A thousand shops tempted me, but I wasn’t here to browse. Thanks to my good friends in the Warren, my armour was in desperate need of repair. Already, I was starting to feel uncomfortable without it. By the time we’d left the Warren, it had been two steps away from scrap metal, the suit’s inner surface pushing uncomfortably against my hamstrings, tendrils squirming furiously like sandpaper against in my armpits. It would be just the thing for faulty wiring to catch fire and roast me alive for real.
I ordered the suit to march behind me as I picked my way to the outermost sectors of the Upper Markets, towards the armoury Jasken had spoken about. One sniff of the suit’s reeking insides and I’d decided my stomach wasn’t strong enough to wear it again without a serious chemical clean.
The suit’s hydraulics wheezed and complained as I found and entered the shop, the sign Gunpowder Milkshake lit up above the lintel. I stood in the middle of a three-storey armoury. Black and gold timbers with geometric engravings rose up around me. The smell of woodsmoke and burnt copper scented the air. Armoured suits of varying colours and designs gleamed on dark podiums in a showroom, crafted and custom-built for humans and aliens alike. I heard a scrabbling noise and glanced up to see a giant metal spider picking its way over the highly stacked shelves. It was a mechsuit, its many-jointed limbs replacing and re-ordering a dozen items on the shelves simultaneously. I waited until the insectoid head swivelled around to peer at me with aquamarine photoreceptors. The mechsuit climbed down the shelving with a slow, oiled grace, reached the bottom and peeled apart to reveal the owner.
‘Fox, at your service.’ Fox wore a stonewashed T-shirt and sloppy grey beanie that couldn’t have been more of a contrast to the filigree furniture around me. A toothpick jutted from his cracked lips. ‘Come now, what’s the order of the day?’
I pointed to the two holes in the back of my suit. ‘What can you do with these?’
Fox barely paid me heed as he ducked and swerved around the suit with the casual grace of a dancer, fingerless gloves skittering over his datapad. ‘Heavy damage, this.’ He glanced at an icon on his datapad. ‘Oh, look at you, you little bugger. Nasty bit of foreign malware in the deep-layer substrate. Been putting your metal right through the ringer. You aware of that?’
‘Intensely aware.’
‘All bad news here. Your metal’s a write-off. Total miracle you were still using it.’ He gave it another professional look-over and twirled the toothpick around in his mouth. ‘Half the circuits have gone to the dogs. A deal on the parts is the best we can do today, I’m afraid.’
I’d grown attached to the armour, but I found I was thankful I didn’t have to go to the trouble of cleaning the thing. Just as well I was stinking rich right now.
‘An upgrade sounds good,’ I said, resting my hand on its shoulder one last time. I found the passkey Jasken had sent to me and forwarded it to Fox. ‘Would this do anything for me?’
His expression rippled as Fox inspected the passkey. ‘This is an Iron Prism. Pyroxene Class. Pyroxene, I say!’ Respect and a touch of disbelief in his voice. ‘How’d you get your mitts on this? Which deepspace smuggler gang you been hauling for, eh?’
I returned his stare, deadpan. You’ve got to go along with these things, sometimes.
Fox slapped the side of his head, straightened his beanie. ‘Oh, where are my manners! That’s all miscellaneous. A customer carrying a Pyroxene deserves … something little extra.’
I was starting to understand why Jasken had been so familiar with the darkmarket tech in the Warren.
‘We’ll have to nip ’round back. Allow me to call my esteemed partner. Badger!’ Fox called out. No response. Fox hit the cabinet, wood rattling. ‘Oi! Badger!’
There was a soft thud from the backroom, like someone hitting their head on shelving. A Torven appeared next to me, the mask of a vidgame simulation dangling in his hands, the blue curl of stormtech squirming up his chest. ‘How many times have I bloody told you?’ the alien yelled, coating my face with a fine mist of saliva. ‘Don’t shout when I’m wired in. Scared me half to death! I almost—’
‘Badger,’ Fox stressed with great strained patience, ‘our customer here is Pyroxene Class. Pyroxene. Class.’
Badger blinked rapidly, coal-dark eyes going big as moons as I wiped my face clean. ‘Then … then we should take him out the back!’
‘Right.’ Fox clapped his hands together. ‘Now we’re all caught up, let’s do some business.’
Badger reached down and punched a button under the desk. The display windows of the armoury turned glassy, a latticework of reinforced bars slamming across to restrict entry. ‘Can’t be too cautious,’ Fox explained. ‘Bad neighbourhood and all.’
Fox deactivated the razorstorm guarding the back of the shop and ushered me down a creaking stairwell into a niche showroom. ‘Exclusive products are reserved for exclusive customers, you see. Things the common person ain’t geared up to appreciate. For a Reaper of Pyroxene Class such as yourself, this should hit the spot.’
The suit he pointed out was a rich dark blue, the metalwork glistening and glimmering like cords of wet, twisting rope. Violent silver stripes swiped up the sides, lights winking around the forearms, chest, shoulders, and back.
I grinned as Badger rattled off the extra benefits. ‘The inside is layered with a nanocomposite sensory system. It’s got a protective reactive metal crystal and a hydrostatic gel layer that will pump you with antibodies and biofoam to seal wounds. The inner material regulates temperature, changes density and thickness when it
