Titan Fractured

Prologue

Light Rain falls on a darkened old city. The cross sectioned weave of small and large streets evenly split are bathed in warm light from merchants overseen by the community watching the commerce of traders sell their scrounged and recycled wares wither in barter or chits for food rations.

Sullen and downtrodden crowds of people shuffle between merchants trying to cobble together complete requisition kits to pass on to factories, merchants debate and turn away people only to be called back and offered less chits, the seller gets angry and shuffles to the next vendor who does the same thing. Eventually the seller gives up after going to every vendor, frustrated they take the chits they get and head back to their homes to scrounge more metal and parts to be polished and recombined to fit the requisition kit.

Behind the stores small transports drive behind alley ways taking wares from the merchants for chits. It is late afternoon and after a day of trading 4 transports park up behind "Mech parts warehouse" owned by Lucius Scott, a shorter man with a stout but wiry frame who waits at the doc in his worn trading coat and collared shirt, his best attempt to look respectable for his customer.

And the cycle continues, again and again the parties continuing to struggle in the hope of times seen several decades but the light at the city centre is dull shaded by the epistilogical ecclesiates further shaded by dark cloaks of their spiritual protectors.

A young man standing slightly straighter stands speaking to a small trader on the street examining some fine alloy cuts he plans to use to strengthen light armour he hides under a long deep purple coat. He flicks dark hair from his eyes and feels their pieces gauging the numerous imperfections he will have to remove due but they are acceptable if there is enough pure titanium in the piece. He pulls a small electronic device from his cloak that lights up. The trader looks at it and looks back at the youth who is too busy gauging the metal to notice. The trader is uncertain who he is trading with and looks to see if there are anyone else has noticed. The youth raises the metal to a light source, his cloak falls back showing a sophisticated gauntlet blinking lightly and below that shiny hilt to a blade of some kind.

"The purity here is reasonable, what is your source where did you find this ?"

"I found it, offcuts from factory 6"

"This has Grade 4 titanium in it, there isn't enough here for me so I want more, this is worthless unless there is more. No-one has seen grade 4 in years it was sanctioned. Where did you get it ?"

The trader froze not realising the peril they were in. The youth detected it also and relaxed his stance resetting from trading.

"There are no Praetorian here now, scans show they are at least two sectors away. You are trading with me... I'll give you 50 chits for this and 200 chits if you take me to where you found it"

"I can't go back there, they saw me"

"Who ?"

"Them" the trader points to a squad of 5 lightly clad soldiers who are looking at him. They marched up to him directly, the crowd dispersing like sand in front of them revealing their dark grey worn uniforms, covered faces shielding their identities but not their indifference to the traders and merchants around them. Each soldier carried a carbine pulse rifle with a heavily worn butt used in hitting people. Manicles dangled from two soldiers. Their commander was man in his twenties, his rank denoted by some scripture on his left breast, he carried a pistol on his hip and an ID scanner.

"Don't move, they have already circled you, do as they say, say you were buying it from me", the youth steps back.

"Citizen, submit to inspection" said the commander pointing to the trader.