>Helmet, child miner, quiet spy
The kid huddles in the corner. Oversized helmet tilted forward, concealing his face. Small fingers wrap something in dirty cloth. Notices me watching. Quickly tucks it away.

"D-didn't think you'd come today," he mutters. Eyes scan the marketplace. Always watching. Always counting exits.

I break my nutri-bar in half. I hand it over. He takes it with a nod.

"There's a new mine, Level Gamma," he whispers after sixty seconds of silence. "Less guards. New project."

Most I've heard him speak in weeks.

>Butthole Mary, awkward printer, novice merchant
The massive woman hunches at her usual spot. Fat fingers with warts like small promethium blisters arrange smut-books behind a crate of stolen smoke-sticks.

"Got anything new?" I slide two coins across her makeshift counter.

"Oh! Yes-yes-yes!" Her typical snorting laugh erupts as she fumbles beneath her stall. "Just finished this one, about a hive-worker getting with a lady with some-" voice drops, snorts, gestures two circles in front of her chest, "- really big ones!"

I thumb through pages of crude illustrations. She keeps looking over her shoulder. She's been in The Hole for two months already and she still jumps at everything.

"Family still wanted?" I pocket the book.

"Emperor's teeth, yes." Another nervous snort. Her fingers fiddle with her broken glasses. They got their names and faces on the bounty-boards. Heretics. "Got some real food too now! Not just corpse-starch. Interested?"

>Fourty-Nine, failing servitor
I find him in his usual corner. His mechanical arms dance in rhythmic spasms, he is sorting some rocks with inhuman speed. Then he mixes them. Repeats.

Somewhere in deep in there, his mind is free. He has never tattled on any one of us. He's different.

"Got what you were looking for." I place the jug of Forza where he can see it.

His hairy face twists into something between gratitude and agony. "Th-thanks... calculations indicate... bowel evacuation imminent..." his voice shifts between his natural bass and metallic drone mid-sentence.

The smell hits first. Then the sound. I don't flinch anymore. I help position him over the waste grate while some passing miners pretend to not see anything. I clean him with a rag someone else must've left exactly for this. He can't reach anymore. His rotting half-brain won't let him. For a moment, his vacant eyes meets mine.

"Eighteen percent increase in phosphorous content," he states flatly. He returns to sorting rocks as if nothing happened.

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From Dirt - 40K