We welcome you to Arcadia, please take a moment to read the info packet that will be dropped to all personal devices as you pass through the spaceport barrier, and follow all written, and verbal instructions for your safety and the safety of others. A summarized list of laws will be included in your info packet, please take a moment to review them as you will be held accountable for any law you may break during your stay.

The martial took a step through the information barrier and onto the spaceport floor. As he stepped through, his implant pinged, and just like the cool female voice had promised, he found an info packet in his inbox waiting patiently to be read. Behind him, there was a soft sort of humming noise as Nemo, his accompanying AI passed through the barrier.

He turned to look at her, and the little aperture at the center of her one black lens seemed to blink at him.

She had come a long way since their stop off at New-Laconia. As a learning AI she had come to develop more of a personality over the past few months, and had, out of the blue, announced to him that she was female and her name was NEMO, and had subsequently stuck to that decision, though she was having trouble deciding between her stored programs for different female voices. She had thrown out a few the female child, which she considered creepy, the voice that made her sound like an AI, and the one that made her sound like an old lady.

Right now she was trying to decide between the deeper woman's voice, the one that made her sound like she could have been a rockstar, or a cute bubbly little voice that was more suited to a kindergarten teacher than it was to an AI. He saw no reason why it was these two voices she might want to pick as they had nothing in common, but he kept his mouth shut interested to see what she would chose.

"Anything I should know/" He wondered

There was no point in reading the welcome packet when he had an Ai to do it for him. She could read ten times faster than he could, and sort through all relevant or novel information.

She blinked at him again.

"Nothing new that I can tell." She was using the cute voice, "It all seems relatively standard for a non-satellite exo-planet being used as a cargo waypoint."

He frowned, "Are there many of those."

"I was being sarcastic. This is the only place of it's kind in system, so all the laws here are novel."

He sighed and rolled his eyes.

"Okay...." He took a few steps into the spaceport as others began to file around him stepping off the shuttle and passing around him like water passes around a rock in a river.

"Give me the general rundown, I want to know as much as I can about this planet, or moon or whatever the hell it is."

"Not big enough to be a planet, so it is an exo-planet, it was purchased a few years ago by some sort of.... Third party real estate firm. I looked into it and it IS legal, but it does mean that the real owner of the planet is not going to be listed on anything but official documents, which are intentionally held back from public record."

"that doesn't sound legal."

"No, but it is. The laws on intergalactic real estate are so new that companies like to use loopholes."

He nodded absently and began walking down the long hallway.

She kept going, floating close over his right shoulder, "The dead to the exo planet was purchased almost six years ago, and was immediately contracted out to a storage and shipping company who was using the rout to transport goods, however I the intervening year, the trade rout suddenly got bigger and it became a lucrative waypoint. Whoever owned the planet allowed the company to begin terraforming operations as well as build a small settlement here for those living and working o the station. As little as a few years ago, someone began funneling money into corporations that started in with bigger terraforming projects which included the gravity grid and the acquisition of atmosphere."

He turned his head to the side trying not to be so obvious about his staring as a strange couple hurried by him.

It was a human woman and a Tesraki. They were holding hands and talking animatedly about soemthing.

"Think Neba if we can just get the void vaccine-" Her voice trailed off into the crowd and he tilted his head. Somehow, the relationship between that human and that Tesraki didn't seem platonic.

Nemo continued to speak , "Less than a year ago there was a sudden uptick in profit as even more money was funneled in by a third party. Most of the building on this planet, including new architecture, parks infrastructure, and municipal features have been erected In the last year. Whatever eccentric billionaire who owns the planet seems to have a thing for acquiring alien wildlife and integrating them into some sort of patchwork ecosystem. The planet has a team of grossly overpaid biologists working to keep a stable enviornment as more creatures are added. As well as an entire team of bioengineers specifically tasked with designing, and I quote, "Cool ass shit.""

The marshal raised an eyebrow, "Sounds like some biologists got a good deal when coming to work here."

She hummed in return, a habit she had kept since their early days together, her way of acknowledging what he had to say.

"Laws? Anything I need to know?"

"So here's the thing, this exo planet is technically large enough to be considered a colony at this point, and since it is considered a colony, the owner of the planet has a right to make and create the laws that govern the planet and the UN and GA have to abide by those laws because it is considered under cultural allowances, aside from genocide, slavery, and child exploitation, which the Ga reserves the right to interfere upon. This particular planet follows most all of the primary GA and UN laws that govern human civilizations normally except for one massive middle finger to the Hunt administration."

The martial watched as another alien/human pairing walked past, "Let me guess, LFIL legality?"

If she could have nodded she would have, "Yes, mixed alien relationships are completely legal on this planet."

He nodded, this fact he had known, and it was primarily the reason why he was here. If ex admiral vir was hiding anywhere, it was going to be here.

"What kind of governmental system does it have?" He wondered adjusting his duffel bag over one shoulder.

"It is.... Tough to say. I think it is some rebranding of a constitutional monarchy in the early stages. They recently put together a congress of some sort, but it's a bit weird."

"Go on, we have time."

"I.... well there is the monarch of course, who we don't know much about. We are assuming he is the same man who is paying for everything. He doesn't come out much and most of the quote on quote "decrees" that he makes are rather minor as far as politics go. The only big thing that he was really interested in was the LFIL legislation, though since that has passed, he has been mostly quiet. As far as the congress goes, they aren't elected positions."

He raised an eyebrow, "Some sort of Aristocracy then?"

"No, its weird, the congress requires representatives, from different planetary sectors, including, educators, small business owners, military and police forces, municipal workers and so on, which means every echelon of society is represented in a congressional body, and each group gets to decide who represents them."

He paused on the escalator as they sank towards the first floor. Large windows overhead showed that the outside was dark, and reflections off the windows made it difficult to see the view.

"So we have an eccentric absentee monarch, who has no interest in actually ruling anything, and some sort of minor congress."

"With an established judiciary system." She finished, "Though It seems that if the courts cannot determine a ruling, than the king is allowed to step in and make his own judgement..... if he is king, I haven't seen anything in the official packet about what they are calling their ruler."

"I see."

He took the last few steps towards the automatic double doors, walking out onto the main thoroughfare before being absolutely grounded in place by the site before him.

His mouth dropped open in awe and shock blinking hard at the strange vision around him.

He was standing atop a wide white marble bridge that stretched off into the distance. Overhead the sky was almost completely dark except for a distant burning pinprick of light, only a little brighter than how the moon might look on earth. However, instead of being dark, the city itself was awash in light bright enough to constitute the noon day sun.

All around him burning balls of light existed atop white Greek-inspired pillars, casting out a warm white glow in all directions, bathing the Greek inspired architecture into an almost otherworldly light. The beautiful sweeping architecture was interspersed with thousands of water features, and impromptu gardens and displays of strange plants. Some of them alien, and some of them which appeared to be genetically altered earth plants, many of them glowing with delicate bioluminescence in a thousand rainbow colors, the most common being blue and green, but occasionally bright pink, orange, yellow or even red stood out in shocking contrast.

Somehow the Greek architecture morphed and blended seamlessly into towering skyscrapers clustered on the horizon, blinking with iridescent white light from a patchwork of glass windows. He tilted his head back nearly stumbling as he caught sight of strange glowing pinpricks of white in the night sky. As one of them drew closer, he couldn't help but pull in a sharp gasp of astonishment as he watched the ethereal, graceful creature pass overhead.

It looked and moved almost exactly like an earth jellyfish, with a gently undulating top and many trailing ribbons below.

As he watched the Jellyfish would dip down from the sky to be patted occasionally by one of the passing humans before returning to the sky.

He couldn't help the sudden and overwhelming jealousy towards those people accompanied by an almost ravenous desire to pet one of the jellyfish too.

As if on cue, one of the strange creatures dipped out of the sky to float before him.

With wide eyes, he reached out a hand and patted it gently atop its cap, The sensation under his fingers was one of odd warmth, and squishiness. He expected his hand to come back wet, but when he pulled away he found that was not the case.

The jellyfish returned to the sky and floated off glittering gently like a floating lantern as it was carried away.

"Holy shit." He muttered to himself.

Nemo kept quiet clearly noting his absence as he wandered awestruck over to a small bench at the side of the throughfare. He sat hard onto the bench, turning towards the garden behind him where a glowing blue water feature led a meandering pond into a delicate fountain. Little lights under the surface caused the water to glow blue from the inside. Atop that odd water plants like lily pads sported delicate pink and orange flowers, with bioluminescent speckles in the same color.

He leaned closer and watched as, under the surface, tiny frogs paddled through the water.

As he watched one of them leaped out of the light, and onto the bank, and he watched in awe as the frog slowly pulsed with an inner green light.

Just to the side of that, a white rose was open to the artificial light, the tips of its delicate pedals glowing blue.

Little moats of bioluminescent dust moats seemed to float through the air around all the gardens.

He reached out to touch the flower, and nearly screamed when a shape rose up from the bushes.

He tipped backward in fright as the shape, like that of a cobra, stretched itself up from the bushes.

A single giant eye blinked at him.

Someone laughed behind him, and he turned heart pounding to see a young girl looking at him.

"Silly, you don't need to be scared. They're friendly."

The little girl skipped over, and to demonstrate, she reached out a hand and patted the snake like creature on the head.

The marshal flinched as the snake creature opened its tri-segmented mouth letting off a soft, but prolonged chirping noise, She was forced to turn away as her parents called her back, leaving him sitting on his ass on the pavement staring at the one eyed creature who, as if not understanding what his problem was, tilted it's head to the side, blinking tis one giant eye.

Slowly, he stood, and with a tentative hand, he reached out almost flinching away again, as the thing leaned forward and rubbed its smooth skin against his hand. He patted it a few more times before stepping away a little shaken.

"Is that normal here?"

"The vast majority of the animals are extremely friendly. There are lists of the ones it is and is not okay to touch, though most of them are okay. However, the penalties for animal cruelty on this planet are much greater than those on other planets, and can include immediate expulsion."

"Wow.... Ok so the eccentric billionaire likes animals.'

"It seems so."

The snake thing, lowered itself back into the bushes, and the martial was able to gather his wits slowly as he made his way down the long bridge and towards the main city.

He was tired, and would have liked to get a hotel, but stopping off for a drink would give him a good enough reason to get to know the people here, maybe see what information he could glean from the locals.

He didn't bother to do a comprehensive search of establishments just yet, and stopped off at the first bar that he saw.

It was big, more like a club with a driving, thrumming beat that rolled through the floor, and flashing blue and pink lights that turned the mass crowd of dancers into a single writhing entity with many arms and many legs. He pushed his way through the throng of people and towards the bar, which, like everything else on this planet glowed with a sort of hazy blue light.

Behind the bar, a man with a green Mohawk, and a punk style taken straight out of the eighties, was helping a small Finnari to mix drinks for the customers at the bar.

He sat at the end, in isolation as the bartender juggled bottles showed off for the crowd. Eventually when their drinks were poured, the bartender headed over to where he was sitting.

"And what can I get for you." The man asked sliding a stool behind the counter with his foot, and allowing the small Finnari to climb up next to him. The marshal couldn't tell, but he thought it might be a she, and detected, by the way the two of them moved together, that they were another LFIL couple.

"Just a whiskey, on the rocks."

"That it?"

"Yeah, just a nightcap before heading in."

The man spun on his heels and poured the marshal a fifth into a glittering crystal glass which seemed to refract the light coming off the dance floor, before setting it down before him.

He took a sip.

"So, just passing through?"

The bartender was going to be talkative, that was good.

He set his glass down, "Depends, this place is.... Well its pretty."

"Amazing/"

He nodded, that at least was true.

"Yeah it's the first of it's kind, though we suspect more like it are going to be popping up all over the galaxy now." He frowned, "Though I do worry about the kind of people that are going to be involved. We have a really good team working to keep the planet stable, I can only imagine what is going to happen with people who are less scrupulous."

The martial tapped his foot against the floor absently as Nemo hovered behind his shoulder, "You say we..... seems like there is an active sense of community here."

The man smiled, "Oh, yeah I guess there really is. I think it might be to do with the LFIL laws here. A lot of us actually know each other, used to live in horrible places like necropolis or the under streets of the Tesraki home world, not great places to be living, but it did foster a strong sense of community. So, when this place opened up a lot of us moved out for a better life, not to mention that we have several drev clans living her, and entire groups of people who just come for a better life. It does really foster a sense of community."

He nodded slowly taking another sip of his whiskey

"And crime?"

The man paused thinking to word himself very carefully, "Not on planet, we have the lowest crime rate that I know of, though the metrics are a bit off considering that domestic disturbances between drev are still counted by law enforcement, and you know Drev. Their entire lives are domestic disturbances."

The Marshall laughed and easy laugh, "I see. \"

"I suppose the GA and the UN don't really like what goes on in the hippodrome."

Now he was curious and motioned for the man to continue, "Since the Drev are here and the Spartans, martial competitions are popular, so we have a sort of gladiatorial ring set up. There are always doctors on standby, and you aren't allowed to maim or kill anyone, but still they are serious fights and people do get hurt." He shrugged, "Brings in a lot of revenue for the planet though, and the people who fight are volunteers, they sign wavers and everything so its all above board.

The man seemed very protective of what he considered to be his planet, enough that he seemed to want the marshal's good opinion.

He would have to see the rest to make his own opinion but.

He could find no argument with what he currently saw.

Not that his job was to sight see.

He had other work he needed to finish.