Leon's Last Stand Ophelia's World was terra-formed at the dawn at the space age. A mere fifty systems were settled then. She'd been a glorious achievement of planned cities and ornate white towers. Promenades stretched along semi-tropical gardens when the terra-formers finished. In the right place at the right time, industries piled on her continents one after the other, until for a time she rivaled even Deneb 4 as one of the galaxy's finest worlds. Her glimmering platinum spires flanked golden clockwork maglevs that spun silently past ladies in billowing gossamer gowns. Her name was tantamount in the settled worlds of humankind with reason and virtue, industry and progress. After 3127 the Arcturian wars cut off much of her trade and so began her slow and aching decline. With time the Cyborgian Empire's only use of her was to house dissidents. Of course, the terra-forming monoliths installed centuries before were shut down then. The planets natural coldness returned. Ice formed on the multicolored croatans and frangipani, which shattered and lay still, frozen like lilies left to fester without even the dignity of raising a stink.... The ship was coming. Yes, right on schedule. Leon was going to stow away or die trying. From somewhere beyond the god-forsaken dirty grey of Ophelia’s pallid atmosphere, past that, yesss, beyond the junkyards of satellites and dreary stations...the ship was even now heaving into normal space. Lunging, blasting away from the hyper streams, coming to the prison world.... coming to Ophelia. Coming to Leon. Leon Percival Gambino-“wild dog extraordinaire”. "Swirl the mesons boys, Leon's coming." The night was frigid and stinging. Fifty thousand tons drifting, spinning, turning down. Down to the prison world. The night side planet loomed. An ancient world all but abandoned by the Cyborgian Empire that had spawned it millennia before. Time had covered over from pole to pole with cities, towers, and factories. Kilometers high, kilometers deep, cities empty now but for a few ragged convicts interred here and there. They were Pirates, losers, loners; misfits not having earned a death sentence or a stasis block, just cast out of the way to go gracelessly in cold derelict cities. They were Wildcat Out pilots, smugglers...sentenced to live out your natural life among the ice and crying ghosts. The wind turned in on a frigid hopeless night as Leon watched for the lights. The wind hooted its indifference. Fifty thousand tons of interstellar freighter sank beneath the clouds and continued its easy silent descent toward the icy seas where it would make water port. "Right on time" Leon snapped excitedly as he saw the lights appear in the gloomy clouds above.