Men of Iron, ships of Bone.

[Enkidu]

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Location: Unmarked Unioner Container Transport
(Formally the ALG Balletdanserinde)
Transport last seen towed by the Unioners into the Nordheide, Hamburg, Rheinland Space, with an unknown repair barge and two tugs on-station. Probable illegal salvage claim.

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Corin Frei, the belicose old arbeitsdirektor of the Alster Unioners, laid a fist to the bulkhead, let the vibrations of the engines rattle in his lungs, and teased a grin out of himself.

The old transport still had meat on the bone, then - he could feel the rhythm as her coolant pumps settled from a hesitant stacatto to as smooth as glass as the magnetohydronamic pumps took over the legwork, filling her cold, under-oxidised blue blood with convected heat from the MOX-drive.

Odd, almost profane was the beauty that came after - the joy of nothing. Of a tuned ship - all her disparate, alien parts, working together. Oh, but she was a flying monster of a transplanted body, this old girl. No two structural beams from the same vessel. It gave her a pulse that lacked the factory-fresh refrains of the Lied Der Seele or any of the other modern, Ill-gotten hulls that still had the mounts for the chrome that the Forge Unions had peeled off.

No sense in a high-visibility hull jacket, when you're a bug on the highway.

Aah. Here was the young man with the technical reports. A relaxed young man who nevertheless gave him the curteousy of making eye contact when he looked the old fossil in the eyes. He had the maker's touch, and like any journeyman craftsman he was keen to learn. Corin trusted his engineering wit - the boy knew that the best way to impress his brothers in the Direktorate's resource allocation department was to be honest, efficient, and fast. Make the truth speak for itself.

"Come. Give me the PDA - My eyes still guide me; I can read still."

"Yes Cor... DirectorFrei."

"Good lad. Stay out of Hart's sight for the rest of your shift. Don't want to bust a bright mind on a cargo manifest, 'eh?"

"Brother guides - thank you, Boss!"

"Prox' beskytter, Arbeiter."

"Prox' beskytter, Direktor.""

Good. He had the right kind of eagerness. He'd make a fine Oberarbeiter someday, given the right impetuousness, a little luck, and a cell that wouldn't feed him to the grinder. Nowadays, few did. He liked to think the slow, constant pressure of change had been his own exertion - but Frei was unwilling to praise himself. Correlation was a bucaneer's luck. Causation was a jail cell, or a shot in the back. That was the order of life.

The transport was a Skipper-weight. The classification had nothing to do with mass - of course. The old container transport was big enough to lose yourself in, when the crew state was low. It meant that the mash of repairs, welds, and inconstant parts stitched together by a wiring harness ripped from everything from a Kusarian bulk freezer for fish, to a Manhattan sky-tram, held the transport just together enough to 'skip' the essential crafts, supplies, and even food, water and medicine, from hideout, to hideout. It meant that the weapons grid would hold up for just long enough to look intimidating to any sole bountyhunter hunting for lower value claims. It wouldn't deter the hessians, of course - but yet again, what did? If men did not - then the plates of ships had no hope.

No-one understood the tie more than the kinsmen of the void engineers.

The corridor was empty, apart from himself. The rhythm dying to inaudible pink noise that set the stardog in him howling. He browsed through rows of numbers, written all in Unioner Tomrum - the bastardisation of Danish and Hamburg Street German that had become increasingly popular with Unioner technicians looking to score a line of seperation between themselves, and the hordes beyond the hulls.


Ach. Every rotation life became more simple, and in doing so, more exciting. More room for an unknown variable to make a chink in the data.

In this case, it was the starboard cargopod. It was full of heavy water from a poor man's Deuterium spitter that would have to be offboarded - but it was too valuable to Vac'. Vac'ing payloads was for the wolves and the corporations. The Tai-Suns and the Ater Hammers were already arguing over the fineprint. He'd have to arbitrate the exchange. It was almost enough to make an old, anxious pirate, go a-reaching for his sidearm.

Yet again, it was a new age. New ideas, bottled in old hulks.

Much like Corin himself.

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THE SYNDIC LEAGUES
(A co-operative of Rheinland's Shipping Unions, retired from a life of piracy.)

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