Yeah I'm a bent copper...

Yeah I'm a bent copper, but who isn't down here? I wasn't always this way. I spent my rookie years up a few floors, up where the main crime is underhive scum breaking into corpie residences. Rich corpies have plenty of gear that the crack-hoes can sell on for their drugs. If they haven't put in kill-switches so their personal music player only works in their house and within range of their chip. Some slipped in explosives so that when the underhiver tried to turn on something that wasn't theirs, boom! Caught a overhiver doing that once. Wanted corp secrets from a rival corp. Hired someone to break into his rival's house and steal his laptop. Tried booting it up outside his house and office and boom! Blew his hands clean off. His MedEvac bracelet went off and they had a few questions to ask him. We pay a bonus to 'Evac employees who snitch out lawbreakers. He tried bluffing it as one of his own systems blowing up on him, so we busted him on owning explosives first. Yeah, he had a good corporate lawyer, but he'd just blown his hands clean off. There's a limit to what a lawyer can do.

Anyway, one fateful day I got reassigned downstairs. Technically it was a promotion, but going downstairs is never an upwards move. It's not even a sideways move. It's a downwards move. Literally. Especially going as down as I went. Maybe I shouldn't have screwed the bosses' daughter. I didn't know she was the bosses' daughter at the time. It's not exactly a question you ask girls you meet in seedy uphive bars. Yeah, there's the odd seedy bar uphive. Gives the corpies a feel of seediness without actually going downhive. Of course, some go downhive, and want a personal security assistant, but we haven't the time for that. We refered all of them to Titan corp. Okay, one or two took "sick leave" to get a better paycheque slumming it with a corpie. We looked the other way. As long as their EF issued armour wasn't damaged and they didn't waste EF issued bullets we could look the other way. Did it myself once.

Yeah, this corpie wanted to tour certain areas of the underhive. Areas with a lot of red lighting. But he was smart. He wanted protection, and he knew to dress to fit in. I also dressed in common garb, as going around the whore houses with a clear EarthFed officer might scare them away. And my boss would kill me if I got bullets in my EF armour while off sick. So anyway, we made our way down a few levels, to a notorious whore house. They bribed the local police, so it was untouchable. They even bribed them enough to have a fully armed guard there all the time, on permanent loan from the EF. So we made our way in, he paid for his time and left me alone. Big mistake. Long story short, he was found without his kidneys, liver, and toxin extractor. Lucky for me that he paid in advance. In cash.

So I got slammed down a few hundred floors, but made into the right hand man for the boss of the station. I never found out what he did to deserve being sent there, but he was always on the sauce. Maybe he was always on the sauce in his last position. I don't know. We were all too embarrassed to talk about what got us sent down into the underhive. Some poor fools were recruited from the local population. They never knew any better than the underhive. They had a high mortality rate. The local gangs didn't like splitters. We never told them about the high mortality rate, especially not when they were spilling enough info to bust a gang.

At first I was horrified at the dodgy deals going on. People buying their freedom, pledging donations to the "widows and orphans fund", AKA, the arresting officer's backpocket with a kicker to the boss. I nearly reported it to the next station up the chain of command, but when I was told that that's just the way things work down here, and they would gut me if I spilled then I had no choice but to join in. And a very nice living you can make from taking donations. Recently we raided a drugs factory just next to the station. They seemed to know we were coming because they were armed to the teeth. And heavily armoured. In Titan armour. I hate Titan armour. Either it protects the person wearing it, or it cracks. There's just no looting available in it. And it can block armour piercing rounds. Those are our favourites because we can then steal their armour and pass it onto our fences. You got to know a fence if you're taking gear. Anyway, they were resisting arrest, so we had no choice but to shoot them. Shame really, it was a big gang. Plenty of money for the widows and orphans. We walked off with the remaining pharmaceuticals, mostly combat drugs, and took the machines off to the evidence locker. We really should fix the lock on the evidence locker because essential evidence keeps disappearing from there. No, nobody ever sees a thing and they must be firing EMP at the cameras or something becuse they always turn off. Our fence's eyes popped when we came up with the machinery. Apparently this was top-end gear. Real conissuer's stuff. Bloody drug nuts. Why can't people find a legal way to get their kicks?

The first time I took a bribe, I was sweating heavily. I didn't suggest it. If the perp is too dumb to suggest a bribe, then they deserve a night in the cells. Sometimes the officer on duty will hint that a few credits, cash preferably, would make a nice gift to the widows and orphans fund, and that maybe that officer didn't really get a black eye in arresting him. I'd pulled someone on dealing drugs. Apparantly he was well known to my colleagues. He knew the drill. He even walked me through the bribing process, including how much to give to my boss, make sure that he looked the other way to the bribery. I was horrified, I'd never taken a bribe in my life, but if I brought the guy in he'd just bribe the officer looking after the cells and I would get a knife to the gut. Many of my colleagues were ex-gangers after all. So I took the bribe and let him on his way. He tried bribing me in pharmaceuticals, but I hadn't a fence at that time, and I sure as hell wasn't going to take them myself. I felt so dirty afterwards that I had to shower. I was fairly new to the area and so I had to search far and wide for a shower. Eventually I went back to my old area to shower, since I couldn't find any on that floor. I scrubbed and I scrubbed and I scrubbed, but I couldn't get the dirt of corruption off me. It never really left. I still feel dirty to this day, but it has become easier with time. I've abandoned all hope of getting a position in a higer station, so why not tell my story? And anyway, this could be any of hundreds of officer's stories. There are a lot of us in the good old L-B arcology.