Meridian Security
The Combine's enforcement arm. Most officers have no splice and signed up for a place in the housing queue.
An organ of the Combine
Meridian Security belongs to the Combine, and no player can join it. Its jurisdiction begins the instant a Clarity Systems scanner flags hostile alloy discharge. Everything else belongs to the Municipals, the underfunded constabulary that civilians would rather call.
It holds detention authority over the unregistered, and nobody in it believes they are the villain. The Combine's page has the rest of it.
No further action at this time.
Who signs up
A spliced officer is Board-Sponsored, and among the most-watched people in the building. The reasons that bring the rest are a place in the Habitation Trust's maintenance queue, a shift with an end time, a paid course, and the thought that somebody has to stand between the Row and a scar.
Ask forty officers why they signed and thirty-eight will name a queue.
Water pressure is the most effective recruiter the corp has.
Badge bands
There are no insignia. The first digit of a badge number is the authority band.
| Band | What it may do | How the street reads it |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Carries the handheld. | The kid. |
| 2 | May release, may not detain. | The one you talk to. |
| 3 | May detain. | The one who arrives. |
| 4 | May classify at the scene. | The one who decides. |
| 5 | Signs the shift's file. | The one you complain to, once. |
| 6 | Doctrine. | Adeyemi. |
Nobody says sergeant; they say she's a four.
The shift
A shift starts with muster at 05:20. Much of it is spent on display, standing where the scanners and the uniforms can be seen. Officers call that posture scarecrow. Then comes the walk, and after relief arrives there is unpaid time spent writing the report.
After a discharge the forms carry a four-digit code, and the Recovery and Reconciliation desks take them at their shared counter. Officers have a habit: when they have made a call they would rather not defend, they write that the scanner was slow.
The scanner was slow.
The kit
Deadbolt Munitions supplies the whole uniform: a sidearm, the suppression baton, which is the only thing hub-legal against a person, and plate rated against alloy discharge in a way the manual declines to quantify. The Clarity handheld clipped at the hip is the weapon that matters. The Chrome Dogs carry Deadbolt too, off-manifest and one contract behind.
Bastion Mutual insures officers under the same exclusion it uses to deny Fringe claims, so an officer killed policing the Fringe is not covered either. Officers rent from the Habitation Trust, and the badge discount on a flat is a clause in the lease.
The plate is rated. The boots are not.
Platform licensed. Modification voids the licence, not the platform.
Two voices
On comms officers read procedure. Off comms they talk like neighbours.
Persons in the arcade will disperse. No further action at this time.
Go on, love, they've got you on the list twice already.
Checkpoints
Designed Checkpoints and what the officers say at them are the game's design.
A checkpoint never blocks a player's way. It holds back the civilians around you. What the officer sees and says depends on your standing: the registry's standings are set out with the Combine.
As your fame grows, the same guard works through these lines in order:
Move along.
Move along, please.
Sir — ma'am — move along.
...That's them, isn't it.
Hold. Confirm it's them first. Confirm it properly.
Legend on the plaza. Everybody act normal.
What they say in a fight
Designed These lines are written for the game's design.
Security officers sound disappointed when they fight you.
Discharge logged. That's a form now, and I'm sorry, and it's still a form.
They're carrying our stock. Last year's. Somebody explain that to me one day.
Machine's up. Nobody argue with it, it isn't listening and it never was.
Let them go. Note the direction, not the face — they'll be back for a birthday.
Unfiled. No discharge. No action.
Nobody call it in. ...It's already in.
Postings
At the Coil's Chain Gates the work is easy, and officers say it rots you. At Eastgate in the Wick they say the job is real.
On the Watchtower in Overpass Fields, sweeps are punctual, and the stalls under the road have learned the schedule. At the gate apron to the Deadband the posting ends at the paint, and Security does not go past it.
An officer who wants a case to stay small does the slow walk: they approach slowly enough for a Municipal to take it first. An officer who lets someone go keeps the badge and gets a new posting.
They were very good about it.
Purge or licence
Hale's licence doctrine won in 2090, and Commander Adeyemi's purge doctrine is held under orders. The split reaches the street through the officers' mouths: the same trigger gets two different words from two different units.
Adeyemi's units say 'hold' and mean 'aim.' Hale's units say 'move along' and mean it.
Hold. If we're wrong tonight, this street stops letting us walk down it.
Contact, sector four. Classifying.
Contact. Confirm it's them. Confirm it properly.
How they fight
In the build, street fights run in the Wick only.
Partly built These units are in the Wick's enemy deck in the development build. The reading of the Writ is the game's design.
Meridian Security is one of three enemy pools in the Wick, beside the Chrome Dogs and Bleedthrough, and a smaller one than the Dogs. In the development build every Legend reads as Licensed to the street director, so Security's units work the block as a third party and fight the other two pools. In the design, the worse your standing with the registry, the more of them come for you.
Overpass Fields is Security's ground in the design, but only the Wick has a street director in the build. How heat escalates is covered with the streets.
| Unit | What it is | In a fight |
|---|---|---|
| Peacekeeper | The institution's baseline | Matched plate and perfect symmetry, the opposite of a Dog's mismatched chrome. Peacekeepers come in squads, are slower than a Dog and much harder to stagger. |
| Writ Drone | Drone swarm | A machined wedge with canted ducted rotors and a downward scan lens, flying in swarms. Security always has something in the air. |
| Patrol lanes and suppression nests | Arc-throwing machines holding a lane | Machines of the same class as the ICE called Spitter anchor a patrol lane, or fire from windows. See ICE. |
| Stinger flight | The price of hovering over a checkpoint | Stingers dive, strike once and return to cruise. They never catch a Legend who is boosting, only one who is hovering, which is why hovering over a checkpoint has a price. |
| Surveyor battery | A walking mortar | A spindly four-legged walker under a fat upward mortar tube. It makes an open junction somewhere you cross quickly. |
| Bulwark line | Two walking walls | Two walking walls side by side. In the Wick this is the heaviest thing Security sends. See ICE. |
| Warrant Officer | The person who reads the Writ | At sustained heat against a Blacklisted Legend, a named officer reads the Warrant aloud. The step past that is GAVEL, a machine that serves a writ without reading it. |
Warrant's served, and it's read out because you're entitled to hear it. Please don't run — the thing behind me doesn't read.
A Writ served by a person is a Writ that can be argued with, refused, fled from, survived.