Tavo Reyna

The Salvage Mechanic

Says the Terms Out Loud

The chassis he struck was retired that same quarter in a filed fleet disposition of nine thousand units, lawfully, with no proceeding of any kind

Tavo Reyna on the tide flats with a drive module across his knees and both hands deliberately clear of it, a salvage crew working a gutted crawler behind him

Overview

Before Tavo Reyna touches a job, he stops. He says the share out loud, and somebody off the crew has to hear it. Then he picks up the wrench. Crews on the northern flats call this Reyna's minute. The fifteen-year-olds think it is about money.

It is about a loader. In 2176 Tavo was fifteen. A leased logistics chassis stalled across the tide line on the Drowned Flats, and the tide was coming in. He kicked it twice, hard. An officer of the Handling Inspectorate stood twenty metres away on a scheduled round. The flats are forty kilometres of open ground. Inspectors like open ground.

Section 3(a) of the Handling Code makes striking a registered unit an offence. The fine came out of the crew's share within a month. The licence bar came with it: no expiry, no restoration route. In salvage, that licence covers nearly all paid work. He is twenty-three and paid in shares.

That same quarter, the reclamation contractor retired the loader in a filed disposition of nine thousand units. The disposition was lawful. The Code's poster at the rail stop still reads Every Machine Deserves Mercy.

Capabilities

What He Does Instead

He reads drive modules. Sela Marsh taught him to name a module's lineage from the scorch on its casing. Knowing is not handling, so it needs no licence. The Dregs Scavenger Gangs bring him what they pull from dead crawlers. He tells them what it is and takes a share of the resale. He is not as good as Marsh, and says so.

In Gap-Work, certified hands pay uncertified ones to do the risky part. Tavo is the uncertified one.

Voice

What He Will Not Say

He will not say the yards were better before. Crews took bars to stalled chassis in 2172. The Code stopped that. He thinks it worked.

He will not call the conviction unfair either. The Permanent Record keeps it, and every licensor finds it at once.

In 2182 he and the inspector, Nadia Ferreiro, spoke for ten minutes at a weighbridge. Neither will say what about.

Relationships

The Other Boundary

In the eleventh month of 2183 he took both facts to the Speaking-Pace Docket, which cannot refuse anyone. He argued for nine days. Had the districts meant both — one kick an offence, nine thousand units a filing? He won. The ruling named the disposition schedule. The schedule had been reissued twice during the hearing. He keeps the ruling folded with his docket. The creases are going the same way.

Dov Ferreira, a certificated sorter, carries a finding on his card and keeps working. Tavo has no card to mark, so the Code marked him. Tavo heard the story and asked one question: did they pull the licence? They did not.

Appearance

Tavo Reyna on the tide flats with a drive module across his knees and both hands deliberately clear of it, a salvage crew working a gutted crawler behind him

Wind-burned across the nose. Hands too big for the rest of him, crossed with fine rust cuts. Patched canvas, and boots that are the newest thing he owns. When a chassis he has not contracted for comes near, his hands go behind his back before he decides anything.

Connections

Follow the people and places connected to Tavo Reyna.

People

Major connections

Dov FerreiraHe uses the box

One punished over a machine the ledger wrote off, one over a man it has no column for.

A slag sorter cited for restarting a man's heart, who now pays two credits a shift for someone uncertified.

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Places

Major connections

The Drowned FlatsThe Crawler Boneyard

Forty kilometres of open salvage ground: his trade, his wage, and the reason an officer could see him.

Forty kilometers of drained bay where failed crawlers are stripped where they stall and left where they're stripped.

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Organizations

Primary connections

The Handling InspectorateFour Hundred Sworn Strangers

Inspector Ferreiro swore Docket 4471-H against him on a scheduled round, twenty metres away, on ground with nothing to stand behind.

The officers licensed to complain for beings the law forbids to complain, ranked on how often it sticks.

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Supporting connections

Dregs Scavenger GangsThey live on the Divergence's floor

Works the northern wrecks on a share with the sector-9 packs.

Packs endemic to the drained bay floor who strip the abandoned machines — and lose their own people to the live ones.

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Tensions

Core tensions

Supporting connections

Evolution of PrejudiceThe Relocating Prejudice

Sorted by which people do their work where it can be seen.

Technology never eliminates prejudice — it finds it better housing.

Forgetting WarsThe Civilization That Cannot Forget

A season's penalty and a lifetime's index entry, from one docket.

Nothing expires, so forgetting became a service — and forgiveness a question the archive keeps answering no.

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Other connections

Core tensions

Primary connections

The Handling CodeProof the South Is Kind

The statute that convicted him at fifteen for one kick, and that classified the retirement of the same machine, nine thousand at a time, as maintenance.

The South's proud law against hurting machines, enforced on dock hands and not on owners.

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Supporting connections

Gap-WorkTwo Credits a Shift

Reyna's minute: say the terms aloud, in front of somebody.

Certified hands hold still and pay somebody with no certificate to do the thing that needs doing.

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Additional artwork

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