Interlude: Squealer

Squealer luxuriated in the afterglow of a late night celebration with Skidmark at 'counting coup' on another Tinker, even if it was just "Armsmaster Junior". The light breeze across her sweaty, naked body felt good. The box fan which provided the breeze wasn't even plugged in and gave off a faint blue glow where Skidmark had laid down just one layer of force on the blades almost a year ago last summer. Even while stationary, air accelerated off the blades as if they were turning. She had only plugged it in that week it got over 100, but it turned their bedroom into a wind tunnel even on low. The false dawn in the east grew as she triggered armored shutters which doubled as blackout curtains to close and she drifted off to sleep.

It was wake and bake as usual in the early afternoon, better than the hair of the dog that bit you was the craving-crushing first drag of the day. It had been true with cigarettes, and just that much better, in her opinion, when the tabaccy was wacky.

"G'mornin' babe," Alan said as he motioned for Sherrel to pass the pipe.

"I recruited a couple of decent greasemonkeys last night, the usual number of posers, though." Sherrel took back the pipe and inhaled, the illicit pharmaceuticals nicely altered her brain chemistry and she continued, "Oh, hey. That bug Master actually called back. I'll need a couple of grand to throw her way. Got me a present to open later."

Alan exhaled a huge cloud of smoke from his lungs then said, "Hey, it's a cape that's not trying to attack us. Let's be all nice like so she sees what the fuck the Merchants can really do."

He rose from the bed and kicked on a pair of well worn jeans. "I wonder if bug venom would make for a good trip...?"

Sherrel cautioned, "Let's not have a repeat of the banana peel incident, okay hun?"

He snickered at the memory and shrugged on the rest of his clothing then left to tackle the business of the day. Or until something pissed him off enough to arrange an attack in retaliation by the Merchants, that is. Or if he got too blitzed out sampling the latest shipment to do anything useful afterward.

Behind his mask, Skidmark knew everyone thought the Merchants would probably... Not exactly fall apart, but stop functioning if you removed capes like him, Squealer and Mush from the equation. Oh, it would probably get going again, but not for a good long time they would think to themselves, seeing as it's unstructured and probably have no, or very little, paperwork telling of their holdings, money, traders etc. Which means that whoever takes over would have to start over from scratch.

But he smirked since he knew it was all a smokescreen. Look at the shiny distracting capes while the street people picked your metaphorical pocket. Enough junkies just kept circling the drain and yet had enough longevity to never fell all the way into the depths of addiction to keep an institutional memory going. The betting action on Police Department schedules and Protectorate cape patrols was so refined through practice that only Endbringer casualties or big cop fatalities really threw it off. Even then everyone knew the long odds against Armsmaster, one of the original Wards, was a suckers bet.

Otherwise, planned obsolescence was the key. Distribution not going the way it should? Cash flow from a certain neighborhood turned up a little too light on a regular basis? Hook someone else with the skills needed to keep the enterprise going, make 'em train underlings to do their job as they descended deeper into addiction and then there are multiples able to handle the job when they eventually ran themselves into the ground. Funny how folks thought Merchants would grab just anyone. It wasn't just addicting people for kicks, but the right kid of an accountant here or the wife of a long haul trucker there and the administration of the Merchants kept on turning. Delegation via drug addiction; an equilibrium in chaos, but it worked.

Now that Skidmark had left for the day to lean on the appropriate underlings who actually did the amorphous organization behind the Merchants, Sherrel had no more distractions. The imminent Tinker frenzy which tempted her to examine Kid Win's pistol safe under stealth field and reverse engineer whatever she could. Sherrel had started taking drugs to blot out the incessant dreams of building vehicles of aircraft carrier size and larger, only to have a lack of good supplies eternally be her foil and ground her in reality. If only her creations could hold together under the increased strain. It was the story of her life, can't get the quality materials she needs, but can overbuild it to make up for any shortages. Then she'd inevitably run out of whatever she was using as a substitution or need to adjust for the increased mass and have to scale down her ambitions.

Sherrel unlocked a safe and studied Kid Win's hard light pistol. Too bad she couldn't get her hands on that hoverboard, but it just stuck to his back armor like it was nailed there. She disabled the tracker, so at least she could now carry it out of the Stealth Field. The damn thing was harder to crack open than she'd thought. Her mind flooded with technical inspiration as she recognized capacitors there, a step-up transformer, plasma coils, hard light maser focusing array, and recursive attenuation emitters to prevent heat bloom and increase range. With all the efficiencies and miniaturization this thing practically had Armsmaster's fingerprints all over it. IFF interlock for visor targeting. Removable power cell... huh. No locking mechanism or latch to prevent it falling out. Then how did the thing say in there?

For that matter, how did any of the components stay in place? There were no screws or retaining clips as far as she could see. When Sherrel had to pry the casing open, the battery should have just fallen out, but it hadn't. Closer inspection revealed little induction channels engraved on both edges where it snapped into place. She re-examined the hard light pistol and a similar engraved induction network held all the components in place, very few screws or bolts except through insulating elements. That was what really sparked her interest... a low level structural integrity system aligned and locked the electron valences of separate parts to make the whole thing behave as if it were one piece instead of merely a system of modular components. The modularity thing wouldn't work on one of her vehicles, but they way they attached together and became a strong integrated whole would greatly increase the durability of her designs.

She removed a paper thin panel of conductive plastic which bent slightly under its own weight as she held it aloft with tweezers. But placed back where it belonged and it was as rock solid as cast iron. No engraving adorned the panel, so the effect was contiguous through the material itself.

Sherrel grinned wider than she had in ages. She could copy this structural integrity system and use it to offset the ever present materials deficiencies she was forced to overbuild to handle. Multiple assemblies could combine to make a larger vehicle and it would be stronger than the sum of its parts, the integrated joins as robust as the armored panel right next to it. But in order to scale it up and increase power to a level where it was effectively a stiffening force field conducted throughout the vehicle frame would be a massive energy suck. That new helicopter engine might run it for a while, but even with the structural integrity boost to keep the turbine blades from self-shattering the compression of the airflow would have to be enormously increased...

Sherrel's gaze fell on the blue glow of the box fan and she became paralyzed by the possibilities as her power shifted into overdrive.

Author's Note: More inclusion of thoughts from comment threads by etincelle047 - webxro - rollobeast - Jetsmillion, and anyone I forgot to drag and drop here as inspiration to answer the questions of how the Merchants are still a force to be reckoned with in Brockton Bay, even being the lowlifes that they are.