Chapter 9: Acquisition
Kian had been shuffling in line for over half an hour. His legs were starting to twitch with impatience by the time he finally reached the front.
The attendant from the Mercator Aqua (The Water Guild) didn't look up. He simply held out a gloved, grime-stained hand. No greeting. No eye contact. If Kian didn't produce payment within three seconds, the Guild's enforcers would introduce him to the business end of an electric maul.
Kian didn't hesitate. He pulled out a single Agri-Scrip—the local currency of 496b.
In the vastness of the Imperium, there is no single currency. With millions of worlds, trade between systems is handled through bartering of raw materials, but on a planetary level, local "Scrips" are used for governance. On 496b, everything revolved around the harvest. Since fertilizer was the lifeblood of the planet, the "Fertility Scrip" (Agri-Scrip) was the legal tender.
The attendant took the scrip and shoved a three-liter container toward him. It was made of low-grade, recycled ceramite. Kian took his water and left. I need to build a filtration system, he thought. Queuing like a peasant every time I'm thirsty is a waste of raid-time.
Next was the food line. Another few hundred people. Kian felt a surge of "Tarkov-rage" at the wait.
In the distance, he could see the Almoner's Station. Massive, soot-covered vats were being filled with Nutrient Starch—a thick, grey slurry made of processed tubers, corn-husks, synthetic proteins, and enough salt to keep a man standing. One Agri-Scrip bought enough "sludge" to keep an adult alive for three days.
Kian had eaten it before. It was foul, but he knew the truth: on 496b, the dregs were eating plant-based starch. In 99% of the Imperium, people were lucky to get Corpse-Starch—literally recycled human remains. Compared to the rest of the galaxy, the Underhivers of 496b were living in luxury.
Twenty minutes passed. There were only thirty people ahead of him when a shadow loomed. A hulking, pox-scarred dreg shoved his way directly in front of Kian.
Kian blinked. Then, the rage took over. He tapped the man on the shoulder. Before he could speak, the man spun around, a rusted shiv pressed firmly against Kian's throat.
"Keep your mouth shut, little maggot," the jumper hissed, his breath smelling of rot. "Unless you want me to carve your stones off and feed 'em to you."
The crowd instinctively backed away, but they didn't leave the line. The Almoner at the station glanced over, bored, and said nothing. As long as the "trash" didn't interrupt the distribution, they could kill each other for all he cared.
Kian looked at the knife. He looked at the man's eyes.
The jumper thought he had won. He sneered and began to turn back around.
The moment the knife left Kian's throat, Kian exploded. His Strength 12 physique was significantly higher than the average malnourished laborer. He drove a fist into the man's gut with the force of a hydraulic press.
The jumper buckled, a wet oof escaping his lungs as he fell to his knees. His eyes bulged with shock—he hadn't expected the "Scav-rat" to fight back. He reached for his shiv again, his face contorting with murderous intent.
He never got the chance. Kian drew his sidearm—a 15mm Rebel-pattern Stub-pistol. It was a heavy, ugly thing with a five-round front-loading magazine. It had terrible ergonomics and zero accuracy, but at point-blank range, it fired a slug the size of a thumb.
BOOM!
The muzzle flash lit up the dingy corridor. The jumper's head disintegrated into a spray of red mist and bone fragments. His body slumped into the mud, twitching as his nervous system misfired.
The crowd flinched for a split second, then returned to their eerie, desperate calm. No one screamed. No enforcers came. They simply looked at the body with cold, calculating eyes.
Kian knelt down and performed a "Corpse-Loot." He found a crude knife, two crumpled scrips, and three water purification tablets. He pocketed them and returned to his place in line as if he'd just stepped on a bug.
By the time he received his starch and turned to leave, the body was already being stripped. First the clothes, then the boots. By the time Kian was fifty meters away, the corpse had vanished—likely destined for a secret cooking pot. A few desperate souls remained on their hands and knees, licking the blood off the floor to ingest the precious salt and minerals.
That was the "Circle of Life" in the 41st Millennium.
Kian's final stop was a "Boutique Shop" near the Sump-Lift. There was no queue here; the prices were so high that the average laborer couldn't even afford to look at the window.
"One pack of Votive Candles, three cans of industrial cooking oil, and a jar of chili-infused grease," Kian told the clerk.
The clerk looked at Kian's grime-streaked clothes and sneered. "Fifty-five Agri-Scrips."
Kian slapped sixty scrips onto the counter. The clerk's sneer vanished, replaced by a subservient grin. He packed the items into a fiber-woven bag and handed them over.
Kian headed home, but he could feel the eyes on him. In a world where a farmer earned 150 scrips a month and a laborer earned 20, Kian had just spent a fortune on "luxury" goods. To the lurkers in the shadows, he was a walking treasure chest.
He moved from the populated plaza into a dark, narrow conduit. He pulled out a Lho-stick, lit it, and took a long drag, the orange cherry of the cigarette glowing in the dark.
He walked deeper into the blackness. Behind him, the sound of rhythmic, hurried footsteps echoed. The lurkers were closing in, armed with lead pipes and jagged stones. They saw the glowing tip of the Lho-stick moving steadily through the tunnel.
They charged, weapons raised, ready to crush the skull of the "rich" boy.
CLANG!
Metal hit metal. The attackers yelped in pain as their pipes bounced off the reinforced plasteel wall of the conduit. They looked at the glowing orange light—it was wedged into a crack in the wall, three meters away from where they thought Kian was.
A tactical decoy.
Suddenly, a blinding beam from a high-lumen flashlight cut through the dark from their flank, searing their retinas.
Kian stood there, his flashlight in his left hand and his 15mm hand-cannon in his right.
"Target practice," Kian whispered.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!