Soon afterwards…
Maryse calls to report on her team’s scavenging efforts.
“What we found was a warehouse full of construction mechs—”
“—modified, overclocked, all the serials filed off—” Hisata Leen’s voice, interjecting.
“—and the owners agreed to pay for our discretion.”
“We shook them down for protection,” said Hisata.
“It wasn’t like that!”
“It absolutely was, chief,” Leen explains. “All very affable: just a one-off and I even said we’d help them clear out real fast if Security got wind of their operation. But your insurance intern doesn’t quite get how things work yet. Doesn’t like being a ‘baddie’.”
“That’s completely—”
The signal cuts out for a few seconds. When it returns Maryse has a tone of forced, desperate calm.
“We can now meet Ridwyler’s exacting specifications. We’ll report back once the mission begins.”
“By which she means we won’t even start until you okay it,” Leen states. “We’ve got the gear but he better have the job to match it.”
“Fair.” That was Riks speaking. “He’d expect you to confirm first.”
“I don’t suppose you know what this job is, exactly?” Maryse asks.
“Even if I knew, he’d probably change his damn mind.”
The call having wrapped up, the party enters the heart of Deffshedd’s territory: a recycling node for the wider sector. The transition is marked by nothing more than signs and an unguarded gate. No battlements or barbed wire or junkyard dogs. Very off-brand for a gang with an inclination towards metals heavy and otherwise.
The node is primarily automated, but not entirely so. Vans and drones transport all sorts of garbage to sorting arrays but amongst the robotic arms there are several living pickers browsing the deliveries and adjusting controls. And some of those living pickers are clearly wearing Maintenance Association uniforms. Which means that the rough and tumble hard-as-nails Deffshedd home base is… up to code.
“Nodes can be privately owned,” someone announces, as if aware of the narration’s focus, “but we’re obligated to give a percentage of our processing potential to the local Association office. Safety first.”
The speaker is a Gef. He has the look of a man who desperately wants to be naked but for a couple of chains and a steel plate but instead he’s in a dangerously sensible hazmat suit with, admittedly, a skull logo stenciled on the chest. He’s carrying an enormous rusty girder, twisted in the middle.
He’s also a cyborg, although you can only tell from up close. In defiance of Deffshedd tradition he’s not a cyborg of the exposed cables and fibre-bundle muscles variety and instead has a much more subdued and utilitarian aug package. He has a very scraggly beard that would look out of place with any style he went for, but he’s also a bald grim eight-foot-tall cyborg Gef and people like that tend to have their facial hair unremarked on.
The man turns and drops the girder. It crashes and clangs but nobody in the noisome workplace seems to notice. He offers a hand to anyone who will take it.
“Name’s Curren. I run the place, or at least the Legion lets me run the place, so who knows the difference.”