The days drag. It turns out that, when Vaia devotes nearly all her time to
Underhive
, the game doesn't prove as difficult as she remembers.
Thanks to a hint or two from Fonso as well, of course.
Before long, Rebeck Goliath, in the form of an @, stands over the bloody, dismembered corpse of the Smuggler Queen ('Q'). It turns out that there are more levels beyond 100, although there doesn't seem to be much purpose to them, except as places to try out the amazing gear that the Smuggler Queen drops.
For the first time, Vaia gets to retire a character alive. The previous 40 or so Rebecks and Sashes (and occasional Vaia) were not so lucky. She checks out the new character classes, and the other New Game+ elements she's unlocked now. She makes a Space Marine first, of course. And calls her Rebeck. Why not?
It is very enjoyable to bulldoze a couple of dozen levels before even meeting a threat, thanks to starting with power armour, a bolter, amazing stats and a host of other bonuses. Fonso proves to have been quite right though. She walks round the corner, straight into an unexpected lascannon blast, and that run's over. YASD.
She finds Redemptionist runs to be very cathartic. And Spyrers have a really weird skill-set that's interesting and hard to adjust to. But at root, the game is still the same.
Right now, she finds herself reduced to playing as a scav, and it's awful. Maybe that's enough
Underhive
for a while.
Still, she grins, there's still the other hundred or so well-curated games that Fonso keeps on the system! She has no idea what kind of game
Arsenal!
even is.
That's when she gets a message: she's been summoned to see Manfred again.
***
Not in his office though.
Having told Fonso that something's happening, she makes her way to the compound's negotiation hall. Or the 'deal room'. The place usually used for formal business discussions with other clans, and any other business partners.
Why would he want to meet her there?
When she opens the door, she sees the back of somebody else in the room with Manfred. A... tall, blonde woman.
It's Rebeck!
Vaia nearly jumps out of her skin. She runs straight at her, piling into her and throwing her arms around her.
Many people would have been knocked over. Rebeck just staggers a couple of steps.
"Ow." She turns her head. "Hello."
Vaia looks up at her with total adoration. "You didn't side-step!"
"You didn't roar. Cheat."
"You came for me."
"Of course I did, bitch."
Vaia hugs her again, twice as hard.
Manfred loudly interrupts the reunion.
"Vaia! That is quite enough of that behaviour! This woman has come to present a contract of employment, and an offer to buy out your release. You will sit by me and hear her out, as the law requires. Then it will be rejected. It's high time that you accept your role in this clan again."
Vaia doesn't even look at him. She only has eyes for Rebeck.
"Go and sit with him, Vaia," she says.
Vaia starts to obey. It feels so good.
After a couple of steps, she turns round and mouths, 'I love you, Mistress', at Rebeck. And then licks her lips suggestively.
Rebeck grins back at her.
Manfred is wearing his formal body-suit, and the clan sash. He's even got a holstered auto-pistol, and Manfred never wears a gun around the compound. Only now does Vaia see that Rebeck is dressed in a very well-tailored suit. Some off-world style, for certain. She has a sword of some kind with a fancy hilt on her hip.
Manfred may be claiming that this will all be dismissed out-of-hand, but everything else about the situation suggests a serious, formal proceeding.
She sits down where Manfred indicated, on one side of the table that dominates the room.
Then she smiles at him, and says, "I'm leaving here with her today, Manfred." She's never used his first name like that before. "You're not going to be able to stop it. It's over."
Manfred folds his arms, and grits his teeth.
"You will be silent. If at any stage your opinion is requested, it had better be a wiser one than that!"
Then he looks at Rebeck. Up at Rebeck, as she stands towering on the other side of the table. "Let's hear it then, Madame Goliath."
Rebeck has her notes on the table in front of her, but she doesn't need them. She's practised this speech.
"Monsieur van Saar. My employer, Madame Pallas Athena, Representative of Hive Acropolis, Necromunda, to the Council of Deputies of the Federated Republic coterminous with the Imperium of Man--"
That mouthful was one of the simpler, shorter formal forms of the Republic's extremely complicated, and much argued-over in council session, full name.
"--has instructed me to present to your clan-daughter an offer of full-salaried employment. In that connection, the Representative is prepared to pay in full Vaia van Saar's release from her contract with her clan. Upon acceptance, she will retain her status as a member of House Van Saar, but her vocational relationship with her clan will come to an end. You have been provided with the relevant documents in advance of this in-person meeting."
Houses plan children. They grow them in tubes (except for some rare Cawdor throw-backs who still engage in natural pregnancies) for nine months. They raise them and educate them. Feed and clothe them. They do not permit them to depart without a pay-off that reflects that investment, and the potential they see in them.
Even people like Rebeck and Sash, kicked out of their Houses, still find themselves with various residual debts to the clans that raised them that they have to pay off.
However, the Houses do not
own
their people. If the required fee, whose amount may be challenged via tribunal, is met, and the clan member is agreeable, they cannot legally be prevented from leaving.
Rebeck is here to buy Vaia's clan contract out. She's going to be free! Free to belong to...
Manfred's voice interrupts her reverie.
"Madame Goliath, I have reviewed the documents in question. However, I must dispute the validity of the proposal. While presently an exalted post, the office of Representative is... a novelty. It is not yet accounted for under the relevant contractual law. My clan may not be required to automatically accept a representative as a suitable employer for one of its clanspeople."
A clause in the law also exists that requires that such buy-outs only be made by entities of suitable standing. Other Houses, imperial authorities, ennobled aristocrats, and so forth. It is one of the safeguards that are intended to ensure that such clauses are not used for sales to unsavoury combines or individuals as part of a system of quasi-slavery.
Vaia is really impressed by how Rebeck-- how her mistress is coping with this formal situation. She surely can't have done anything like this before, but she appears unflappable.
"To suggest that a delegate to the Council of Deputies, whose official duties involve determining interstellar policy, and writing the law of the Republic, duties that were formerly the province of the High Lords of Terra themselves, is not a fit and proper employer could be deemed an affront to the dignity of the Republic itself."
A veiled threat. Under the recent Coterminous Law, the dignity of the Republic is now legally the same thing as the honour of the (missing, presumed deceased) Emperor. In the Imperium, people who impugned the honour of the Emperor had not met good ends. Some believe that the Republic is to be a break from the Imperium in such matters of dissent, but it is new, and changing rapidly, so that remains to be seen.
"Nonetheless," Manfred says hoarsely, "I would feel compelled to take the matter to tribunal."
"This is obvious obstructionism," says Rebeck. From a case, she produces a stack of further documents. "These are precedent cases where Necromundan representatives, including Representative Pallas, were deemed fit and proper employers by other clans, including member clans of House Van Saar, in analogous circumstances to this case all over the planet since the formation of the Council of Deputies. There can be no doubt what the conclusion of any tribunal would be. My employer will not tolerate a blatant effort at delay."
Manfred does not reach for the papers. "Representative Pallas bought out a release before? I thought she only took in waifs, strays and crooks."
Rebeck ignores it.
Vaia has never heard him be so rude!
"I don't want to sound like a character from a bad holo-vid show here." Rebeck is smiling thinly. "But you should realise that, in my capacity as the Representative's head of security--"
"You got your promotion!" Vaia bursts out. "That's great!"
Rebeck grins at her, but continues. "--as her head of security, I have had the privilege of meeting the wife of the Planetary Governor of Necromunda on a number of occasions when my work takes me to Hive Necromunda." A slight exaggeration. They've been at some of the same cocktail parties. They've been introduced. "So when I say that, if necessary, I am prepared to take this matter to the Governor himself, I am not just using a colourful, well-worn expression."
Necromunda's Planetary Governor, Edwin van Saar, is a legendary figure in his own life-time, especially for the House of his birth, living out a new version of the Necromundan dream. A former gang boss, over a century ago, he had joined the Space Wolf Legion soon after its recruitment rate began to escalate rapidly.
Thirty years ago, he returned to Necromunda as a retired Lieutenant Commander, flush with wealth from investments and prize ships taken. In due course, he became one of the leaders of a compact among the six Great Houses -- Orlock, Goliath, Van Saar, Escher, Delaque and Cawdor -- which resulted in the removal from power of House Helmawr, whose members had held the governorship since time immemorial.
With the Great Houses making a deal to rotate the post of Governor among them, Edwin Van Saar became the first to take that job, for a 20-year term that is now overlapping with the sudden, rapid events of the birth of the Republic.
And among other things, Governor van Saar has always been a strong proponent, within his House, of female emancipation.
Manfred van Saar is just the head of an undistinguished Mid-Hive clan, one of over a thousand Van Saar clans in Hive Acropolis. He doesn't even want his name to reach the ears of the Governor, never mind in a less than flattering context which would seem to go against his policies. Manfred has always thought of himself as wanting the best for his clan's young women! Especially Vaia.
