Kira was working her way through purity tests on Goldflower as peasants brought bins of the exotic plant into her little testing room in the back of the packing house. Her work was a slog, calculating chemical content in the nectar. When she had started in the Packing House it was late summer and the heat was oppressive but now at the end of the harvest the nights were cold enough she word a coat in the drafty office. Rumors had been spreading all week about the Archbishops new Proclamation of Ethical Botany and Animal Husbandry, a church edict that would threaten the entire industry of the feif of Bloom and more specifically the contract the Engineers worked on.
When she was called into her Cheif Engineer's offices she expected to find out she would be working longer shift but Cheif Bak sheepishly announced that the Baron had decided to comply with the Proclamation and if there would not be another planting season for botanicals there would be no more contract for a botanical tester. She was blindsided, her skills her impressive but very specialized there wouldn't be a lot of other opportunities for her. The Chief tried to mollify her with the hope that there would be some work for botanists as they change the crop over, maybe a short contract but she knew what agriculture work paid. She returned to her testing room angry looking around at the workplace she had built stacks of bins full of rejected Goldflower and Willowfinger. She stared at the failed crop, it was of poor purity, but someone with skill could extract valuable medicinals from it and they were just going to throw it away.
Ian was asleep in the cargo bay of the shuttle on his 8th day without flying. Even with the harvest in full swing this contract was pretty uneventful. His maintenance tech Dennis hurried into the shuttle and shook him until he pulled up his head to look around blearily "Ian! Haggen wants to see you. Reeves Manager Hanse Haggen managed most of the guilt contracts and was Ian's only real superior and the man was almost completely uninterested in him so long as cargo got where it was going and passengers flew in and out on time. Ian pulled himself out of his hammock and pulled on his good flight suit, running along the work road towards the palace grounds. He met Manager Haggen in his small office in the west wing. Haggen was a Reevey-looking old man with thick glasses and a roman nose. He dressed well but his hair was always poorly kept, his face just a day behind a good clean shave. Haggen sat Ian down with his file open and reviewed his contract, which made the Charioteer sweat bullets. Reeves never reviewed your contract because they wanted to pay you more. Haggen told him that with the adoption of new Church policy they would not require a full-time pilot any longer and while they would keep him on month-to-month for a time they were going to cash out his contract penalty and let him go at the end of the month.
Ian was at a loss for what to do. He walked out of the palace grounds in a daze. He had no other connections on planet and lucked his way into the shuttle pilots position by low-balling the contract. He wouldn't be that lucky twice. Ian took a detour through the crowded market streets and thought about getting some Chunjan and Noodle but money was about to be tight so he decided against it. While he was looking at old pins on a merchant's table, a kid ran through the market followed by a red-robed priest. Ian had seen them in the town square preaching their shame sermons but this was new. The priest caught the boy and peeled back his hooded tunic to unveil his canine features to the gasps of the crowd. The Avesti Priest lectured about the cost of laying with impure blood as he branded the screaming Changed child in front of horrified townsfolk. Ian had had enough of that, he moved along, covering his genetic tattoo. Ian slowed down as he walked past the packing house and saw all of the bins of botanicals with rejected stickers. Those are worth a lot, he though, are they just going to toss them out somewhere?
Kira had bade her time working in her lab, counting bins in the rejection pile thoughtfully. She slid a few of them under her prep table before she turned out the lights and headed back to the engineer's hall at the edge of town. As she passed the shuttle platform the other piece of her plan jogged loosely like the wrong piece of a puzzle fitting in. She could steal all of the nectar and oil she could carry but if she couldn't get it to the agora there would be no payment for it. She had to bring in the Charioteer. He was a loner and probably also going to be out of work soon. Kira was attractive and well-spoken but she was held back from becoming a spy for a reason. She was much better in quick exchanges. She sat up writing something bening to look self-absorbed so the other Engineers would ignore her. Once they had gone to sleep she turned out her desk light and walked out to knock at the shuttle.
Inside of the Shuttle Ian was playing music loudly, no flight schedule had thrown him into a spiral of later and later nights. The rapping at his cargo ramp surprised him and the cute Engineer standing outside made him flash a dumb smile, one she obviously didn't like. He waved her in and offered her a drink from the Baron's courtesy bar. Nobody kept track of what was in there anyhow. Kira got right to the point, laying out a way Ian could get rich quick without anyone catching on. All he had to do was transport her and the product to Avalonia City and to his contacts in the market. Ian didn't really know anyone in The Agora that mattered but he wasn't passing on free firebirds. He let her know that his next flight to the capitol was in 8 days, and just like that details of a simple and productive plan began to fall into place.
Night after night Kira dragged her testing enough that she had to stay late and once the peasants shut the bay doors she got on the extraction machinery and began to work at extracting the valuable nectar and flower meat of the end of the harvest rejects. The poor quality plants made the work difficult for the small gains but long nights made the small increments add quickly. Ian came by in the early morning with ore cans from the mine, filled them with stolen botanical product and stored them under the shuttle platform until he knew how much cargo he was transporting.
With two days until the caper Chief Bak called Kira into his office. He had a bin of botanicals that she rejected to steal on his desk and he looked angry. She reached glanced at the work floor and searched her pockets for something she could use to stab him in the neck if she needed. He told her he had seen fresh Goldflower in the rejected pile and tested it and found it was viable. He frowned and told her she had been pushing herself too hard, that this was the end of the contract and there was nothing to gain from killing herself to meet a deadline hat wasn't going to matter. Kira apologized and assured him she had just tagged the wrong bin and it wouldn't happen again. She smiled as she walked out. She liked Bak, it would be unfortunate if she had to silence him.
On the morning of the launch Muster Sgt Feng rolled up to the shuttle with an Autowagon full of mining ore and had some peasants load it into the shuttle. Ian "balanced the load" making sure to leave plenty of space for smuggling. Kira took the day off and showed up without warning deciding she didn't trust the Charioteer entirely and she was going with him. They discretely loaded their ill-gotten goods onto the shuttle ran pre-flight and had a pleasant flight to the capitol city. On the tarmac they waited for about two hours for a Charioteer merchant that was always late to arrive and sign for the ore canisters, leaving them free to wander the market. Ian lead them to the market hall where merchants bought and sold medicinal. By the time they arrived many of the merchants were packing up for the day. They stopped at a few of the herb merchants to haggle and found two of them who were interested in their canisters of distilled nectar tincture and fluffy air-tight bags of goldflower. With some shrewd bargaining from Ian they turned a week's worth of treachery into 320FB.
With most of the Agora gone dark Kira was eager to get to a weapon shop with her money They hurried through the night streets until they found an open gun broker. Nothing he had in his shop was affordable. While the shopkeeper was busy putting things away for the night a sly looking Scraver introduced himself as Maez and let them know his boss had weapons he'd be willing to make a deal for. Kira was determined to get something to protect herself and if Ian was being honest he felt a bit vulnerable, but didn't like the idea of wandering off with a Scraver. and all these Firebirds. Still despite his better judgement he followed the eager Engineer and their new Scraver friend into the wookworking district into an old reclamation warehouse where Scraver guards stood outside. Kira adjusted the rapier on her hip, ready for a fight. Maez, good to his word, led them upstairs to an office occupied by a fat-cheeked man with the Eye of Ben Hadir tatooed over his eye, Boss Harmon. Harmon had a simple offer. He showed them a fancy modified Ripper autofeed and told them if they ensured that the wife of the Jewler on Pearl Street was killed in a break-in he would let them keep the Rip-Roarer and a writ of licence to carry it, no questions asked. Ian didn't even have time before Kira agreed.
As they moved through the bustling city streets Kira explained that they would go and warm the wife and have the gun and be in the air before the Scravers knew better. Ian seemed doubtful a double-cross would work but Kira seemed oddly informed of how fast word could get back to Boss Harmon, so he acquiesced. At the shop they knocked at the door until the lights came on and a woman came to the door. Kira convinced the jewler's wife they were being chased by thugs and needed help to trick her way in and she held the woman, Nola, at sword-point as they explained that the Skravers were willing to have her killed to get their protection money. They ran into a scrape when Earl the jeweler came down into the shop with a shotgun but they gradually convinced him that if they were assassins he'd have a dead wife. They backed out of the shop, ran back to the furniture factory and collected their gun and writ and hurried back to the shuttle.
The weather going back East was bad but they didn't think it was smart to wait. They took off and powered through the turbulence, landing back in Bloom Barony just before sunrise. Nobody seemed to notice as they sleepily split their Firebirds and readied to go back to their bunks. Ian looked at her, "I'm flying back to Avalonia in 28 days, it may be our last opportunity". Kira smiled, "I'll make sure we're ready".
The following day Ian filed his receipt for the shipment and cleaned the shuttle. Kira showed up at the packing house with a smile and glibly hummed as she ran tests. The deliveries started to stack up and workers complained about the work piling up. This was the peak of the harvest and it was going to be trivial to smuggle a good quantity out. At the end of the long day both Kira and Ian avoided one another, deciding it was better not to be seen together in case anyone grew suspicious of their activity. At night there was a commotion coming from town, firelight across rooves and a plume of smoke rising into the night sky. Ian and Kira saw each other in the street in the crowd of people who came out to see what was going on. One of the warehouses in the Cathedral grounds was engulfed in flames and everyone around was scared of what it could mean.
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