House of Reeds

The Imperial Development Board Warehouse Sobipuru Spaceport

Chief Machinist's Mate Helsdon thumbed the ident panel of a crate marked with Fleet colors and raised an eyebrow in interest as the contents listed themselves. "Microcell power units, six dozen? These will fit in our field equipment and shuttles. You don't need them?"

"Already replaced." The shop foreman shrugged, waving his hand at the wall of shipping containers the Fleet engineer was examining. "They sent us sixteen satellites for a first-tier global information grid, along with replacement parts to cover five years of attrition and the shuttles to place them in orbit. Ten of the satellites failed within a week of going operational, so then they sent us another sixteen – but of a different model!"

Helsdon nodded, bending down to examine the bottommost crate of a dangerously tall stack. Despite the efforts of his shipsuit to adapt to the climate, he had to wipe sweat out of his eyes before he could read the manifest. "Sensor relays, type nineteen. Are these in good shape? We could use hundreds of them…they run our automatic compartment doors."

"Like I said," the foreman chuckled, lank dark hair tied back behind his head in a ponytail. Watery blue eyes glinted with amusement. "This whole wall is redundant material. Small equipment power cells, replacement comm panels and nodes, synchro-tracking lasers, the works! The development board director wants me to surplus the whole lot to the slicks as an economic stimulus project. But between you and me, Helsdon-tzin, I'd really rather trade for something I can use."

"Trade?" Helsdon frowned, fiddling with the environmental controls on his shipsuit. Normally, the temperature regulators built into the millimeter-thick fabric under his uniform shirt and pants kept him nice and cool. The shop foreman didn't seem to mind the heat – he wasn't even sweating. "What kind of equipment do you need?"

"Well," the foreman frowned, "what I really need is a whole 'nother cargo shuttle – the humidity here breeds a bacterium capable of metabolizing hexacarbon – and if I had five or six hundred Macana auto-rifles and ten thousand rounds of 8mm caseless, I could raise the cash to buy one…" He raised a placating hand at Helsdon's grimace. "But! But…I've no d esire to hand the slicks something that will wind up aimed at me, so the real thing I could use is whatever scrap metal you might have on hand."

"Scrap?" Helsdon gave up on not sweating and feeling miserably hot. "We've suffered some battle damage. We planned to dump the wreckage…"

"That," said the foreman with a broad grin, "is exactly the kind of trade goods I can use."

"So," Helsdon said, scratching his jaw and turning on an earbug channel to the ship. Thai-i Isoroku would be interested in this bit of bartering. "How many square meters of hexacarbon steel are you looking for?"