The Kitty: From Wives To Wormholes!

Target Delta?

"State your business," said the guard on my dashboard receiver.

"Contract work, I replied. "Full permit to traverse down there, number 1-1-0-9-6. My ship's got approval, have the rest of the credentials along with it."

"Send them over."

The dash screen asked for the authorization code to allow the security detail to I.D. match the Rocketfeller. Using the keypad to my left, I punched it in. After a brief time of waiting and hoping nothing was out of place, the signal light outside turned green.

"Everything checks out, miss. Be careful down there."

"Will do."

I had travelled to the edge of town where my journey to the underground would take place. The facility ahead of me was a hulking mass of super concrete and steel, separated by a massive titanium bulkhead that begun to open. The speed was arduously sluggish, ember sparks flowed at its feet followed by smoke trails. The cockpit vibrated like land on an unstable faultline, feeling tremors on my hands gripping the piloting wheel and the noise of its metallic scrape as the layers unraveled. It was so loud I could hear everything outside the ship like I wasn't even in it. This was a time, like other times, where having two sets of ears was a curse.

After an agonizing minute, the darn thing finally cleared the path into the tunnel where the only way forward was down. I shifted the Rocketfeller to a relaxed speed and flew into the cold, metallic abyss.

Wasn't first time going to The Underground, but getting the permit was a kick to the head. It was given to me through a past job where I had to deliver a shipping crate filled with things I never bothered to ask about to an underground gang called The Buntercuts. Before then, I needed to bribe a permit officer on-the-take to register an old, untraceable permit signature from a deceased delivery pilot, only instead of payment, he tasked me with a job of telling off some guy cheating on his girlfriend because he didn't want to break up with her.

Unfortunately, turned out the cheater was a trained combat fighter, and pretty soon we engaged in a sort of urban gladiator battle! Bruiser had a mean roundhouse kick that I took about as well as anyone could take on a good day, but I won the fight because I happened to have a meaner uppercut. Anyhow, guy lived, warned the broad, left the place before anyone got to know my name, returned with the job done and had the permit well in hand afterwards. Not the worst job, but suffice to say, guy still owes me a favor after taking a roundhouse kick to the head.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the descent to The Underground was a familiar sight. The whole downward tunnel could almost be compared to going down to some kind of Hell if robots had an afterlife at all. So much metal, the structure was completely mechanical in nature. It was a dimly lit place, but from the headlights of the ship, there was more purpose than just being a downward tunnel.

The whole structure was primarily a conduction grid from the power facilities of The Underground, mechanical plates of the tunnel shifting, essentially making the tunnel itself spin around me, tilting its plates on occasion, all in rhythm with one mechanism to another like cogs in an old-fashioned clock, in service of feeding the topside vast quantities of power. Even if they say the plates are grounded, I wouldn't bother testing that theory. Always felt that a single tap would cause the Rocketfeller to explode.

Passing by the cockpit window were autonomous service drones, battalions of them, likely being sent to areas of the tunnel that required maintenance, instructed by the greater grid integrity A.I. like a conductor of an orchestra. The lower I got, the more I'd see them and for good reason. There was a build up of fog and heat haze at this level of the mechanical tunnel; I was at the hottest portion of it now, Level 40 to be exact, which is where the engine is located.