The Nadeau Chronicle|Maine|

[Enkidu]

Maine. The void stuck to her like a cyst.
The system hung upon the dark attic spaces of the Gallic Core Worlds. She was an excitable system where the excitement lay in strands, webs and tangles; her lanes throbbing like aortas with the flush of her cargo, her twin inhabited worlds saturating their surrounding with all the EM waves that spoke of civilised life. Small talk, spamware, dance music, dating sites, quibbling traders and screaming escorts, police taking bribes as the reserve fleet lumbered ambiently amongst the twilight lights of the sarscape. Only the smugglers marked the silence. Maine remained young; furious and bright as her stars combusted thirst fully in the full youth of their fusion. And yet, she was also cold - black and void of any nebulous tints that speckled the distance. What fields there were - expansive, latticing things, lay well beyond the ridged lines and tracks made use of by respectable agents of commerce. What installations there were, were expansive, rambling steel, palladium, nanotube trellises that throbbed with industry and spoke of a wiser, more dignified time long past, tugs, barges, elephants and cows pulling away their waste products to the cluttered chaos of salvage and the salvaged that formed the central dumping ground. Her product would have formed a familiar mythos for humans a millennia past; cracking, viscous, rindful slabs of jellied bitumen.



Achille Augustain Nadeau did not enjoy nostalgia; he found the sentiment redundant - catharsis filled. And he especially did not enjoy the presence of the enterprising Gendarme stitching up the lane traffic between the Le Mans to Mayenne lanes. Grumbling, he jimmied the thrust leavers to the negative and awaited his turn, the twin turbo pumps of the JX-3 pushing him against his restraints in an stately, two-G break.


"This the Gauloise Police Royale to Eta seven Zulu, cut your engines and submit to a transponder check, Eta seven Zulu." Came the bored, languid tones of the fonctionnaire. Achille loathed the man immediately.

The temptation to comply literally to the official's request and genially drift into the lane's capture area was not lost on Nadeau, but neither was the probability of finding himself in a permanent resident of the Chateau d'lf. The gendarme's Auroch closed upon him like the plague. Achille's shields imitated seltzer as the freighter's sensors probed him invasively, and wondered what could be so fascinating about the several ration packs, holoentertainment bands and chemical commode blocked up against the compartment walls. Perhaps the officer was scatologically inclined.



Losing patience, he fired up the communicator. "Eta seven Zulu to GRP actual, I am a self-employed, self-motivated, selfless citizen of the one true kingdom." Achille soothed, dulcet, stewing. "My flight plan brings me from New Paris and takes me to planet Mayenne. May I proceed, monsieur?"


The silence wasn't so much golden as gangrenous. Finally, the good citizen stirred. "Citizen Nadeau, your documents show a failure to report a charted domicile." The officer finally uttered, a little triumphantly. "You have no stated residence, Citizen Nadeau. Are you not a taxpayer?"

Achille silently cursed all civil servants and their underlings. "Yes, as those miraculous 'documents' will reveal. I have a personal income of five hundred and eighty million credits, per annum of dull, disinteresting, incredibly conventional credits. I pay a ridiculous quantity of IR, VAT, THP, PT, ISF and even succeeded in losing a sizeable margin of my inheritance to inheritance tax, to boot. My sojourns into taxation fiddling amount to zero; all are drawn from an account in the Sorbonne, held inside Banque nationale de Paris".

The guardarme elicited a reverential silence. "Citizen Nadeau… ham, Monsiuer, pardon me Sir, but you lack a place of residence, Sir."

Nadeau shrugged, and deliberated excreting a mine. "Guardarme? Is there a reason why I should be loitering in the traffic here? I have a Vache to starboard causing me to feel rather uncomfortable."

The Guardarme pondered if he should be more strident with the man. After all, he was searching for a bribe. "…Sir, ah, without a residence, you could be viably charged for vagrancy. That is to say sir, you may have to pay a fine. Along with the fact that you are currently flying a craft registered to the GRN, Sir."

The temptation to obliterate the Gendarme had Nadeau reaching for the fire selector leaver, before he realised that Commonwealthian ground crews weren't in the habit of strapping firearms to the hard points. He slapped the dash profanely.

"A fine?" Nadeau gawked, or at least, struggled to. The actual sound was more of a retch. "As in, an immediate fine, collectable by your person right here, right now?"

The officer became more confident here. This, after all, was his territory. "Yes, Citizen. In my capacity as an intermediary of the crown."

Achille Augustain Nadeau was repressing a chuckle so urgently he'd considered suicide to relieve the itch. "…In your capacity as an intermediary of the crown… Hm. A black box is a wonderful thing, is it not? A rather extensive reel of audio data I have here, Sir Guardarme. Perhaps I should hand it to someone to the defence at the magistrates, no? A fine record for an intermediary of the crown, correct?" He let the nothingness hang.


The officer suddenly decided that his wages were enough to contemplate retiring over, after all. "Very good sir. Move on."

Achille suddenly became extravagantly compliant. "But oh, monsieur, should you not arrest me?"

The gardarme silenced the communicator. "Citizen Nadeau, you may now enter the lane at your discretion. Now, please."

Nadeau grinned, and killed the feed at its roots. The lane flared nightmares.

---

THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's outlawed trade unions, determined to take the underworld for themselves.)

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