Glitch in the God Complex (AmpCore #1)

22 - My Badge is Bigger Than Yours

It was almost nice to be out on the docks again.

After spending so much time tramping through unfamiliar parts of the city, Kirk took at least some comfort in these well-travelled surroundings. In some ways nothing had changed.

Kids still scrabbled and jostled and barged on the jetties. Foremen still bellowed orders and laid about with a wrench if their voice didn't do the job. Cranes still heaved their great loads onto the armoured barges that crawled snail-like across the water.

In the late evening he saw several larger vessels at the main dock, immense cargo barges several stories high with the logo of Prometheus Haulage emblazoned on their steep flanks. A great globe of orange and red sat against a spherical backdrop of fire, with the letters following the circumference.

Those great hulks hauled hundreds of tons of cargo up and down the Hadrian river, west to the Celtic republics, south to the Mercian archipelago, east to the vast Breton Ports and north to the sprawling highland valleys of Pictavia.

Kirk had never seen those places. They were abstract shapes on a map that he would probably never visit. The cargo-crews spent weeks on end trapped in those big ships, shuttling back and forth to feed the glut of the corporations. You didn't get a lot of time for sightseeing.

He glanced back over his shoulder. Detective Delgado trudged along in his wake, gripping the handles of a dock-loader carriage they'd 'requisitioned'. Within the bulky cuboid, concealed under a crinkled moss-green tarpaulin, was the corpse of the wraith she'd killed.

"So who is this guy?" Delgado asked quietly, her voice tight with the effort of wheeling the bulk of the dead machine along the dockside. Even with the loader's piston assists and weight distribution modules the thing was heavy.

"His name's Selbray," Kirk explained, twisting down a narrow, dark gap between a pair of dock warehouses. "Anybody who needs to dust up some old tech they want to sell on, they call him. Guy's worked on the docks longer than I've been alive."

"Doing what?"

"Officially he's just another repair tech. Makes sure all the crane auto-systems are working properly, fixes navigation glitches in some of the shitty tubs that dock up here; keeps the manifest software up to date – stuff like that."

"How'd you meet him."

Kirk shot her an irritated glance. "My dad runs a scrapshop at the west end of the dockyard. Sometimes we get spare parts that he can use. Why?"

"You just don't strike me as a tech person, that's all."

"I'm not, generally speaking."

"So what do you do?"

"Work the shop when I can."

"And when you can't."

A twang of bitterness rose inside him. "I play music."

"Music?"

"Yes, music," he snapped. "Not everyone in this city wants to just spin in the wheels of the fucking corps, you know."

"Alright, alright, keep your wires plugged," Delgado shot back. "It was just a question. How much further? Where the hell is this guy?"

"We're almost there." Kirk stepped out of the narrow alley into a small clearing behind the warehouses. Buildings still loomed up on all sides, their walls filled with auto-ladders and shop fronts live the caves in a cliff face. It was a semi-vertical market, stinking of oil, cheap food and chemicals.

"Tell me this guy is on the ground floor," Delgado grated as she wheeled the loader into the space, her eyes flashing suspiciously over the dark, shuffling figures of this place.