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surprising the General. “I’ll monitor you from here. I can fly this ship, so I can evac you, if you need, you know, a deus ex machina to save you from the machinae deus …”
    “And a Latin scholar to boot,” Chen smiled. “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.”
    They crept up to the ridge and took a look at the city. The people were simian-humanoid, close enough for Hewitt to crack a “Planet of the Apes” joke when he’d fabbed up masks and gloves to match their appearance.
    It looked like some kind of festival was in progress. The natives were all garbed in bright colored tunics and trousers, and most people wore a flamboyant cloak. There were marching “bands” on every avenue, whose music consisted of banging together varying kinds and sizes of rocks, each section responsible for the beat or the rhythm. The sound was thunderous, and despite the distance between each lane, they were all in sync – even the effect of the echo off the high mountains around them.
    “It’s the local Mardi Gras,” Hewitt speculated.
    “It’s the ultimate drum circle,” Cruz agreed.
    Masked up, they approached the edge of the city. There were no walls, no guard towers, nothing to indicate that war ever came here. The houses on the outskirts were brick and mud, all deserted for the festival. There were smaller canals out here, made of brick, stinky and full of sewage and garbage revealed by the low water level. The bridges across the main canals were wooden and rickety.
    They found some clothes hanging out to dry and took them, leaving some trinkets as payment. They walked towards the city center, weaving back and forth through the side streets, avoiding the avenues.
    Out here in the poor area, they were a tangled warren, but as the avenues converged and they got closer to the temple, the streets became more orderly. And the houses got larger, finer, made of stone and then eventually of concrete and marble, approaching High Roman Empire in their magnificence. The canals here were stone, and the bridges were ornate, with bas-reliefs carved into the sides. On the ends of the bridges stood two statues, one on each side, presumably of noble citizens.
    “Same old story everywhere,” Archambault muttered. “The rich get richer…”
    The one constant from poor to rich zones were the lampposts. They were all the same black metal, with an unlit lamp on top, completely anachronistic among the wood and stone buildings. The lamps ran down all the major avenues, and the seven significant cross streets.
    They watched the festival from a side street long enough to be able to mimic the dances, well enough, anyway to get into the crowd. Years of hands-on anthropology and sociology were paying off yet again for FJ One.
    The poor were relegated to the back of the line streaming towards the temple, which enabled FJ One, already dressed in the poor’s clothes, to remain at the very back, unobtrusive, and unnoticed.
    The crowd got denser, as they squeezed together near the temple. It was a ziggurat mimicking the shape of the mountain behind it. Even from a distance, the team could see the priests on the stairs to the temple, clad in brilliant gold – they were the only ones wearing that color.
    The high priest held his hands up for silence and began to speak, his voice magnified by an unseen source. The team looked at each other. It wasn’t a natural sound projection.
    His gestures and voice were indicative of what 6C had classified as “dynamic leadership.” Which could mean anything from messianic to totalitarian to revolutionary, but definitely the tones and gestures associated across the galaxy with “true believers,” the ones who have all the answers already, and may the local god help anyone who disagrees.
    Some of his statements were met with cheers, others with boos (clearly aimed at the Other, whoever that might be around here), and then, as he reached a crescendo, he did a “wait for it” moment with his arms