The Precision of Small Things
DeadThrone playing Megolopolis
Story So Far
Chapter 1
In a converted storage-unit workshop on the forty-third floor of the Vantage District, a technician adjusted a shoebox-sized drone's gyroscopic stabilizer, rerouted its servo wire, and reconnected its power cell until it hummed correctly. The workshop held a three-sheet blueprint above the workbench showing a solved frame, a messy locomotion array, and a blank weapons mount marked with a question mark, with the larger design about forty percent complete.
The technician checked the gig boards on a wrist terminal, dismissed a courier run and data entry job, and focused on a freelance fabrication post labeled MECH-7741 offering 40 credits per task in a licensed-contract format. A district news ticker reported an unconfirmed powered individual in Vantage District and advised residents to remain indoors. With fifty credits, a half-built drone, and blueprint materials they could not afford, the technician packed precision tools into a canvas roll, powered down the drone into its padded case, folded two key blueprint sheets into their jacket, and stepped into the forty-third-floor corridor.
They rode the elevator down through a district showing half-shuttered shops, an empty stopped cable car, and a collapsed elevated walkway two blocks north, and received an urgent MECH-7741 update adding a 65-credit hazard premium and directing them to a sublevel access point near Harwick Plaza for an immediate start. At Harwick Plaza, they found a recently forced hatch under the northeast corner, dropped into a damp amber-lit service corridor, and discovered a disguised military fabrication terminal beside a crate stenciled MECH-7741 / COMPONENT ARRAY / HANDLE WITH CARE. The screen confirmed them as a technician, ordered assembly to begin, and started a countdown at 14:00.
Using a driver from the tool roll, the technician removed four quarter-turn bolts, dragged the crate ten meters, and opened it to find six familiar micro servo parts surrounding a heavier unmarked black component whose heat-dissipation grid was already warm and running through an unfamiliar proprietary connector port. They shouldered the active-warm component and drone case up through the hatch, crossed Harwick Plaza, took the elevator to the residential stack, and locked the workshop door. Back at the workbench, the technician examined the component under the light and traced the setup: the hatch had been pre-forced, the post went live as the walkway collapsed, the countdown had started before contact, and the unlisted component had been nested in the foam. A drone feed on the wrist terminal then showed a figure standing in the alley looking up.
The technician pulled the prototype through the window, killed its running lights, opened a false floor panel, stowed the active-warm component and six servo actuators below, flattened the crate behind wall insulation, and stuffed the empty foam under the workbench. The panel was replaced and the alley figure was gone, but the workshop door had only a weak residential-grade lock. The technician slid a secondary tool rack two centimeters to cover the panel seam, powered the drone for passive monitoring at the door, and waited beside the rack with sightlines to both door and window.
After thirty seconds, a tall hooded man moved silently along the corridor wall, held a small rectangular device with a pale blue blink to the lock panel, clicked the residential lock open, and entered. He scanned the workbench, crouched at the padding under the cables, noticed the crate was gone, drew an amber-lit locator, and began sweeping the room. The technician rushed him from shadow, drove a forearm into his neck, pinned and twisted his wrist, and forced him onto the workbench as both the locator and the signal spoofer fell to the floor.
Under questioning, the man admitted he had set up the job posting, the chaos, the sublevel terminal, and the walkway collapse using a structural charge to clear the district for moving the crate. He said the moved component was not in his projection, refused to identify who "we" referred to, and stated that a zero trigger required an assembled component array that was not yet assembled, with fourteen minutes left on the sublevel countdown. He explained the posting had gone to forty-seven nearby terminals, the technician was third on his filtered list, the first two had not shown, and moving the component proved they understood it. His hood slipped to reveal a scarred, steady face and trained posture, and he glanced at the false-bottom panel. The technician stepped back, put the workbench between them, and apologized; the man tested his wrist, picked up the locator, and showed three amber dots converging through the Harwick Plaza grid toward the residential stack with about four minutes remaining. He warned that his team saw the technician as a hostile asset and that the component was the only thing keeping them useful.
The man keyed the locator twice and spoke into it but received only static. The technician opened the false-bottom panel, set the component on the workbench, and mounted all six actuators around its casing by reading the mounting points until the assembly looked symmetrical and finished. The elevator bank began to move. The technician staged a plausible fabrication scene with blueprints, tools, and the padded drone case. Three spaced knocks sounded at the door, the lock rattled, and a voice ordered the door opened under threat of force.
Two men in matching unmarked jackets entered. The man with a case inspected the assembly and the scarred man confirmed the technician had it running before he arrived. The second man said the technician was in the system now. He set down a flat card with an embedded chip strip and explained the terminal handshake had registered the technician's skill set, biometrics, and workshop location. The technician demanded forty credits and told the men to leave. The second man, identified as Rolan, and the other man, identified as Jarek, described a nameless procurement division that sourced technical talent for unofficial operations working beside or against government and hero groups. Rolan warned that the biometric handshake had already occurred and refusal left the technician with no protection, credits, or explanation if someone else came looking for the component.
The technician asked what the division offered. Rolan promised extra credits and unlicensed fabrication materials; Jarek added workshop protection if someone came for the component. The technician demanded the materials list in writing and an explanation of what the component did, then picked up the card and was accepted into the division. Rolan laid down a second card and warned the work might involve active components, contested locations, and sleepless deadlines, with support available only when the division could provide it. Rolan said the first assignment would arrive within forty-eight hours by encrypted channel, that the card must be read and the frequency memorized, and must not be written down.
After the three men left, the technician set both access cards beside the blueprints, studied the component and six servo actuators, and began sketching a first shape on the blank weapons mount. Over the following hours and through the night, they cross-referenced the blueprint with the materials access card, cleaned up the locomotion array, turned margin notes into measurements, and shaped a rotating folding weapons hardpoint. They ordered a noodle bowl, steamed greens, and a soft egg by delivery, ate while sketching two more anchor points, and continued revising until every section of the blueprint was filled in for the first time in two years.
The technician keyed the division's encrypted channel, reported the component assembled and secured and the blueprint progress logged, and heard Rolan confirm the assembly and authorize the first materials draw on their access code. They filed a requisition for titanium-alloy servo housings, a gyroscopic dampener, and two proprietary power cells. They slept on the floor by the drone case, woke stiff, checked the terminal, confirmed the component's warm stable grid, and continued refining tolerances and folding hardpoint geometry through the night until the full schematic was complete. Rolan confirmed receipt with "Confirmed. Good work." The technician hung up their jacket, checked the city feed, read a Sector 7 fabrication headline twice, and sat with folded arms and closed eyes near sleep beside the completed blueprint.
The delivery arrived at 6:14 the next morning: two crates in the corridor under a slip reading APPROVED / SECTOR 7 MATERIALS DRAW / HANDLE PER SPEC, with no courier visible. The titanium-alloy servo housings fit the actuators as the blueprint specified, the gyroscopic dampener seated into the locomotion array's central cradle with a definitive click, and the proprietary power cells slotted into the frame's twin bays, shifting the component's hum lower and steadier. The technician worked through the morning without stopping and around noon set the last housing in place, torqued it to spec, and stepped back. The core assembly sat on the workbench with frame, locomotion array, and weapons mount all present, the folding hardpoint locked open at forty-five degrees with both anchor points seated, and the component at the center feeding current through the servo network in a clean unbroken loop.
The technician keyed the division's frequency, reported the core unit assembled and functional, and heard Rolan confirm and state that the first assignment would drop in six hours. The line closed. The technician showered, dressed in clean spare clothes, and sat back at the bench beside the humming machine with the completed blueprint pinned above it and the division's channel open and quiet on the terminal, waiting.
Chapter 2
The operative used a wrist terminal to search the city property registry for a ground-floor workspace with high ceilings and low profile, filtered out Harbor, Downtown, and Vantage using the incident map, and called Rolan to report three candidates in Sector 7 outer ring. Rolan told them to send the addresses and said the division would clear the lease. Three street-facing light-industrial units with roll-up doors and five-meter clearance remained available in that row. Rolan then sent the three addresses through an encrypted channel, and a reply identified Unit 7B as a shell-registered sublevel workspace. The operative packed a humming core assembly and a blueprint roll into a padded drone case, locked the workshop, went to Unit 7B, retrieved keys from the landlord's drop box on the building's north side without using their name, and opened the case inside.
In Unit 7B, the operative hung the blueprint by the roll-up door, laid out the core assembly, tools, housings, servo actuators, locomotion cradle, and two power cells, then extended the frame, measured against the blueprint, marked the floor, fitted the locomotion array's outer struts to the core, and cut a scrap shim to seat one bracket. By late afternoon the assembly stood on its own with the core humming and feeding current through the new connections. The operative then tested the welds by pulling a strut and kicking the base bracket, keyed the power cells to thirty percent, and watched the servos cycle as the frame shifted forward and centered itself. Notes designated the padded seat as priority one and thrusters for the next build.
The operative measured from the blueprint note, marked anchor points, fitted the seat brackets, drove the stubborn left bracket home, torqued every bolt, and checked pilot sightlines. The cockpit cavity became structurally sound and ready for the next layer while the locomotion array continued cycling. The wrist terminal then buzzed on the division's encrypted channel with a message from Rolan setting a 72-hour deployment to escort and secure a classified asset through Sector 7, requiring a pilot-ready mech for low-clearance corridors under 4.2 meters. The operative ran the frame and seated-pilot measurements against the sublevel ceiling, judged it tight but workable, and keyed a reply committing to confirm clearance compliance and noise dampening before the window closed.
The operative cut foam from the padded drone case into four pieces with a utility blade and wedged them into the bare cockpit cavity, then traced the folding hardpoint on the blueprint. The cockpit held four foam pads and the hardpoint remained unarmed. The operative then asked Rolan for route length and escort duration, traced a shield-mount point on the forward struts, and received a four-to-six-hour estimate. Rolan said the route remained classified until briefing and told them to stand by. The operative filed the estimate and continued working on forward strut geometry for a shield mount.
With Rolan's stand-by reply unresolved, the operative flattened the shield blueprint, traced the forward strut geometry, circled anchor points, laid out servo actuators, the gyroscopic dampener housing, and spare titanium offcuts, then drilled two clean anchor points, bent and bolted titanium offcuts into a shallow V, repurposed a servo actuator as the pivot hinge, and seated and torqued the bracket onto the forward strut. The bracket held fast but had no emitter face. The operative took fifty credits into the Sector 7 outer ring black market, found a vendor past the maintenance depot, chose an older wider-coverage emitter face with a scorched corner for forty credits, spent the last ten on a compact stun baton, slid the baton into an inner pocket, and returned to Unit 7B.
Inside Unit 7B, the operative seated the emitter face into the bracket housing, rotated it a quarter turn until the alignment pins locked, checked contact points, and confirmed the lock. A power draw test at fifteen percent showed wide pale-blue field coverage with the scorched corner causing no interference. The operative routed the final wire lead, torqued the last bracket bolt, and powered the cells down to standby. The completed mech stood in Unit 7B with the frame upright, locomotion array grounded, cockpit cavity foam-lined, folding hardpoint closed, shield module bracket seated with emitter face dark, and both power cells humming. The operative set a division-frequency notification on the wrist terminal, then slept on the floor beside the padded drone case. Rolan's signal came in and directed the operative to be at the Unit 7B sublevel access point at 0300 for the assignment brief, with asset details and route map to be transmitted on confirmation. The operative acknowledged, ran a final hand-check of every strut, bolt, power cell draw, servo response, shield module alignment, and hardpoint cycle, then sat on an upturned crate to wait with two hours remaining and the stun baton still in their inner pocket.
Chapter 3
In Unit 7B at 0258, the mech and power cells came up from standby, the wrist terminal showed zero credits, and the gear on hand included a shield module, stun baton, and rolled blueprint. At 0300 a floor hatch opened and Rolan sent a route map, having promised extra credits after the job and ordering no questions and immediate movement; his message identified the asset as a person, unarmed and injured. In the amber-lit sublevel corridor below, an injured figure in civilian clothes was found slumped by a junction wall near a fabrication terminal, with a shallow dried cut from the left temple to the jaw and one arm held to the ribs; the figure said they could walk mostly. Because the corridor was too narrow for the mech, the carrier lifted the figure in both arms, left the mech behind, and sent a drone thirty meters ahead to map a clear route to the escort point with no heat signatures or movement. They moved at a steady pace through the sublevel, passing the first junction, taking the left branch on the route map, and turning sideways through a buckled conduit section before reaching a wider straight run. The escort point was a small alcove with a composite hatch marked SECTOR 7 / TRANSIT NODE 4 / AUTHORIZED ACCESS ONLY; the carrier eased the figure against the wall, recalled the drone, and took position before the hatch. Rolan sent a text ordering them to hold position at Node 4 for an inbound handoff contact due in six minutes, and the hatch was not to be opened until the contact identified themselves. The carrier waited between the figure and the hatch, confirmed no heat or movement via drone sweep, and learned the figure's name was Maren. After a coded knock and a terminal message reading Contact at Node 4, Sequence confirmed, Open, the carrier loosened the hex bolt and admitted a courier carrying a medkit and folded stretcher who went straight to Maren; the contact said they were clear to stand down, and Rolan's terminal message read Asset secured, Well done. The carrier watched the contact bandage Maren's jaw cut efficiently, saw the tension leave Maren's shoulders, then picked up the drone, stepped back through the hatch into the wider approach corridor, and let the composite lid swing shut. Walking back through the sublevel past the collapsed pipe section, the junction wall, the fabrication terminal, and the crate stenciled MECH-7741, the carrier followed the route map in reverse to the maintenance hatch above Harwick Plaza, climbed out into the pre-dawn plaza, and stood in the cool open air with the city not yet awake. Reflecting on the job, the carrier identified that the workshop on the forty-third floor was too small due to ceiling clearance and floor space, while Unit 7B had a five-meter clearance and established sublevel access but lacked heavy fabrication equipment, a lift rig, and a proper assembly crane. The next stage of the mech would require thrusters, armor plating, and a real weapons system, all of which required equipment, equipment required credits, and credits required the division. The encrypted channel showed no new messages beyond Rolan's last text, and the carrier concluded the next assignment would come and would bring an opportunity to negotiate with the division for the resources needed to build a mech capable of actual field performance rather than one built on forty credits and improvised parts.
Chapter 4
This chapter is still unfolding...
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