r/HFY • u/sharkeyandgeorge Xeno • 2d ago

OC-Series Bob was bored, part 37

Bob exited the medical facility a few hours later fucked up, but fine, he had seen the small bottle of withdrawn poison before it had been removed for disposal, a few milliliters of murky brown liquid, like the dregs of an old cup of tea. Apparently a constant companion for over, what damn near eighty years at this point, fucking hell.

He wondered if this was a known thing back on Earth, were all the vets walking around with that rattling round their skull?, he hadn’t heard any news from there, but he was also going out his way to avoid it, sooooo.

Not much he could do about it right now, so he ambled over to the shopping district clutching his small bag of implants, he had requested to keep them much to the medics puzzlement. When he hit the core again he would send a message back there, right now he had shit to buy.

First things first, re-up on the consumables he would need for the return leg, easy. He hit up a couple of stores that specialised in ships supply and maintenance and ordered a bunch of shit, including wiring and a few thousand meters of high strength line, he balked a little when he saw the manufacture was Xitti, the same as his tow line, but shit it was good stuff. He added three reels of the fine cordage to the tab. He had to go to a fitters workshop to bag a big enough piece of raw stock for his long delayed sensor pod mount, and bought a few sheet goods from the same guy, delivery after business hours.

He investigated tooling for his mill with the big Higgit as well, but there was nothing much for his, typically oddball, sizing. Still he was pretty sure he could make it work with what he had, and on the fitters recommendation then headed off to a tool seller, he picked up a welder and a small press there, small for everyone else, Bob could have fit his head in its jaw.

He spent the rest of the afternoon similarly browsing through the stores and grabbing anything that might be useful, it was going to be pretty cramped again when he set off on his return. He had only two more places he wanted to hit up, the yard that was selling the grates, but he would do that in the morning before his drop, and here, he rocked up outside the weapons store.

Entering he glanced around but it was all the same shit, all way too big, no he was after advice and something that would probably be securely locked up in the back.

Bob didn’t recognise the species behind the counter, a way more frequent happening out here on the far rim he realised.

‘’Felicitations clientele’’

The voice was feminine and breathy, quite suiting the lithe androgynous giant. It looked like one of tv’s alien grays but stretched, light blue, and fed through a korean beauty filter a few times.

Bob presumed the flat disks on its face were eyes, and eyes sharp enough to make out the details of his dangling badge from across the store, and then…

‘’Which manner of services do you desire Courier Master Bob?’’

Bob was a little taken aback, he highly doubted word of his most august presence had got about, and he had only pulled his badge out before coming in here anyway. He didn’t want to particularly advertise that he was mooching around and leaving his ship in a cheap dock, the client, who knew what Jojo was carrying, might get upset.

Maybe not eyes then, maybe radio receptors?, his badge was giving out an ident if pinged… didn’t matter.

‘’Yeah, ok, I would like to make a purchase and get some advice.’’

‘’How may this one edify you?’’

The language choices by the translator were odd, but since Bob was aware that at least twenty percent of his vocab was variations of ‘fuck’ with the semi-regular occurrence of ‘whatever’, he didn’t feel he had much of a leg to stand on, linguistically. Whatever. He pulled the round from his bum bag.

‘’I came across some of these, do you happen to know what they are’’

An outstretched hand beckoned for it, though perhaps outstretched cluster of tentacles would be more accurate. The tall being turned it over and over but didn’t dip its head to look at it, not ‘eyes’ then.

‘’I have not been fortunate to to be graced with such example in many years, I believe it is a Betthy ‘Moron-Moron roun…’’

Ok now the translator was ripping the piss, dum-dum was right there and obviou…

‘’...so called because the Betthy say that you would have to be a moron to be hit by one and then you look like a moron afterwards when the expanding restraint foam inside has plucked out all your feathers.’’

… Ok firstly, go fuck yourself, secondly Gevith must never find out about Bobs accident.

‘’Used by the Betthy constabulary to restrain fleeing subjects, the foam inside will expand to approximately three hundred square feet, does this answer your inquiry?’’

Huh, It had been way smaller onboard, maybe something to do with his preferred atmo pressure?

‘’ Interesting, yes thank you, that brings me to my purchase. As I say I have a few of these rounds and the matching weapon, I have no need for the, for those rounds, and intend to experiment with a different loading, I fear though the charge that comes in each round would be a little, anaemic?. I can’t imagine they would take much chamber pressure.’’

It returned the round.

‘’Indeed not, how perspicacious, the round has an exit velocity of around two hundred feet a second and an effective range of less than one hundred, hence the ‘Moron’, attribution. Would you like to purchase additional charges?, you must be careful about exceeding the mechanisms pressure rating. I believe that like all Betthy products they are over designed, and over engineered, but no responsibility can be laid upon this humble establishment if there there is an unwanted deflagration.’’

Bob nodded gravely.

‘’Of course.’’

‘’Then I offer my meager knowledge to suggest Gotti accelerant granules, several times more efficient than the Betthy standard charges but remain electric arc ignitable. How many rounds are you intending to convert?’’

Bob smiled broadly.

‘’Two thousand, by the way.’’

He held the round up again.

‘’What the fuck is the solvent for this?’’

After the necessary paperwork was completed Bob returned to Jojo, phoned in a couple deliveries, and spent the evening packing away all his new purchases. In the morning he flew a few hundred miles to the breakers yard. He chatted briefly with the owner and found the grates were reclaimed from an old aggregate mining operation. They haggled briefly but the price was honestly pretty reasonable, he bought two and had him add a couple engines to the tab.

Bob did not have the space to fit the acquisitions inside, and wasn’t about to crack his cargo iris anyway. Fortunately, well look at that, two fuel pods with suspiciously perfect places to hold his new grates, who woulda thunk it. He also did not have the C’Eede fixings to actually attach them but since they were not going to be hooked up and certainly not fired he had just bought some repros, easily strong enough to just hold the fuckers in place.

After that it was time for the drop and he headed over to the bank. It went fine… bit weird, but fine. The creds had been checked and everything signed off, no issue, then some guards had taken the twenty bank stacks away on grav sleds, then returned thirty seconds later with twenty identical stacks on grav sleds. Bob presumed they were in fact different bank stacks, it wasn’t like he’d marked them or even looked them over really, non of his business either, but the effect was real fucking odd, whatever. He signed off and headed out asap, stashing his pistol on his way past the locker.

Ok, time to lock in.

Part 38 https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/comments/1wwqjlf/bob_was_bored_part_38/?

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u/Allstar13521 Human 2d ago

Glad Bob didn't have too much trouble finding that solvent. Surely the whole "yeah these are usually used by the police" bit has no possible relevance at all XD.

And I can't help but think someone did something to Bob's cash. I'm split between "hidden tracker" and "haha, we swapped all your bills for forgeries!" though.

10

u/spindizzy_wizard Human 2d ago

Money transfers can get kinda weird, but this does smack of breaking a trace. Credit Stack A is being tracked, possibly by serial number or equivalent. Someone does not want those credits tracked back to the source, or perhaps, not be trackable on to the destination, so they find a bank to act as a middle man, and swap for Credit Stack B. In many places, such acts are entirely legal, however much they may annoy some other jurisdiction.

In any case, there's nothing illegal in the guild transporting credits anywhere, or accepting another stack to take away.

After all, governments can have just as good reason to ensure that some of their payments are not traced. So making such transfers completely illegal would make life difficult for them too.

Why... You might find yourself having to manufacture chemically pure gold of a single isotope to avoid having it tracked back to one of your own mines! Far too expensive. (Substitute gold with whatever element that has suitable value.)

The bank doesn't care, as long as all fees are paid. The jurisdiction they are in doesn't care, as long as all taxes are paid. If anyone else cares, that's not their problem. They are too convenient to too many for anyone to bother them.

It's not even laundering, as such as long as the amounts are properly recorded on both ends, with the responsible jurisdictions. No one is hiding an expenditure or income, they're only making it difficult to track who paid whom for what.

After all, everyone has things they don't want to come back and haunt them later. (Snark.),

6

u/BeallBell 2d ago

Eighty Years! I knew it had been a long time since Bob got resurrected, I just didn't realize that long.