The desert, which was also a plateau, stretched for hundreds of kilometres in every direction from the transport hub. This was the reason the hub was located in that place, it was almost an equal distance from every small colony on this desolate northern continent. There was little life between the colonies and few who lived out there. Though in truth there was plenty of life and it wasn’t really a desert.
A desert is an arid place that is lacking in life or the means to support life. The plateau was literally covered with life. However most of it was microscopic bacteria, and most of the rest a type of lichen that gave the ground its yellow-green appearance. There was a lot of water in this land, trapped in the rocks, though the rainfall was lighter than the city, and was not engineered.
The sky above the desert was a near white that scattered the brilliance of the suns making it harsh to see without filters. The high level of sulphur in the atmosphere at this level was the cause of the white light that was in stark contrast to the icy blues above the southern lands. Here the atmosphere wasn’t so clean as the regeneration plants were few and far between. It would be decades, maybe even centuries, before the atmosphere at this height, and location, was suitable for long exposure without filtration.
Out here there were few large structures, plants or landscape to hide a figure. You could view for miles using just optical scanners. The land was flat with little differences in height to hide. The ground had been contoured into smooth undulations with no deep valleys of large rocks by years of erosion.
The figure on the scooter was visible for almost a hundred kilometres with even modest visual enhancement. A detection drone would be able to view for a thousand kilometres in every direction. It was a good place for a meeting that you did not wish to be closely observed. If anyone tried to watch you would spot them a long way distant. It was likely why it had been selected.
The scooter came to a halt in a small hollow and the figure dismounted. After quickly scanning the horizon with a handheld monitor it unpacked the small cases from the side of the scooter. A few moments of disassembling and the scooter was packed away. A few minutes more and a small survival dome had been erected and anchored into position. Almost immediately the synthetic skin of the dome discoloured and began to resemble the ground it was sat upon. Within a few minutes it was invisible unless you were very close.
The figure set up a small device on the roof of the dome, a small rotating scanner. It checked that it was functional and then set it to be the same colour as the dome, rendering it almost invisible. The figure went inside the dome and sealed it up. They had taken the second pack inside with them.
