The buyer for the Agrarian Guild was dressed in the standard guild uniform: gray blouse and trousers edged in dark green. Her name tag read “Chrysanthemum.” Never mind the fact that the name tag was so long the last few letters were almost into her armpit, and that no one on the planet of Agrotis had ever seen one of the flowers.
Thorn and the apparently unimpressed Chrysanthemum (she went by “Chrys”) were walking through the bundles of snake skin that he had taken out of the back of his truck and placed on the floor of the Agrarian Guild warehouse. Thorn had never been to this particular warehouse on the south side of Aba, at the base of the mountain and near to the flood plain, but if you’ve been to one, you’ve been to them all.
Like all Agrarian Guild buildings the exterior of the warehouse was relatively plain and unadorned. Clean, square concrete and steel rising three stories. The only sign it belonged to the guild was the small guild logo, embossed in green and gold, next to the entrance. The interior, however, was where they spent their quints. Precise climate controlled micro-environments, hidden security systems, system-integrated inventory management.
“With all the extra time and effort to get these in shape for production, I unfortunately don’t think I can give you market rate,” Chrys said.
Thorn took a look around at the well-ordered shelves stacked to the ceiling. As he breathed in the dry, filtered air he could almost hear his father’s favorite saying: everything with a place and everything in its place. The air tickled his nose and he sneezed into the elbow of his jacket.
“I hear you, I hear you,” Thorn said, running his fingers over a piece of the surprisingly soft snake skin. “What can you give us for it?”
Chrys squinted her eyes and said, “Seventy-five per bundle, deliverable in five days, standard System delivery terms.”
Thorn barked out a short laugh. “Oh, he’s not going to agree to that. My boss, well, he can be…” Thorn glanced over at Lief, surrounded by a group of warehouse employees and gesturing animatedly. “A bit unreasonable.”
“That’s the offer,” Chrys said. “If you can’t agree to it, then tell your boss so that he can make the decision.”
“Okay,” Thorn said with a smile. With Chrys following behind him, he walked over to where Lief was holding court. While Thorn had done all the work unloading their goods for inspection, Lief had launched into a completely made-up tale of tracking this awakened beast for days across vast tracts in the mountains to the east.
“…So then I’m thinking, where’d the daggone snake run off to? It was a slippery bastard, I’m telling you. But then I felt it… it might be able to sneak past the infrared and q-band sensors, but it couldn’t slip past my honed sense of danger! I pulled out my machete and…”
“Seventy-five per, System-contract standard,” Thorn called out, rudely interrupting Lief in the middle of his story.
Lief frowned at Thorn, then at Chrys. He said nothing at all for a full ten seconds. The warehouse workers and Chrys all shifted uncomfortably at the silence and sudden change in the atmosphere.
Lief turned, walked slowly over to Thorn’s truck, climbed into the cabin, and slammed the door shut.
“No deal,” Thorn explained. He began loading the snakeskin bundles back into the truck. The warehouse workers looked at each other awkwardly and wandered off. Break time was over, apparently.
“That’s it? Hold on, hold on, wait a minute,” Chrys said, crossing her arms. “You can’t just walk away.”
“Uh, yes we can.” Thorn shook his head. “I think you offended him. I tried to warn you.”
The woman walked over and interposed herself between Thorn and his truck.
“Stop. This is ridiculous.” Lowering her voice, she said, “I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I’ve got a production manager who has been comming me non-stop about the ‘fresh goods.’ He is going to be angry if those goods drive back out of the warehouse because we couldn’t come to terms. I have no idea how he found out! You gotta help me out with your boss.”
Thorn knew. Lief had commed that production manager before showing up at the warehouse. It was useful having old contacts, even after leaving the ‘ole AG.
“And I’m giving you a fair price! Your boss should know that. My hands are tied.”
“You seem nice. And since you were frank and transparent with me…” Thorn set the bundle he was carrying back on the floor of the warehouse and leaned in close. “Just between you and me, the old boss man is going through a rough patch with his better half, if you know what I mean. Really, really toxic relationship, on again, off again, on again… they’ve been married and divorced at least three times, and…”
“And what?” Chrys said, growing impatient.
“And well, the ex has her claws in his System and is garnishing his quints. I mean, how stupid do you have to be to agree to a pre-nup like that? And on the third go at it, to boot? He’s not a bad man to work for, not really, except for the mood swings and the occasional beating, but you gotta question his judgment sometimes and…”
“I don’t care about his marriage! Just stop, stop.” Chrys held up her hands in frustration. “That doesn’t explain why he’s just walking away from the deal. Who else is he going to sell to in Aba? By the time this is transported elsewhere, it will have lost some resiliency and be worth less. Half even.”
That was only partially true. Chrys didn’t run the only warehouse for the Agrarian Guild in the city of Aba, and Thorn knew of several others, but their managers were far more savvy. He and Lief were hoping to take advantage of Chrys’s relative inexperience.
“Well see, that’s the thing. If he’s not getting enough out of a sale these days, he’d rather just not make the quints. Cutting his nose off to spite his face,” Thorn explained, shaking his head. “He’s unreasonable at the best of times. You think a fully sane man will trudge around the mountains hunting awakened beasts? Hmm? It scares the ghost out of my shell just to drive out into the wilds and make the pickups in the truck.
“But…” Thorn paused for a moment, letting it stretch out. It was risky to make a play directly, but the woman was being coy.
“You wouldn’t be able to do anything with cores, would you? I bet your guild doesn’t allow that.”
“That is correct,” she said stiffly. “The Guild won’t trade material for beast cores. It’s our standard policy.” She shook her head.
“Well then, I guess it’s too bad we can’t do some kind of deal.” Thorn sighed. “I’m sure my boss would take a discount, no questions asked, so long as he could screw the ex out of her quints.”
And there it was. The bait was on the hook.
He began picking up more bundles and putting them back in the truck. The trick at this point was to let the line play out and be patient.
Chrys watched him load the truck in silence, a frown on her face.
“Well, I think I might be able to help you out,” Chrys said. “Who says you have to sell to the Guild directly? I have some cores at my apartment right around the corner. I could buy these off of you and then sell them to the guild. Your boss is happy, I’m happy, production is happy. Win-win-win.”
Hook, line, and sinker. Time to reel her in.
“Ok, I’m listening. How would this work precisely?” Thorn said.
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
…
Thorn hopped into the truck and closed the door, handing Lief a small bag.
“It’s good to know that the warehouse buyers are still as corrupt as when I was in the Guild,” Lief said with a smile. “Some things never change.”
“One of these days I get to play the bad cop.” Thorn pulled the truck out of the alley next to Chrys’s apartment where they’d unloaded their goods.
“You don’t have the facial structure for it,” Lief said, chortling. “Besides, that woman wouldn’t have done a deal with me directly. She’s new, still figuring out the local players. She’s likely scared of an outside sting operation. What she did was very, very against guild policies. Buying goods for a cheaper price with her personal funds, then selling to the Guild for a higher price and taking a cut? Yeah, no reputable organization is going to allow that, even if everyone does it on occasion.
“But working with a baby cheeks like you? She’s thinking she hustled you good.”
In terms of total quints, maybe she had, but Lief and Thorn had gotten what they wanted too: cores, instead of quints banked in their Systems.
“Let’s see the haul,” Lief said, opening the bag.
“Three small cores, should be close to 40k in value,” Thorn said. There was a danger he had been cheated on the value of the core, but even his System could grossly estimate a core’s density based on its size. “A handful of core chips, maybe 5k worth. Plus a few odds and ends to sweeten the pot: some dehydrated ration packs with mismatched packaging and a real steal: a few boxes of Q-Stix, only a month past expiration date.”
Q-Stix were one of the Agrarian Guild’s more popular, mass-produced products. They were a highly processed jerky, made from a combination of different meats and spices, and very dense in both calories and quintessence. The flavor was only middling, but the number of quints that could be absorbed through the quick snack made it useful as a low-value currency.
“Nice. The cores look about right,” Lief said, adding the larger core from the humper beast, and the pitted and scarred core from the snake beast to the loot bag. “Not a shabby haul for a weekend’s worth of effort.”
Not shabby at all. Of course, they had each lost a good number of quints in the fight with the snake: Thorn in keeping the pumpkin up and running, and Lief in using his imbuement technique on his machete to end the fight.
Thorn’s share of the single humper they’d bagged for Cook came to 50 quints. Surprisingly, Cook had asked to buy the venom as well, saying he could use it. He didn’t say for what, and Thorn wasn’t about to ask which marinades it would be going in. He merely appreciated the eye-watering 15,000 quints Cook had paid them for it. Thorn’s share came to an even five thousand.
Since Thorn had been in danger the most in the snake beast fight, Lief had graciously said they would split the value of the two beast cores fifty-fifty.
“Will you take two of these smaller cores for your share in the humper’s core?” Lief asked.
“Sounds good,” Thorn agreed. “But can you hold on to them for me?”
“No problem.” Cores were big value, hard cash. Carrying them around Aba was just asking to get robbed or worse, for someone as low-leveled as Thorn. “Next stop, go ahead and drop me off at the Wayfarers Guild.”
The Wayfarers Guild was known for two things: its stranglehold on intersystem travel, using quintessence-powered ships to cut wormholes through space, and for being the closest thing to a true neutral party in this part of the galaxy. No major power would offend them, for fear of being cut off. That made them rich and powerful, which gave them the perfect reason to operate a bank.
Lief had an account and a safety deposit box at the small Wayfarers Guild branch in Aba. Thorn didn’t; he expected that they wouldn’t even let him in the door. He trusted Lief to hold on to his beast cores and chips for him, until a time when he could use them. A new System was expensive, and one that didn’t come with significant ties or restrictions even more so, but there wasn’t much that couldn’t be bought with enough quints.
Thorn checked his System status.
He’d lost over seventeen thousand quints in that fight. It was a ridiculous number… the sum of his savings for years. And yet he was actually pulling out ahead, with the value of the cores he’d gotten his hands on outweighing his losses and more. With what he’d gotten today plus the two he already had squirreled away in Lief’s stash, he was getting closer, maybe halfway to a decent System, according to what Gammon had told him about the black market fences she knew.
He wasn’t sure because he’d never asked Lief, but he imagined his friend was in the same situation, albeit more perilous. When the Agrarian Guild had exiled Thorn, his System had been locked so he was no longer able to level up. Only if he changed Systems could he level up. But for someone like Lief, who was already at level 13, changing to a different System could lead to de-leveling if the new System was significantly different from his current one. De-leveling, where previously bound quintessence ran amok and was lost, was extremely painful and potentially lethal.
Thorn dropped Lief off at the Wayfarers Guild, then drove back to his parking spot. He was exhausted, and went to sleep almost immediately, not bothering to clean out the back of his truck. He pulled out the panels that enclosed the bed of the truck and set them up. It was quite cramped, but there was still enough space to hang his hammock in the enclosed compartment, and as soon as he dropped into it, it was lights out.
…
Thorn sat up with a star. His System had woken him with an urgent notification.
Thorn could hear a scritch, scritch coming from the back of his truck. He had kept the detachable panels in place, securely enclosing the bed of the truck. He slipped out of his hammock, grabbed his rifle, and after confirming it was loaded, eased the safety off.
The scratching noise continued, and Thorn considered his options. Whoever was breaking into his truck likely did not know that he was there. He decided to wait.
He didn’t have long to wait. A drill bit tore through the center of the tailgate, surprisingly not much louder than a soft tapping sound. The bright lights of the parking garage shone through the hole. There must be some kind of sound-dampening field in action, Thorn thought, as the drill bit retracted and a small wire reached in to undo the deadbolt that secured the tailgate from the inside.
With a muffled click, the bolt went up and the tailgate dropped down.
The would-be thief froze, staring directly at the end of the rifle not more than a meter from his face.
“Howdy,” Thorn said, his finger on the trigger.
The thief raised his hands slowly. “Hello there.”
The voice was a svelte alto. The thief was a woman. She wore a non-descript work uniform that on close inspection lacked any specific guild logo or design. She had a small scar on her left temple, and dark colored eyes; the rest of her face was hidden by a mask. On the ground next to her were a folding ladder, her drill, and an open toolbox.
“Who are you?” Thorn asked, before instructing his System to compose a comm and send to the building’s security, along with a still frame of the woman. Like most security forces in the city, they were more like a protection racket than a police force, but he was current on his dues.
“Let’s not do anything… hasty,” the woman said, the creases of a smile visible at her eyes. “I didn’t know you were in there, and I think we can talk things through, if you don’t mind lowering your weapon.”
“If you want to talk, start talking,” Thorn said. He kept his rifle sighted on the woman’s scarred nose.
“Is this your parking spot?” the thief asked with a sigh.
“If it is?”
“Then you pissed someone off pretty badly,” the thief replied. “Someone that knows you have the lease terms to hire a tow job.”
Ah, so that’s what this was about. Thorn lowered his rifle. At the same time, he asked his System to ping security again. They should have been here by now.
“So, just saying I know who owns the lease.” Thorn tried to hide his grimace at the obvious charade. “What were you planning on doing to them?”
“A little bit of breaking, a little bit of entering,” she said in a teasing voice. “Then at the end, I like it when things… explode.”
So maybe she wasn’t just a thief, but some kind of demolitions expert, sent to blow up his truck? Or was she trying to flirt with him?
Ew.
“Afterwards, track them down,” she said, wiggling her eyebrows and playing along with Thorn’s pretense, “and then if they have an insurance payout, collect that. I usually just send a message. I don’t go in for the assassinations… Too messy.”
Thorn sighed and thought for a second. The woman’s hands gradually began to come down, but she stopped when Thorn shot her a look. It took a few levels before you could ignore a flechette from a rail gun rifle to the face.
“How much?” Thorn asked.
“To let you go tonight? Oh, you’re cute so I’ll let you walk away for free. Consider it a professional courtesy for not rearranging my own good looks.”
She gave a toss of her hair.
Thorn shook his head. “No, no, the guy who hired you. The one with the small dick and the fancy car and the anger management issues. How much does he want for the spot?”
“Oh. I think we’re well past that, but I don’t know, I suppose I could find out. What’s your name? And uh, any affiliations?”
“No names. No System contacts. Leave me a message here, scrawled on the wall for all I care. I won’t be here, obviously, so if mister bigshot wants to just use it, go ahead, he can have it. But I want a small core for the trouble and the promise of not calling Tow-Jammers in the future when I’m feeling petty.”
“Sure. Sure. I can deliver your message,” Grif said with purr. “If that’s all…?”
Thorn nodded, and the thief quickly picked up her drill, toolbox, and ladder and high-tailed it out of the parking garage.