Rheyla Tann
Character
Etti IV - Sublevel 6
You could tell everything you needed to know about Etti IV by the smell.
Ozone. Fuel. Metal baked under artificial lights. Down here in the subsurface freight levels, the air had the bite of coolant vapours and the stale tang of old electricity. Every breath tasted like rusted infrastructure and recycled ambition. The city never stopped moving—skylanes thrummed far above, layered in traffic and noise—but none of that sound made it this far down. Only the hum of freight haulers, the hiss of steam vents, and the occasional screech of something mechanical on the edge of breaking.
Above, Etti IV’s skyline gleamed with Corporate Sector wealth. Towering arcs of steel and transparisteel reached toward the sky like monuments to profit. Neon signs pulsed with carefully curated brand colours, advertising pharmaceuticals, weapons, offworld investments, and artificial vacations to places that didn’t exist. Surveillance droids drifted through the upper walkways like digital ghosts—polite, polished, and armed.
But here—down on Sublevel 6, deep beneath the surface—you got the real Etti IV.
Here, the holoboards were dead, graffiti bled under leaking coolant lines, and the walls sweated grime. Industrial loaders wheezed under rusted ceiling fans. Utility panels hung open with exposed wiring. Nobody cleaned. Nobody asked questions. The Corpo execs liked it that way—quiet, invisible, deniable. They shipped everything down here they didn’t want seen: sensitive cargo, illegal stockpiles, debt-skipped merchandise. The only people who worked these docks were indentured contractors, freelance hauliers, or ghosts like her.
And Rheyla liked it just fine.
No guards. No questions. No one who’d remember her face once she was gone.
She crouched beside a dented container, slapped the mag clamps in place, and gave a Loader droid a sharp knock on the chassis. The massive unit chirped once and began to lumber forward, lifting the crate and stomping up the loading ramp of The Scourhawk. It moved with the deliberate speed of a droid that had seen better days—back when its joints weren’t stiff from low-budget maintenance routines.
Behind her, The Scourhawk waited like a beast at rest. Mid-sized, low-slung, patched with salvaged metal and scars. The ship squatted under the arch of the landing bay’s shadowed roof, half-hidden beside a groaning power relay tower. Gunmetal grey skin, olive green panelling, faded clan markings. Its starboard flank still bore the damage from a close call over Kessel—scorch trails fanned out like a starburst. A line of red-orange striping ran beneath the grime—someone else's past ownership, maybe, or just a splash of personality.
The ship's cockpit sat offset to the left, visor-like and cracked on one corner. A panel had been replaced with mismatched transparisteel, darker than the rest. The front landing strut groaned as the weight shifted. She’d probably need to kick it before takeoff. Again.
But it flew. And that was all that mattered.
Rheyla stood, flexed her shoulders, and gave the loading bay a quick scan. Same as before—no personnel, no cameras that weren’t already fried. A few flickering lights overhead bathed the entire place in a pale yellow glow and shifting shadows. The next stack of crates waited silently at the far end of the dock. The job was simple: load, fly, drop off. Get paid.
Just another delivery in a city that didn’t care who you were, as long as you didn’t cost it money.
