"And a little east - I know how to drive it not how to tell people to go - how are - we're out of juice -"

"Don't worry about it."

She takes them a few blocks east and resumes going northward; with her senses stretched out, she should hopefully be able to find the red district if they pass within a few miles of it.

Yup, it's over there.

Excellent.

- as much as she hates mind-tricking people, it's really not going to go well if these reds tell anyone what really happened. So, just before they reach the edge of the district, she tells them: "You had just enough fuel to get back; you didn't meet anyone in the storm."

The healthier of the two drags his companion out of the hearse and into the nearest building.

And back home she goes.

Hotel staff fuss over her.

When they have determined that she is not frostbit she can go back up to her room without further obstruction.

(She's not even chilled; her hands are probably warmer than theirs are.)

She heads up and snuggles up in bed with a book of poetry.

The storm eventually clears up. Everything comes back on.

She sends out a batch of emails - did all her people make it through the storm okay? - and puts on the news.

All her people made it through fine. Peka's town wasn't even hit. If your landlord isn't prompt about fixing damages call this number. Worst storm since the one years ago. Hit Anitam pretty hard too.

She asks DZ too keep an eye on the red sites to see if they need help with repairs, and gets back to work.

The red district buildings are all old enough to have withstood some serious weather. Minor broken windows and such that they need to wait on parts to fix but know how to handle. The problem they have is mostly that the snow won't melt till spring, so they have to find places to put it in-district where the melting later won't flood anything. They turn snow into ice bricks and build structures with it so they can store it nice and vertically.

Neat.

She puts in an order for some of the more expensive materials the nearby red district needs, and stops by to leave it just inside the border with a note, 'for repairs'.

They are confused and now have redundant items because they weren't expecting those, but grateful.

Better that than not enough.

The hyperdrive project is coming along; they have a few pieces still to figure out, but the last breakthroughs could happen any day now.

They're figuring out how many credits to issue now! They are not sure whether to just up them a skosh or whether to do some kind of subsidy for people turning nineteen this spring who'll be left out of the baby boom resulting from success.

A subsidy for people turning nineteen sounds better to her, though she'll defer to DZ and Kesa on the wisdom of that one. Also, the reds should get extra. (...that won't somehow freak them out, right? She consults Peka.)

They say Rivik likes to factor in how many reds get randomly murdered when they allocate credits. Since it's a high rate there.

Like, credits are good, but they're not totally unscary.

Eesh. Okay, just a small bump then.

I'll have to figure out what to do about Rivik.

A red planet and robots works for them too.

If it's as straightforward as 'we'll trade you these robots for your reds', yeah - not great for the reds, being traded like that, but it'd work. But I'll be a little surprised if it's that simple; some people like having someone to beat up on.

I'll figure something out, though, don't worry about it.

Thanks.