Scrap Value

0. Artifact: Salvage Notice (MER)

FREE MERIDIAN CLADES — INDEPENDENT SALVAGE REGISTRY
ENTRY: MER-SV-7H-Δ
SYSTEM: Sector 7-H ("Kharon")
STATUS: Post-Compliance / Low-Fire
PRIORITY: Medium
NOTE: Infrastructure intact beyond expectation. Civilian logistics partially preserved.
RECOMMENDATION: Investigate quietly. Avoid doctrine entanglement.

I

Captain Rysa Quell trusted finished wars more than ongoing ones.

Ongoing wars lied to you. Everyone involved still believed something important might happen, which made them reckless with both people and truth. Finished wars, by contrast, were honest. The winners had already written their reports, the losers had already learned how to keep their heads down, and the universe had moved on—leaving behind useful things.

Scrap. Labor. Gaps.

The Free Meridian Clades lived in those gaps.

The flotilla translated into normal space at the edge of Sector 7-H with engines dialed back to civilian compliance. No tight formations, no sharp vectors. MER ships never arrived looking like they expected trouble; that was an invitation.

Rysa stood on the bridge of the Gantry-class Paid in Full, one boot hooked into a deck brace, fingers wrapped around a dented steel mug. The coffee inside had been reheated twice and tasted like regret.

"System scan's… weird," said Jax, her sensor tech. "I'm not seeing what I usually see after a Hegemony demo."

Rysa raised an eyebrow. "Less wreckage or more?"

"Less everything," Jax said. "Power grid's intact. Comms stable. Civilian traffic actually moving."

Rysa took a slow sip. "Someone upstream showed restraint."

Jax frowned. "That's not like them."

"No," Rysa agreed. "It isn't."

She set the mug down and leaned forward. "Open a trade hail. Old civilian band."

The hail went out—quiet, unassuming, legal enough not to trigger alarms.

The reply came back almost immediately.

Not automated.

Not Concordant.

Human.

Rysa smiled. Finished wars always talked back.

II

The orbital platform was still standing.

That alone made Rysa uneasy.

Hegemony compliance operations were efficient to the point of cruelty. They broke things not because they needed to, but because broken systems were easier to rebuild in the image of doctrine. Intact infrastructure meant hesitation. Or deviation.

The platform's signage had been updated—Concordant fonts, standardized language—but the staff were locals, moving with the slightly stiff posture of people who knew they were being observed.

A dock coordinator met Rysa at the customs gate. Middle-aged, grease under the nails, eyes alert in a way that suggested too many recent changes.

"Captain Quell," he said, reading from a slate. "You are cleared for limited trade and salvage under Civic Continuity Provision—"

Rysa lifted a hand gently. "You don't need to recite."

He froze.

"I'm not Concordant," she said, keeping her voice level. "And I don't report to anyone who cares about your phrasing."

The man swallowed. His shoulders dropped a fraction. "Right," he said. "Sorry."

Rysa glanced at the slate. "Continuity Provision. That's new."

He hesitated. "Some of us were… left."

Left was a dangerous word. It implied intention.

Rysa nodded slowly. "Then let's make sure it stays that way."

III

Kharon planet-side felt like a city pretending not to hurt.

The streets were orderly. Too orderly. Curfews enforced politely, signage crisp, public transport punctual to the minute. The Harmony Offices were busy, their queues long and quiet.

Rysa walked the city herself. MER captains did that—not because it was heroic, but because models lied less when you looked people in the eye.

She bought food from a stall that should have been closed. Paid extra. Listened.

She heard about the Compliance Demonstration in the way people spoke about storms: inevitable, survivable, still frightening. She heard about the square that turned to glass. About the people who were taken afterward.

She heard about the ones who weren't.

A medic spoke of clinics still operating. A teacher mentioned "after lessons." A dockhand joked—too loudly—about manifests that didn't quite add up.

Every conversation circled the same absence.

The poet.

The woman on the balcony.

Removed.

Everyone understood what that meant.

Rysa marked the pattern carefully. Removal without eradication. Fear without collapse.

Someone had pulled a punch.

IV

MER doctrine was simple: don't ask why someone spares something—ask what survives because of it.

Rysa requested a meeting.

Not through the Harmony Office. That would have taken weeks and resulted in a room full of observers.

She requested it through a maintenance channel that shouldn't have been monitored.

The reply came late that night.

A location. A time. No confirmation.

That was confirmation enough.

V

Leina Oros arrived alone.

That told Rysa more than any background file.

They met in a storage hall beneath the transit grid. The place smelled faintly of citrus cleaner and old metal—maintenance territory, ignored by doctrine because it was unglamorous.

Rysa leaned against a crate, posture relaxed, hands visible. Leina stood straight, hands clasped, eyes sharp.

"You're Meridian," Leina said.

"Free," Rysa replied. "We try to keep it that way."

Leina studied her. "What do you want?"

Rysa shrugged. "Trade. Salvage. A reason not to make things worse."

Leina exhaled a humorless laugh. "You can't help us."

"Probably not," Rysa agreed. "But I can help some people avoid becoming examples."

Silence stretched.

Leina's voice dropped. "They took the ones who spoke."

Rysa nodded. "They usually do."

"And they left the rest," Leina continued. "Which is… confusing."

Rysa smiled faintly. "That's the part I'm interested in."

Leina looked away. "I don't know why he did it."

Rysa didn't ask who he was. "Someone who didn't follow the book," she said. "Those are dangerous people."

Leina met her gaze. "Or useful ones."

Rysa inclined her head. "Sometimes both."

VI

The deal took shape slowly.

Not an evacuation—those were loud and attracted attention. Not resistance—that got people killed.

A corridor.

MER would move people sideways, not out. Reassignments. New work. Transfers that looked boring enough to pass audits. No heroics.

In exchange, Kharon would provide what it had: skilled labor, repair crews, quiet cooperation, and a willingness to accept imperfect solutions.

"Scrap value," Rysa said, tapping the crate beside her. "Everyone else writes things off too quickly."

Leina hesitated. "The Hegemony will notice."

Rysa nodded. "Eventually. Everything does."

"And then?"

"Then we adapt," Rysa said. "That's what we do."

Leina considered for a long moment.

Finally, she nodded. "All right."

VII

The corridor did not announce itself.

It grew like a habit.

MER ships docked under civilian codes. Goods flowed in odd quantities. Medical supplies arrived labeled as surplus. Skilled workers left under temporary contracts and never quite returned.

Rysa made sure the paperwork was immaculate. The Hegemony tolerated many things, but it despised sloppiness. Sloppiness invited attention.

The dock coordinator became indispensable. The medic quietly trained replacements. The teacher shifted lessons into informal spaces.

The network breathed.

Rysa learned the Arbiter's name weeks later, from a scrap of overheard conversation and a half-buried report.

Cassian Virex.

She said it once, aloud, in her cabin.

"Careful," she murmured. "Or tired."

She raised her mug in a private toast to someone she would never meet.

VIII

The first KES probes arrived six weeks after compliance.

Rysa noticed them immediately. She always did.

"They're modeling deeper," Jax said. "Higher resolution than before."

"Of course they are," Rysa replied. "Someone doesn't like loose ends."

She adjusted routes. Reduced volume. Increased redundancy. MER had learned long ago that optimization was an adversary's tool; survival favored messier solutions.

KES optimized.

MER adapted.

The corridor narrowed—but did not collapse.

IX

The poet never returned.

The balcony woman did, eventually—changed, quieter, eyes always scanning.

The corridor held.

Not because it was strong.

Because it was useful.

People who stayed fed the city. People who left fed other systems. Trade flowed both ways, never enough to matter to doctrine, always enough to matter to people.

Rysa watched from orbit one evening as Kharon turned beneath her, lights steady, patterns imperfect.

"Worth it?" Jax asked.

Rysa thought of the ones who had been taken. The ones who had stayed. The ones who had left quietly.

"Yeah," she said. "Good scrap."

X

Months later, Rysa received a message routed through three dead channels and one obsolete registry.

No sender.

Just a single line.

Continuity persists.

Rysa smiled.

She deleted the message, drained her mug, and set course for the next system everyone else had already declared finished.

Epilogue Artifact: Ledger Note (MER)

ENTRY: Kharon
PROFIT: Modest
RISK: Acceptable
PEOPLE MOVED: Enough
ASSESSMENT: Keep quiet. Keep going.