บท 37: How To Hustle

I paid half of the price as a deposit for the gene mod to Mara.

With my Codex showing three hundred thousand Credits lighter, I stepped out into the alley with Amber.

"So… You're against modding?" I asked, remembering the conversation between Amber and Mara.

She grimaced, "I… Have a condition, I suppose… That makes it difficult for me to accept modifications done to my body."

"Ah… Do you want to talk about it?"

"Nngh… Not right now… Maybe in the future, Tera."

I nodded in understanding before I tried to change the topic, "So… I guess maybe we can go and look for some equipment? The blaster and rifle I'm using aren't the best after all."

Amber's face quickly lit up, "Oh! I know a place for that! In fact, The personal shield I ordered had just arrived~"

"Why haven't you gotten one for yourself yet?"

"Ehh… The ones being sold here aren't really that great. Most of them are heavy and clunky which slows me down so I never really got one. That's why I made an order with the shop for one of the higher end ones but they had to ship that over from inner colonies so it took a while to get here."

I pointed at my own shield device on my belt, "What about this one?"

She lifted an eyebrow, "Hmm? What about it?"

"It doesn't really feel that heavy? So I'm wondering if it's any good."

"I dunno. I'm not that familiar with the range of shield devices myself but you can ask the shop later when we get there."

I was about to ask her to lead the way when I noticed a group of people pulling up near the entrance of the alley while riding on what looked to be a three wheeled bike.

At first I thought they were the backup or compatriots of the thugs we killed here but then I realised they were carrying various cleaning equipment that they unloaded from the bike.

"Looks like the cleaners are here. We should move or we'll be in the way," Amber suggested.

"Cleaners?" I asked, following after her as she walked towards the other end of the alley.

"Mmhmm, they are in charge of disposing of the bodies left behind in gunfights like these. Keeps things working as normal despite all the chaos happening around the city."

Literal cleaners huh… Here I thought it might just be another name for assassins or something.

"But what about crime scenes? You know, if there was a murder or something?"

Amber pointed at her personal terminal, "This was a hustle, remember? Mara posted that so everyone involved knew this wasn't a murder scene. Would be different if it wasn't tied to a job."

"Oh yeah, what was that thing about? Why did I receive it as well?"

Amber smacked her forehead with her palm, "Ah, that's right, I forgot to tell you about that… I never actually explained how you can accept jobs as a Mercenary didn't I?"

"Err… I thought I would just need to go the Mercenary Guild to pick up jobs or something."

She waved her hand, "Nah, why the heck would anyone do that when you have the Galactic Net? You've already signed up with the Mercenary Guild so you should have access to the Mercenary network on your personal terminal. Take a look."

I did as she asked and tapped on my Codex, opening it up to the main screen.

Sure enough, there was an additional button there labelled 'Mercenary Guild'.

Tapping on that button, it opened up to another screen which showed an entire list of what I realised to be job offers ranging from escort to delivery to guarding and even pirate and gang subjugation jobs.

She slowed down her pace so that she could look over my shoulder at the screen, "This is the job board, anyone can just take a job from the list though only jobs that are accessible to your rank will be displayed. But since I registered you as my partner, you will also be able to see up to Gold ranked hustles as long as we remain as partners in the system."

"I see… So I could just pick a job from here and I can just proceed to deal with it immediately?"

Amber nodded, "That's right. But you also need to be fast because there are lots of Mercs that are also looking at this job board at any given time and a job you are eyeing could just be taken at any time."

Like she had said, I noticed quite a number of those jobs disappearing from the list though new ones were also taking their place just as quickly.

I'm kind of reminded of the stock market just by seeing this.

"And what about the open hustle thing?"

"Ah, we call those Roaming Hustles. Sometimes there's a time sensitive hustle like someone getting robbed, attacked or having an emergency and requires help immediately. They would then send this out in the network and only Mercs within range and required rank will be able to receive it. An open hustle means that it is acceptable by everyone and it's a first come first served basis."

"What other types of hustles are there besides an open one?" I asked, stopping at an intersection with several others waiting for our turn to cross.

"There's some that might direct to a specific Mercenary group that they have contracted or even only allow solo Mercs only. It depends on what the client needs, really. Maybe someone is having a medical emergency but also being pursued by some thugs, they might post a hustle that asks for a Merc with some medical expertise as well."

Interesting…

I then gestured to the screen in front of me, "In that case, why do they even need to make use of this job board?"

"Because making use of the Roaming Hustles is much more expensive than the job board and you might not get a good Merc to help you. If Mara had known ahead of time they were coming and posted it on the job board, she might have only needed to pay us maybe a thousand or two Credits each."

"Huh… But didn't she already know she was being targeted?"

Amber shrugged, "I'm guessing she wasn't sure when they would actually come for her or she only leaked out the information very recently and didn't have time to request for a Merc through the job board."

And as though fate ordained it, both Amber and my terminal beeped again.

I already had my Codex out so I simply tapped on the notification to display it on my screen.

'Shakedown at 3rd Dudec Street. Two men. Open Hustle.'

I then noticed in the corner was a sum of Credits. This one in particular showed five hundred Credits.

I hadn't noticed this on Mara's Roaming Hustle before because of how Amber had reacted to the message itself back then.

Looking back to Mara's message, I found hers showed ten thousand Credits so I guess the number there would be the total one would be willing to pay which would then be shared by whoever takes that Roaming Hustle.

That means this shakedown hustle would have only netted Amber and I two hundred and fifty Credits each…

I turned to Amber and she simply slid her personal terminal back in her pocket.

"Not worth our time," She huffed.

Well, that's what I thought too, but someone obviously was of the other opinion because a man with cybernetic limbs immediately started running away, presumably another Merc that had decided to accept that hustle.

The light for us turned green and we walked across the intersection.

"So is there anything else that I should know?"

"Ah, there is one other thing. There's a penalty for not completing a mission you accepted from the job board of course, but there isn't one for a Roaming Hustle. If you were to fail a job you took from the job board, unless you can justify it was due to the fault of the client because they gave incomplete or even false information, you would need to pay back the client what they were going to pay you and also get Mercenary points deducted from you. You could get demoted if your points fall below a certain threshold too."

"So like your case with the freighter where they didn't tell you about Voidshade?"

She nodded, "Yep. They only told me about the Underdogs so I could go back and report that they did not mention about Voidshade who was a former Gold ranked Merc that could implicate this hustle. I did make them give us a bonus for it since we completed it anyway~"

As expected of an experienced Merc.

Amber then pointed to a building by the side of the street, "That's the place~ I've been getting most of my equipment here so I can guarantee its quality~ Let's go!"

I looked at the place she was pointing at and saw it was a shop with the sign 'Bang Guns Store' above the main door.

Rather odd naming sense but whatever, I'm just here to buy some guns~

Let's just see what they have in store~