Shard Market (Patreon)

I was wondering how geroo launder their illegal credits. You may find the answer a little disturbing.

(Another Tori episode.)

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“No, absolutely, I insist!” said the big officer.

“Oh, thank you,” said Tori. “I really appreciate this.”

She led to the downwells, and they began their descent, but Sese’s ears splayed in confusion when Tori got off. “Level 12? Honestly, Tori, this is a very safe level. I figured you needed to go to the bottom of the ship,” she said. “Levels 20 and up are very safe decks. Well … it might be unwise not to wander Level 20 during third shift, but it should be safe during the day.”

Tori opened her eyes wide. Back home, on the Harvest Reaper III, there was definitely more crime on the lower decks than the upper ones, but she had never felt unsafe anywhere she went. Once in a rare while, someone would report getting mugged for their strand, but most of the lower-deck crime was drug and black market trade. “Hang on, how lawless is this ship?”

“It’s not lawless, per se,” sighed Sese, “but I worry about you. I wouldn’t want you ending up on the shard market.”

“The… The what?” Tori stopped and turned to study Sese’s face.

“The shard market. Cuz, it looks like you’ve…”—the officer gestured wordlessly at Tori, from the tips of her ruined ears down to the end of her tail—“y’know, had a lot of surgery.”

Tori cocked her head. “I have had a lot of surgery,” she said. “So?”

Sese’s ears looked pained for a moment, then she turned and headed off down the corridor, forcing the rusty red geroo to follow. “You know what titanium is, right?”

“Uh, no?” she said. “A chemical? I was never good at chemistry.”

“It’s a type of metal,” Sese explained, “super-rare. They use it as fuel in the reactor.”

“So, it’s dangerous? Radioactive?”

Sese shook her head. “No, but since we need it to power the ship, you can’t exactly go buy a bar of the stuff. Almost every scrap of titanium on board belongs to the company.”

“Almost every scrap,” Tori repeated back. “So, I take it that there’s some held illegally.”

“Well, there is one other legitimate reason to own some titanium,” explained Sese. “You see, titanium is super hard, and it’s really good at bonding to bone.”

“Bone?” she said in surprise.

“Yeah, it bonds to bones.” Sese walked in silence a moment. “My grandfather got an infection in his hip, and the bone was just wearing away. He was in a lot of pain with each step. When painkillers weren’t enough, the doctors went in and fixed his hip joint. He was much more comfortable after the surgery.”

“They fixed it … with titanium?”

“Yeah, they did. The doctors filled in the decaying bone with half a gram of the stuff. Filled it in, polished it up,”—she held her nightstick in her armpit and rubbed one fist against the opposite palm as if it were a hip joint—“and when it was healed, the joint moved smoothly again. He could walk without relying on painkillers.”

“I’m envious,” Tori sighed. “Half a gram, huh?”

“Yeah, I saw a photo of the bone after the surgery.”

“Creepy.”

“I thought it was pretty neat,” said Sese, unflustered, “plain white bone and then this shiny metallic area filling in a sort of … irregular crater. And the doctors had stenciled zero-point-four-nine-two on it to record how much titanium they’d used.”

“I take it that’s worth a lot on the black market,” said Tori.

“Prices vary.” Sese grinned. “He was pretty tight-muzzled about it, but after the surgery, I heard him joke about walking around with ten thousand credits in his leg.”

“Wow, that is a big stash,” agreed Tori. True, Aziz had given her many times that to bribe her way onto the surgery table, but her mate, Druka, was the only other geroo aboard who knew it. “So, what would a criminal do with a half gram of titanium?”

“They don’t do anything with it. They just use titanium shards as untraceable currency,” explained Officer Sese. “In a criminal investigation, we can follow credits between bank accounts and strands. If some guy has a half-million credits in his strand, we can trace where that money is coming from and going to. If he’s selling drugs, we can trace who is buying and who’s selling.”

Tori swallowed quietly but stared straight ahead. She had a lot more than a half-million on her strand. Would anyone presume she was a drug dealer? “That’s the second time you’ve called them ‘shards’. Why that term?”

“Yeah, well,” Sese sighed, “this part is a little unsettling…”

“Says the gal who liked a photo of exposed bone.” Tori grinned.

“Like I said, you can’t just go out and buy a bar of titanium. Almost all of it is inside the reactor, powering the ship,” said Sese. “Some geroo—like my grandpa—have some titanium inside their bodies, but eventually they die, and their bodies get recycled. The recycler breaks the bonds between atoms and then pipes the different elements—”

“To the recombiner,” said Tori. “Yeah, I’ve been there.”

“Then, the titanium gets piped back to the reactor where it’s needed.”

“And so, a shard?” Tori repeated.

“On rare occasion,”—Sese lowered her voice—“patients with titanium implants have been known to arrange a quick post-mortem surgery before their body enters the recycler. Someone—we call them ‘bonesmiths’—chisels out the titanium and splits the take with the deceased’s widow or widower.”

Tori’s ears laid flat. “Ew. Really?”

Sese nodded. “Once out of the body, the bonesmith cleans off all the … mess and grinds the bone down so it’s not all that much larger than just the titanium.”

“They keep it attached to the bone?” gasped Tori.

“Oh, yeah,” said Sese. “Shards are bone shards.”

Tori laughed a yarp. “This sounds far too much like a ghost story that cubs share during sleepovers.”

“I agree, but it’s true,” said the tan geroo. “We find them from time after a big bust—little glass tubes with a shard of bone and metal inside—each clearly labeled with how much titanium is present.”

Tori walked in silence, trying to resist the chill that wanted to run down the spine. “So, what’s that got to do with me?” she asked. “The sulfur burned me. My joints are still in decent shape.”

“Yeah, well, you know that, and I know that,” said Sese, “but someone down on the lower decks might not. I’d be awful sad if someone smashed you over the head and dragged you off to a bonesmith to go ‘digging for treasure’.”

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Reviewer's link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1266RhanstV2VtLl7oSlbtFUMCI4VJMINtn3P8dGzMK8/edit?usp=sharing

Thoughts?