RB arrived at the depot carrying a piece of brass almost as long as his body. He had dragged it through a drain opening and hauled it across two steps, putting a noticeable strain on his bandaged hind leg. He set it at Frank's feet and waited, his ragged ears tilted forward.
The fitting had a double groove and a stamped triangle, and the inner bore had been machined to a tolerance ordinary door hardware didn't require. It belonged to the restricted bypass line behind the banquet wall. Worse, it was the sort of piece that sometimes stayed pressurized even after the main valve was shut.
"Where the hell did you get this?" Frank asked. The fitting was heavy enough to jar RB's injured leg, and a live bypass connection could have hurt them both. His voice came out sharper than he meant it to, but he needed to know whether the pressure line was still intact.
RB shook his head hard enough to scatter grit on Frank's apron, then shifted his weight off the injured leg. He squeaked twice and pointed his snout toward the old service trench.
"From the trench. Did you take it out of the pipe?"
RB squeaked again, sharp and indignant. He flattened one ragged ear, shifted his paws onto the brass and stared at Frank with the full affront of a creature who'd hauled a treasure up two flights only to be interrogated.
Frank turned the fitting over. The sealing edge had a hairline crack, and the threads were packed with mortar dust. It had probably been discarded during the repair, but probably wasn't a classification the dungeon accepted when dealing with expensive property. Nor was Frank prepared to assume that a component from a restricted line was safe to sell, fit, or keep simply because a rat had pulled it from a hole.
He put it in a lidded salvage tray, wrote FOUND IN SERVICE TRENCH on the tag, and asked Moss who had signed for the removed parts during the last construction shift.
RB made a move toward the tray and was stopped by Frank's hand across the lid. RB could have bitten the finger joint blocking the tray. Instead he turned away, tucked his injured leg beneath him, and refused to look at Frank.
STATUS WINDOW
Name
RB (Rat Bastard)
STATS
Shiny Things
31 (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧
Confiscated by Frank
-1 (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻
Collected
+11 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Hidden
7 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Missing Somehow
9 (ಥ_ಥ)
Found
+2 ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Familiar
Frank
"I wasn't accusing you of stealing it," Frank said after a while. "I was asking whether you took it off a pipe that was still working. Those are different things."
RB responded by turning his back altogether. Frank let him. The explanation had come too late to sound like much.
RB'S THOUGHTS
(╬ಠ益ಠ) (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ (ಥ﹏ಥ)
Moss was sorting through the morning reports. "Ketha should have the list. Why?"
Frank showed her the tray. Her face tightened. "If that's from the bypass, it shouldn't be loose where anyone can find it."
"That's what I thought."
"You didn't fit it back into anything, did you?"
"No. RB brought it in."
Moss looked down at the rat. "You have a talent for finding the parts of a problem that nobody's admitted losing."
RB squeaked, accepting the observation as a compliment.
RB'S THOUGHTS
(ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧ (≧▽≦) ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
Frank took the tray to Latch. The property clerk had been trying to reconcile three bins of recovered coins with a visitor complaint about a stolen purse. He had laid the coins out in tidy groups, each beside a handwritten label, and was in no mood for an unidentified fitting worth more than the furniture holding his records.
"Restricted marking," Latch said as soon as he saw it. "Why is that on my counter?"
"Because I want to know if it's salvage."
"Where was it found?"
"Service trench by the banquet return. RB carried it out."
Latch fetched a clean cloth and wrapped the component so he could examine it without spreading grit across his forms. "That's part of a pressure bypass. It belongs to Infrastructure until they release it, and there's a hold on all removed pieces from the fountain failure."
"Can you check whether it's on the list?"
"I can. And if it isn't, I'll have to find out why."
While Latch sent a runner to Construction, Frank checked the hold number on his old hinge requisition. He still needed to know which parts his new salvage clearance actually covered. His newly granted salvage authority wouldn't help him much if every useful thing remained the dungeon's property until the metal wore completely away.
An hour later Ketha arrived, carrying the original removal sheet in one hand and a broken elbow fitting in the other.
"This part?" she asked, looking at the brass in Latch's tray. "I had it bagged for disposal after the temporary loop came out. It was in the collection crate when I signed off."
"Doesn't mean the crate stayed where you left it," Latch said.
Ketha examined the crack, then turned the component to read the stamped triangle. "The seal's gone. Nobody should put it back into service. We sent it out with the rest of the bad fittings."
"Which department owns discarded restricted fittings?" Frank asked.
"The department that had to buy them," Ketha replied.
"Infrastructure," Latch said. "Until a disposal certificate transfers them into salvage."
Ketha looked at the repair list. "I can sign that certificate for the damaged pieces, provided Compliance confirms they can't be reused in the pressure line."
"All of them?" Frank asked.
"All the ones we actually removed and listed. I'm not releasing a pile of mystery fittings into the general bin because somebody has a good eye for brass."
Frank nodded. That was fair enough. He'd seen what happened when the dungeon treated a component's appearance as proof it was fit for a job.
RB climbed onto a low step beneath the counter and sniffed at a box of copper washers. Latch noticed him and moved the box away before the rat could begin his usual investigations.
RB'S THOUGHTS
(ಠ_ಠ) (¬_¬) (╬ಠ益ಠ)
Latch watched RB abandon a copper washer when the box went out of reach. "I keep expecting a requisition for your assistant's own drawer. Does he know we're supposed to account for the contents?"
"He knows what he finds," Frank said. "I'm still teaching him what he can't carry home."
"That's what makes his acquisitions so difficult to process."
By midday Latch had reconciled the transport signatures but not the missing crate. Ketha knew where her crew had left it, Harl had recorded a smaller weight arriving in Stores, and the runner remembered parking the load beside the laundry trench when the usual shelf was full. Frank drew the path on his plan. None of the people involved had actually signed for that last move.
The runner showed them his note, rescued from the wheel of a cart somebody else had borrowed. It had the correct destination but no crate number. Ketha looked from the blank space to the boy's anxious face and made him write down the exact place he had left it. "I'm not asking you to invent a signature," she said. "I want the next worker to find what you moved."
Ketha wanted to know who'd taken it. Frank pointed to the service-trench bend on the floor plan. Any of the supply wagons could have clipped a crate left there; first they needed to find it.
Frank went to the trench with Latch and found the empty crate tipped on its side behind a stack of tiles. Several smaller pieces were still inside. The brass fitting had apparently rolled through an open grille when the crate fell, and RB had found it among the dirt. A broken wooden slat explained how the crate had tipped; a wagon wheel mark showed where someone had clipped it while turning through the passage.
Frank found RB at the edge of the service grille. The rat had been watching the search without offering any more metal. "All right," Frank said. "You didn't take it off a working pipe. I was wrong about that."
The rat squeaked as though he'd been saying that all morning.
"Next time, come get me before you haul something twice your size upstairs. Even if it's worth keeping."
Frank crouched and held out his open hand. RB hesitated, then put one muddy paw against the nearest finger. He held still until RB withdrew his paw. The rat had refused him since morning.
Latch held up a record crystal and recorded an impression of the crate with its broken slat and wagon scuff beside the inventory marks. He then counted the damaged fittings and added their condition to the disposal sheet. The expensive bypass part remained condemned; the released brass could be melted for nonpressure uses, never installed back into a live line.
That still left Frank's inspection rod. His original one was broken, the better model was too highly classified for a simple requisition, and his old hinge hadn't yet received a final release. The only solution that remained inside the rules was a trade from the general salvage pool for a usable component already approved for simple repairs.
Latch checked the pool register. It included a length of sound spring steel salvaged from a damaged cabinet, a worn brass handle that could be reforged, and several small fasteners released after inspection. None would recreate the full sprung-hook tool by itself, but the steel could make a replacement hook for Frank's surviving rod shaft. A specialist would still have to approve the finished tool for certain work; at least Frank could build something suitable for basic inspections without asking to dismantle a wall.
"What can I exchange?" he asked.
Latch studied the list. "You have recovery credit from the clean brass components in the collection crate. Those were on the disposal certificate and don't have restricted markings. If you accept the released fittings as salvage, you can surrender them for an equivalent small-material allowance."
"That's my first actual salvage credit?"
"First under Custodian Grade. Your old contract didn't give you the same standing."
Frank signed the release carefully. Latch placed a numbered tag on the spring steel and handed over a receipt, then stamped the old hinge's paperwork as approved for limited nonstructural use. The hinge itself remained in its tray until the next inspection date, a delay Frank found irritating but no longer mysterious.
Back at the depot Harl examined the spring steel. "That'll make a decent hook if you don't temper it too hard," he said. "You'll need a file with a fine edge."
"Got one."
"Use my vise if yours won't hold the shaft straight. And don't let that rat carry the spring while you're fitting it."
RB was sitting inside Frank's toolbox, cleaning dirt from his whiskers. Frank set a folded rag inside the toolbox so RB could sit comfortably while Harl worked at the vise.
They fitted the spring hook slowly, heating it only as much as required to shape the curve and filing the sharp edge until it wouldn't scratch a pipe. Harl checked the joint where it attached to the rod and advised an extra retaining pin. Frank made the pin from released scrap, tested the tool against a loose elbow fitting, and marked it PERSONAL REPAIR TOOL on the handle so nobody would mistake it for certified pressure equipment.
The retaining pin defeated him twice. The first blank was too soft and bent when he tested the spring; the second had a burred head that caught on the sleeve. Frank threw neither away, leaving both in the scrap tray while he found a third piece of metal with a sounder grain. Harl didn't tell him to hurry, although the shop was due to close. He simply moved the better lamp closer to the vise and went back to mending a torn glove.
"You could make that quicker with the factory jig," Harl said at last.
"Wouldn't be approved on my badge."
"I know. Just wanted you to know there's a quicker way. If they ever let you use it."
Eleven XP appeared for documented recovery and the approved repair, bringing his Rank 1 total to sixty-eight. Frank recorded it beside the materials receipt only after filing another tiny burr from the hook. The tool had taken more care than the ledger could show, and he still wasn't entirely sure whether the finished hook would pass an independent inspection.
When he got back to his room, RB inspected the finished hook, then climbed into the wooden collection box and arranged the blue ribbon over the new salvage tag as though it belonged among his treasures. Frank removed the official tag before the rat could chew it.
"That's the bit that says we're allowed to keep the metal," he explained. "You can have the ribbon."
The repaired rod lay on the table between them. Frank bent the spring gently and felt it return, then placed it where RB could inspect it without hurting himself. The rat nosed the new retaining pin once and, apparently unimpressed with Frank's hard work, went back to arranging his ribbon.