The Favour

Welcome to the workshop. In here is where I store old payroll records, mission dossiers, or whatever information I’ve been… stealing or compiling.

This one is for you.

Everything you need to know to become a proper Armournaut, yours truly's guide to the cluster. Correct it as you go.

Anything written by a Superpower is wrong on purpose. This is only wrong by mistake. 

I need you alive for a favour down the line, and I don’t trust you to stay alive without my help.

Just take the drive. Both hands. Firmer.

Good.

Officially, Armournauts are independent professionals. Security, exploration, rescue, enforcement, specialist military support. 

In a word, mercenaries.

Someone paid for the crisis. Someone profits when the shooting starts. 

Every benefactor will tell you its violence is necessary, to soothe your aching heart. 

Maps can show you where a world is. They will not tell you who owns the dockmaster, which charity reports to an intelligence office, which megacorps stiff you, which contractor pays dependants, which government will deny hiring you, or which local insult starts a firefight.

Now to the favour, indulge me for a while will you…

I was born on Conran.

Polluted, poor, corrupt, and ignored by the Superpowers. That last part was almost a blessing.

My father taught school and worked too much. My mother looked after half the neighbourhood and still found time to call me Chicken when I sulked. Cally was younger, louder, and usually right.

Then the Temple offered me an education. Everyone thought it was a miracle.

Except my sister of course, I shipped myself off anyhow. 

Ilden felt obscene. Clean air, more food than I could finish, streets where nobody tried to crack my skull, and people confident enough to be beautiful.

My host mother, Morena, once chased me around the house with a skillet for skipping language lessons. She was right. Once I could joke and flirt in Municipal, I finally felt like I belonged. For about six months, I became unbearable. Clean clothes, full stomach, enough Municipal to make people laugh. Thought I’d solved existence.

Then university kicked the confidence out of me. The Erudite said their aptitude system discovered what each student was best suited to do. What it really discovered was what the state needed.

I wanted medicine. The Temple wanted a bright Jambles boy who could return home and explain why Temple policy was good for everyone.

So, mysteriously, I had an aptitude for “alignment work”.

You’re not holding my first guide to the Cluster, kid. To my enduring shame.

When I returned to Conran, my parents had separated, Mum was sick, my relationship was collapsing, and the work felt even emptier than before.

Cally was gone.

She had recorded messages for me for years, telling Mum and Dad she was sending them to me. I poured over them one by one. At times, I wish I hadn’t. I got it all. The years of hurt. My own home movie marathon.

Then the Temple offered her the same education it had offered me, and she accepted.

By the time I came home, she was on Ilden. I should have turned around and gone after her. Instead, I sent messages and told myself that counted.

Anyhow, I quit working for those lying Temple bastards within the week. Got a job doing commercial alignment consultancy for the Venti instead. Turned out to be alignment work without the pretence of conviction. Mostly reports, meetings, and getting yelled at by a Venti suit.

I got bored, drunk, picked up a jitter habit. I became single. Woke up one time on a bathroom floor somewhere. Tile pattern pressed into my cheek. Didn't know which city. Didn't care. Peak of my career.

Eventually, I took long service and never went back.

An Armournaut band found me half-starved and hired me to stand in the general vicinity of a nervous Venti noble so the crowd would think he had protection.

Then the shooting started, the noble died, and I stayed upright. Everyone mistook that for competence.

I had no idea what I was doing, but hunger is clarifying, and violence made more sense than consultancy ever had. Survivors get paid well.

The Temple noticed I was useful again. I built Nil-Star from there.

I was never our best shot or pilot. I was good with clients. I could find the hidden sponsor, smell a bait contract, keep crews supplied, pay dependants, and convince powerful people I understood their interests.

We rewrote my fate with the blood of others, and it was good.

Speaking of rewrites, take a look at this contract. See, here. Casualty exclusions.

This one voids compensation if you die outside the declared operation zone. That sentence means they expect you to die somewhere inconvenient. Evacuation is “subject to available capacity”, which means there is no evacuation. Dependants are covered through a subsidiary that stopped trading three years ago.

And the employer?

The company on that particular contract is a shell. 

My point is the cluster will take advantage of your ignorance. That’s why you need me, that’s why you need the codex, surely that’s worth hearing me out?

Nil-Star once had four hundred people at the Conran compound, proper armour, vehicles, and Temple intelligence feeding us warnings before most threats knew we existed. We had spent years hitting Union proxies, ships, and facilities. We thought any serious attack would announce itself.

Major Zhengfu arrived with ten commandos.

They breached the network, locked the hangars, destroyed everything left outside, cut communications, and killed every team we sent on foot.

We assumed an army had surrounded us.

Three weeks later, we knew better.

We tried to negotiate. One of ours offered to sell us out. Zhengfu accepted, mutilated him, hung a camera around his neck, and sent him crawling back. After that, people tried to escape alone.

None made it.

When Zhengfu finally called for me, my people still believed I could save some of them.

He made me choose.

Children. Debts. Sick partners. Years of service. Promises I had made. Every person explaining why they should live, certain their commander still mattered.

I chose.

He killed them anyway.

I was the only one released. The footage went to every Nil-Star compound and every client who had ever trusted us.

That was the point.

I cannot promise I will protect you.

I can only make you harder to fool, and less likely to stand inside a locked compound mistaking your MOA for safety. After Nil-Star, I started writing down every warning I had ignored, every sponsor I had misread, every clause that had cost someone blood.

Oh, no, don’t mistake what happened to Nil-Star for our innocence.

We raided, killed, extorted, and worked Temple interests for money. Civilians suffered. I knew they would. I had prisoners murdered and called it discipline.

On Klein, some surrendered. I found a slower way to kill them because the crew was angry and I wanted them to see I could be crueller than our rivals.

One was young. I remember her face. I remember -

In any case, Zhengfu being a monster did not make us good.

You don’t need to believe I was secretly decent.

Like everything I do, I messed it up along the way. It’s not ready yet. I got distracted with a scruffy wannabe Armournaut who needs supervision breathing. Or a guinea pig for the Codex, sure.

Listen up.

The Codex is not objective, complete, safe, or politically neutral. It is not a substitute for asking locals, and it is not a guarantee.

It contains things I witnessed, things I stole, things the superpowers claim, things I believe, and things I suspect. Some names belong to people already dead. Some warnings may keep you alive. Some prejudices are mine, and you’ll need to learn the difference.

Fix it when I’m wrong.

Do not preserve my mistakes because I made them confidently. Like I said, check everything, especially me. Alcohol and jitter literally rot the brain.

Take the damn drive.

Now the favour. 

There’s someone I want you to find…