“There is one thing that I don’t understand.” Agate said to Zihan.

The two sat at the table after a round of candidates who’d all failed to unlock the cube in front of them. Some had done better than others. One managed to shift a chunk of the liquid metal that coated the cage within and looked like he might succeed until the cube grew a stinger it plunged into his hand. He’d hissed at the pain and made threats until Hao Dong’s cape tapped at his foot and looked up at him with a host of small bright eyes, like frog’s eggs attached to a thing made of shadows and claws. He’d grown pale then, and returned to the bar, cradling his hand and chugging the beer Agate offered “in sympathy”. One candidate even managed to open the thing, only to reveal an empty interior, at which Agate shook his head.

“Tough little nut you’ve brought.” Zihan noted, at which Agate hummed before changing the subject.

“Sound’s like you’re a long way ahead of me then.” Zihan noted. He’d stopped smoking a long time ago and didn’t seem to know what to do with his hands without it. He’d taken to drawing thin stick figures in the table, black scars in the layers of paint. “A lot of stuff out there I don’t understand.”

“You miss my meaning.” Agate replied. He watched the bar for their next candidate and sipped from his beer. “What I don’t understand, in all this, is what’s in it for you.”

“What’s to understand?” Zihan replied. “Pull this off and we get lots and lots of money.”

“Money, sure.” Agate replied. “But, Nshamti doesn’t use System Credit, or Aarrppaa credit. Doesn’t have cyborgs, as I understand it. Trades breathing stones and spirit wafers or something.”

“At higher levels.” Zihan replied. “Mostly we trade silver.”

“Silver.” Agate mused. “If only.” He studied his drink, then looked at Zihan. “So, credits, more credits than any of us are likely to see in a lifetime, and what will you do with them back home on Nshamti?”

Zihan stopped cutting lines into the table and regarded the little panorama he’d begun. A little family standing in front of a poorly rendered house with a tree outside. The tree looked to be on fire. He set his hand against the whole thing and erased it in a puff of smoke and a circle of charred paint, then sat back in his chair and looked at Agate.

“I never asked what you intended with your cut.” He said. He crossed his arms.

“No.” Agate replied. “And that makes me wonder.” He played with his glass, spinning it in its own pool of condensation. “What sort of man doesn’t wonder what his companions will do with good fortune?”

“Me.” Zihan replied. “The me kind of man.”

They looked at one another for a moment, then looked away at practically the same time. After a moment of silence Zihan answered him.

“There is an immortal back home.” He said. “Promised me some resources if I brought him enough money.” Zihan grimaced and waved a hand. “Same one I promised to introduce to Feiruhn, if we succeed. You can ask him if you want the details.”

“A quest then.” Agate said.

“Something like that.”

A new candidate arrived, obvious, as they’d all been for their augments or the way they looked around Te’klub before they approached the bar to give their password to the bartender, the one Feiruhn gave out to those with similar backgrounds to their own, and the skillset they were looking for.

“And you?” Zihan asked. “What about you?”

Agate watched the candidate wait to catch the bartender’s eye.

“My people were servants once, on Kispuhr, long ago. A bloodline born to a patron we were meant to serve for eternity, but she died, and my ancestors left. Lost our gift, with our patron. Mingled bloodlines. We weren’t many. None of the folk are, taken individually.” He tapped his glass contemplatively as Izzi made his way down the bar towards the new candidate. “Get’s old, being an outlaw, after a while.” He took a drink.

Izzi said something to the new candidate and pointed the woman in their direction.

“Always been stories of those who stayed.” Agate said as he set his glass down and the woman picked her way between the tables. “Kept the bloodlines clean. Strong. Found new patrons. Fairytales mostly, but tales all the same.” Agate glanced at Zihan. “I’ll probably travel.” He said. “Like Hao Dong. See what a real Zhar-Ptitsa can do.”

They studied one another for a moment before the woman sat down and Agate turned to smile at her.

“Welcome.” He told her, then shoved the cube across.

She failed. Like the others that came before, and the one that came after.

It was the twelfth candidate who finally opened the cube.

The thing arrived in what could, nominally, be considered night time on the station. The girls had long gone back to the rented room behind the bar leaving their group alone with a couple of other patrons drinking quietly in different corners of the bar. They’d given up on the cards and each sat hunched now over their own glittering construct while they waited and Yi Cao paced to work out the kink in his back.

The candidate looked like a scarecrow. Hunch backed and loose limbed, wrapped in scraps of burlap it wore like a cloak. Foul fluids dripped from it and something scurried underneath, making the burlap flap as the twisted thing stomped across the bar.

It ignored Izzi and headed straight for their table. A brown streak followed it where it dragged its burlap cloak across the floor. When it sat, it brought with it a stench of sewage, axle grease, and other, bloodier, unguents. In place of a face it had a pair of lopsided cartoon eyes and a crooked smile painted onto a veil of cloth. Its voice issued from the mask in the inflectionless rasp of a cheap construct, deep and inhuman.

“We hear that you are looking for an infiltration specialist.” It pronounced each syllable of the word carefully, in-fil-tration, as though they were words it had been taught. “Someone, for a big job.”

It dropped one hand onto the table with a thump. Its fingers rattled in a loose heap as though held to the hand by nothing but it’s glove.

“A big job.” Agate confirmed. He slid the cube across the table towards it.

The thing didn’t respond for a moment. Its eyes and head didn’t move, but something twitched under its face, making the veil sway before another something scuttled under its cloak. The head swayed as the entire thing shook, then the arm on the table levered itself into the air and dropped gracelessly onto the cube. Each finger rearranged itself carefully before it gripped the cube and lifted it, crane-like, into the air.

It held the cube in front of itself, eyes unfocused as only cartoon eyes could be.

“What is this?” It said, or asked, the voice distorted by the construct. “A gift?”

It brought it under its veil and inhaled deeply, sucking a bit of its veil into some hole in its face.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

“A test.” Agate replied.

The thing spat out its own veil with a noise that might have been disgust or mechanical feedback.

“Open it,” Agate went on, “and we might have work for you.”

The scarecrow’s arm lifted the cube in the air then slammed it onto the table. It lifted it up to its face as though to see if it had worked and watched the fleshmetal shift as it reconfigured around the cube.

The thing in front of them hummed with feedback for a moment, then its voice snapped out. “I have a cutting laser.” It said. “That should do.”

It reached towards its cloak with the hand holding the cube.

“No, no.” Agate held up a hand, stopping the thing before it could tuck the cube away in its cloak. “Not like that.”

The thing swiveled its face towards him, tilting its head so that the rag veil drooped and warped the features drawn on its face. “How then?” It asked.

Zihan stopped blowing smoke rings at the ceiling long enough to answer. “If we wanted to cut it, we’d just get a laser.” He said.

Something rattled inside the thing’s chest, and more bits of its cloth rustled and shifted, gears whispering inside like the tiny voices inside.

“Open it as though it had to be opened without anyone knowing we’d been inside.” Agate told the thing. “If you can.”

“Ah.” The scarecrow seemed to roll its shoulder, making a series of clicks. “Stealth.” It said. “This we are proficient with.” It tucked the cube into its shirt as things inside ran around making the cloak of rags shift and rustle. It pulled its hand free, empty of the cube and dropped its arm onto the table. “One moment please.” It said.

It fell perfectly still while the mechanisms inside its chest whistled and clicked.

A moment later the hand came back to life, levered upwards, and swung into the cloak. It emerged to offer the gleaming cube back across the table.

Agate took the cube and turned it over in his hands, studying it.

“Open it.”

Except for the voice, the thing in front of them might have been dead.

Agate glanced up at it, then spun a couple of dials along the side until he could present his thumb to some kind of sensor within the flowing metal.

The entire cube twisted open, reconfiguring around its wire frame until it showed a hollow sphere at its core, empty.

“Well?” Zihan asked. “Did he get it?”

“See for yourself.” Agate tossed him the cube, now turned sphere. “No hidden pockets this time.”

He turned back to the thing across the table from them.

“What’s your name?” Agate asked.

“Name…” The toneless quality of the statement could have made it a question.

Agate waited. The thing whined to itself for a moment, then the head jerked and the voice returned. “Eyan.” It said. “My name.”

Something banged hollowly in its guts.

“Well, Eyan.” Agate held out his hand. “The ring?”

“Payment.” The thing replied instantly.

“Payment?” Agate replied. “What payment?”

“For the return of your bauble.” The thing said.

“The payment will be a part in the job.” Zihan replied.

The thing’s head swiveled to him. Huge, Yi Cao now saw, in comparison to normal human proportions. “Payment will be now.”

The thing didn’t move.

Agate raised an eyebrow. He and Zihan shared a look. “What kind of payment do you require?” Agate asked.

The construct in the thing’s head buzzed momentarily with feedback then died abruptly. “Liquor.” It conceded, the toneless voice slowed the word so that it sounded like an entreaty. “In small quantity.”

Agate looked at the thing as though dumbfounded. “Liquor.” He said.

“Yes.” The thing moaned. “Only a small quantity.”

Agate looked behind him, then reached back to take the bottle from the table in front of the Smart Kabi. The Kabi grabbed one of the girl’s leftover glasses and handed it over. Agate poured.

“Stop, stop!” The thing’s arm practically dove for the glass and yanked it from the table as Agate ceased to pour. Its entire body rocked back as it raised the glass to the veil, then tucked it under and dumped it back.

Something chittered in its guts as the liquid moved down its gullet. When it rocked back forward it practically slammed the glass onto the table’s surface.

“No more.” It said. “No more.”

A riot seemed to have started underneath its cloak. Some engine kicked and whirled beneath the cloth making the whole scarecrow jerk fitfully in its chair while its rags twitched across its midsection. Some mechanism deep in its gust screamed.

Agate pulled the empty cup to him and fished a golden ring from its bottom.

“Congratulations, Mister Eyan.” He said. He waited to see if he would be corrected but the thing just twitched its arm. The fingers rattled as the whole arm slid bonelessly from the table to hang limp beneath the scarecrow’s cloak.

“Do we have some means of contacting you?”

The things head bobbed and shook. “We left it with the in charge one, at the casino.”

“Well.” Agate tapped the table, then glanced back at the man standing in the shadows before he gave the thing in front of him his full attention. “We’ll be in touch.”

“You will not be touching we.”

The thing slid from the chair, then lurched up to lean forward, looming above them, huge and amorphous beneath its rags.

“How much?” The thing demanded.

“How much what?”

“How much, to be paid?” It demanded. “For the job?”

“We won’t make our final decision until all the candidates have gone through.” Agate replied.

“We did what you asked.” The thing told them. “We opened the box. We are to be hired now. Play a part. For a reward.”

Something black dripped from its veil onto the table and Agate wiped it up quickly without so much as blinking. “A stake.” He said. “If we hire you.Like I said. We’ll be in touch. Sometime in the next two days.”

“A stake. Many credits?”

“System credits.” The Androgyn replied. “More than you’ve ever seen.”

“And, departure? From these rocks?”

Agate nodded. “If that’s what you want.”

“Want. Need. We do.” It lifted one arm and banged it onto the table, then wobbled backwards and staggard towards the door. “We speak, then.”

“Until then.” Agate agreed.

They watched it go.

“Hao Dong?” Agate asked after it disappeared.

Hao Dong didn’t have to be asked. He prowled forward, then disappeared after the stinking scarecrow.

“Well fellows, what do we think?”

“He’s more biological than he pretends.” Shockstick said. His eyes buzzed. “Weird augments though. Probably custom jobs, way they’re reading. A lot of mechanicals. Not much in the way of high energy. Had a hardlight on him though. Maybe a grenade. Bloody big one. Possibly more.”

“That’s to be expected.” Agate turned to the other table. “Kabi’s?” He asked. “Nothing?”

The smart Kabi just grunted. Shook his head.

The Lucky one looked up from scrolling on his display. “He smelled like shit.”

“If he can do the job.” The smart one said. “Don’t see any reason that should be an issue.”

“Spend time on a cramped shuttle and it will be.” The Lucky one muttered. He turned back to his screen.

Agate turned to Zihan last. “Thoughts?” He asked.

Zihan nodded to the door as Hao Dong returned. “Let’s see what he has to say.”

Hao Dong pulled out a chair and sat across from the two. “Followed him.” Hao Dong told them, “but he didn’t go far. Turned down a maintenance tunnel and disappeared. I checked the tunnel for exits or secret passages, but there’s only sewers running through there. Only place I could see him going, but the holes were small. Too small for me.”

“Explains the smell.” Shockstick noted.

Hao Dong cleared his throat. “Could’ve sent my cloak in after him but I figure anyone hiding in the sewers has more to hide than we do. Probably would’ve just lost the cloak and learned nothing.”

“You have an opinion?” Agate asked.

Hao Dong sucked at his teeth, then cleared his throat and spat. “Weird fucker.”

“You’d be hard pressed to define normal on this station.” Agate pointed out.

Hao Dong nodded. “If he can do the job. If he’s desperate enough to hide in a sewer, seems like the sort we could work with.

“He does indeed.” Agate fished took the cube back from Zihan and dropped the ring into it.

“You think…” The Smart Kabi hesitated as the rest turned towards him. “You think he could be the Ghost?” He asked.

“The Ghost ain’t a biological.” Shockstick said. “Bit of rogue AI excavated from the old days. Everyone knows that. A fragment of the old Governor for the station before they neutered it.”

“And it got caught.” Hao Dong added.

The Smart Kabi shrugged and looked at the table. “Maybe. You ever been down in the sewers? I can’t think of anyone else might be desperate enough to hide in there, and you don’t know it’s been caught.”

“Maybe.” Agate conceded.

“Ain’t just the governor for people to escape around here.” Hao Dong added. “Could be any number of reasons someone takes to hiding down there.”

“Either way.” Agate interjected. “He’s the only one whose been able to crack the cube so far. If no one else can do it, I don’t see what choice we really have.”

Shockstick snorted. “Working with a rogue AI.” He said. “Robbing the guild. What a trip.”

“Or just something highly augmented.” Hao Dong replied.

“I doubt it.” The Kabi answered. “Did you see how that thing moved? If that thing has biology it wasn’t born with it.”

Agate waved a hand, dispelling the conversation with a wave of blue sparks. He turned to Shockstick. “Have you had any word from our suppliers?” He asked.

The goblin pilot flipped his handheld construct out and tapped at it. “Need a day or two.” Shockstick replied. “And I need a day to scope out the hangar once we got the codes. You got a timeline in mind yet?”

Agate looked around their little group. “The Pitanmikasi is here for twelve more days.” He said. “If we have our infiltration specialist, I think ten wouldn’t be pushing ourselves too much.”

“So, we’re doing this?” Hao Dong asked.

Agate looked at him. “We are.”

The whole group shared a moment of tense nervous energy as Agate looked between the members of his old crew, ending with a long look at Zihan and a glance at Yi Cao who watched from the group’s edge. “If we succeed,” he told them, “we’ll be making history.”