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[Pel]

## **THE LEEDS TRANSACTION**

**CHARACTERS:**

* **DR. BRONNER:** A researcher for the Gaian Doctors, wearing a pinstriped lab coat that highlights the piercing brown of his eyes.
* **RATTY MICK:** A Junker foreman at Trafalgar Base. He wears a grease-stained flight suit and sports a perpetually soot-smudged grin.

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**SETTING:**
**Trafalgar Base, Leeds System. Interior: Mick’s "Office."**
The room is a chaotic cathedral of salvage. Shelves groan under the weight of rusted manifold stabilizers and half-disassembled thruster cores. Outside the reinforced viewport, the Leeds atmosphere is a swirling, toxic soup of sickly greens and industrial browns—a monument to centuries of human excess.

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**[SCENE START]**

**MICK**
(Wiping a wrench with a rag that is blacker than the floor)
"You’re late, Doctor. The toxic scrubbers in Section 4 gave out again. I almost had to charge you a 'clean air' premium just for standing there."

**BRONNER**
(Adjusting his pinstriped lapels, unbothered by the grime)
"The transit from the Taus was... unpredictable, Mick. I had to dodge an Order patrol that was far too interested in my cargo. Besides, quality takes time. "

**MICK**
(Chuckles, a raspy sound like gravel in a blender)
"Quality. Right. You’re the only man in Sirius who buys precision glassware from a scrapyard and calls it a luxury. Most folks just want enough hull plating to survive the week."

**BRONNER**
(Leaning over a desk cluttered with jury-rigged jet prototypes)
"Standard equipment can’t handle the reagents I’m working with. I need the lead-lined borosilicate you salvaged from the old Bretonia Research station. Tell me you found the distillation columns."

**MICK**
(Grins, revealing a gap-toothed smile under a thin moustache)
"Found 'em? I had to fence three stolen engine blocks and a crate of H-fuel just to get the location from a contact in New London. It’s sitting in the back, wrapped in enough insulation to survive a supernova."

**BRONNER**
(Nods, appraising a prototype jet fueled by a tank of murky, reclaimed Leeds propellant)
"Your engineering is as desperate as it is brilliant, Mick. Using the smog as fuel... it’s a poetic way to spit in the face of this system's ruin."

**MICK**
"Waste not, want not, Herr Doctor. Speaking of fuel... did you bring the 'exotics'?"

**BRONNER**
(Reaches into his coat and pulls out a reinforced canister. Inside, a faint, bioluminescent purple glow pulses.)
"Direct from the Omicrons. Harvested from a specimen I tracked near the edge of the nebula. It’s highly concentrated sentient fuel—purer than anything Daumann or the GMG could dream of synthesizing."

**MICK**
(His eyes widen, the grease on his face catching the purple light)
"Calculated risks. I like it. This will keep my prototypes screaming for months."

**BRONNER**
"Then we have a baseline. You keep the fences looking for the rare stuff—spectrometers, centrifuges, anything 'lost' in the war. I’ll keep bringing you the fire from the deep stars."

**MICK**
(Offers a hand, his posture a mix of noble effort and merchant grit)
"To a safer corridor of trade, then. Even if we have to build it out of trash."

**BRONNER**
(Shakes the hand firmly, ignoring the grease)
"Precisely. I believe we’re about to become very well-acquainted with each other’s ambitions."

**[SCENE END]**

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