DusktoDust_Final3 Read Online Free PDF Page B

being named after the great ship captain and explorer, the land that Mandell City was built on was not rich with ores and minerals. Because of this, no aggressor in the Colonial War took interest in the metropolis.
    After the war, since Mandell City was one of the only places still standing on Prospect, UNEC chose it to host the Mandell Accords, where the Prospect Denationalization Pact was signed. The city also became the center for the reconstruction of Prospect. The Skylift was built, along with layer upon layer of urban sprawl. All of this was paid for by UNEC in conjunction with Scepter Tech, the multinational company that now owned the land Mandell City was built on. The city saw an influx in population and its economy boomed. Even with its lack of local mines, it became a major center for ore processing.
    But the prosperity didn ’ t last. Six years after the Mandell Accords, Baoshi was discovered. Soon thereafter, all mining companies on Prospect with Chinese, Korean, or Siberian ties left Prospect to begin mining on their new “ Gem ” . The economy of Prospect plummeted. Mines shut down over night. Mandell City went from being the pride of the planet to just another run down slum in the Dusk Zone.
    Alana and David descended the flight of stairs into the center of Mandell Square. The place was crowded with pedestrians and vendors. There were bums on park benches and in gutters. There were even some street performers doing God knows what to earn a note. There was rubbish everywhere. The city was a hellhole.
    Despite the square ’ s aesthetic qualities, it was much safer for the two of them than the Skylift had been. There were no cameras out here, at least no cameras that UNEC could use to monitor them. Nearly every corporation within the Dusk Zone used some type of camera surveillance. But because everyone knew about the intrusive computer techniques used by the Peacekeepers, all of these cameras were on closed-circuit fiberoptic networks, which were nearly impossible to tap. Of course, UNEC did have drones in the sky, but once David and Alana got underground the prying eyes from those aerial sentinels would be useless. All that they had to worry about was human monitoring. David doubted the PKs were above breaking the PDP ’ s covert clauses.
    He scanned the crowd looking for any sign of Peacekeeper human surveillance. There were no telltale signs of pursuers, but he wasn ’ t surprised. They were there. As much as the smuggler joked about the ineptitude of PKs, he knew they were good at what they did.
    Alana and David made their way across the square. They reached a bank of turbolifts and boarded one. It went down. Far down. Ten stories, then twenty, then thirty. The metal and concrete that made up the decaying metropolis flew by outside the lift ’ s viewscreen. They were going all the way down to the planet ’ s surface. They were going to the train station.
    There were twenty-two colonies in the Dusk Zone and all were connected by repulsor trains. The train network on Prospect had been ground breaking at its inception. It circumnavigated the Dusk Zone and stretched deep into the dark and light sides of the planet. Many of the major lines had been destroy or damaged in the Colonial War, but had since been rebuilt. The trains transported passenger and cargo alike around the planet. Decades ago the trains had been state of the art, featuring fully automated controls and beautiful interiors. Now David would be lucky to find a compartment that didn ’ t smell like rat feces.
    The two of them got off and walked into the giant lobby. David went to the ticket kiosks, and Alana took a seat on a bench which just happened to have a great view of the turbolift banks.
    There were fifteen trains leaving from Mandell City in the next hour. Six were headed out of the Dusk Zone. Four were exclusively freight trains. One was fully booked. That left four viable options for David. There was one train going directly to