<div class="floatright">(https://elliquiy.com/elluiki/images/4/43/Ghrreigh.png)</div><strong>Name:</strong>Ghrreigh<br/><strong>Location:</strong>Jone High Port Loading Bay 2B<br/><strong>Station Time:15:40</strong><br/><strong>Tagging: </strong>Max<br/><hr/><br/>Privately owned or not, the docks are far from a quiet place. The low thrum of diverse processors and maintenance systems provides a background noise that overrides all but the loudest sounds unless they're close by.<br/><br/>...Which makes the whirring, lurching clang of a robotic stevedore placing a shipping container near the end of the row noticeable to Max, but not terribly out of place. The automated forklift certainly wouldn't have been audible too much further into the maze of similar stacked pods.<br/><br/>The robot ignores Max. Having ungracefully discharged its load, it rolls back across the yellow-barred line which marks the edge of the private dockside, and then stops right where it had been when she moved past it earlier.<br/><br/>Right where that same shipping pod had been, too. Somebody had programmed the simple bot to move the container across the lines and...just dump it? And whoever did it hadn't bothered to even program the stevedore to make sure that the shifted cargo pod was aligned with the others nearby.<br/><br/>Not subtle at all. Definitely nowhere near as sneaky as the folks Max is looking for. The only thing at all subtle about it is that the loading gates of the container are pointed directly away from the closest security camera and straight into the path she'd been about to use to sneak closer to her goal.<br/><br/>This isn't smuggling; it's stupidity. That, or ridiculous, outrageous overconfidence that more intensive measures are unnecessary.<br/><br/>The pod's loading gate is unlocked, and even as Max stares at it, the locking bars shift and rattle...<br/><br/>Somebody, or something, is inside that box and is about to come out.