The Heights of Technology

As my timer that I had set to remind me of the impending “burn” reached zero, I gripped the handrests of my seat in anticipation of weighing three or four times as much as normal again… but nothing happened. I glanced left and right, wondering, worriedly, if the pilots had a problem. Why were we not accelerating again? Why was I not being smooshed into the back of the seat again?

Was there an emergency? Or did something happen to change our navigation plan?

Finally, I realised that we were accelerating. I might not have detected it if I hadn’t checked my accelerometer. It might be enough force to level a plum bob like I had seen workers using back home and at the farm, but I suspected it might take a number of seconds to do so.

Rather than admit my ignorance to the Skiitari, whom I was trying to impress with my professionalism, I closed my hands and caressed the side of the bulkhead. There weren’t any windows in the passenger compartment, unlike in some of the aircraft I had seen pictures of, but I put my hand where one would be and opened myself up to the spaceplane on the noosphere.

‘Blessed Machine, please enlighten my ignorance of your mechanisms,’ I thought in my head, directed towards the spacecraft as I sent a few exploratory commands in the noosphere simultaneously. Placating its Machine Spirit as I was doing might not have been necessary, especially since this was both a very new machine and a relatively simple one. It was manufactured here in the Orkney system, and it hadn’t had many millennia of life serving the Imperium of Man as some spacecraft had, so it was both simple and its machine spirit was nascent.

I had never worked on or with the large, five-terawatt fusion reactor in the basement, but I had been told that its machine spirit was both strong and churlish by the crew of Tech-Priests that saw to its needs. It allegedly had a lot of strong preferences and myriad ways of expressing its displeasure.

I didn’t like going in there too often since I learned what ionising radiation was—but maybe I should. If my Gamer’s Body skill could repair minor damage from exposure to small amounts of radiation, then using it to train and get every version of Radiation Resistance would sound like a good idea. Since Gamer’s Body could heal a missing chunk of my calf that a murderous rodent had bitten away, I thought it likely it could heal the damage done by radiation—but the idea of invisible energies that could kill me did scare me silly, so I had ignored and avoided it. It sounded too much like witchery.

As far as unruly machine spirits went, though… Frankly, I didn’t know if machine spirits were real, unruly or not—and it was kind of heretical even to have that thought. Even a ball peen hammer should have a machine spirit, but I, personally, had never yet felt the stirrings of the motive force while using a screwdriver or a hammer. Also, it wasn’t lost on me that it seemed as though the most “active” machine spirits tended to reside in complex machines featuring cogitators that had been active for hundreds or thousands of years. Could this expression of their Machine Spirit simply be the result of cogitators and their programming either being really complicated from the get-go or getting old, with hundreds or thousands of adjustments over the years?

Still, there were plenty of weirder things that I knew for a fact existed, and I kind of wanted this to be true. Plus, as usual, it was better to err on the side of safety and act as though they were true—besides, it was the polite thing to do. Also, there was the fact that I might be killed if I didn’t act as though it were true and the wrong person found out. Dad always said: fake it ’till you make it, so that was always my strategy.

[DOGMA: MACHINE CULT has gone up a level.]

Shortly after my entreaty, a diagram of the ship pulled up in front of my eyes. There was also a link to the cockpit so I could see the instruments and hear the pilots talk in real-time. The pilots weren’t Mechanicum… instead, they were civilian orbit-to-landing pilots who were, until recently, out of work. There used to be a lot of them that supported the construction of the large atmospheric processor.

While traditional shuttles could only be used sparingly in Orkney, there were tons of designs of one-time-use landers that could take a rather large load of supplies and glide into the planet with virtually no emissions. They had to be built in the space station, and then even the carbon fibre that made up their hulls was utilised in the construction when each lander was disassembled and recycled after landing.

A large percentage of the parts for the atmospheric processor could not be built on the ground, after all, and had to be delivered this way—and it took a lot of pilots to service this effort because they all had to wait a significant time on the planet before they could be returned to orbit for their next trip, sometimes months before the competing priorities of exports and the promethium budget allowed a passenger on the traditional shuttle flights. If I were them, I would have thought of this as a vacation, and that might be true as many of the pilots had stayed on Orkney and lived in Landing after the construction project was completed.

From their conversation, I was now overhearing that these guys were now being bribed to act as test pilots. Did that mean I was a … test passenger? I didn’t particularly like the sound of that, despite being reassured by the Genetor that this vehicle’s safety was “acceptable.”

I shook my head and looked deeper until I finally noticed that this spacecraft had two different types of engines. The ones that were being “burned” now had very low thrust compared to the huge ones that pushed me back into the seat with such force on takeoff. It was a group of some sort of plasma engines, and I could barely detect the acceleration at all—in the diagrams, they were called “constant thrust units.”

I didn’t know enough about spacecraft to understand why a series of such a seemingly weak engine was necessary, but I made a note to try to look it up later if I could.

My curiosity was satisfied, so I turned to the leader of these Skiitari, who were, theoretically, under my command. I fired off an Observe on all of the Skiitari, although only the leader was somewhat interesting.

[Sigma Alpha, Post-Human Male, Sigma Alpha is a full-body replacement cyborg that holds the rank of Alpha amongst the Skitarii Rangers. He has served Genetor Neurosage for over forty T-years. He is curious about you and feels a lot more emotions than most Skitarii, although he is just as devoted to the Omnissiah. Lowest stat, Vitality(10)]

«Sigma Alpha, can we talk about these dock rats? When will they attack us after we get to the space station?» I asked after a moment, wondering if “full-body replacement” meant what I thought it did. Was he just a brain in there? Was that why his Vitality was relatively low, too? It was hard to improve the condition and general health of your body if you replaced all of it with blessed augmetics.

I was eager to hear his advice about the rats we would face. I had already switched to using my Verminbane title in anticipation of being swarmed by the rats as soon as we left the shuttle. I was ready to shock these Skiitari with my performance, as I had gotten very good at the killing of rodents. My accuracy with hitting fast moving rodents with my LasPistol was only about fifty per cent, but that was still pretty good for a girl my age.

Plus, Marksmanship—Light was a skill that got a pretty slow start. Right now, it only offered a 27.5% bonus to accuracy, but if I could get five more levels, that would increase to 45%—and 95% in fifteen levels! It made me want to practice some more. I really liked seeing the numbers go up—it was already an addiction.

«What the Magos called dock rats are simply the criminal element on the space station. If you went up alone and attempted to sell as valuable a cargo as this, there is a ninety-seven point six per cent chance that they would have tried to rob you,» the Skiitari Ranger chirped back at me.

Oh. I casually reactivated the title Noble Daughter, storing Verminbane for later. I wish I had more useful titles, and I had been kind of expecting to get one from the Mechanicum at any time, but it still hadn’t come. Luckily, I hadn’t bragged out loud at my rodent-killing prowess yet—that would have been so embarrassing.

I didn’t have much experience with criminals. I had grown up on a large farm, and the small villages nearby wouldn’t tolerate criminals in their midst. There were basically no criminals in Landing, either. Not for long, anyway.

Occasionally, there would be a crime of passion or opportunity, like a husband beating his wife or someone stealing something that had been left unattended, but I hadn’t ever heard of an out-and-out robbery.

Highwaymen, I could understand. They lurked outside of what I considered civilised places, but I don’t think I had ever thought about being robbed. I suppose I should have because I intellectually understood this sort of thing happened in some of Orkney’s larger cities, but I had no experience at all with crime.

«I see,» I said and paused for a moment before asking, «Do you have advice for how I could proceed?»

The Ranger inclined his mostly metallic head and chirped back, «There are two main pathways to consider. The simplest would be to sell the entirety to a wholesaler. You’re not the first to have this idea, although you might be the first to carry more than a couple dozen doses.»

I frowned, thinking back to what education I had on selling and buying things. Rather than my dad, this was something my mother considered essential knowledge for any wife. It was under the heading of managing a household’s finances, «The materials have a limited shelf-life. If I sold them to a wholesaler, they’d have to sell them to individual buyers rather quickly, just like me. Wouldn’t I be able to get significantly more compensation if I eliminated this middle-man?»

«Affirmitive. How many doses do you have to sell, though? We will have to set up a centralised location to disburse them, and we are obligated to take possession of the Magos’ shipment in approximately one hundred and fifteen hours and eleven minutes,» the Ranger explained, and I both nodded and set a timer for that duration.

He was correct, but still… I said aloud, “I have five thousand doses, plus or minus two hundred.” I was a little intimidated at the precision and accuracy of the estimates of this Skiitari, so I hedged my estimate of how many doses I had since some humans massed significantly more than average, while others like me were less. I then tilted my head up to stare at the bulkhead in thought.

Finally, I said, “I’d like to try to sell them all individually to maximise profit… if I can. All the doses I have brought have at least two weeks before their expiration date, and most have close to a month.” I then tapped my thigh with my fingers, thinking about who should be my target customer. I had the feeling that life extension treatments would be cheap in the station soon. As soon as enough shuttles were operating, they’d load even the poor-quality goods on it so they could get what they could for it. But there was so much of it produced every week that eventually, things would be similar to Landing, where it was cheap or even possibly free.

«How many interstellar ships are in the Orkney system at any time?» I chirped back while simultaneously using the noosphere to try to find the same answer to the question. The shuttle was acting as a relay right now, so it sent my traffic both to the space station and back down to the planet using its directional antennas and powerful vox transmitters, which were technologies I didn’t know the first thing about.

Sigma Alpha answered about the same time I got some answers from the space station, «The Orkney system is actually the sub-sector headquarters for the Navis Imperialis, and they generally have one oversized squadron of escort-type ships assigned, roughly one-third to half of which are at dock at any time. The flagship is a heavy cruiser.»

I hummed and nodded. Merchant shipping was considerable, too. The Imperium took a tithe from every world… not in currency, but products or even people—it depended on the world’s speciality. Orkney’s tithe was, of course, rejuvenat drugs and precursors. But after the Adeptus Administratum took their large share, the rest was sold by the Duke, who owned the entire continent on which they were collected. No wonder the Duke was so rich…

Ships didn’t come in and fill up their holds with the stuff, though. I guessed most ships couldn’t afford an entire hold full of life-extension drugs. It would be worth many, many times the value of their hull, so rather than a few ships taking huge amounts, it seemed like lots of ships bought and took a little bit at a time. The combination of a large Naval presence, a huge space station, a lively asteroid mining concern and Orkney’s signature export paradoxically made Orkney, a near feudal world, a popular destination for interstellar ships.

“Spacers,” I said, finally. Spacers would be my target demographic, specifically merchant spacers. I wouldn’t feel bad about screwing them by getting them to pay a lot for a service that might be cheap or free on the station eventually because they might not return to Orkney for some time, or ever. I bet that there were some spaceships that just went back and forth between set destinations their entire lives, but that didn’t seem to be the case for most of the shipping here, at least according to the many different names of ships that had made a port call in the past year.

Perhaps merchantmen made a trip here specifically if they were in the vicinity solely to buy rejuvenat drugs much cheaper than they would be available at any other place. I would just be undercutting the already undercut prices due to my product’s shelf stability issues.

«Can spacers afford life extension treatments?» I asked.

«Ninety-four per cent of captains and senior officers, certainly. I suggest you set a price that would allow regular or even junior officers to purchase them if you want to sell your entire stock. Those are all you are likely to see, as most rankers are not generally permitted to leave the ship, as most would flee without proper leave,» he chirped back in a slightly amused way.

I sighed at the last thing the Ranger said. I had the feeling that even a peasant farmer down on Orkney had a much more free and fulfilling life than most of the Imperium’s citizens—this made me sad. I wondered why it had to be this way. Did it have to be this way? I wasn’t presumptuous enough to think I could help the God-Emperor-Omnissiah personally, but every time I heard something like this, it reinforced my decision to learn as much as I could and gain as much technology as I could. What I was doing was right, and this path was the only way I could take to maximise the number of lives I could help.

I could only do what I could do, though. I couldn’t even change things rapidly on my own planet, much less the whole galaxy.

Although I had made some progress with my scheme to make life extension universal on Orkney IV. The Genetor had agreed to bottle more low-quality life extension drugs—the vast majority were simply discarded as soon as they were seperated from the higher quality products—and I had discussions with Sister Jorus about starting a program to distribute and administer the treatment to all Orkney citizens universally.

Right now, the only people who routinely went from Landing to all of the large population centres, much less small villages, were missionaries, whom the Ecclesiarchy oversaw, and they would become the ones to deliver and administer the basic life extension drugs that required basically no medical knowledge—if that made people like the God-Emperor-Omnissiah more, well… good.

I knew he was looking out for all of us, but he was a busy guy, and it was best to help ourselves if we could. He had a lot on his plate, after all.

Until recently, these missionaries rode carts pulled by donkeys or trixits, though, and wouldn’t have gotten too far before all the medicine went bad. However, this could change with more and more electric trucks being put into service every day.

I pushed down those thoughts and accepted I would be selling a premium product. I had known that already, of course, but I didn’t like having the idea of helping as many people as I could, followed immediately by only helping the rich and powerful, but the only way to help anybody at all was to amass resources, power and influence.

Sigma Alpha continued in the middle of my reverie, «The ideal location will be co-located near most of the piers—a central location that spacers can see when entering the station. I have several options, and with your permission, I will look into arranging a short-term allocation of any that are currently vacant.»

The silence after he stopped chirping caused me to snap back to awareness and out of my own thoughts when I realised he was expecting a reply. I glanced at the rolling transcript that I had programmed my internal cogitators to take of all audible speech and read it twice before I nodded, “Yes, that sounds great.”

I sighed. There was a lot more involved in this than I had thought at first. Even if I hadn’t been murdered and robbed, there was no way I would have been able to do anything but sell the treatments wholesale and get pennies on the pound.

We still had hours left before docking. I’d use some of that time to plan things… or rather, let the ultra-competent cyborg in front of me plan most things so that I wasn’t surprised when I arrived. The rest, I planned to reinvestigate my own cybersecurity so that the farting bandit couldn’t get me again.

---

After exiting the shuttle, I took a moment to watch them unload it. I was pleased with myself, receiving one additional level of Cybersecurity before we docked.

The security here was high, and servitors were being used rather than the normal station stevedores, probably to protect from pilferage. Set aside from the shuttle, waiting, was what looked like a hundred large containers that were stencilled “LASGUN, STYGIES PATTERN MK2, SHORT.” I frowned, seeing it, correctly assuming that they would be loaded in the shuttle for the return trip back down to the planetary surface.

Seeing my frown, Sigma Alpha misconstrued it, saying, «Yes, as usual, all the value is in what comes up the gravity well.»

Ah. He thought I was thinking about how little value those lasguns represented. In reality, I was worrying about my dad. The increased need for arms planetside meant there was an increased need for armsmen. And when armsmen were needed, they had a tendency to die. I had known that since I was ten, which was ages ago. I glanced at the case of drugs I had brought and mentally bumped up how much I should charge a bit.

We didn’t stay any longer. Besides, the Tech-Priests overseeing the unloading of the shuttle were a bit nervous with the extremely well-armed squad of Skiitari next to the very valuable goods that they were no doubt responsible for. We were all in the cult, of course, but it wasn’t unusual for for competing priorities to result in out-and-out conflict.

Sigma Alpha delegated half of his squad to depart on errands that we had talked about on the long flight over. We didn’t have a lot of time to waste, so we were heading directly to the “shop” that we were renting. The area around the docks wasn’t the best area of the station, but even so, there were only about three vacant storefronts that were suitable, and only one of them was both immediately available and for a short-term rental instead of a lease, so I had lucked out.

His half squad would go to the Mechanicum area, check-in, and get some servitors for general labour and cleaning and source all of the supplies I would need to start seeing “patients” immediately. I probably did not have enough money to do any of this, despite receiving a small stipend from the Genetor. I had brought up all of the currency I owned, but I had far more Stygies VIII credits than Pounds Orkney.

The first thing I had learned about the Imperium’s economy was that there was no central currency, although there were a number of currencies that in effect acted as one, depending on where you were. The largest and most common was the Adeptus Administratum promissory notes. However, since Orkney was a sub-sector for the Imperium’s Navy the most common currency here was Navis Imperialis scrip.

All currencies could be traded, but the exchange rate varied depending on what system you were in. For example, Pounds Orkney probably wouldn’t be worth much in a different star system unless you accumulated a lot of them to buy our exports. I assumed that the Duke had the same problem I was about to have and accumulated a huge basket of random currencies, or perhaps it was more barter-based. I didn’t really know—only that since I was targetting spacers for my trades, I was likely to get a wide assortment.

Perhaps there was a money changer or bank on the station that I could use before I returned to Orkney. I would prefer a digital currency, like most Forge Worlds used—if Omnissiah forbid, I ended up with a huge treasure chest of precious metals like a pirate, and then I would have a decision to make.

If I wanted to use some of my new wealth to buy imported star products, then I would need to keep some up here if it was physical currency. If I took it back down to Orkney, I might not be able to easily send it back up! And random slips of paper or odd coins wouldn’t be useful in Landing’s economy.

The space station reminded me a little bit of the Hive underneath Landing, although instead of dark and dusty, it was dark and grimy—at least the parts we were walking through.

There was a deep frown on my lips as we got closer to the nexus of commercial cubic where we had rented. Finally, I chirped, «The condition of these corridors is intolerable.»

I could understand why corridors were dusty inside the Hive back on the planet. Nobody went in them! But why was this place dirty? I continued, «Isn’t this station supposed to be where the richest of Orkney citizens dwell?»

Sigma Alpha gave me a sideways “glance” with his optics and replied, «Those sections of the station are immaculate, I assure you. Where there are the rich, there will be the poor… if only so that the rich have an easy group to consider themselves better than.»

The insightfulness of that statement by someone who was ninety-nine per cent machine almost made me trip over my feet. Still… even the poor people I had met had pride in what little they did have. This wasn’t squalor like I had read about, but it wasn’t so far off from that either.

The spot selected was pretty good, though. We were right next to a restaurant that called itself The Taste of Orkney that seemed to do a brisk business, as well as a ship’s chandlery that had an eclectic group of people walking in and out of it.

“We’re going to need a sign, not to mention advertising to all of the ships already in port and those coming in-system,” I mused. I then tried to open the door with the electronic key we’d received and frowned when it wouldn’t open. Sigma Alpha tilted his head to the side and then made a few complicated hand gestures and high-frequency chirps and beeps. It was binaric but at something like a thousand hertz instead of the normal slow conversational rate.

Before I could decode what he said beyond, «Vigilince Protocols…» one of the other Skiitari gently grabbed me by the waist and pulled me away from the door. Another one took my place and used a small mechadendrite from his hand to interface with the door’s electronics.

The door promptly opened with a polite beep, and two of the Skiitari, including Sigma Alpha, moved briskly through. Two more, sheltering me, followed, and one stayed at the door, facing outwards, presumably to alert for threats from the rear.

The area inside was large, and that didn’t count the numerous rooms. A large space was one of the limiting factors for our choices, as I planned to use this area as an accommodation for both the Skiitari and me. It would be much simpler if we didn’t have to commute from the Mechanicum areas of the station and either secure or transport the highly valuable goods.

We weren’t alone. There were a group of maybe a dozen people milling about. They reminded me of the general state of the station, grimy but serviceable. It seems as though we startled them, and one yelled, stupidly, “Intruders!”

Well, fuck. I had already fired off a number of Observes, and while this might be a gang, most of these guys weren’t combatants but civilians. About a third were children! As soon as the “sentry” yelled, all of the Skiitari’s weapons snapped out of a lazy, ready position and were levelled at individuals. Their threat analysis program was good, and each Skiitari seemed to be about to shoot one of the guys who did have weapons, even if they seemed kind of shite.

They moved so fast that the people in the room barely had a chance to even notice. If they had, they would have realised that the Rangers had them dead to rights. One of the biggest and ugliest of the men, who had the best weapon, had a stubber gun. It looked vaguely like an improvised shotgun, or musket. Probably not the latter. Unfortunately, he was—in slow motion—starting to raise the weapon, probably out of shock.

Shite. Things were going to shite. I was absolutely sure that the Skiitari would fire before this idiot reached an aim point, but I had no confidence at all that these Skiitari wouldn’t just cleanse the entire room, non-combatants or not—half of them carried blessed Arc Rifles that I thought would probably kill or injure half the room with one shot, anyway.

I ducked a little bit more behind the Skiitari guarding me, both to hide my left hand and because I was a little bit concerned about catching a bouncer if that shotgun went off. I made a sharp downward grabbing gesture with my left hand, reaching out with my mind and the Warp. I was sure that experienced psykers didn’t need crutches like hand gestures to help their witchery, but I did, unfortunately.

Before the man’s shotgun could be lifted even a quarter of the way, my Telekinesis grabbed it and ripped it out of the owner’s hands, clattering to the floor. At the same time, I yelled, “Stop! Drop your weapons! Hands in the air!” I used both my voice as well as the speaker installed in my augmetics, cranked to maximum. It caused my voice to sound doubled and probably fey.

[TELEKINESIS has gone up a level.]

The reality of their situation finally reached their brains. The “intruders” weren’t a rival gang, or even a couple of station Arbites but a half-squad of the best and most deadly fighters in the Imperium of Man… if one didn’t count the Astartes, since they were cheaters.

Most weren’t even armed with stubbers, and the couple of others who did have projectile weapons dropped them or held their hands way in the air, as far away from their holsters as possible, if they carried pistols.

I was hoping that my pulling the shotgun out of the man’s hands merely looked like he lost his grip on it in shock, but given the advanced sensors and cogitators every Skiitari had, I felt that was probably optimistic. Sigma Alpha glanced at me for a fraction of a second before he chirped, confirming my fears, «That wasn’t necessary. We could have pacified them easily.»

I sighed. I was already positive that the Genetor knew my secret, so my decision wasn’t as short-sighted as it might have been. I replied, «I didn’t want the non-combatants killed.»

«I see,» replied Sigma Alpha, although his chirps were politely confused—as if I had just claimed that two plus two equalled five.

I stepped from behind one of the Skiitari guarding me and addressed who I had already identified as the leader, here, “The Mechanicum has rented this cubic. Explain your presence. Any hostile action directed towards us will result in immediate lethal force.”

[Jacob Bones, Human Man, Leader of the Bones Gang, who are recovering from a war with another gang, using their present location as a safe house. He is a cruel and merciless man. Lowest stat, Intelligence(8)]

The man turned to a boy a little older than me and snarled, “You said that this place was gonna be empty for a month!”

The boy in question stammered, “I-It was! This must be a last-minute rental—” The kid was then interrupted by being backhanded by the gang leader, and I frowned. I should have said any hostile action.

[Ashley Fraser, Human Boy, Ashley “Ash” Fraser is the oldest of the Fraser siblings, whose parents recently perished. Ash has a gift with cogitators and uses this skill to gain protection for himself and his siblings with the Bones Gang, even if it is only a step up from slavery. Lowest stat, Strength(5)]

There were three other kids near this Ash fellow. Ashley wasn’t a popular name for boys, but it had been in the past. Frankly, it wasn’t a popular given name at all, but Fraser was one of the most Orkney of Orkney surnames. A fifth of all farmers and herders were named Fraser, so it was a bit curious.

The gang leader turned back towards me and said, “We aren’t about messing with the cogboys—”

“…cog-girl…” one of the younger Frasers said, which caused the gang leader to glare at the girl.

“—so this is a misunderstandin’. We’ll be leaving.” the gang leader finished.

“Stubber guns are a hazard to public pressure and are prohibited,” I recited from memory about the rules and regulations of the space station. Half of the rules involved things that were a risk to public pressure. It seemed that people who lived in the void were paranoid about their air supply and fond of breathing. I didn’t blame them at all because I was even more paranoid as a visitor, unused to such hazardous environments. I finished, pointing to the four Fraser kids, “You will leave these weapons behind. Along with those four.”

“Now look ‘ere,” the man started, and I pursed my lips. My Observation made it clear that this wasn’t a good man, and his behaviour confirmed that. He was a murderer and a net negative to the community. My intuition told me that he wouldn’t understand anything but naked force at this point.

I steeled myself and casually reached down to a slit I had carefully cut and hemmed into my robes. I wore lightweight but regular clothes underneath my robes, and that included a holster at my hip for my LasPistol. The Volkite pistol I had packed was still in my bag, but I wouldn’t need that.

He must have seen something on my face because he raised his hands even higher and said, “Alright! Alright! We got it! We’re leaving!”

[TEACHING has gone up a level.]

The alert from gaining a level in Teaching, of all things, surprised me, and I stepped aside. I had one of the Rangers disarm the several men who carried pistols. The retreating Bones gang almost ran into the other five Skiitari and several dozen Servitors they were escorting, which just made them beat feet faster.

I glanced at the description of the skill Teaching for a moment as the servitors entered the large room. I wouldn’t need to supervise these servitors very much at first because cleaning was a very mature and hard-coded procedure. I set half to clean inside and half outside. I wanted both the inside and outside of our cubic to be spotless. That would be advertising in itself.

** Teaching (LV11): Increases your ability to teach a lesson by (LV*0.35)*(LV*0.35)% [14.8%], subject to your student’s cognitive capabilities and limitations. Every level you have an increased intuitive understanding of the way a student will absorb a lesson until you reach a point where you intuitively understand the ideal learning plan for a specific student.

Well, that was a curiously ambiguous phrase. Teaching a lesson could imply a lot of things. It could definitely be argued that I had taught him a lesson, after all. That interpretation would make this skill a potentially much more useful one than I had originally thought, especially if I could approach conflicts in a similar manner in the future.

I glanced at the four kids and said, “Join me for a meal next door. Let’s talk about your future.”

---

I had saved the Fraser kids mainly because I thought they got a bad roll of the bones with the Bones Gang, pun intended. But also because my Observe indicated that the oldest boy was gifted with cogitators, and that seemed to be an understatement.

I ordered the traditional ethnic food of Orkney at The Taste of Orkney, which was, of course, curry. As we ate, the older boy told me about how he had gained unauthorised access to cogitator network that handled the commercial district in the docks, although he didn’t precisely put it in those terms.

It took a lot of effort to finish this so-called curry, and finally, I said, disgusted, “This is a bit naff.” The four kids looked shocked. Perhaps they hadn’t had much good to eat in a long time, or maybe it was just because I knew what actual curry tasted like. I was sure it was impossible to import spices up to orbit, so they had to make do with whatever they could get from the out system or grow hydroponically. Whatever the reason, it was the worst curry I had ever eaten.

One of the middle kids gladly finished my plate for me, which made me feel better. I didn’t like wasting food, no matter how unpalatable.

After hearing the rest of the kid’s story, I glanced at Sigma Alpha and chirped, «See? He was worth saving.»

He groused back at me, «The penalty for hacking Mechanicum cogitators is Servitude Imperpituis.»

I rolled my eyes and chirped back, «These aren’t Mechanicum cogitators, firstly. Secondly, the penalty for hacking a cogitator with no heretical intent should be to be given a well-paying job as a Technomat and enlightenment about the Omnissiah, not being turned into a servitor.» We had a dearth of programmers and data smiths on Orkney without turning the next generation into servitors. Besides, I could have seen myself do something like that.

After we had finished eating, I said to the boy who was older than me, “I’d like you to help me with my little project. It’s paying work.” I then explained what I was doing and how I suspected I wouldn’t be able to sell my entire stock within just a few days.

I could tell that he was both excited and very nervous about the prospect. He had some concerns, “As soon as you and the Skiitari leave, we will be attacked, murdered and the balance of the life extension treatments stolen.”

Yes, yes. I am educated about this—now, anyway. I nodded, “Protection I can arrange.” Skiitari—and I was impressed that the boy recognised them at all—might be a scarce commodity around these parts, but traditional security, gun servitors and sentry guns weren’t. If anything, the Genetor had a ridiculous quantity of all of those things when he had been limited to only a single maniple of Skiitari. I supposed he wanted to make up for quality by quantity.

A lot of it was still up here in orbit, too, so I was sure I could arrange enough security for four kids. Maybe not if they had to come and go, but they could stay in place until they sold everything and then be directly escorted to the Mechanicum side of the station so that there would be no easy target for a gang to exploit.

Plus, I needed enough security to ensure that the kids themselves wouldn’t steal it. I think it would be their deaths if they did, and not by me, either. If you had a poor person a bar of gold, how do they spend it without being robbed?

“If I could provide enough security, what kind of payment would you want?” I asked, feeling him out.

It was as though he was waiting for this answer, and he rushed to say, “We want to go down planetside.”

I raised an eyebrow. I did it successfully, this time, gaining a level in Acting.

[ACTING has gone up a level.]

I had intended for the entire family to just stay in the Mechanicum section after this transaction. He’d have enough money and a working job as a Technomat to have a future for both him and his siblings. But… sending mass down to Orkney would be a lot easier than the other way around… but we’d need new datasmiths planetside just as much.

I glanced at Sigma Alpha, and he made a token affirmative beep. I nodded, “Agreed. I’ll arrange protection, and when you’ve finished the job, an escort will be taken to the secured Mechanicum side of the station, where you will be taken planetside. Once in Landing, you’ll begin learning more about cogitators and working as a Technomat while your brothers and sisters attend schola. Agreed?”

The boy tried not to look too excited while he nodded, saying, “Yes!”

[Skill Bargaining gained at LV1.]

[INTELLIGENCE has gone up a level.]

Oh. Nice. It had been a while since I had gained a brand new skill. I ignored it for now, though, as the level in my Intelligence stat was a lot more valuable. I suppose I had been using my noggin a little bit recently… or at least trying to. I had a feeling I gained credit for failures, too, as long as I survived them.

---

I was right. We only sold about fifteen hundred doses in the next two and a half days. That was still an amazing number of people in and out of our little “shop” though, most of which were officers on merchant ships that were docked on station.

I declined the business of a number of people who claimed to be in the process of going planetside. There were a number of immigrants, a few missionaries and a couple of Sword Sisters that were transferring in. I privately told them that treatment, once they reached the planet, was free, and I wouldn’t feel comfortable scamming them up here.

I was about to leave, but I had one last customer, and he wanted to buy a thousand doses all at once, and he was from a ship too. I was a bit perplexed.

“Sir, do you understand that this medicine will lose efficacy in two to three weeks? Do you have a thousand members of your crew that you plan to administer them to?” I asked, curious.

“No, my dear Tech-Girl… I am Garus Filius, seneschal for the Rogue Trader House of Filius. I understand the limitations, and I still want to purchase them,” he said in a slightly condescending manner.

I had already known that, of course, but it was still very impressive. There was a Star Galleon on station, and I had even treated a few of the officers of that ship. From his name, I took it was a relative of the Rogue Trader themself. That made sense. Who could you trust more than family?

“And if you sell me the doses, I’ll be more than happy to show you how I plan to keep them safe,” he said primly. At least he hadn’t threatened me yet, I supposed. Rogue Traders were serious business, even here.

He was offering more than I would probably get from the wholeseller here, but if he wasn’t affiliated with a Rogue Trader I probably wouldn’t have gone for the deal. But I didn’t want to make enemies, and now I was curious. After he transferred me the currency, in Mars credits no less, I arranged a number of vials on the counter for him.

He held his hands out and one of his minions placed a medium-sized matte black box onto it. I fired off an Observe immediately and then watched him load all of the vials into it.

[Temporal Stasis lunchbox, good condition, manufactured by the Staze(tm) Corporation of Earth in the 25th Millenium. This temporal bento box was marketed as the perfect gift for a busy man or woman. No matter how far you worked past your lunch break, your lunch would always be as fresh and hot as it was the moment it was cooked! “Just made it? Staze it!”]

I gasped and said in wonder, “Temporal stasis…” This caused chirps back and forth from the Skiitari, and even Sigma Alpha seemed moved by the blessed device.

The seneschal raised his eyebrows and said, “You recognised it? Impressive. There are not many of these devices left in the Imperium.”

There really weren’t. Temporal stasis was on the verge of being a lost technology. There were some rumours certain Forge Worlds had retained the ability to construct some devices that used the technology, it was basically out of use entirely in the Imperium. A Rogue Trader owning examples of the technology was in the realm of what was expected, though, as according to stories, they all collected eclectic and valuable things.

Sigma Alpha shifted from foot to foot, almost as though he had to stop himself from taking it away from the portly man, although that would have been a terrible idea. Perhaps sensing the fervour of everyone present, the seneschal made a hasty exit after that point.

After he left, I went into my private room and tried to push away tears. It wasn’t seeing the device itself that made me emotional… it was reading the text from my Observe.

How far had we fallen? This used to be a novelty, something to keep a worker’s lunch fresh. And now it was a near-mythical piece of technology. Unacceptable. Unacceptable. Unacceptable.