Pump Crews

The people who keep Long Beach above sea level, which after a century of oil-field subsidence is a job that never stops. They run the injection wells and the vaults under the harbor that connect to the wider tunnel system, know every inch of ground nobody else is allowed near, and have been underpaid for it for thirty years.

Parts, not muscle, are their leverage. Impellers and seal sets for the pumps and boosters that run every stack in the basin come through salvage or the harbor's own stock, and pump crews are the ones who know which yards still have the right ones. They trade that knowledge and those parts for favors rather than cash, because cash is easy to come by and the parts aren't.

What the crew knows#

• They sell knowledge and access before they sell violence, because knowledge and access are worth more. A pump crew would rather trade than fight: which yard has the seal set nobody else can find, which vault connects where, which injection well is a week from failing. That's a choice about what pays, not a lack of teeth.
• Thirty years of bad pay hasn't made them careless. The wells fail and the city floods if the work stops, and they know it better than anyone paying them does.
• Their vaults connect the river system to Terminal Island and the injection wells, which makes them useful to nearly every other cartel working the tunnels and to nobody's enemy in particular.
• A favor owed to a pump crew usually gets called in as parts knowledge, a route, or an introduction, because that's the debt that pays best. It's not the only kind they collect.

Standing with the crew#

Neutral, and easiest of the four cartels to be owed by rather than to owe. A crew that does a pump crew a real favor, the kind that gets somebody a seal set they couldn't otherwise get, has bought goodwill that's rare in this market and cheap to keep.