the planet, which seemed a little bit bonkers. 

"Anyway," She continued, "We shouldn't be talking about this out here, eyes and ears everywhere remember, just keep your mouth shut, follow me, and we can talk when we get to where we're going." 

I grunted an okay in response and shoved my hands in my pockets. This woman was rude, but I'd probably be rude too if I'd been trapped down near the centre of a planet with all this heat for however long it had been. 

Honestly, I had been expecting the upper city to be using the lower city as slave labour or something like that, but that didn't seem to be the case at all. In fact, they seemed to be relatively left on their own down here. 

But that was the problem. 

The impression I was getting now was that the real issue was the fact the undercity had essentially been left entirely to its own devices, without any way to expand or grow as a civilization due to the topsiders taking up all that space. 

The only time it seemed the tops got involved with the bottoms on this world was when they needed to stimy some kind of revolution if the undercity was getting too uppity and needed to be shut down. 

As we wound our way down what felt like a never-ending alleyway, ignoring any turning that we passed, the beat of a heavy thumping bass track started to grow louder and louder. 

This tucked away from the main high street I hadn't been expecting to find any more clubs, but my instincts told me that was exactly where we were going.

One final bend in the track and our destination made itself apparent to me. A nightclub by the name of 'The Ice Box'.

Much like the name suggested the building was a small box built into the side of one of the buildings, with a holographic display turning the usually dirty and drab walls of the undercity into a shining light blue, much like an ice cube. 

It was no surprise to me that in a boiling hot environment like this something like an ice cube would be treasured above anything else. A shame it was likely to be just as hot inside the club as it was outside, if not hotter thanks to all the dancing. 

Outside the Ice Box club was a line that stretched far around another corner, I wasn't looking forward to waiting in a queue like that. 

I needn't have worried, though, because my guide walked straight up to the bouncer on the door, a bulky and imposing man with spikes grafted onto his knuckles, and whispered something into his ear. 

The man glanced at me, glanced back to the woman, then gave a single nod and waved us through into the club itself. 

I heard some pretty angry yells from the people who had clearly been waiting for ages in the queue, but all of that was forgotten as the door opened and I was hit by a blast of frigid cool air. 

The Ice Box wasn't just a name, then.