Checking out a vehicle cost quints, of course, and if you wrecked it you bought it, but it was certainly convenient. He wasn’t going to walk to the Wayfarer’s Guild in downtown Aba, that was for certain.
Thorn was starting to see how the Crows Guild provided a lot of convenience for its members. It wasn’t an army, even though many of the members had been in armies and some of their engagements were injecting themselves in armed conflicts. The Guild wanted its combat members to focus on delivering outcomes to clients, clearing missions and making quints for the Guild. They also didn’t want their members to leave, either striking out on their own or joining other mercenary guilds. Thus the convenience of the motor pool, procuring items through the Quartermaster or Armorer, paying bills through the Bursar, and so forth. There was probably more that Thorn hadn’t seen yet.
Thorn walked past the heavily armored limos and fancy, aerial vehicles to the back of the lot. He picked out a beat-up troop transport that was missing a top, jumped in the front and waved his badge over the controls. Korakis flapped down onto the seat beside him with a squawk. Engaging the manual operation mode, he eased the vehicle out of the outpost and down the road towards Aba.
As he was leaving through the gate, he had a moment of irrational panic. He felt as if he were stealing the vehicle from the Crows Guild, and that he was about to be caught, pulled over, and shot on the side of the road. It was irrational, illogical, and he knew that he could borrow a vehicle like this, but he still felt like a thief. He was even paying for it! He shook the weird thoughts off and focused on the road.
He’d always enjoyed driving. There was something calming about it, similar to his Meditate Skill.
The WFG outpost in Aba was small, comparatively speaking, but it was built like a fortress. It was a single, squat building in the center of a square of marbled stone that took up the entire block. No vehicles were allowed to park in the square, but plenty of locals walked and talked, using the open area as a place to meet, or even a place to put a blanket down and have a picnic. Attentive guards patrolled both the square and the outside of the building itself.
Thorn, and Korakis walked across the square to the building’s entrance. He showed his WFG tokens and was let inside. When the thick, metal door closed behind them, a second door opened in front of them, and they progressed to a second security check inside the small lobby. Aside from a minor delay as security examined Korakis, they easily passed through security and down a long hallway.
The inside of the WFG was claustrophobic for Thorn, and he had a hard time figuring out why. The place was well lit. The rooms were small, but not overly so. The walls were a dull matte silver… as were the ceilings and floors… Which didn’t have any seams at all, he noticed. It was as if the whole building was a single, solid chunk of a metallic alloy with passageways carved into it. It was creepy, like crawling inside of an ant nest.
At the end of the hallway were a series of small rooms, most of them open.
Thorn and Korakis went into one of the rooms and closed the door behind them.
Now that Thorn had a key to a lockbox himself, he could use it to store his own valuables. He could also have kept his cores at the Crows nest, but he didn’t like having all of his eggs in the same metaphorical basket, and Lief agreed with him on that. It never hurts to have a backup plan.
The viewing room was small, and more like a closet; standing room only. There was a short shelf in front, and a sensor and blank screen embedded in the wall to his right. After a moment’s thought, he ran Marta’s token over the sensor, and the screen beeped to life.
Welcome to the Wayfarers Guild, Account #SDF89723HKSFD.
Would you like to:
- View lockbox contents
- Review security settings
Thorn selected “view lockbox contents.” His curiosity was burning, as was his greed. What if it was chock full of cores or other valuables? He had a sudden worry: what if it was full of glitter, or more of those golden pills? Or something worse? They might be difficult to fence.
The shelf in front of him opened up, and a small box the size of an ammo case lifted into view. Thorn put his hand on the side of the latch, and hesitated for a few seconds before popping it open.
It was empty. Well, mostly empty; it was certainly not filled to the brim with cores. That was a disappointment. The future where he’d just found hundreds of thousands of quints evaporated into thin smoke.
There was a Crow badge, similar to the one he had, sitting on top of a small book on the bottom of the lockbox that he’d missed at first glance. The badge must have been Marta’s, and he wasn’t surprised to see it here, after he’d failed to find it on her body in the cavern. He was surprised at the book. Paper was rare; he’d only seen it used for creating ink paintings or other physical decorations. The last time he’d even written anything by hand, using a stylus and a tablet, must have been when he was still in school.
The book’s pages had tight, neat handwriting. Dates, numbers, and names. Nothing else, no descriptions of any kind. Most of the names repeated: Hubert. Iskill. French. Brown. The dates went back for over a year. “Brown” was a common name among the Patricians of the AG. Here was another name that he knew: Scrivler. Why was that psycho’s name in this book? There were a handful of entries next to her name, but not as many as the others.
The dates and numbers were clearly details of shipments. Glitter, cores, quints, or whatever wasn’t indicated, but Thorn could make educated guesses for them. One column was payments made, another was payments received. This was some kind of accounting ledger, written on paper and not a record on someone’s System.
Thorn flipped through the pages and had his System summarize the totals.
Brown 0 4330
French 125000 12500
Hubert 0 433
Iskill 0 5000
Jeorge 0 1745
Scrivler 1700 255
Zimmer 4900 735
The numbers didn’t make a lot of sense to Thorn, but now that his System had all of the data, he asked it to run an analysis.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.
- If one of the columns is glitter, and the second quintessence units, then the first column of numbers is likely the quantity of glitter product, in kilograms, supplied to each distributor
- The second column of numbers becomes the approximate value, in small cores, of the product supplied. Distribution-level pricing will be lower than street-level pricing, and also reward lower per unit pricing for greater volume, accounting for the differences between French, Scrivler, and Zimmer’s per unit cost metrics
- Iskill and Jeorge provided no payment, but received cores. They are likely suppliers of equipment or resources to the illegal enterprise
- Hubert received exactly ten percent of Brown’s payments. Hubert is likely laundering the cores for Brown, who is possibly the principal investor and thus sole profit-taker
- Considering that Agrotis is a primarily Agrarian Guild planet, the capital required for an operation shipping hundreds of thousands of…>
“Damn.”
The analysis continued, but Thorn had read enough. He was impressed by his System’s response; there was no way he would have come to those conclusions no matter how long he had studied the numbers in the book. Of course, they could be far-fetched hallucinations, given how he’d instructed the System to basically make up the gaps.
He was sure Smithson would be interested in this little book. He checked the details of his Probationary Orders in his status.
- Duration: 59 days remaining.
- Commanding Officers: Colonel Smithson, Chief Warrant Officer Gammon Vortega.
- Primary Goals:
-
- Unmask the identity of the investors behind the glitter farm south of Aba.
-
- Prevent public disclosure of any connection the Crows Guild may have to the operation.
- Upon success:
-
- Promotion from Probationary Recruit to Private 2nd Class.
- Upon failure:
-
- Expulsion from the Crows Guild.
He had fifty-nine days to find the parties that were responsible for the glitter farm and dead zone. Did he just complete the unfair probationary mission Smithson had assigned him on his first day as a Crow?
Of course, as Thorn thought it through, there was an issue with showing Smithson the book: its provenance. He would have to admit that he had taken the WFG token and come clean on not telling Smithson about it in the first place. He was reluctant to do that. What if Smithson considered it lying and decided to smoke Korakis again? Or maybe Thorn this time.
The book might not be enough, either. A list of names in a book with numbers was evidence, but it wasn’t proof. Nor did it actually tell him who these people were, and the orders specifically said “unmask the identity of the investors.” Some of the names were extremely common. Some of them might even be fake names.
It was a clue, an extremely important and valuable clue, but it wasn’t the solution to the problem.
Thorn sighed. He put the book back in the lockbox, set Marta’s Crow badge back on top, and closed it up. He signed out of the account, and then logged into Lief’s using his token.
He would keep this information under wraps until he knew more. In between missions with the Crows he’d need to track down Scrivler; that was his primary lead at the moment. He needed to figure out what she knew, either through threats or buying her off somehow.
He doubted she was a primary player in this conspiracy. If he could convince her to talk, he could promise to keep her name out of whatever he reported to Smithson; that approach might work well with someone like Grif. Throw up Smithson as the bad guy, position himself as being able to protect her in exchange for good intel on the real culprits.
Marta’s lockbox had been a disappointment in the make-some-quints arena, but at least he’d made progress on figuring out Smithson’s impossible task.
Lief’s lockbox popped out, just as the first one had. Thorn opened it up, and it was stuffed full to the brim. Korakis squawked with delight and immediately dove for the open container, but Thorn had been ready.
He grabbed two bags off the top, blocking Korakis with his arm.
“Not here, you glutton,” Thorn said. “Some of these are mine, some are Lief’s. Don’t worry, you’ll get a share. Maybe.”
Korakis let out a deep, threatening croak and fixed his blue, beady eye on Thorn.
“Fine. But only if you’re good, and only back at base.”
“Crrrrrs.” Korakis flapped his wings and began preening his feathers.
A fight averted, Thorn replaced the lid on the lockbox. A small and frayed doll sat on top of a flush of papers, odd ends of machine tech, a few ribbons, locks of hair, and a beast tooth and bone or two. He didn’t sift through the items, even though he was curious about them. These were all Lief’s most precious possessions, and he shouldn’t pry.
Thorn and Korakis exited the Wayfarers Guild into the thick evening air of Aba. The drive back was smooth, except for one incident on the way back up the mountain. Korakis attempted to steal the cores out of his pocket, and Thorn almost plowed the truck into the ditch fighting the beast off.
He needed to get rid of these cores, fast.
After checking the vehicle back into the motor pool, he made a beeline for the infirmary, Korakis trailing after him angrily. He barged into Lief’s room, and thankfully there were no nurses in the room. Lief had been napping, but he looked up in surprise as Thorn tossed him a bag full of cores.
“Better hide those,” Thorn said. “Our mutual friend here really, really wants them.”
Lief laughed. “Well, of course he does! And he deserves his cut.” Lief fished inside the bag and pulled two shiny, polished cores out. One was a sharp crimson color, and the other a brilliant emerald. Neither had the dull, pitted look of the cores they’d harvested from beasts inside the dead zone. These were the real deal.
Lief tossed them in the air toward Korakis, who was already in flight toward Lief. The raven caught them deftly out of the air, one in his beak, and the other in his claw. He landed on the edge of the bed, and cawed in triumph.
Lief pulled a few more out of his bag and held them out to Thorn. “Here, these are for you.”
“I’m not sure I can take these.” He knew Lief had lost levels, plus a new arm and a leg couldn’t be cheap.
“Sure you can. You just shut your mouth and put the cores in your pocket.”
“No, man. Those are yours.”
“Stop being a little bitch and take the cores,” Lief said, suddenly irritated. “Just ‘cuz you saved my life doesn’t mean you get to tell me how I spend my quints. Besides, I got enough left in here to pay for the prosthetics.” He shook the bag.
Thorn reached out and took the cores from Lief, putting them in his own bag. Korakis eyed him greedily.
“Thanks,” Thorn said.
“You’re welcome,” Lief replied, back to his normal, merry self. “See, that wasn’t so hard. Now, while I appreciate the personal delivery, could you do me a favor and take the rest of these to the Bursar and deposit them in my account?”
“Of course.”
Lief eyed him suspiciously as he handed the bag back to Thorn. “And I’ll know how many cores you deposit. Don’t be a little bitch.”
“Birrrrrch.” Korakis echoed.
“Keep the ones I just gave you and use them to level up.”
Thorn sighed. Lief knew him too well; that had been his plan exactly, to return the ones Lief had given him and deposit them in his Guild account. He didn’t like getting things for free, especially from his friends. Especially when he knew his friend needed quints too.
“Okay, fine,” Thorn said. “But when you’re all recovered, we’re gonna go on missions and make more quints.”
“Damn straight,” Lief replied. “We’ll be rolling in the cores, enough to fill a bath and swim around in. More quints than we know how to spend, and trust me, I know how to spend ‘em.”
Thorn nodded. Korakis, having decided that more cores weren’t being tossed his way, tipped his throat back and crunched down. The core within his beak cracked, and he swallowed the shards whole.
Thorn felt a pang. He could live off the amount of quints in that core for months, and Korakis had gobbled it down like a crunchy snack. He had a sudden realization: cores were pet food for Korakis. He was suddenly nauseous.
Lief’s head twitched, like he was listening to something Thorn couldn’t hear. He sat up straighter and ran his fingers through his hair, and then unbelievably, breathed into his hand to check his breath.
“Thanks for stopping by, kid, but you might want to scram,” he said. “Don’t want the nurse to catch you in here. She’s on her way, and I’m supposed to be resting.”
“‘Resting,’ huh?” Thorn said. “Is that what you old men call it?”
“Orrrd mannn,” Korakis echoed. Thorn was proud; he’d taught him that one on their drive back from the WFG.
“Korakis, buddy, why are you turning on me like that? I thought we had something special going on.” Lief looked hurt. “Now shoo.”
“Later.” Thorn smirked, put Korakis on his shoulder, and left Lief to his ‘rest.’