The Courier

“Thirty-second timer, set, the packet is in motion” Ricohn growled through my headset, cutting in through the soft radio static of the Hesseclaim Dispatch channel momentarily before he went quiet again.

In the corner of my vision the vintage-styled digits of a countdown timer appeared, joined by a simulated narration: “Thirty… Twenty-Nine… Twenty-Eight…”

Our timers were now synchronized. Scanning my surroundings, I briefly caught sight of movement in the snowy street below and the hair on my neck bristled against the hood of my jacket. I held my breath until I could identify the tumbling frame of a plastic bag drifting through the silent complex—despite the isolation, I never felt alone in the abandoned districts. I knew better than to assume no one was watching.

Ricohn’s blurry hologram appeared next to me, the tiny avatar paced around the windowsill while he combed the transfer networks for the packet’s routing information. I began to shiver. The crawlspace on the shuttle had been cozy enough, but the vacant bunkhouse I had holed up in to await the bounty was cold when I arrived, and was getting colder.

I hadn’t dressed for the freeze. On a clear day, getting outside the walls of the Claim would be simple, but getting to a District without transportation would’ve been impossible in these conditions—nothing moved in the Districts without being validated by Dispatch, especially during a severe weather alert. Keeping this in mind, I had to hide aboard an unmanned maintenance shuttle that was headed to prepare the power grid for the coming snowfall. I didn’t have much room in the crawlspace for cold-weather gear, and I wasn’t keen on hiking back through the snowy streets, anyway, so I used the travel time to plan my route back to the Burrow through the old U-Bahn tunnels that run below the district.

While I was laying low on the shuttle, Ricohn and his team in the Burrow intercepted radio communications that the transfer was on its way to the Data Bank Tunnels. The transfer’s original location was encrypted, but the fortified relay station at Grafenwöhr gave radio confirmation when they received the packet, allowing for Ricohn to divert a copy of the packet to this complex—specifically, to that parcel station across the street.

“Okay, listen, you got less-than thirty seconds ’til the packet loads up,” he said, flicking his wrist habitually to refresh the counter, “you gotta get on the network and catch the download window before the transfer is detected—no matter what. Once you’ve accessed the network, the Claim will start scanning the whole district.” Making some adjustments to his scanner, he continued, “the Burrow estimates that you’ve got 3 minutes to clear the district before the Claim can get a lock on you, sure you’re ready for it?”

We were both fixated on a parcel delivery station on the street below, barely visible through the smog-stained window. The “packet” was my bounty, just over 20,000 credits for its recovery. Supposedly, the packet contained handwritten notes from one of the Claim’s lost expeditions into the Eastern Bloc, but it could’ve been the key to the Claim for all we cared—20,000 credits was a score that I couldn’t afford to turn away from.

“Na klar, Ric, let’s cut it,” I replied quietly, “I’m not gonna miss out on this bounty, and you’d never pass a val-scan at the Data Banks. What, with your Strafregister, we’d have a dozen Claim drones hunting us before we reached the gates.”

He recoiled slightly, but he knew I was right. An identity validation scan would find Ricohn in a staggering number of the old Federation Asset Databases that were now public-access, not to mention the countless Corporate Claims that were searching for him on various charges as we spoke.

“Just keep an eye on the counter and cover me. I’m going for it at three seconds ’til,” I whispered to him, checking up and down the block for any sign of life.

“Fine, but keep your guard up,” his hologram grumbled while he held his gaze on the parcel station outside, “...my strafregister?”

“… Fourteen… Thirteen… Twelve…” the polite voice counted.

My movements were silent as I crept down the staircase to the ground floor of the bunkhouse. Carefully making my way through the decades-old empty food wrappers and vapur cartridges, I reminisced about the few good years I had in the city, living off the credits from my last bounty as a courier. These high-risk bounties gave me access to a lifestyle I could have never imagined before I met Ric, but this time the payout is so good I can start over in another claim and live easy. I’m lucky, there aren’t a lot of couriers that can get around the districts like me, thanks to the years I spent digging out the U-Bahn tunnels with my scrapper-parents.

“… Ten… Nine… Eight…” the console continued while I scanned the piles of cardboard, snowdrifts, and decaying leaves that littered my path, watching for an ambush.

“… Seven… Six… Five…” I peered out across the street through the peephole in the door. An amateur would already be sprinting over the curb, but the software on this console generation has a glitch in the countdown sequence, a slight hiccup between the ‘Four’ and the ‘Three’ during the door arming process. At oh-three I had two seconds to cross the street, one second to insert my token, a nine-digit confirmation keypad code—

“… Three…”

I threw open the door and sprinted toward the console. I had one chance to get this packet and get out.

“… Two…”

I had to time my movements to match the console mechanisms; I glanced around to see if anyone else was coming as I approached the station. The wind picked up and snow swirled around me.

“… One…”

A small slot opened with the last digit, and I quickly inserted my ID card. The card froze for a moment in the slot, typical for these older stations. Then the keypad flipped open and I quickly entered my ID sequence:

three . six . two . four . neun . neun . one . acht . null .

In an instant, the screen displayed an image of a small black notebook, alongside the words, ‘Caster Hold Field Journal’. Caster… like the old NeuralCasters from the Eastern Bloc propaganda? I quickly saved the file to my ID card and ripped it out of the scanner right as the system started locking down. Is that the wind, or rotors? In my headset, Ricohn sighs calmly, “you nailed the timing,” he said, “a real pro, now get to the Burrow before the Claim gets to you.”

Our communication channel went dead as I sprinted from the parcel station to a stairwell across the street, leading down to the condemned U-Bahn tracks below the complex. The calm night broke into the roar of descending Claim drones as I disappeared into the darkness—I’ll have to let the Burrow know that their estimate was a bit off, I thought to myself as I followed the tunnels back to the city.