Aveya was cautiously optimistic about the response to her datanet message about starting a citizen's militia. It was something useful to do, and Aveya needed to find some sort of purpose. Here it didn't matter that the NCM had only taken her on because of her family and because they wanted to be inclusive, even of messed-up spacesick girls, because Nammu 85 years after settlement was safe enough that the militia was as much about community as it was about defense.
She was less messed-up than she used to be, and she sure as hell knew a lot more about this sort of thing than most of the young people of Preya. It was sensible. And Aveya wasn't a rebel, not in the sense that Preya defined it. Some bizarre multiversal slippage zone offers you sanctuary from certain death-by-pandemic, you take it, and you're grateful. Even if that place is full of pre-Lorentzen cavemen and arrogant Earthers. Aveya now knew more about Earth – or at least a few probable Earths – than anyone on her homeworld had. For them, Earth was just an old enemy, the spectre of a tyrant.
She didn't know what to make of the man she was meeting, whom she was mentally calling Citizen Vanguard, even if she was near as certain as a person could be that it wasn't actually his surname. She'd thought they had some kind of shared understanding – until, that was, he'd mentioned terrorism. She'd brushed it off. Was it a test of some kind? There was no way to tell. Aveya Dalwood wasn't a terrorist. The NCM was very healthily skeptical about anything said by the inner worlds government, and skeptical even about its own founding corporation, never mind the others. But so long as Nammu was left in peace, it left others in peace, an attitude fortunately shared by the other frontier colony worlds.
Whatever was going on, she wanted to find out more, and that's why she made her way out to the old Everdale ruins. She wasn't an imposing figure – short, dressed in practical trousers and tunic, lasgun clipped to her belt and hidden under her winter coat. He saw her long before she saw him, but when she did, Aveya's immediate response was to decide that this had all been a terrible mistake. All-in-black, face hidden. That wasn't a sign of someone who wanted to talk. That was more like the pre-Lorentzen equivalent of an Amitsec wannabe. Not a good sign at all.
She cursed imaginatively under her breath, and quick as she could, pulled out that lasgun – Tradelines issue, could cut a hole in a starship if you flipped the safety switch, and in a human far more easily – and pointed it straight at the dark figure ahead of her. Hand steady.
'I don't want trouble. Show me who you are. Or we can both just back up and go home. Up to you.'