delta. It sat at the end of where the great river on whose banks Singking had been built emptied into the Sea of Vikaran. The city was named Levelflats because when the first settlers staked a claim they had found that for more than a hundred square miles, there was nothing but floodplains, and mud flats. The mudflats and floodplains were gone now, and in their place was a great port city of seven million people. Levelflats was the heart of Solarian Industry, and a hub of cross continental trade between the Tiananmen continent across the Sea of Vikaran to the cities of Solaria’s second largest land mass, and agricultural breadbasket, New Albion. Daily barges sailed down the Serentine from the mines of the Aboreia highlands bringing raw materials to Levelflats’ ever-busy factories. Other barges brought off-world goods from First Landing, while ships anchored in the shallow Chun Hu bay carried goods back and forth across the sea. In addition to its sprawling warehouses, harbor fronts, and industrial parks, the city had a greener more pleasant side. The Chins, the original Landed family who had owned the Delta Estate which Levelflats now dominated, had originally planned to grow rich by making it an agricultural hub. This plan ultimately fell through because of the climate. Despite being in an extremely fertile flood plain, the Serentine delta was also an extremely humid area where high-pressure fronts moving off the Tanah Besar Step collided with moist sea air. As a result, it rained in Levelflats 366 days out of the 400-day Solarian year. Seeing that any attempt to grow crops would ultimately prove futile as even the most moisture resistant strain of plant would eventually drown, the Chins had instead sought to industrialize the Estate and turn it into the commercial and industrial hub it had become. Refugees of the smog choked Tri-City on Earth, the Chins had been fixated on making sure that what was sure to become a great commercial and industrial hub didn’t turn into a slum-riddled cesspit of pollution. As a result, they had aggressively sought to surround all industrial zones with green space investing heavily in state-of-the-art drainage systems. The result was a handsome city where even the lowest factory worker lived in a neat low-rise apartment building surrounded by emerald parkland. Levelflats’ true source of wealth was that it was located less than two hundred miles from the equator, and as a result held the honor of hosting the oldest of Solaria’s four orbital tethers - what had been called space elevators in times gone by. The Space elevator concept was actually very simple. It was a space station or asteroid secured to the surface by a large tether. Once secured, elevators could climb the tether in a matter of hours without the hazards involved in a chemical rocket launch, and able to carry far more than a rocket or shuttle ever could. The Levelflats tether was attached to the orbital station of Macran the Solarian Navy’s primary base in the Solarian system. The station was a city in itself. Levelflats boasted a population of seven million, while Macran had nearly four hundred thousand souls permanent and transient, and it was growing. Jonathan glanced at his chrono. He’d booked himself a spot on the 10:30 lift plenty of time for him to run his final errand before ascending to space once again. Turning down Giliad Street, Jonathan was glad that he’d already checked his luggage. All the possessions he had fit into three suitcases, but they could be a chore to lug around. Jonathan found his destination easily enough. He’d been here frequently as a cadet. Overwatch was only twenty minutes outside the city, and easily accessible by maglev. The building was plain stone with a red tiled roof. Unremarkable except for the single large North Star carved just below where the roof peaked. What struck people unfamiliar with such structures as unusual were the doors. The front and back of the building had
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