Termite offices were open at all hours, since exterminators worked the oddest of shifts, and wanted to get paid pronto, instead of sitting on kills which could be taken away from them. There were people who thought of camping Termite offices to waylay returning Termites and steal their evidence, and there were a lot of dead people who wound up beside Termite offices and were unceremoniously left for TC's scrupulous curbside cleaners and soylent recyclers, too.

I contributed to the city's fine gak-food when a lowlife walked out from behind a building in front of me, his face half-metal, hulking with a cyberarm visible, and grinning at me like something out of a freak show. "Hey, there, little girl, need some help carrying that?"

The next second Chalice had blown through his chest, the Sun Strike shattering his power core and his heart at the same time, and then turned back to punch directly into the face of the guy rushing in with a remarkably quiet vibro-knife from behind.

They hit the ground about the same time together, and I almost walked on before sighing, setting down my dripping thorax, and reaching down to rip off their bands and their wallets, before heaving them non-too politely into the gutter.

I knew eyes were upon them, and Mr. cyborg here's arm was going to be detached right in public and the neural circuitry torn out of him messily. Within an hour it'd be on the table at a chop doc, ready to be cleaned up and re-used.

And hey, got me some cred sticks and a new/old vibro-knife. I put it in its sheath and trundled along, and nobody tried to stop the bladebelle again.

I wandered up to doors which looked like they could stop an armored truck, brought up my badge id on my Band, and the doors opened resignedly.

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Of course, someone walking in with a giant greasy black spider thorax dripping on their shoulders, as well as smelling like I did, was going to get some attention, regardless of how much the other party had seen.

The short woman with an acid burn across half her face, leaving her with a glossy, mottled patchwork of synthskin where it had been unable to heal properly, looked up at me, flicked knowing, unimpressed eyes at the thing on my shoulder, and glanced at her screen.

"Sama Rantha. This is only your third visit to a station. What are you claiming?"

"The recently posted spideroid a couple miles away." I jerked my head over my shoulder. "Uh, can I claim the two kill-jumpers lying dead in the gutter outside?"

Her screen flickered, and her sour half-smile, because half her face didn't move, didn't change. "No." There were already four people at work stripping them down, a good day's work. "We pay for vermin, not scum."

I had to grin. "So mean!" I sighed. "Oh, I have an upgrade to report on the original bounty. Full nest, queen, four matures, twenty-three young, and egg-sacs. Nineteen total victims remains, I assume they'd only been there for a week or two."

She pushed her glasses back, looked at the back end I had on my shoulder. "In there?"

"Yeah."

"Go to the disposal room in the back. I'll ring the manager to sign off on the upgrade."

"Right!"

There was a screech as two vans drew up outside the doorway. I sauntered across the room as the men inside piled out, and charged inside.

"You! Girl! Hold up!" the guy in the lead snarled, lunging after me.

I turned around, and he came up well short as he saw the golden Claw humming on my hand.

I just looked at him, calculating the credits if I were to kill him and loot him here, and his jaw worked for a moment, before he finally burst out, "That's our claim! You jumped our claim!"

I turned a cold eye to the short woman behind her glass partition. "Miss Harring?" I asked archly.

"Your Claim came in first, and is valid," she reported with deadpan neutrality.

"That was our territory!" the man snarled. "Nobody jumps a claim in our territory!"

I just looked at him. "Are you actually trying to enforce a Regulation Four code violation in front of a government official?" I asked archly.

He blinked at me, his jaw worked, and he looked over at the cold-eyed Miss Harring standing there glaring at him. Regulation Four clearly stated that claims were first-come, first serve, and that any territories set up or divided among agents of the Exterminatus Sanctia were unenforceable, and attempted enforcement of such claims was reasonable cause for use of force.

In short, he had just given me a reason to kill him... or Miss Harring could, if she was of a mind to.

"Uh, uh, uh, no..." he stammered, backtracking himself very quickly.

I nodded at him. "That's too bad. It looks like I'd get a couple thousand creds off you, selling that body armor, nightsight, and tactical las. Looks like you took a sinew fiber upgrade too, huh? Wonder how much those go for at the chop doc." He flushed despite himself, trying to meet my eyes and failing.

I flicked my eyes to meet those of the others standing behind him, one by one. "Just so you know, I now have reasonable cause to believe you are Regulation Four violators. That means if you show up at one of my Claims and do not immediately vacate the premises upon learning that I am there, I have proximate cause to eliminate all of you, and get quite a haul of equipment and vehicles in doing so, so there is significant monetary incentive for me to just butcher you all."

They blinked at the bladebelle with the queen thorax I had carried for three miles over my shoulder, and then remembered what they'd seen at the target site.

"Where's... where's the rest of your team?" the lead guy asked faintly.

"I'm not registered to a team. Have a nice night!" I turned back and headed through the break room/lounge area inside, to the disposal room off to the right.

Sure, I'd never used it, as the giant neo-rats I'd killed the previous two times could be dropped off at public recyclers and compensated on the spot for their value in protein bars. Mmm, gak-food. Buuuut, all Termite offices were modular and identical, prefab government design that saved money and could be replicated again without thought. After all, some of this shit couldn't be shoved down a recycler, or you might introduce mutagens into the mix.

Eating mutant shit, especially phrenic mutant shit, made more mutant shit.

---

There was someone waiting inside the room.

He was a couple inches taller than me, built on the heavy side, with old stimulated muscle acquiring a layer of fat from a sedentary job. His pale brown eyes were a bit on the disturbing side, but complemented his thick brown hair, shortly trimmed mustache, and old white shirt, suspenders, and brown pants equally well.

He had a firearm in a shoulder holster, worn like it had been there since he was born, and by the lines on his face, his frown had been there that long, too.

"You want an upgrade from a bounty." I blinked at his totally flat tone, his voice deep, and just radiating 'I am unimpressed.' I had to smile.

"Yes, My Queen." As he watched, I executed a full formal curtsy, dripping mutant spider thorax on my shoulder and everything, and rose up again under his watchful gaze.

We were known as Termites. Office managers were thus all dubbed Termite Queens, although few would say it to their faces.

Not the slightest tic of a smile or anger. His eyes just said he'd seen it all before, and it had been unamusing then, too.

"A full den; queen, four adults, two dozen young, nineteen victims." I set the thorax down on the long table. "I did a sweep of the surrounding fifty meters of the facility, and found a few more webbed chambers, and one egg sac, but no further presences. However, given the size and number of them, they could not have been in the area long, so they probably migrated from another area, moving here so as not to alarm their prey. My guess would somewhere east of here, judging by the oldest tracks, which all entered through the same second floor window."

As I spoke, I cut open the thorax, and with some wet squelches and a really bad smell, began to lift out the contents.

I lined up the heads of the spideroids by size, the molting stages obvious, waved the cleaver-like forelimbs of the queen at him, then chopped them into the plascrete, where they stood on their own.

He didn't blink, just sitting there watching, ignoring the eye-watering stench, and I continued with the skulls, wrapped in shirts and with what jewelry or electronics might identify them, including the relatively fresh Miss Dru.

"I've got the file of the takedown and quick pass of the surroundings. Where would you like me to send it?"

He just lifted his arm and the Band there; I waved mine at his, and sent the file over. Given I could download visual data directly to it through my hair, and timestamp it, it was as good a proof as you were likely to get, barring someone who could hack Riiiilly well. Mine eyes were cameras, flick flick flick!

He just glanced at his Band, obviously having a neural link to it, and shuffled through the contents of the file at speed, especially the leg-point contact plotting and how it was spread over the factory.

"You can track them." It was a question again, but master of the monotone manager here delivered it in the same voice.

I tilted my head. "Yes, My Queen, I could..." I didn't know his name, so I called him what was appropriate.

He just ignored it. "I can authorize a kill expenditure of targets acquired by tracking if you will pursue them." Stated as a fact, not even an offer, really.

I thought about that. "I will need to get paid first. As you can tell, I'm not at all geared up. I'll also need a Masspack or Disk to carry kill proof on."

He looked over the array of proofs of death, monstrous and human, and then looked down at his Band. Lights flashed and flickered, screens holo'd past, and checkmarks were made.

My own Band dinged with 'You've got Money!' in a cheery note. I opened up my Termite account, and grinned at getting paid. "Can I exchange direct pay for suitable materials for use in my Termite activities?" After all, getting hold of some of that gear was not easy.

"What are you requesting." Again, the period with the question. Truly a master of the monotone.

I tapped up my Band and brought up the holo of the materials request for a Disk, and a standard-issue narrow-form Masspack. "I can empower the Disk myself, but I also need raw material of high quality, uncut, for a psi-crystal. Non-energized diamond or corundum would be best."

His face stayed apathetic as his Band danced, and winked up with a holo of the online Mentat auction house. Multiple uncut diamonds suitable in size for a psi-crystal were there, and were rapidly thrown away as he filtered through them for the 30+ potential, based on clarity.

"Item 26457-a," I said, noting the price. Psi-crystals were a high demand item, but you didn't need a high-quality gem for them, and having them Energized was usually a waste. Better material grade was only needed if you were cutting them for high-end psionic-empowered jewelry, and if you were strong enough to do that, you were strong enough to refine lower quality gems into higher ones. So, the difference in price was the time savings, which was nominal, vs the skill required to actually make use of it, i.e. the demand for the higher Quality Level just wasn't there.

However, if you wanted to upgrade your Psicrystal, you did need a certain level of QL. I could not actually refine the thing, so I needed something good to start with, and I could improve it by cutting it better over time.

I needed QL 35 at the end, so a fine quality level. I didn't have to worry about competition from jewelers, as most gemstone bling jewelry was just forge-grown and psionically useless.

They'd have materials and Masspack here in a day, another day to make the Disk and my psi-crystal. Tracks grow cold...

"I want an hourly wage for the tracking process, My Queen. I'll keep you updated of my progress, and immediately go to bounty and hazard pay if I encounter danger."

"Granted." Totally unfazed. A moment later my mission account updated. I eyed a livid scar mostly concealed by his collar, the smear of a burn under his right eye, wondered about his past, and how he seemed to know everything about being a Termite.

"Then I'll head back right now and start." He didn't even blink as I curtsied again, turned around, and strolled out the door.