that sounded exciting. Travertine grabbed his telephone and called the number given for inquiry.
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“feel the man on the other end beaming; “You have experience in spelunking?” Whilst technically all people in the entire Devil''s Basement were spelunking at all times (except on rare visits to the surface), the term had come to refer to travelling anywhere off the beaten track outside the main rail-tunnels.
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“really worried about though are the rumours of....” the man paused and when he resumed he did so in a hushed tone: “rumours of slavers in that area. Wildmen who kidnap travelling miners and mechanics and take them through Almighty-only knows what route in the warrens to some stations either in the 2/3 Alliance or on the 1<sup>st</sup> Ring to sell them into ''indentured servitude''—a polite term for slavery. According to the rumours, this gang is led by a pair of ex-Republican military men who still address each other as ''comrade,'' so that''s what people call them.”
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“our guns pointed at you, so put your guns down!”
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could see past the flashlights in infrared and he didn''t like their odds of resistance.
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Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
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st</sup> Ring while the stockholders could get rich off tensions over the Line and RHS would snap up contracts to fix everything in the aftermath.
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“Your boss?” Asked the leader. He was dressed in a uniform of the Red Army of the People''s Republic of Ragnarok. The other three included a human woman and two zene males, each of whom wore a mixture of ragged clothing: all four also wore a headlamp, a backpack and a cloak that could double as a sleeping bag. Judging by their appearance and the leader''s comment about ''living out here,'' it seemed the best guess was that they were wildmen—people cast out of their stations for criminal activity (or for getting the wrong people mad).
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“don''t want a gang of angry wildmen tracking you through the warrens.” He was ignored by the newcomers, who filed back through the door with the mechanics in the middle of the line.
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