Ever get the feeling no-one likes you? Yseult thought to herself as she powered up what looked like the oldest most out-dated walklift in the foundry. The KH-40 was an augmech, a rare type of walker where the pilot's legs clip into the upper leg and the whole torso looks mostly supported by the pilot's own body. It isn't, the rear dampers taking most of the load but it was a design that left most workers feeling uncomfortable, despite the extra speed and freedom of movement it afforded. The design soon fell out of favour but this unit had clearly spent a long time in service; it was covered in a multitude of different green markings as different work crews had taken it into their fleet for a while and put their mark somewhere on the bodywork.
Yseult made her way through the freight terminal, deep in the pyramid behind the lower landing bays as the heads-up display in her visor outlined the route to her first pick. It was slow going compared to the hoverbike she was used to and as a pilot at heart, she had accepted the work a little begrudgingly but she'd been sat around for long enough and hadn't exactly made her flying history public knowledge. She didn't really want them to know; The more they know, the more questions they can ask. At least moving crates around in a loader kept her out of people's way, and them out of hers. Is this what he meant? She had made a deal with Big Sal and was getting paid for the work but he'd targeted her, specifically, she'd felt when she gazed at the rusty old replacement hoverbike he'd bestowed upon her. Surely, he hadn't gone through all that for her to move boxes in a mech. I won't find that out here she thought. So I might as well get on with it.
Riddaeon watched impatiently as Big Sal examined equations on a screen while only half paying attention to their conversation. "You spoke to her then?" the scientist said without looking up in response to Riddaeon's report. "Analasys?" he asked. Riddaeon had an air of concern in his tone. "Hot headed, cynical." He began. He paused for a moment, recalling their conversation. "Sharp though." He continued. "Quick to evaluate and react, even though she probably over-reacts". "Does she trust you?" Big Sal interjected. Riddaeon thought back to the trap he'd set. "No". Now Big Sal looked up from his screen. In between the large beard and the mop of hair, behind the thick-rimmed glasses, his eyes darted around as if calculating something complex in his mind. He strode in a not-quite-straight-line over to an old vidi-board full of equations and started scrawling in one of the few empty gaps. His stylus stopped suddenly as if all of his mind's effort had become focussed on one single mental calculation. He turned to Riddaeon. "And what about her?" he asked. "Can we trust her?". Riddaeon thought for a moment... "No". Big Sal's bewildering look of impossibly complex internal arithmetic slowly turned into a knowing, sly grin. He returned to the board and finished the equation... "Good" he said aloud... He looked at the final entry in the equation: delta Upsilon... "Good".