Chapter 284: Twenty Percent of Something Wet

The thing inside the container was eating its handling frame, which made the label describing it as cooling equipment feel aggressively optimistic. Tollan cleared the bay while Mara grabbed the emergency barrier control and I looked for a solution that didn’t involve putting my head beside the teeth.

A pale jointed limb reached through the split seam and scraped towards the nearest worker. I caught his harness with a tendril and pulled him behind the barrier before the limb struck, leaving a groove in the floor where his leg had been.

[System: Industrial shell-borer, mate, and definitely not a fucking refrigerator. Hard mouth, soft joints, and a strong professional interest in eating whatever keeps this room from collapsing.]

Then let’s offer it something less structural to embarrass itself with. I pushed an empty scrap bin beneath the reaching limb while Mara lowered the handling frame, trapping the creature’s joint between the bin edge and its own damaged container.

It chewed the offered metal immediately, giving Tollan enough time to bring the reinforced cover down over the whole assembly. The cover locked into the inspection floor, leaving the creature busy inside a space designed for cargo that had become an argument.

Nobody drained the bay to make the problem easier. Half the workers needed its water to breathe, and Tollan sent for a specialist containment crew instead of letting a talking snake improvise another exciting way to hurt the wrong people.

I watched the sealed cover shudder and asked whether the creature had been declared anywhere on the manifest. Mara pointed at the cooling-equipment label again, then told me BrineSpan had either made a serious mistake or paid somebody to call it one.

The specialist crew took over with a wheeled enclosure and instructions that sounded suitably expensive. I left the bay with Tollan’s report number, a fresh respect for inspection floors and no unannounced EXP reward for helping contain a creature I hadn’t killed.

Mara’s supplier meeting happened in an air-filled office above the water lane, where my fins could lift me into a chair without soaking the cushions. Galaxy Brain checked her trial figures instantly, catching a doubled transport fee that she removed before I could name it after a sex act.

The first shipment would cost forty thousand, with a four-thousand deposit held in escrow and the rest due only after the casino checked delivery. No exclusive route, no automatic renewal and no impressive promise that required Lyra to fix the details after I left.

I called her before agreeing to spend the casino’s money. She asked sensible questions about quality, losses and who paid if the cooling failed, and Mara answered them directly enough that I stopped expecting the deal to reveal a hidden knife.

"I’d like to bring you something home that improves dinner without first requiring a police statement, love," I told Lyra. She approved the trial deposit after reading the terms, then said she would reserve judgment until the fish arrived colder than my excuses.

Cherry joined the call long enough to request a sample menu for the lounge. I promised to send it and asked how her day was going, giving her time to answer before the next person tried to turn me into a delivery service.

A cuttlefish woman entered the office carrying a broken valve and wearing a work jacket marked with pale handprints. Mara introduced her as Sera Quill, an engineer responsible for several cooling berths and apparently the only person in the district willing to tell rich customers their equipment was rubbish.

Sera looked at my fins, asked whether I could work in both air and water, and offered an authorised salvage job on a damaged cooling rack. "Before I agree, does this one have teeth, or can I finally earn money without being courtship-fed to the fucking equipment?" I asked.

"Only if you ignore the isolation switch," Sera said. "And if you do, I’ll turn you off before I repair anything else." The job would recover useful parts from a closed berth, give Mara a cheaper replacement unit and give me a chance to earn money through something resembling an actual agreement.

[System: She’s offered to turn you off and you’re still taking the job, mate. Either the pay’s excellent or your flirting’s reached the workplace incident stage.]

She’s paying me to move scrap, you furry little divorce statistic, so stop trying to make a date out of a repair quote. I asked for the rack diagrams, ready to learn the system instantly once I had them, which Sera preferred to another customer claiming expertise without checking the model.

We left the office in Mara’s loaded work pod, with sealed cooling parts secured behind the passenger compartment. I swam beside its window while Sera pointed out the service berth and the intake lanes we needed to avoid during a scheduled pressure change.

I sent the signed terms home with the supplier’s name and delivery window. Cherry returned a picture of the menu she’d already started, and I was considering a smug little announcement about my business skills when a black tow unit appeared below us.

It moved out from beneath the platform and matched our speed. Its pilot ignored Mara’s request to identify himself, then released a traction cable that struck the pod’s rear coupling with a heavy metallic click.

The cable tightened before the pod’s driver could disengage it. Our route marker swung sideways as the tow unit accelerated towards a restricted pump channel, dragging the loaded pod and everyone inside away from the safe lane.

Mara hit the emergency release, but the coupling refused to open. Through the black unit’s window, I saw a BrineSpan badge on the pilot’s jacket and a handwritten sign telling us all recovery complaints had to be submitted after collection.

"I’ve got a complaint ready now, mate, and I’m bringing it directly to your face," I called through the open communication channel. Then the restricted gate began closing ahead of Mara’s pod, leaving just enough room for the cable and nowhere near enough for the people attached to it.