He watched the movement on the screen of his Personal Data Display. Two large figures, both with the gleam of metal appearing here and there on their bodies, stood guard in the hallway that ran down the middle of four cells. A third figure smaller, thinner than the others, sat huddled in the corner of one of the cages. Kidnapping, rescue, rendition, whatever you wanted to call it, this wasn’t usually the kind of thing Rogi asked him to take care of but he owed the man, owed him a lot. He’d come a long way since La Croix had hired him as a dockworker a decade ago. Usually Crabber earned his keep pulling container jobs for the transplanted Quebecois. If he asked him to make an exception though, he did.

The chain smoking French Canadian was the union steward of Longshoreman’s Union Chapter 539. It was the strongest in the Pacific Northwest and that made the 29 year old’s regular gig easier than it might normally be. The boys wouldn’t work for anyone else. In the end Rogi had parlayed that into the desk in the manager’s office at the shipping port. And that in turn gave him access to everything. He knew what was in every one of those steel boxes that arrived and where it was going once it left. It made choosing a target a simple matter of finding the low hanging fruit; valuable cargo that would travel through a variety of facilities on a variety of vessels before reaching it’s end destination. From there it was easy.

Gus and the crew he was a part of would be loaded into a dummy container and placed it in the stacks next to the one they wanted to highjack. They’d remove a side panel of the one they were hidden in and Crabber would cut through the wall of it’s neighbor with his industrial water saw. After that it was all about loading and unloading, a task a longshoreman knew only too well. Sacks of sand were put in the second unit to replace the weight, the wall sealed up once more. A signal was sent, and then they’d simply wait. A heavy lifter inevitably arrived a short time later. They were pulled back out of the pile and set down elsewhere, away from the curious. The other box would leave port, follow it’s meandering path, and only weeks later would it’s recipient find out they’d been robbed. Best of all, their route gave them no end of suspects to choose from.

From his position in the shadows within the warehouse, the machinist peered into display once more. The loop was still running on the exterior cameras. The interior ones showed him the guards were where he wanted them, some 30 feet away, right under the lense he had been spying through. The hiss of his water saw sounded when he brought it to life. He activated the keypad buster then pulled a pair of small orbs out of his tool belt, removing the anti-stick wrappers. Moments later the digital combination appeared on the tool attached to the lock. One by one the numbers turned from red to green and the door slid to the side. When the shiny thugs looked at him in surprise and began to angrily approach he threw the two rounds, one at each. They were set to go off on contact and go off they did once they stuck to the torsos of the duo. The advance of the pair abruptly came to a halt. The glow of the cyber eye on the first faded. It didn’t matter how much chrome you had in your body, a small burst EMP would shut you down, at least temporarily.

The light on the overhead camera was also dark. The mechanic was alone in here but he knew the voltage of his grenades wasn’t high enough allow him too much time. It was probable that a re-boot would return motion to pair if they had a restart sequencer. He quickly stepped forward and decapitated the mercenaries to prevent that from occurring. “Watersaws, they never fail,” he muttered as the second skull hit the ground. “That one was all natural but the other one had toys” he then mused inwardly. Crabber tossed his duffle on the floor and stuffed the head with the implants into it. He then used his favourite tool to carve through the seams of the armour each had to see what lay beneath. “Turbolungs,” he exclaimed quietly, “Jackpot.” Efficiently he sliced through the lines connecting the cyberware to the bodies it had been placed in and added them to his haul. A few more cuts tossed three arms in as well. “That’s enough, I don’t have time for more,” he muttered glancing at the PDD on his forearm.

“Stand back,” he warned the suddenly interested prisoner as he approached the cell. Another hiss and the lock on the door was severed. Gus ran his PDD up and down the others body and checked his display once more. There were a couple days of stubble and his suit was tattered but the cybernetics identifiers in his skull matched up. He pulled a small square item on a chain out of his tool belt and handed it to the prisoner. “Put that around your neck if you don’t want your head to explode. Now make yourself useful and grab that,” Gus then growled pointing at the canvas bag, before speaking into the throat mic. “I’ve got him. Coming out.”

It was sometime later when the van pulled up to the machinist’s shop in the deep within the container port. Even at night it was a hive of activity. Stacks of portable metal each going somewhere else after arriving only days earlier, were helped on their way by a row of massive cranes that effortlessly lifted each onto ocean going freighters moored nearby. Heavy lifters some 30 feet tall before extending upwards, mere child’s toys by comparison, buzzed about busily moving others around as needed. “Follow me,” he instructed securing his water saw in it’s harness and picking up his duffle. “Rogi didn’t tell me a lot about you but he told me enough,” the square jawed man spoke over his shoulder as he lead the pair through the side door. “Van Der Nooy, right?”

“Hakim, Hakim Van Der Nooy,” the thin man offered scurrying along behind him.

“Apparently, you’re good with numbers?” he probed walking through the shop,

“I’m on the Financial Oversight Team with the Aquatech Research Institute,” he revealed causing the maritimer to look back at him. In the dimness where he had found him and the darkness of the van he hadn’t noticed. In the light of his current location however, he could see that the man he had freed was definitely of Persian extraction despite his last name.

“Aquatech Research Institute huh?” he repeated leading him further into the building past a couple of his mechanical brethren at work. “Interesting.” And for Crabber it was. There was a time in the machinist’s life where his circumstance was much different than it was currently. Back then he lived on a research platform some 70 miles off the coast with his marine biologist parents and his kid sister studying the Pacific White Side Dolphins. He’d sometimes spend afternoons swimming with them in the enclosure beneath the platform before they were released after they were chipped to track their migration patterns. And then ARI had come along, bought the facility, and defunded it. The life the Farnham family had lived up until then was shattered. His father thought he had legal standing to preserve their lifestyle but when the cybermercs wearing the dark grey of Hanratty Security Solutions had landed in their helicopters, documentation no longer mattered. He made up his mind that day. That would never be him again.

His parents found employment as lecturers at Great Lakes University in New Chicago, taking his sister Fiona with them. It was hardly a substitute but it was the best on offer at the time. Young Angus had too much a love for the sea however and joined the navy. But the discipline required to keep his place with the forces was too much for the somewhat more wild teenager. He was unceremoniously discharged just after his 19^th birthday. Those years weren’t wasted however. His naturally inquisitive mind and practicality had landed him with the mechanics. He had learned much about making certain the gears of nautical war kept turning before his time was up. Nonetheless, a month later he found himself looking for work as a longshoreman and the chain smoking union man Rogitien La Croix was the one who hired him. Within two months he was in the shop with a bench of his own and a tool belt around his waist. And he’d been there ever since. He owed the man, owed him a lot.

“My family,” the financier babbled from behind bringing him out of his memories. “I have a family.”

“Yes, you do,” Crabber answered stopping next to a tub full of clear liquid that had a grill some two feet below the surface. “We’ve got them as well.” He dropped and opened the duffle, then grabbed a long pair of tongs. One by one, he set the cybered up body parts he had harvested into the clear liquid and watched the bubbles rise from each. “This is going to take a bit, Come with me Hakim Van Der Nooy, banker of the overclass.” He led the skinny executive around a corner to a small break room where sat a young woman and two children. Next to them was a massive older, taciturn figure with only a grayish fringe for hair dressed much like he was. He looked up from his bible and fingered the large pipe wrench leaning against his leg ... A cheerful reunion then followed causing the navy reject to turn back inward once more for a moment. But that moment soon passed.