TA36

==Chapter 36 - The Armada==
Unity City, Terra
Sol Star System
Wolf Empire
December 9, 3170
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[Corner of 1st Avenue and Pike Place, Unity City Terra...]
She could have used an official vehicle, she could have summoned one with a single comm-call.  One of the things Sharon learned many years ago, is that when one wishes to move unobserved in an urban environment, one often can do so by the simple expedient of using public transportation, civilian taxi services, or, in a pinch, walking.
Walking is also good for 'walking off the anger', something useful when one is about to confront the elected/appointed leader of the human race over something the man probably doesn't understand is an insult.
Pike street is mostly a shopping zone. Ground vehicles are banned along most of its length, in part to ease the congestion of the four hundred million people living in the Puget Sound area.
In spite of frequent patrols, this part of Unity city would be a high-crime area even by the standards of the Periphery.  Tenement arcologies crowd against a commercial Boulevard. Welfare-island populations living on basic assistance because even with the innovations brought by the Wolf Empire, there just aren't enough low-skill jobs to keep everyone who needs one employed. A situation the inverse of the Clan Homeworlds, where there is a deep foundation of excellent education combined with a chronic shortage of workers caused. In part, by the small initial population and exacerbated by the youth-obsessed labor theories of Nicholas Kerensky being at play for three or four centuries.  Progress is slow, of course.
Foreigners shouldn't be on these streets after dark without police escort.  Especially these streets.
It isn't Nha Tranh here, it's not even the rougher portions of Hood IV or Jessenice.
Sharon Ngo may have trained once as a police officer, but that was decades ago. On a different world, during a different time.
It began with the lure.  Street criminals in Unity City, like their brethren in Chicago-Detroit or lower London have a few tricks they've learned for robbing offworld military personnel.  One might say it's a bit of a sport, some of those tricks were honed under Comstar and Word of Blake, some under the Republic's administration.
The Lure was a cry for help from an alley and it worked.
There were fifteen of them, and a jammer to block calls out, and they were armed with pilfered small-arms from generations of military presence going all the way back to the original Star League.
Sharon, had a crowbar and a six-shot 9.8mm revolver with four ready reloads.
In a sense, it was no contest.
When SLDF Naval Provost forces found the body, she was surrounded by a dozen dead men and three who were injured and deeply traumatized.
"She wouldn't go down...she didn't stop! We tried to get away and she wouldn't let us go."
R.I.P. Ngo, Sharon Elizabeth.
February 3rd, 3105-December 9th 3171
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