Every day is the same. You blink away the grit that stings your eyes, choke down another lungful of dust and ash, and try to get by however you can. What little food you can afford tastes like stale cigarettes and refrigeration coolant. There’s no point in complaining. The smugglers never lack for customers, and they understand the economics of scarcity.

Can’t even buy your way off-world with a kidney these days. They just grow them in a lab, same as the meat you see the suits eating on the pipe. Real steak. Just like they grew in the tanks back on Earth.

This guy’s been making the rounds, hitting up all the down and outers who can drive metal. Smile that looks like it cost a year’s work to pay for, and practiced too often in a mirror. And eyes that don’t smile at all.

It’s a simple proposition. You want off this rock, he makes it happen. Food, money, and a clean place to sleep. Adrenaline modulators. Hydrostatic shock inhibitors. Vascular blowback dampeners. All the enhancements a mech driver needs to keep fighting beyond the veil of death.

And when you see that poor dumb bastard that signed up for the same thing coming at you, you don’t hesitate. You go in hot and you put that fucker down. Because that’s how it’s done.

Or tomorrow you wake up, blink away the grit that stings your eyes, choke down another lungful of dust and ash, and try to get by however you can.