Higgs & Soap: Galaxy Delivery

Chapter 4

"Booter Berts" was deep in the Digimarket area of the city, a densely populated hub of buildings. Most were built from 3D printed regolith concrete during the first settlement phase and formed a honeycomb of structures that held each other up. Originally they belonged to the workers who helped the primary engineers and scientists build the city and terraform the environment. Now they were cheap rents for shops and late settlers' families.

The windows were filled with every piece of tech you could imagine and many that made you wonder how anyone could imagine them. Narrow electronics shops with displays up to the ceiling set next to Atommaker kiosks, where literally any item you could think of could be nano-assembled in seconds. These were squeezed in amongst noodle bars, and between them were small shops offering encrypted data and credit transfers to anywhere in the known Expanse (the human colonies and bases) for a fee. Not all of these places were strictly legal. One of the noodle bars didn't have an alcohol licence for starters.

Soap had accessed the city directory and found the shop they were now heading to. She had also bought a scarf along the way from a confused vendor who had to get one from the stock room. He had been very reluctant to sell her one as it, "wasn't scarf season". Higgs had it wrapped round his neck and pulled up over his ears to hide the exposed implant nodes.

"This way."

Soap pulled him down another alleyway. The shops here had pieces of communications and navigation tech hanging in the windows by their wires like dead animals. Stripped and stolen from decommissioned spaceships, these definitely weren't on sale legally. The authorities mostly turned a blind eye as it was a quiet area, run by the small but highly efficient Tetsuo Gang, who charged for violence by the minute. They were the Grey Dragons' main rivals in the city, so Soap hoped they would have at least some passive protection here.

"Here you go. You sure this place is OK? Looks a bit dodgy to me."

They stopped outside a narrow door jammed between two window displays of cabling.

"Yep, been here before. Or so I partially remember."

"It's coming back to you?"

"Such an effort though. No idea how our ancestors got anything done with basic biobrains." He looked all round him. "Doors everywhere. Who thought there'd be so many? Do you need to get into so many places?"

Soap pressed the button next to the name "Bert" scrawled in pen, and looked up at the camera over the door. Shortly, there was a click and she pushed the door open. They went down a long narrow corridor between the shops that ended in two flights of stairs going down. At the bottom of the steps they emerged into a large basement. It was some sort of storeroom, with white racks of standing shelves in rows, all the way up to the ceiling. They were laden and, in some cases, bending under the weight of piles of tech – black and silver boxes, cabling, small components in plastic containers, cybernetic implants and limbs.

Soap was about to call out when she heard footsteps winding their way towards them. Bert was older than Soap had imagined him to be. He was a small, chubby man with a scruffy grey beard and round glasses. He was wearing dirty, torn jeans and a black T-shirt featuring a cartoon of a boy in a green tunic and hat holding aloft a sword. He also had one built up shoe which clomped loudly as he approached.

Higgs didn't acknowledge him, but stared wide-eyed at all the shelves.

"Are you Bert?" said Soap, one ear pricked up.

"Yes, hello. You must be Soap? I've heard Higgs say a lot about you."

Both ears pricked up. "Really?"