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Premise: When Myles Abiel, vampire hunter, follows his latest prey into an office building, he is astounded by what he finds. Siren, a public relations agency, have taken it upon themselves to announce to the world the existence of supernatural creatures. Even worse: they're telling people that they aren't evil.
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‘I’m going to be off work for a few days,’ Ava said. ‘Just ‘til Monday.’
‘Oh?’ I asked. ‘Any particular reason?’
She glanced at me with suspicious eyes for a moment before answering. ‘Yeah, I’m gonna be busy mind my own business.’
I waved my hands in the air in exasperation. ‘I’m just making conversation. Small talk, you know. It’s what colleagues do. “How was your weekend?” “Are you going anywhere nice on holiday?” That kinda stuff.’
‘I don’t take holidays,’ Ava replied.
‘Spain is nice.’
My boss ignored me and went instead to grab her coat.
‘What am I supposed to do while you’re gone?’ I asked, sensing that in a few moments, I wouldn’t be able to.
Ava nodded towards my computer. ‘New case has come in. Should be right up your street.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘It’s a simple kill. I know you’re up to the task.’
My boss headed for the door. As she arrived at the threshold, she turned to me once more.
‘Oh, and Myles?’
‘Yes?’ I replied.
‘Don’t let her say anything to you. OK?’
‘Why not?’
Ava pursed her lips. ‘Just don’t,’ she said, then turned and left me alone in the Siren basement.
This was it, then: the case that Knocker had warned me about. The case that might offer me some insight into the inner workings of Siren. The one I shouldn’t kill.
I opened the latest email in my inbox, and the target’s information appeared on screen. The image showed a young woman, younger than me, perhaps in her early twenties. She had long grey hair, down well below her shoulders, and blue eyes so pale that they seemed to match her hair colour. In bold letters at the top of the file were the words:
Classification: Banshee.
Her name was given as Niamh Adley, who appeared to have worked at Siren as a “data analyst”—whatever the hell that meant—up until yesterday. In the entire file, there wasn’t a single reason given for her “termination”—as the instructions described it.
I stared at the screen a while longer, looking into the eyes of the being I was supposed to kill. Whether I went through with it or not, I seemed to be serving evil creatures. On one hand, if I killed her, I’d be furthering whatever despicable cause Siren was truly up to. On the other, if I didn’t, I’d be taking instructions from whatever the fuck kind of being Knocker was—and, let’s face it, he probably wasn’t anything good.
Deciding to get a little more detail on Banshees—or, better yet, on Niamh Adley specifically—before commencing the hunt, I left the basement and took the elevator towards Siren’s main hub of information: Research and Classification.
​
Agatha was once again alone in the great library that made up her department. I couldn’t help but let a part of me feel jealous that she’d been placed in such an impressive room and I’d been… sent to the basement. I shook my head to rid myself of these thoughts and began ambling over to the woman who was already staring at me with glazed eyes.
‘Myles,’ she said.
‘Agatha,’ I replied.
‘What do you want?’ Her voice was drawn-out, resigned.
‘Banshees,’ I said. ‘What do you know about them?’
She tapped deftly at her computer, bringing up the records for banshees within about two seconds. ‘Alright, here we go...,’ she said. ‘Hate fire. Can be used to kill them. They’re not exactly particularly robust things, though. Anything that’d kill a human would—’
‘No, I’m not looking to kill her,’ I said, and then, realising that I’d potentially be in deep trouble if anyone important heard me say that, added, ‘Well, I am. But that’s not what I’m here for.’
Agatha raised an eyebrow at me, pulled a strand of hair back over her left ear. ‘What are you here for, then?’
‘Are they evil?’ I asked.
My research and classification counterpart laughed as I’d never seen her do before. Where previously her laughs had been malicious, forced, sometimes even used to drive a point home, this was genuine.
‘Myles Abiel wants to know if something’s evil before he kills it? What’s happened to you these past couple of weeks?’
‘Maybe I’m just learning,’ I replied. ‘I thought you’d be happy I was asking questions first rather than later.’
‘Oh, I am, I am,’ she said. ‘I just never thought I’d see the day.’
‘So? Are they?’
‘Evil?’ Agatha replied. ‘I dunno, Myles. Are humans evil?’
I shrugged. ‘Some of them.’
‘There’s your answer.’
I glanced around the room, then scooted closer to Agatha. I lent in towards her a bit closer than I’d like, and whispered, ‘OK. Niamh Adley, then. Is she evil?’
‘I—’ Agatha started, then cut herself off when she saw her boss standing in the corner of the room.
‘Miss King,’ Peter said, his voice high-pitched and haughty. ‘We pay you to work, not to chat with your friends.’
‘We’re not—’ I instinctively began, expecting Agatha to also lend her voice to the “we’re not friends” choir, but trailed off when I realised I was speaking alone.
Peter Ilandor looked at me over the rims of his glasses. ‘And Mr Abiel… I believe Ms Ondieka has left you with an important task to complete? No?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘And that’s—’
‘Move along, now,’ Peter said. ‘Chop, chop!’
I shook my head, made it clear to Agatha that I was unimpressed by shooting her a boorish stare, then turned and left the room.
​
The email I’d received had given me a few addresses: Niamh’s home and some of her usual haunts. It seemed the latter were generally bars—I liked her style—and so, considering it was still mid-afternoon, I chose to head to her home address first.
Niamh Adley lived in a towering apartment block overlooking the Elephant and Castle roundabout. Her building was one of the older ones, ex-council, with the dreary grey exterior of 1960s architecture. All around her block, new builds were cropping up—each even more luxurious than the last, with sleek, glass design ushering in a new age of gentrification for the area.
I leant against one of the building’s pillars as I waited for someone to open the front door. It didn’t take long; in a building with over fifty apartments, there was always going to be someone coming or going.
As an elderly man shuffled through the doors, I approached. He smiled and held the door for me, and for a moment I felt guilty over taking advantage of his good nature. I followed him into the elevator, pressing the button for the ninth floor. The elderly man exited on the third, and I found myself alone but for the gentle whirring of elevator machinery.
When the elevator arrived on my target floor, it dinged a pathetic and warbly noise to signal that the doors were opening once more. I stepped out slowly, keeping an eye on the corners, prepared for the Banshee to strike.
But the hallway was empty. It stretched down the length of the building, a window on each side, through which I could see back out onto the train tracks at Elephant and Castle station.
I paced down the room towards Niamh’s door slowly, taking great care to place my foot on the carpeted floor gently, not making so much as a whisper of noise.
At her door, I placed my ear to the hard wood, listening for…
Noises.
Inside, there were the loud and choppy sounds of someone moving around in a hurry. I knew instantly what it was: the noises of someone packing. The sounds of someone fleeing.
I took a deep breath, then kicked the door in. I didn’t know exactly how dangerous this Niamh Adley was, but I was hoping that the dramatic entry might intimidate her some.
The door opened into a small hallway, another with another open door at the other end leading into a cramped living room. Silhouetted by the light of the sun pouring in through a window at her rear, Niamh Adley stood, frozen, to the spot.
‘No!’ she eventually wailed. ‘I thought… I thought I had more time.’
‘Don’t move,’ I said, forcing an eerie calmness into my voice. ‘We talk first.’
‘I told them! I told Gabe!’ the banshee said.
‘Told them what?’
‘I told them… I don’t know anything!’
I took a step forwards. ‘Then why leave?’
Niamh Adley opened her mouth to speak, but no words came out.
‘Then why leave?’ I repeated.
‘I…’
She wailed again. This time, however, was not like the last. When Niamh opened her mouth, the cries escaped at a volume painful to the ears, one which made the very walls of the building shake, that made me feel sick to my stomach.
I rushed forwards and pulled my hand over her mouth. ‘Nope,’ I said. ‘None of that.’
I could feel Niamh gulp beneath my hand.
‘OK,’ I said. ‘The way I see it, someone’s definitely heard that. And I know that if I heard something like that, I’d be calling the police.’
I caught myself.
‘Well, maybe I wouldn’t, but I know others that would. So what I’m going to do is: I’m going to pull my hand away once more, and then I’m going to answer my questions. And if you don’t… then I’m going to kill you. OK?’
Niamh nodded slowly.
‘Good,’ I said, then carefully released my hand. ‘Tell me what you know.’
‘I don’t—’
‘Not interested,’ I interrupted. ‘Tell me what you do know. And I know there’s something. Knocker is many things, but he’s not a liar.’
Niamh’s eyes softened. ‘You… you’re Knocker’s friend?’
‘I don’t know about “friend”, but… I play crazy golf with him.’
The banshee breathed a sigh of relief. ‘Oh, thank god. Well, not god, it’s not like he’s been doing me any favours recently.’
I shook my head. ‘Look, OK? Knocker said you knew stuff. That you’d be able to tell me what the hell’s going on over at Siren But if you don’t, then my best bet is to kill you and stay in their good books. So, talk, yeah?’
When Niamh opened her mouth, her voice was shaky once more. ‘I… I’m sorry! I don’t know. Not much. And I’m not just saying that, either, I really don’t. But... I know how you can find out.’
‘How?’
Niamh gulped once more. ‘You… you’re aware that you’re the subject of a prophecy?’
‘All too fucking aware, yeah.’
‘Well… that’s it. That’s the pivotal thing. Everything they do… every cog in the Siren machine… it’s all carefully orchestrated. They might say they have noble goals, they might even act the part, but it’s all leading to something, Myles. Something involving you. Something much, much, worse than we can even imagine.’
‘And how do we find out exactly what that is?’ I asked.
Niamh made a conscious sort of eye contact with me. ‘You trust me,’ she said. ‘And you protect me. Tell them I’m dead, that they don’t need to worry about me any more. And then we can work together.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘OK. Say I’m on board with that. And I would be, sure. But how do I know I can trust you?’
‘Myles,’ Niamh Adley said. ‘They’re trying to kill me. I have far more at stake here than you do.’
I considered this for a moment, then nodded. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Fine.’
The banshee smiled, and her eyes turned kind. ‘Thank you, Myles,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
I pointed at the semi-packed bag of luggage on the floor. ‘You can’t take that.’
‘But—’
‘You take that, and they’ll know you escaped. You wanna live or not?’
Niamh nodded. ‘OK. But can I just take one thing?’
I sighed a deep sigh. ‘What is it? A weapon?’
‘Not quite,’ Niamh said, then crouched down and pulled a stuffed teddy bear from her bag, hugging it close to her chest. ‘It’s just Mr Popples.’
Strangely, I found myself smiling. Laughing, even. It must have been infectious because even Niamh joined in to an extent. ‘I think we can get away with that, yes,’ I finally said.
​
We left the apartment and began our journey back to the only place where I both knew she would be safe and where I could keep an eye on her: home.
I pointed to the sofa. ‘It’s a one-bed, so you sleep there tonight. In the morning I’ll go down the corner store and get a blow-up mattress. That OK?’
Niamh smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘A few rules: I don’t have any secrets so you don’t need to worry about sticking your nose in somewhere you don’t belong, but do not touch the weapons. That’s for your own sake as much as anyone else’s.’
The banshee nodded her understanding.
‘I’ll cancel the cleaner because we can’t risk anyone seeing you. While you’re here, you’ll help with the chores, because I work long hours.’
‘Yep, yep,’ Niamh said.
‘And finally: I do all the cooking. I like my kitchenware as it is: in good condition and stored away. Don’t touch.’
‘Are you a good cook, Myles?’ Niamh asked, then her hand shot to her mouth as though she’d asked something she shouldn’t have.
‘I am. If vampire-slaying hadn’t worked out then maybe I’d be doing that.’
‘What’s on the menu tonight?’
‘Are you fussy?’ I asked, then realised I wasn’t supposed to care. ‘Tough shit if you are: I make what I fancy. Tonight is truffle and mushroom risotto. You good with that?’
I realised I was doing it again and again: asking if Niamh was comfortable. It seemed a strange quirk of my personality that someone I was ready to kill only an hour earlier I was now looking after. I initially told myself that I was just trying to keep my main weapon against Siren safe, but then I looked over to her.
Niamh sat on the very edge of the sofa, staring out the window at the clear blue sky, clutching her bear in her arms—the only possession she had left. Tears rolled down her cheeks.
This wasn’t an enemy. This wasn’t an evil being. This was a young woman in a deep, deep, kind of trouble. And Ava had been right about one thing: I couldn’t solve every problem by slaying it.
‘Would you have killed me? Really?’ Niamh asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied, my stomach twisting as I admitted the truth. ‘I would have.’
​
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Continuing
The flight continued along as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Nary a bump or jostle. Hours later, I was playing with the in-flight entertainment system when Major Nak awoke.
I toasted him with a fresh drink and asked if he felt fully functional.
“Doctor?”, he asked, “Have you slept at all?”
“On the flight? Nah.”, I replied, “I slept well last night. Besides, this flight’s been fascinating.”
“Do you always drink like that?” he asks.
“Of course not!”, I replied, indignantly, “Sometimes, I really twist off and tie one on.”
“Seriously?” he asks, shocked.
“Major, I’ll let you I on a little secret.”, I said in confidence, “I’m a member of a certain class of unusual creatures; I’m an ethanol-fueled carbon-based organism. Many other geologists are as well. We tend to be drawn to that particular science.”
He stares at me with a look that is a cross between incredulity and “you fuckin’ with me?”
“You’re not normal…”, was his only reply as he shook his head.
“Not by a long shot!”, I laugh, drain my drink, and signal for another.
After one arrives, Major Nak stumbles to the head. A few minutes later, the annunciator notes that we are on the flight path to Bhavnagar Airport and should be landing in 20 minutes.
Another drink and beer chaser later, we’re buckled into our seats and on final approach. We land light as a feather without a crosswind, a perfect three-point touchdown. We taxi for a bit and stop out on the tarmac, next to a large non-descript gray-colored four-door sedan.
We begin to deplane and I see my luggage being loaded into the sedan already. Before I get off the plane, I am asked for my passport. The steward of the flight stamps it and welcomes me to India.
Off to the sedan and I see it’s larger than most usual 4-door types. It’s a minor limo of sorts, with rear and front-facing seats, like an old London taxi, except one wall is taken up with a fold-out bar.
Oh, I’m going to like this job.
I am instructed to sit in the back. Major Nak is sitting up front, working on papers of some sort.
I am told the travel time to Alang, the place where I’ll be staying, is approximately one to one and a half hours. I am asked to please make myself comfortable and if I desire, there is a humidor on the back forward-facing seat. I am to help myself to that and the bar, and enjoy the ride.
Which I did. The scenery was your bog-standard usual coastal highway sort of stuff, moderately interesting for the first 5 minutes, then it just sort of blurs together.
I sampled the humidor and most of the bottles in the bar while we wound our way south to Alang. It was getting late in the afternoon, so it was decided that I would be taken to the “Raj”, the company’s corporate house for when high-ranking business types, visitors, and guests arrive for more than a single overnight.
Alang is a company town, and that company is the Ship Breaker’s. It’s a fairly common sort of one-industry town; kind of shabby, kind of old, kind of desperate. It’s not horrible like some oil towns in West Siberia, Venezuela, or West Africa; but it’s no Paris, Texas either. There are some green areas, quite a slew of shops selling sea-sailing ship-sourced stuff, and a few residences.
We travel along and I can smell the diesel, dejection, and desperation in the air. This place is an area of low wages, hard work, little to no environmental or HSE controls, and throngs of men wanting to work. This is going to be some kind of experience.
We wheel around a well-planted and manicured corner and arrive at the “Raj”. It is a colonial-era, how can I put it? It’s a fucking mansion. Situated behind security fences on grounds of approximately 4 acres, at least. It’s an Edwardian or Georgian pile some four stories thick. There is a security shack out front and even Major Nak has to show his ID in order to enter.
They take my photo, particulars, and have me sign-in. Looks like I’ll be the only VIP staying here for the duration of my contract. However, I certainly won’t be alone.
There are butlers, cooks, chauffeurs, maids, and other forms of domestic help. And they are all there just to make my stay as pleasant as possible.
We drive into the compound, for the lack of a better term, come to a thick security door where the driver punches in a code and we are allowed to enter the underground parking facility. There are several security vehicles parked down here, a couple of motorcycles that I intend to ask to borrow. Before we went underground, I saw at least two teams of security forces patrolling the grounds with huge Alsatian dogs.
“Is all this security really necessary?” I asked Major Nak.
“Better safe than sorry”, he bewilderingly replies.
“OK”, I reply, “Thanks for the clear-cut answer.”
He smiles and confides that they’ve never had any trouble here, but since it’s where VIPs and corporate shills stay, they make a brave noise to dissuade anyone with evil on their mind. Shipbreaking is big business, with receipts measured annually in the billions of rupees. Yes, I agree, better safe than sorry.
We exit the sedan as two worker bees attend to my luggage. We are lead to an elevator and get in, take a quick ride due up, and exit on the main floor.
“Holy shit!”, I exclaim lowly. “This place is incredible.”
Full late 1800’s glory expressed in dark, thick hand-carved wood, leather, and dripping in opulence. It’s quite the sight, and it takes me a minute to realize that all this pomp and circumstance is being laid out for me. Now it’s Major Nak’s time to smile on my bewilderment. He asks me to walk with him as he needs to ‘introduce me to the staff’.
But first, a young lady appears, in a traditional maid’s outfit, and asks if I require anything.
“Loaded question”, I smile, “But I am a bit dry. If you could rustle me up a drink, I’d be beholden to you.”
She smiles and looks to Major Nak for a translation. He speaks in Hindi and she smiles wider and scurries off.
“What did you tell her?” I ask.
“That you’re American and can’t be expected to speak normal English”, he laughs, “Plus I told her of your favorite drink.”
“Why, thanks Major.”, I smile.
“Anytime, Doctor.”, he replies.
We walk along and the cute maid reappears with my drink. Major Nak is holding off and abstaining for the time being.
We walk along and meet the head of the household, the Majordomo, one Mr. Kanada. We exchange greetings.
“If you require anything, Doctor”, he tells me, “Please let me know. I have read your contract so when I say ‘anything’, that is precisely what is meant.”
“I will do that”, I reply and give him a hearty handshake in return.
Suddenly, a young male individual type appears. He looks very intent and earnest.
“Doctor Rocknocker?” He asks.
“Yes. And you are?”, I reply.
“I am Sanjay. I am your personal assistant while you are here in India.” He smiles back.
“Nice to meet you, Sanjay”, I reply, “What are your qualifications?”
I’m not messing around. I’m going to have a full tour on this job. He appears quite young but does have a good handle on English. At least English that I can understand.
“I hold a Bachelor’s Degree in Geology. I am going for my Master’s next semester, once this virus business is over with. I speak Hindi, Urdu, English, and some Russian. I carry a light, the time, and your favorite vodka. I am 100% at your disposal.” He smiles and hands me an airline-sized miniature of Blest Vodka; a local favorite.
I look at Major Nak, “Oh, I like him. Good choice.”
Sanjay beams. Major Nak smiles as well.
Major Nak continues, “Sanjay here can show you the rest of the house. If you’ll excuse me, I must be off to camp”.
“Most certainly, Major Nak. It’s been a pleasure.” I reply as we shake hands in a very manly fashion.
“I hope to see you before you leave, Doctor. Perhaps at the yards to see your progress. “ he notes.
“I look forward to that, Major.” I smile
He smiles to Sanjay, and does a briskly military about-face and disappears.
“Doctor Rocknocker”, Sanjay continues…
“Sanjay.”, I interrupt, “Call me ‘Rock’, it’ll save everyone a lot of time.”
“Oh, OK. Sure. Doct…um, Rock”, he says, as I smile back. “You must have made a big impression on Major Nak. He hardly talks to anyone he oversees.”
“Oversees?”, I smile, “OK, he seemed harmless enough. Affable chap. Can’t hold his liquor worth a shit though. But you’re not to say I said so. ..”
“Understood, Doc…Rock”, Sanjay smiles, “Let me show you the rest of the house. Let’s go to the basement first. “
“OK, fine. You lead and I’ll follow.” I replied.
The basement was one of wonders. A large heated and chilled pool, a sauna, fairly well kitted out gym, and a game room. The game room held a snooker table, a billiards table, a ping-pong table, and a Ms. PacMan table video game and a Galaga upright game. Vintage. Sweet.
There were cupboards full of ping-pong paddles, ping-pong balls, pool, and snooker cues, as well as the remotes for the sound system and large, flat-screen TV, with uncensored 7-satellite feed, hanging on one wall. There were several comfy chairs strewn around. This would be a nice place to relax after a long day of blowing the living shit out of old rusty boats.
“Nice”, I noted, “But no beer cooler or bar in the rec room?”
Sanjay smiled and motioned me to the elevator.
“Moment.” was all he said. He did speak a bit of Russian.
We go up two floors and exit the elevator. One side of this floor was taken up with a huge library, complete with a huge antique harp, a very shiny black Steinway grand piano, hundreds if not thousands of books, and several large leather chairs and a couple of leather couches and ashtrays strewn about.
Another place to waste a modicum of time.
Then Sanjay points me north to the other side of the floor.
There was a huge bar, fully stocked, with about a dozen barstools in front. There were at least a dozen taps of Indian, British, and Indonesian beer. There were hundreds of bottles of non-repeating liquor. There was a large ice machine humming away in the corner, full bar glass set-up, wash station, and dishwasher under one corner of the bar. There were several under-bar coolers full of carbonated drinks, juices, and other potential mixers.
“We have two dedicated barmen at your disposal”, Sanjay smiled, “Or you can go ahead and use it self-serve if you desire.”
I look at the empty glass in my hand and decide we’ll go ahead and inaugurate it now and not bother to call the barmen.
Sanjay, eager to please, runs behind the bar and asks what I’d like.
“Well, since we’re in India”, I say, rubbing my chin, “Let’s start out with a nice IPA.”
“Certainly”, he replies, “Light or dark?” as they had two on tap.
“Oh, dark, I think.”, I said, “And since you’re back there, why not grab yourself one and get me 100 milliliters of the finest chilled house vodka.”
“Yes, Doctor!”, he smiled and fetched our drinks.
Sanjay and I spent an hour or two at the bar getting to know each other. Several times, house employees rolled through to see if I needed any dinner or a cigar or…
“Good lord”, I say to Sanjay after the fourth one in an hour was dismissed, “They keep this up and I might take them up on something off the menu.”
“I can arrange that”, Sanjay smirked.
“Thank you, no. That was a joke.”, I told him, “I’ve been married 39 years to the finest partner and deadliest crack shot this side of Annie Oakley. Besides, I have no desire for any of that sort of extracurricular shenanigans. It was a joke. Seriously.”
“Understood, Rock”, Sanjay said. “I’m not married, but I am engaged. I understand fully.”
“Good and congratulations”, I replied, “No need to get off on the wrong foot or anything.”
“Or anything?” Sanjay smirks and raises an eyebrow.
“Keep that up and I might just keep you on as my assistant.” I said, “You will need a good sense of humor before this all over.”
Sanjay quaffed his beer and smiled broadly.
After I had him get me another beer and asked for my room as I was needing a cigar. He pulled out a phone, dialed a few numbers, and Hindi’ed directly into the device for a minute.
“No worries, Rock”, he said, “One will be here directly.”
“Fine”, I replied, “Now Sanjay, this job is not all skittles and beer, if you take my meaning.”
“Oh, look. Your cigars have arrived.” He says, totally distracting me.
An ancient butler pushing a silver tea cart appears. On the cart is a very large humidor full of many different shades, shapes, and sizes of cigars.
I went to grab one when the butler stops me and tells me to make a selection.
“Oh, oh, oh! Very nice.” I say and point to a likely looking Oscuro Churchill.
He takes the cigar, carefully wipes it with fine cheesecloth, and asks what type of cut I like; V-cut, punch, or slant.
“Oh, V-cut, if you please,” I reply.
He V-cuts my cigar and with his with gloved hands, holds it out for me to inspect.
“Lovely,” I reply. I jam the cigar in my yap and start digging around the pockets of my field vest for my lighter.
He taps me on the shoulder and extends a lit piece of cedar bark. The ‘traditional’ British way of lighting a cigar.
After all that, he tells me his direct number is 214 and that if I need anything more to have one of the staff ring him. With that, he turns heel and exits without another word.
“Well”, I smirk, “That was weird.”
Sanjay just smiles and tells me to get used to it. They will do everything here for you if you allow them.
“Yeah, I’ll bet.”, I say, get up and pour myself a new beer. A ‘Tiger’ this time. I ask Sanjay if he’s ready for a refill and he tells me he’s good.
I grab another 100 milliliters of chilled Old Fornicator Vodka and sit back down at the bar.
“Now, where were we? Ah, yes. Can you be a hard ass, Sanjay? Can you tell your peers ‘no’?” I ask.
“Will I have to?” he asks.
“Yep.” I say, “Damn, this is a really fine cigar. But working with me, you best develop a thick skin and a hard head.”
“Oh, OK”, he says, obviously confused.
“Right.” I say, “Serious talk time. I’m the boss on this project. What I says, goes. No questions. Period. You’re my de facto second in command. We are here to teach 24 of your comrades how to blast boats to smithereens and how to train the next set of like-minded individuals. This is a step up for them, every one. It means more money, more security, more prestige. I need only 24 and from what I hear, there’s what, up to 30,000 workers here? Guess what? That means a lot that are going to go home disappointed. They might hold that against me and you, Me? I don’t give the tiniest shit. But I’m going to leave after a couple of weeks. You’re here for the duration and going to take over my spot. Some of these characters might get shirty and decide to tap dance on your head if you tell them no. You have to be ready for that. Can you deal with that situation?”
Sanjay just sits there and looks intently at the finely polished hardwood floor.
“This is old hat for me,” I tell him. “I’ve had to tell some good friends that they weren’t picked for the job or contract. It’s business. And some have been less than adult about how they handled the rejection. There have been threats, usually hollow and empty. There have been altercations, usually unimportant. There have been fights with bloodied noses, broken arms, and police reports. But in the end, I had to stick to my guns. You ready for that, young Mr. Sanjay?”
“Thank you, Doctor Rock…”, he replies, “I never thought about it that way. But, yes, I think I can handle that situation if it arises. It’s business like you say and I am able to defend myself.”
“That’s good”, I reply, “At least physically. What about mentally? You might have to tell a good friend to get stuffed; in a nice manner, of course.”
“I think so.”, he replied, “I’ll follow your lead over the next couple of weeks. Call it ‘on the job training’.”
“Mr. Sanjay”, I say, “I do think you’ll do.”
We talk a bit more and I decide that after one more round of drinks, I’ll call 214, grab a couple of cigars and have Sanjay show me my room.
On the way down the long hall, Sanjay is smiling in a weird sort of way.
“OK, give,” I say.
“No, no yet. Wait until you see your room.” He snickers.
Now I’m worried.
We come to a large, polished, and engraved oak door. He produces a key from out of the depths of a Stephan King novel, twists it in the lock, and the door silently swings open.
“Holy shit!”, I exhale.
The room is enormous.
En suite bathroom where one could hold an Olympics meet in the Jacuzzi. American Standard bog, flanked on either side by bidets. Twin sinks, a shower with tropical, right out of the ceiling rainfall, or the new waterfall shower design. Or both. With steam function. Not boiling water, but live steam like any sauna.
“I could get to like this”, I mutter.
The room is fully carpeted with tapestries on the walls. A large, Victorian oak desk is over on one side, with a very nice dual-screen computer work station at my disposal. There is a note with my login and password in the leather-bound legal pad on the ergonomic computer chair before it. There is a huge flat-screen TV over on the other wall with the same 7-satellite feed as in the rec room.
“Whoa!” I say, “Data overload.”
My luggage is next to the built-in wardrobes. One houses a bespoke mini-bar.
“The maids would have put your clothes away”, Sanjay explains, “But they were locked. I can call them if you’d like.”
“Sure”, I reply, “Why not?” I see two of the aluminum cases that I marked “Careful: Scientific Instruments” are next to the computer workstation.
Two maids presently arrive and I unlock my luggage. They set to putting it away and are tsking that it needs to be pressed first.
“Perhaps later”, I said, “It’s been a day and I’m a bit knackered.”
“I will turn down your bed then”, one of the nubiles remarks.
Sanjay is now smiling way, way too broadly. I go through the door to the master bedroom.
“Holy shit squared,” I say.
There is a huge four-poster Edwardian? Georgian? bed. The carved wooden uprights are the diameter of telephone poles. I’m a pretty large person, but on this bed, I’ll need a personal transponder as its large enough for me to get lost. Easily 3x4 meters and the mattress is nice and firm, just the way I like it.
On top of the bed are blankets, a comforter, a quilt, an afghan, and more feather-stuffed keep-warms than I ever saw outside of Siberia. Under those, I’d sweat away to nothingness; but it looks so damned comfy.
The bed properly turned back, I thank the maid and make the noises like I want her to get the fuck out so I can get horizontal.
Sanjay notes that and has her and the other maid exit. All my clothes are put away, even my field vest I discarded when we walked into the room is tutted over and hung up.
“So, Rock?” he laughs, “What do you think?”
“I think if I didn’t have a serious job to do, I’d come down with some damned virus that would require me to stay home and socially distance myself.” I laugh.
“Sorry, but work begins tomorrow. What time would you like for me to ring you?” he asks.
“Right”, I said, “About that. I want to be on the job at 0600. Not leaving here at 0600, not wheels up at 0600. I want to be ready to select my 24 candidates beginning at 0600 tomorrow. I leave that to you. When do we need to leave, so when do I need to be rung up?”
“I’ll call you at… 0430…?” he cautiously says.
“Fine.” I reply, “Make certain that the notices I sent were posted. I want my 100 applicants ready and on-site spot-on 0600. I’ll need a large black coffee in a travel mug. Green?”
“Green?” he asks.
“My shorthand for ‘are we in agreement?’” I say.
“Oh, yes. Rock. Very green. See you in the morning.” He says, shakes my hand and departs; but not before leaving me the room key.
I lock the door and strip down. A steamy shower and a couple of very well-appointed in-room mini-bar bourbons later, I’m going over Email. Seeing nothing that can’t wait until the next day or two, I flop into bed and immediately become a missing person.
The phone cheerily chirps at me at precisely 0430. If I had my Casull, that phone would be in another dimension. As it is, I drag my carcass to vertical, grab the phone, say “Thanks” and hang up.
A quick shower, a couple of shower sunrisers, and I’m feeling much better. Damn near human. I gather the day’s necessities, don my vest, and Stetson over my usual field outfit and toddle downstairs. I’m not 5 steps out of the room when the maids arrive with the intent of committing premeditated neatness in my room.
I wave to them, and gargle an obligatory “Morning”, and head down to the main floor.
I am greeted by Sanjay, who is holding a large metal thermal coffee travel mug for me.
“You are a gentleman, scholar, and life-saver”, I say to him.
He beams in the way-too-early morning light.
“Breakfast, Doctor?” he asks.
“Just coffee. I don’t want to eat too much these first few days. ‘Delhi belly’ and all that. Too much work to do.” I remonstrate.
“Understood.” Sanjay complies, “Cigar?”
“Yes, it is,” I say.
“I have brought along a box of them for you today,” he adds, smiling.
“Outstanding”, I say and sip my coffee. Surprisingly, it is of the Greenland variety.
“The driver is waiting. Anytime you are ready, Rock”, Sanjay informs me.
“Give me a few minutes,” I say as I review the morning edition of the Times of India. I was actually waiting for the fine coffee to take effect.
A few minutes later, we’re headed down the coast to the beach; right where the rubber hits the road. Or rather, the ships scrape the sand.
Alang is the biggest ship breaking facility in the world. There are more than 400 ship breaking platforms here. They break about 1,500 ships every year. At any time about 300 people can be working on a single ship. The total workforce here is 40,000 plus. There are complaints about the treatment of workers and their service conditions. Ships are broken down crudely by hand using the minimum machinery; typically oxygen lances and welding torches.
It’s a horror show. Huge, rusty, jagged pieces of ships everywhere. Puddles of every color, containing noxious chemicals of every description. Lead, organotins such as tributyltin in anti-fouling paints, polychlorinated organic compounds, by-products of combustion such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, dioxins, and furans are found in ships and pose a great danger to the environment and personnel.
There is a singular lack of PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) here. Thatched, woven palm-frond ‘hardhats’. Steel-toed sandals; if you grasp the irony. No coveralls, gloves nor much else. Ragged shorts, torn shirts, and car-tire soled sandals are the uniforms here.
Well, if there’s one thing I can do, it’s change this.
We wheel into an area containing a huge tent-like structure, a couple of Quonset huts, and a smattering of non-descript outbuildings. The place is swarming with workers. All male, all young, and all looking to be part of the chosen 24 today.
We park and I’m shown into the large tent-like structure. At the head of the tent are a table, a PA system microphone, and a desk where we can sit down and tally the day’s take.
“OK, Sanjay”, I say, “Time to work. Remember I sent ahead the qualifications I’m looking for in trainees?”
I had cabled ahead for them to pre-select 50 candidates, 175-225 pounds, 5’ 9” to 6’ 3”, preferably unmarried bachelors, which tend to be the best kind. They must be English reading and speaking. I need the larger guys to handle the physical demands of the job. They need to be within the height requirements as those are the heights my pre-ordered coveralls will fit. They must be fluent in spoken and written English as I don’t have time to learn Hindi.
There were easily 5 times that number milling about just outside.
“OK, here’s the deal”, I said, “Here are 100 numbered chits. You will pass them out to the first 100 gents outside that pass initial muster. That is their ticket inside. Pucker time. Think you can handle the throng?”
“I’ve got this, Rock”, he says, with a stalwart look.
“OK, but if you need help, you know where I am,” I reply.
I busy myself constructing a 10x10 grid on a sheet of paper. I number it 1 to 100. This will keep tabs on our candidates.
Behind me, on the wall, are 24 brass tokens, ‘chits’, about the size of a US$1 Silver Bullion coin, about 1.5 inches in diameter, numbered 1 to 24. They have a flat space for a name to be engraved upon. These are the coveted chits that enable a person to graduate out of the swill and into the ranks of blasterdom and eventual teaching.
Right now, they are the most coveted possession within hundreds of miles.
One by one, pre-selected individuals are filtering in and finding seats. Sanjay is doing quite the job, as so far, they all fill the bill nicely. Whether they pass or fail muster will be determined in the next couple of hours.
I sip my coffee and smoke my cigars. The room swells by the numbers. Soon, all the seats are taken and Sanjay rejoins me at the head podium.
“Good job, Mr. Sanjay”, I say, shaking his hand. “Let’s take a couple of minutes and then we shall begin, OK?”
He agrees. I head to the loo and he takes my coffee for a refill. We reappear a few minutes later and I grab the microphone for the PA system.
I key the mike, “Hello! Please, everyone, quiet down and pay attention!”
Very few replies much less capitulation.
Sanjay stands and shouts something in Hindi.
The room goes deathly silent.
“Remind me to ask you to teach me that,” I say and return to the job at hand.
“Gentlemen. Welcome to the selection board for Blaster’s Assistants. If you are not here for that particular position, the exit’s to the rear.”
No one moves, except to shift to pay me more attention.
“OK. Great. I am Dr. Rocknocker, the headmaster of this special education class. I am the boss. The hookin’ bull. The head cheese. I am the Maharaja of this project. What I says, goes. I am an American, I am a geologist, and I don’t tolerate tomfoolery or bullshit from anyone. I say jump, you say ‘how high’? I say shit and you ask ‘what color’? You will follow my instructions implicitly, without question. Are we in agreement?” I ask.
There are a few feeble “Yeah’s”, and “OK’s” that drift up out of the crowd.
“Gentlemen. I am an American, as I said, and I’m old, weary, and slightly hard of hearing. I don’t expect you to use your indoor voice around me. You answer so I can hear you, loud and clear. Understand?”
“Yes.” Comes a few half-hearted attempts.
“GOD DAMN IT! I’m the fuckin’ deaf one. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME?!?”
“Yes, Doctor!” came the reply.
“What? I CAN’T HEAR YOU!”
“YES, DOCTOR!” came the thunderous response.
“Outstanding,” I reply.
There were some snickers and chuckles in the crowd. It was time to toughen up the crowd and see if I can thin the ranks early.
“Gentlemen! Your attention.” I roar.
I had their attention.
I hold up my gloved left hand. I rip off the glove and show everyone my physical deformity. There were gasps, groans, and a couple of less hearty souls bolting for the door.
“I received this in a Russian rig accident years ago. It was not from a blasting accident. I’ve never had one and don’t intend on starting now. If this bothers you, leave. This is me and I’m the instructor.” I announced. “That fact will not change.”
Physical deformities here really scare some folks. I figured I’d get this out of the way straight off, and that would be one less thing to worry about. We lost three with that revelation.
“Groovy,” I said as I replace my glove.
“Now, we will begin the final selection. You all have your numbered tokens, one through a hundred. If you thought because you had a low number, you’d be first, forget it. I have a random number generator application on my phone, set from one to one hundred. And the first number is number…Lucky 13! Lucky 13. Come forward, front and center, and be recognized.” I say.
Sanjay is seated next to me with our book of the job. He’ll be handling secretarial duties whilst I do the interviewing.
“Your token?” I ask.
The young gent hands me lucky number 13.
“Fine.” I say, “Name?”
Name go in book.
“Age? Company number? Years with the company? Married? If so, children?”
All data goes into the book in the proper zones.
I ask a few questions about the job, to make sure they know what they’re in for.
“How’s your English?” I ask.
“I speaks it very goodly”, was the reply.
“Marvelous.”
I pick up this month’s Journal of Explosives Engineering monthly and hand it to him.
“Page 22. Read the first paragraph, please.” I instruct him.
He fumbles with the magazine, counts singly to page 22, and tries to read some random, but not first, paragraph.
I retrieve the magazine, thank him, and tell him we’ll be in touch.
Everyone and I mean everyone, chosen or not, will be personally told of their results.
I mean, it’s only right and fair. It’s the way I’ve done business for 40 years and it’s worked pretty well so far.
Candidates number 9, 57, and 42 results in much the same way.
“Number 77!” I call.
He lopes up to the podium.
“Your token, please,” I say
He hands it over.
We gather the information and he’s unmarried and without children.
How refreshing.
I hand him the journal and ask him to read the last paragraph on page 52.
“iRing has announced, “a breakthrough technology in ring design for underground mines” that uses a completely new blast design model. The development of this innovative blasting technique uses a unit charge and stress reflection methodology in conjunction with electronic detonators to design ring patterns with the objective of transforming underground blasting operations into primary crushing operations.”
“Your name again?” I ask
“I am Waazir Naidu.” He replies.
“Mr. Naidu, welcome aboard,” I say as I hand him his brass token. “You are trainee number one. Do not lose your token. It is your key up out of the swill.”
He smiles broadly and turns to the crowd to display his brass letter of acceptance. There are growls from the crowd, as well as a smattering of applause.
“We will reconvene in Outbuilding #2 at 1300 hours. See you there.” I say and shake his hand.
He’s all beaming smiles as he almost literally floats out the door.
We spent the rest of the morning thinning the herd. There were some judgment calls, but by 1130 hours, we were down to two candidates and one last brass token.
“Number 79!” I call.
He approaches, we do the usual and get his information.
“Please read paragraph three on page…oh, I don’t know, 31.”
He fumbles with the magazine a while and stutters and stammers somewhat.
“OK, thanks.” I say, “We’ll let you know.”
“OK, number 5! The best and last number 5!”
“About time!’ He scowls.
“Excuse me?” I said.
“You really are deaf, Yankee benchod.” He sneers quietly; but loud enough for me to hear.
He figures he’s a shoo-in; last number called, last chit on the board.
“Sanjay, a moment,” I ask.
“This “benchod”? Not a term of endearment, I take it?”
“Ah, no”, he stammers.
“And it means?” I ask.
“You don’t want to know.” Sanjay hopefully replies.
“But, yes, I do. I insist.” I reply.
“It means colloquially ‘motherfucker’. ‘Sister fucker’ literally.” He splutters.
“Hmmm. OK. A new term for my dictionary. Fine. Let us continue.”
Name, age, etc. all go in book.
I hand him the magazine. He almost rips it from my hands.
“OK, please read the ad on page 55. All of it.” I instruct.
He flips the magazine to page 55. There’ a half-page ad in Russian for a new form of blasting cap super-boosters.
“I can’t read that.” He complains.
“Well, then me ol’ mucker; looks like you’re just shit out of luck. Good day.” I say.
“Sanjay”, I say, “Go outside and find number 79. He’s our last candidate trainee.”
“You said you wanted good English readers.” The rejected complains.
“Yes”, I agreed, “But I also need people that can follow instructions and not have a Gibraltar size chip on their shoulder. I’m the boss, and what I say goes. And I say you go, dick cheese. Ta-ta.”
He realizes his mistake and beings to entreat me with tales of woe.
“If that was a loose blasting wire, we’d all be dead. I don’t need an attitude. I need people with brains enough to listen. Now, piss off. We’re done here.” I say.
“Benchod fucker”, he snarls. “I keel you.”
Luckily my coffee mug was nearly half empty. Otherwise, it could have really left a mark across his face where I slammed him with it.
He’s down on the ground, wondering what hit him. I’m standing over him, towering and glowering. It was that kind of day. I don’t have time for monks resisting the carnival.
“You get the fuck out of my sight, you sawed-off little prick. You’re lucky I’m in a good mood and don’t give you a fucking C-4 enema. Or kick your scrawny ass to death. You might still have your shit job here in the yard, but I hear from anyone one more foul oath or unkind word out of you and you’re going to be Alsatian chow back at the Raj. You diggin’ me, Beaumont”
He just looked at me with eyes as wide as cheap paper plates at a windy Sunday picnic.
“Get out of here, you asshole.” I snarled and puffed mightily on my cigar.
He got up and scarpered. He didn’t even take the time to dust off.
Sanjay arrived with number 79 just as he hit the exit.
I hand number 79, one Mr. Yudhishthira Bahaiti, brass token number 24.
“Welcome aboard. Sorry about the foul-up. It’s been handled. See you in building #2 at 1300 hours.” I say.
“Sanjay? Lunch?” I suggest. “I could really use a fresh coffee.”
After lunch, Sanjay and I are smoking away in Outbuilding #2. It’s about 1245 hours or so and already a couple of new recruits have appeared. They are sitting in one of the 24 seats which look for all the world like elementary school desks way back in the day.
There are 24 locker boxes stacked along one wall. These are the new locker boxes for my recruits.
These contain a number of specialty items which they will now need in the execution of their new jobs.
Some of it could be considered quite pricey and there are needs for security, especially since this bunch will be dealing with high, low, and medium explosives. I’m getting that teaching vibe again. I love geology, I love blowing shit up, but I really love to teach. Especially a new crop of fresh recruits.
I’ve watched Full Metal Jacket far too many times.
It’s 1300 hours on the nose. All 24 recruits are assembled and in their proper numbered chair. Sanjay has made up a seating plan for me so I can get to match a name to face and locker box number.
It’s showtime.
To be continued…

That reminds me of a story.
Seems I was out working in the middle-of-absolute-fucking-nowhere Siberia on a Russian oil rig when I was party to a little industrial accident.
Normally, Subsurface Managers do not go out on the wellsite. I consider that not only short-sighted but damn-near dereliction of duty. That's where the magic happens, that's where the rubber hits the road; like the Boss and Manfred Mann say: "that's where the fun is".
Most managers delegate such 'mundane' activities like this to either the Sr. or Operations Geologist. Not me. I enjoy getting out of the office, spending a few days out in the field actually visiting with rocks in their native habitat, and getting away from all the office bureaucratic bullshit for a while. Besides, it's a trip back to my roots, when I was the Ops. or Sr. Geologist. I think it's a necessary part for all good industrial scientists to remain active in their particular field, no matter where that may lead them.
Anyways, we were drilling a rank wildcat well way the hell out in the back-40 of Eastern Siberia. I took two three-hour hops by helicopter just to get to the site from the home office. Now and again, after I had acquired my pilot's license, I could coerce (via free cigars and vodka) the co-pilot of the Russian crew manning the Mil Mi-24 (Hind-20 'Flying Tank') to relinquish the right-hand seat, and I'd get to fly one of these monsters (this was a couple of years after the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan and returned to the Rodina large amounts of demilitarized material…the Geofizika I worked for got 10 of these birds to help with their exploration activities) for a couple of hours. All just a bonus for going out on the rig to pull core, shoot guns, and play with explosives.
It was summertime and since we were well above the Arctic Circle, it was White Nights. That is, the sun didn't have enough sense to set at night…24 full hours of daylight. Conversely, during the winter it was 24 hours of continuous darkness. That, coupled with 12-hours of jet-lag, could really wallop your Circadian Rhythms. It took most folks at least one day per hour of jet-lag to recover, but some never could handle 24 hours of light or dark. As far as I was concerned, that's why vodka was invented…
It never really bothered me, I always found that going out on the rig, going fishing, hunting or mucking about with high explosives always kept me occupied and actually recharged. When I was tired, I slept; and before I knew it, I was in sync with local time. The only downside was I had to re-adjust to Central Time 28 days later then go through the whole shebang 28 days later. Glad I'm more settled now and only have to adjust to skin-bubbling weather for eight months of the year.
So, we flew out to the wellsite to take part in the time-honored tradition of "pulling core". The well was down some 5,700 meters and since this was a rank exploration well, I decided that since these rocks did not crop out anywhere in the vicinity, we needed physical samples of the potential reservoir.
So, we took core; using a specialized bit of kit called a "core barrel" which was attached to the end of the drill string. It possessed a circular polycrystalline diamond bit and an inner non-rotating belly where the cut core would be stored. With the current heavy rig we were using, we could pull 40 meters of pipe ('fourbles'…one joint is a single, two joints are doubles, three are tribbles, etc.) out of the hole and retrieve 40-meter sections (we hoped…coring is monster bloody expensive) of core.
Full core is nominally 3.5 inches in diameter (I know that almost no-one in the world still uses Imperial measurements, but the oil industry does…so don't get me started on such silly measurements as kilofeet or tons of oil per day or…) and possesses some serious gravity. The retrieved core was broken down into one-meter sections and stored five sections per wooden core box. It usually took three men and a boy to shift these heavy fuckers down the stairs 20 meters from drill floor to ground.
Anyways, this well had proved to be a real bastard. If there was some sort of drilling or logging calamity, we had it happen. The nearest well to ours was some 450 Km to the south, so we were in true terra incognita. Since we had little offset drilling data on what to expect from these deep and highly pressured formations, we basically had to ramp our awareness and preparedness to a Spinal-Tappian #11.
We had redundant systems (in some cases triply-redundant) monitoring wellbore temperature, wellbore pressure, mud levels, pit levels, rate of penetration, weight on bit (measured in hundreds of thousands of pounds), H2S monitors, BS&W of the mud systems, etc. There were pressures in excess of 10,000 psig, temperatures exceeding 150C, huge pieces of very powerful pneumatic and hydraulic machinery that would rather kill you just as soon as say "Good Morning", and hunks of heavy metal weighing more than your Granddad's Buick hanging over your head on heavily oiled cables. Yes, it was a potentially very dangerous situation, but with constant training and drills, the industry has learned how to make hole and keep everyone healthy and happy in the process.
Usually.
Once on location, I make my rounds (I'm the boss out here as I'm the one signing the checks, so there's that as well) and let everyone know that there's something out of the ordinary happening (coring ops.) and to kick out the jams.
After going over the dailies, and having a few cups of truly awful 110-octane rig coffee, I saw that we were surprisingly on schedule and actually pulling core. You see, 240 meters of core had been cut so now it was necessary to 'trip out of the hole', that is, pull 40 meters of pipe out of the hole, break connection and stack it or lay it down on the side of the rig. This was continued for the entire 5,700m worth of pipe until we got to the core barrel. The sections would be broken, and slowly the core barrel was lifted while the core slid out the bottom. As I said, these rock cores were heavy (some 2,300 Kg/m3), so everyone on the rig floor was on double-super awareness level and only the most senior hands were allowed to muck about with the core. The FNGs (Fuckin' New Guys) were told to keep their hands in their pockets, watch and learn.
At least, that was the plan.
Remember I mentioned this well was a copper-bottomed bitch to drill? We had all sorts of fun: caving sections, thief zones, under-pressure zones, over-pressured zones, surprise gas zones…we took kicks (rapid inflow from the reservoir into the wellbore that were above lithostatic pressure and the mud gradient), had oil to surface, sand cutting out chokes and the bit jets…it was sometimes really most un-fun.
So, we're all out on the rig floor, swatting F-16 sized mosquitoes, slowly pulling core. At this point, we've had great recovery rates, well over 97%, which in exploration is the Holy Grail of recovery values. Core's sliding out like a well-greased piston when we note by the down logs we had cored through a very sticky shale section. Of course, this was the last 3 meters of core in this stand, so we had to coax it out of the barrel.
As we're increasing the angle so the core would slide out and gently caressing the core barrel with a sledgehammer, an errant bubble of formation gas, which was held downhole by the mud and weight of the bottom hole assembly combined, decided to make its presence noted.
Like a 747 landing in your backyard, the well screamed to life as the pressure of the gas finally broke free. It was hypersonically (and, no, that is not an exaggeration) blowing 150C mud, gas, sand and water out of the wellbore. It crested some 50 meters above the derrick and rained back down on us hapless hands.
The rig was literally shaking; like a rat caught by a terrier. The BOPs (hydraulic Blow-Out Preventers) were prevented by the volume and cutting action of the sand being blasted out of the hole from actuating and shutting in the well. Some hydraulic lines were cut, and that rain of high-pressure oily schmoo was added to the hot water, roaring gas and blinding sand drenching the rig floor.
The toolpusher wanted to just drop the core barrel and try to get back in the hole. There's absolutely no way that would work until this maelstrom subsided a bit on its own. I was holding onto the core barrel to both keep from going on my ass and trying to stabilize it as it was being slowly hoisted out of harm's way. Unexpectedly, one of the greenhorn floor hands grabbed a power tong (essentially huge chain-mounted pneumatic/hydraulic pair of pliers, a huge, self-locking power wrench, used to grasp and screw in or out stands of pipe with tons of applied force) and in an attempt to lock it down, he clamped it around said core barrel…
...And my gloved left hand.
As I recall, that stung a bit.
What really hurt was when he actuated the tongs.
Back then, these tools weren't intrinsically safe, meaning they could cause sparks. As you might guess, sparks and violently belching natural gas and condensate aren't the best batch of guests to invite to any of your parties.
At this point, even though I'm jacked on adrenaline and rig coffee, I knew deep down things were headed south in a massive fucking way. However, I really didn't feel anything other than a lot of pressure on my pinned hand as I tried to extract it from the tongs.
Then the rig blew up.
Actually, a condensate-rich gas pocket that had formed around the rig ignited from some sparks; either from the power tongs, the sand moving at ludicrous speed out of the wellbore, or simply from the static electricity of someone running their hand through their hair. Whatever the cause, we were all standing smack in the middle of a pretty entertaining fireball.
Luckily (?), since we were in the middle of this maelstrom, the volume of gas, condensate, water, and sand being blown out of the wellbore actually somewhat protected us. It was blasting at such a rate and concentration, that it had to slow down and get between 9-14% by volume in air before it would combust. So, we were essentially trapped until the rig's fire systems kicked in and doused the blaze.
Yeah, like that was going to work. Far too much volume and far too much velocity rocketing out of the wellbore. The containment foam and water combination of the fire suppression system just got blown out of the way like a trailer park in a tornado. Further, it was getting a bit warm on the rig floor but fortunately, it wasn't a sour gas well. However, with that fire blazing, it was thoughtlessly sucking up all the oxygen in the vicinity.
For all those counting, the time elapsed from the well blowing out to now was about 75 seconds.
We had to get off the rig in a matter of minutes or it'd be the Final Countdown for all and sundry. My left hand was a bloody disfigured mess and I used my right glove to wrap it to keep whatever was left more or less intact. This subjected both hands to second and third-degree burns as I was attempting to get everyone off the rig. Grabbing railings and the door of the doghouse added more insult to the injuries. The rain of hot sand, mud and hydraulic oil only added to the festivities.
Then, suddenly, silence. The well lost its fart appeal and finally bridged over. The remaining mud pumps struggled mightily to refill the hole with weighted mud to take advantage of this respite. Realizing we had a narrow window of opportunity, I made sure to hustle everyone (at 150-decibel really bad and vile Russian) off the fucking rig and get to the safety muster area.
On the way down, I lost it; winking out and tripping on the bottom rig stairs though my buddy Dima grabbed me and bodily dragged my carcass to the muster area. I was a bit of a mess. I always insist on the best PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) and thank my Nomex coveralls for saving my blistered hide. However, my forearms (I had work to do so I 'rolled up my sleeves'…) and hands were both bar-be-qued quite nicely. My left hand was a fairly unrecognizable mutilated mess of what used to be flesh and fingers. As I said, it stung a bit.
The relief crew had gone into action the second we got off the rig and shut the bastard in properly. They had dragged a couple of portable hydraulic generators to the BOP stack and just threw the blinds and shear rams. With that, the well was secure and attention now turned to what the fuck were we to do with our injured.
There was always a medic on location, and he didn't ask any questions. He saw the condition of my hands and arms so I got a jabbed with a couple of styrettes of morphine. He stuck about 6 more in my coverall pocket "for later" and started in on the others in the crew that took a beating as well.
After triage, I found that I had graduated at the top of the class. There were burns, cuts, temporary hearing loss and a lot of bangs and bruises, but amazingly no one else suffered any broken bones. My right and left hands had second and third-degree burns, but my left hand was the one that took the worst pasting. I was feeling a lot better after the 3rd morphine styrette, and goofily smiling at the medic as he debrided my wounds and insisted I just pay attention to my vodka glass (which magically remained always refilled) and not on what he was doing.
About 8 hours (a couple of bottles of Russkaya, some beer and Spirt) later I hear a big chopper spooling down. Seems they had arranged a flight just for me back to home base. What a bunch of nice guys, and I didn't even get them anything…Whoa, walls melting for you too?
24 hours later, I'm in a Moscow hospital hearing quiet, hushed remarks about the big oil guy in Room 12 with all the burns and mangled hand. Hey. How about that? I'm in Room 12…Oh, wait…
The Moscow medicos did what they could for me, but I had to be medevacked to Finland for some surgery and rebuilding of what remained of my left hand. I spent 2 more or less enjoyable months in Helsinki before being allowed to fly back to kith and kin in Houston.
Sorry about all the fucking exposition, but in the business, we call that 'setting the scene'.
The medical folks in Finland were top-flight. They did everything possible to save the middle three fingers of my left hand (index, fuck-off and ring fingers), but it was all for naught. I am now destined to give a perpetual shaka sign. However, I'm a one-man show at thrash-metal concerts. Yow!
However, after the amputations, they cast the off-cast fingers in alginate and made somewhat restored resin copies so when I returned home, I could have purely cosmetic prostheses made. After all the surgeries, burn debriding and general medical hoo-hah, the last thing I was thinking about was anything cosmetic for my beleaguered mitts.
Apart from the missing digits, I had masses of keloid scarring develop and my hands looked like, well, they had gone through a very warm meat-grinder. To this day, I wear modified weight-lifting gloves to avoid scaring children and the inevitable "What the fuck happened to you?" questions.
Once back home I was on light duty for about 6 months. That gave me time to try and deal with the blizzard of paperwork that stemmed from this little adventure. The medical bills were, well, massive. I was necessarily insured to the hilt through codicils in my contract, through the company for which I was working, and once home, through Foreign Workers Compensation Coverage (FWCC).
My insurances covered the medevac costs of the air ambulance, pharmaceuticals, nurses and flights to Finland, which were in the 6-digit $US region. My company covered the costs of the Siberian helicopter extraction and flights to Moscow, which was another few tens of thousands of dollars. They also plumped for a private room at the best American-staffed hospital in Moscow. So, the transport and medical bills were all handily handled (small pun there for the humor-impaired).
Now, there was just a matter of my pay whilst I was out of commission and recovering. The AD&D riders of my contract were honored immediately, much to my relief. For the discovery that the well eventually gave up (we opened a nice new field with multiple pay zones) and my actions on the rig during the debacle, my company awarded me a nice lump-sum bonus and ORRI (Overriding Royalty Interest) so I actually owned a small piece of the well. In fact, set into a trust fund, this sent my kids through college.
All seemed to be done and dusted…until I contacted FWCC for the funds to which I was entitled. Both my company and I pay into this slush fund on every overseas job, and it's designed to compensate those workers injured or killed while working across the pond.
Yeah, about that.
When first contacted, they replied, "Sorry, but we have no record of you nor your company."
So, down to Kinko's and photocopy all the relevant documents, get them all notarized and send them off via registered mail. You bet your ass I'm keeping a tally of each and every expense these incurred.
"Oh, sorry. Looks like we did find your records.", they grudgingly replied after I sent them all those costly documents.
"Now we just need various documents of the incident: an official narrative of the incident (from me, my company and the Russian Government since it involved Russian nationals), copies of any medical reports, notarized of course; copies of expenses, affidavits from those involved in the incident, flight histories of the medevac, extraction flight histories, pilot's notes, official of course, and…" the list went on and on.
The upshot to all this is that I needed documents that were variously in English, Finnish and Russian, all expertly translated and attested from three different countries. Can we say "Red Tape"?
Almost 8 months after the initial incident, I had assembled all the documents that they'd requested and sent a weighty package, and bill, off to the FWCC. It took them a full 3 months to reply and to add to the fiasco they inform me that they needed photographic evidence of my injuries; that is, before and after photos.
Hands up for all that can lay their mitts on a near-year-old photo documenting your left hand.
I myself abhor having my picture taken (except for passports and blasting permits) and digging through the family photo albums, couldn't find a single snapshot that actually showed my left-hand pre-accident.
"Well, sir. Without that photographic evidence, I'm afraid we would be unable to honor your claim."
You have got to be shitting me.
"Look, I have sent you the x-rays, photos, and kilos of documentation of the incident and injuries."
"I am sorry about that, Sir. However, we do have our standards…"
Yeah, well I just upped my standards, so up yours.
"What can I do if such photographic evidence of my hand pre-injury does not in fact exist? Can I send an affidavit from my doctor? My wife? My bartender?"
"So sorry, Sir. We must have some kind of physical evidence."
I remember getting an actual Grinch-like grin when she delivered that last line.
"Oh, OK. No worries, I'll be back in touch."
Now a good friend of mine is an artist. He's really into surreal imagery, drawing nightmare-fuel illustrations for periodicals that include death, dismemberment, gore, guts, and other children's pastimes. He's also the quite accomplished sculptor and works for beer, scotch, and cigars.
Talking with Dom I explained my predicament and my idea to finally settle the matter.
Over Lagavulin and Fig Newtons ("They're great if ya' dunk 'em!"), we hatched our sinister plan.
Over Kingfisher Strong and Habanero Doritos (also great if dunked), we carried out our sinister plan.
He casts my right hand in alginate and makes silicone rubber copies of the relevant digits, just like the ones the Finns had so graciously created back in an earlier part of this tale. He's actually worked in splatter-cinema special effects so the next step was just one of alcohol-fueled genius.
He does a mortician's-best job of sculpting and painting the casts he's made of my un-mashed fingers to match the real-life situation, minus the keloid scarring. They are unsettlingly realistic. We decide to sequester them in a Riker Mount for safe keeping.
He then makes copies of the Finnish casts of my mangled left fingers in silicone rubber. Then he gets to work. Blood and gore and guts and veins in my teeth! Eat dead, burnt bodies! I mean these bastards look so realistic and so gory, you expect them to be looking for a bad B-movie to crawl into. He highlights the bloodied, amputated digits with purple keloid scarring, adding just the right amount of shadow and airbrushing to make them really disturbing.
To this point, I never really had any sort of real negative reaction other than "Well, it is what it is." to the accident. Seeing those terrifyingly realistic, gory, damaged digits he created gave me a first-class case of the retroactive jibblies. Luckily, beer and vodka were able to drown those demons.
We Riker Mount the disfigured digits like the un-mashed ones, except for the artistic addition of blood, pus, shattered bone, and shreds of connective tissue; labeling them simply "Before" and "After". They are carefully packed in a shipping box, with an accompanying letter explaining while I could find no photos, I had forgotten that my hand was cast a while back for the fitting of a new bowling ball. OK, sure; that part was a fabrication, but they didn't know that. I also requested the return of the digits as personal property.
It was addressed explicitly to Ms. Needmore Proof at the FWCC and sent special delivery.
I received the signed receipt from the FWCC 4 days later.
I received a frantic phone call from the FWCC 4.01 days later from one very upset, stressed and disturbed Ms. Proof.
I received my payout check 14 days later.
I never did get the Riker Mounts back…
TL; DR: Got fucked up in an industrial accident. Trying to obtain fair compensation while I was unable to work fully, I run into an officious bureaucrat who requires ridiculous amounts of paperwork and physical evidence of my injuries. I literally give her the finger.
Edit 1: Yeah, 'that' did remind me of a story.
Edit 2: Yeah, it's long and involved; but, hey, it is what it is.
Edit 3-a: In Chinese, the gesture means "six" sounding like “溜", which means “smooth”.
Edit 3-2: In the American manual alphabet, the gesture is the letter "Y"; like "Y me?".
Edit 3-iii. The gesture can also be used to indicate the imbibing of a bottled drink. So I got that goin' for me, which is nice.
Edit 4. I'm in the Middle East, some 9-12 hours ahead of North America. So If I don't reply immediately, there's the reason.
Edit 5: \000/ Hang loose.
Edit 6: There is no Edit 6.
Edit 7: But there is an Edit 7 (Hi! u/assassin_kitten )! First off, thanks for all the positive feedback, it is truly appreciated. If you hate my writing style and think it's too long, too bad and your mother is a cow.
Edit 8: About my maniac malfeasant manicurist. Oh, yes; he knew. After all the drama, he was dragged in before the bosses and given a proper ass-chewing. Since I didn't bear him any umbrage (excrement occurs, ummm...shit happens) and there was no malice aforethought, he just got all the shit duties on the rig (drifting casing covered in cosmoline...I wouldn't even wish that on an engineer) for a while and demoted to the lower social ranks of FNGs. However, he knew my penchant for practical jokes and long-term revenge, so I basically kept him walking on eggs for 18 or so months. One day, I showed up on location and called an unscheduled muster drill (everyone not physically on the rig, drop everything and hit the muster area in full battle array). He shows up sans the required company issued hardhat.
"Where's your hardhat, Ivan (a pseudonym)?"
"Sorry, Chief. I can't find it."
"Is that it on that box over yonder?"
Looks out past the mud pits where his hardhat (they're color-coded as per job) is sitting on a wooden box.
"Could be mine. I'll go get it."
"No worries. I'll get it to come to you..."
I produce a small electronic gizmo, push a button and his hardhat disappears into Low Earth Orbit.
Amazing what a half-kilo of RDX can do to a person's headgear.
(PPEs are company provided, so he just had to go to the quartermaster and explain why he needed a new one...)

Ah, Sector Seventeen. Land of scrap metal, garbage, and corpses. Fragrant and majestic. Spire Circle is the spine of the city. Sector Three is the eyes. Six is the brain. Fifteen is the muscles, Eleven is the mouth, Eighteen is the stomach. And Seventeen is the anus. Definitely not the most glamorous of body parts, but I’ll tell you this much - if your anus suddenly went missing, you’d be in a pretty desperate situation.
Some might call Seventeen an ignoble and rotting jumble. A scab on the scarred hide of Wellspring City. A box of trash that no one important would be interested in - and that’s sort of true. Slums, graveyards, crumbling tenements, and cracked concrete populated by souls as eclectic and shabby as the towering scrapyard piles. A place for lost and discarded things. If you throw something away, it’ll wind up in Sector Seventeen eventually. If someone goes missing, their body is probably in Sector Seventeen. If you lose your wallet, you might be able to buy it back from someone in Sector Seventeen. People with clean clothes have no real reason to ever come here and typically look on it with no small amount of revulsion, but Sector Seventeen doesn’t care – no matter how high up you think you are, when your time is up, chances are good that you’re going to end up down here with the rest of the corpses either way.
Standing on the train platform, I’m struck again by how weirdly clean everything always is around here. The buildings are old, the streets are in bad shape, and everything in sight looks like it’s been recycled nine times over, but there isn’t any garbage anywhere. The broken avenues are nigh-on spotless. That seems kind of paradoxical considering half of this sector is literally full of refuse, but it makes sense when you consider who lives here. This is a society that’s treated trash as currency for a few hundred years now. Would you let free credits gather up in the gutters? With the right processing facilities, even slime can be gold. Littering isn’t just a crime here, it’s a literal waste of money.
Alright, let’s see… the Horsebreaker family lives in the shadow of a biotrash rendering plant, not far away. Can you imagine what that must do to someone’s nose after a few years? I wonder if anyone around here even has a sense of smell anymore.
I start off down the street toward the residential areas. This place is more hive-like than others. Slums made out of reclaimed metal and plastic, held together with wire and optimism, all stacked haphazardly. Rusty gray-orange sheet metal awnings covering junk hawkers, calling out for passersby to examine their refurbished and scavenged wares. You always hear stories about these junktown marketplaces - tall tales of people finding ultra-rare bits of machinery, lost art, and other incredible trinkets. The vendors are incredibly aware of this, and loudly embellish their stock as potentially full of hidden treasures. In these alleys, trash gets compressed by rumor and lie into suspiciously affordable diamonds for those not observant enough to tell the difference. The sellers aren’t as dumb or simple as they’re trying to seem - they’re keeping the actual treasures for themselves, and laughing all the way to the bank.
It speaks to the mentality of the people here. It feels kind of like Thirteen - people that look like they’re on the bottom rung of society’s ladder, but if you ask them, they’re on top of the world. They don’t have anything but scraps, so they’ve learned to get by on resourcefulness and trickery. I can’t help but respect it. I’d do the same thing if I were them, but I’d probably mess it up - I don’t have a single mercantile bone in my body.
Speaking of bones and bodies, it’s kind of refreshing being in a place where clank is a bit more common. I see one lopsided guy with a colossal hydraulic loader for a right arm. That thing could squish a human skull in an instant, but he’s using it to put some apples in a grocery bag. He probably makes a killing in arm-wrestling tournaments. There’s a little old grandma in a pink sundress with a huge electromechanical mess where the right side of her head should be, sunk right in the poofy white nest of her hair, complete with frightening red camera eye. She probably uses its x-ray emitter to cheat her friends in card games.
Most people in Seventeen make their living doing very dirty jobs around heavy machinery, and sometimes safety takes a backseat to productivity. Infections and injuries aren’t uncommon. They get around the cost the way they do everything else - every old cybernetic implant is going to end up in one of these scrapyards eventually. They just clean them up and sell them at a discount. This hilariously oversized hydraulic arm and decades-outdated ocular implant might not be glamorous, but they’re better than living half-blind with a clipped wing. It’s a longstanding rumor that you can make a pretty killer living here doing back-alley biomech surgeries if you fail out of medical school.
After a bit of walking and resisting the shouted advertisements of the junk dealers, I find a quieter, more shadowy side street near a towering facility with huffing smokestacks. The workers don’t exactly live a high life, and their jobs literally stink out loud, but trash processing companies have some of the most secure profit margins in the world, so they’re able to afford their drones some pretty decent benefits. Mostly so they don’t quit in droves. These hab blocks are pretty humdrum and cheap, but it’s definitely better than living in a sheet metal shack or a gutter. I find the one I’m looking for - Unit 105, on the ground floor of one of the anonymously-numbered apartment complexes. And thank goodness - after this afternoon I don’t know if I can handle any more stairs.
I knock on the flimsy-looking door, and hope they’re home. It’s after shift time, so chances are good, but you never know. Hopefully they want to talk. I would have called ahead of time, but Horsebreaker didn’t have a registered phone number. Guess they don’t come standard around here.
A plain, tired-looking woman with graying hair opens the door. Mrs. Horsebreaker, I presume. She does the same thing most people do when I come knocking - looking where human faces usually are, then having to rise up to where mine actually is. Her eyes go wide when they meet mine, and I’m afraid she’s going to panic, so I raise my hands in surrender.
“Easy there, ma’am. I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m Baulric Featherlight. I know you weren’t expecting anyone, but I’m here to talk about your son, if I haven’t come at a bad time.”
Mr. Horsebreaker, a balding, tanned old fellow with a very dad-style mustache, appears next to his wife while I’m speaking. He looks like he’s ready to grab a weapon, but doesn’t move.
Ma doesn’t seem any more relaxed at my words. “What do you know about our Aklei? Has something happened to him? Father Below, do you know where he is?”
I shake my head regretfully. “No ma’am, I don’t, but I’m working with the Watch to try and find him. So I’m here to see if I can gain any insight, from the people that know him best. If you’ve got the time.”
Pa narrows his eyes at me. “We haven’t filed a report with the Watch yet. How on earth do you even know who he is?”
I reach into my wallet and hold up my ID card. “I’m a mage too. We talk to one another. I don’t know your son, but word gets around. I get not wanting to talk to the Watch, believe me, but they got your son’s name anyway. He’s involved with… another case. A case that I’ve been brought in on.”
Mrs. Horsebreaker looks like she’s going to explode with confusion and built-up fear. “What case?”
I sigh. “A murder, ma’am.”
She looks like she’s going to burst into tears. Pa’s face goes white. I take a little time explaining the whole situation so they don’t fly apart. I leave out the more secretive bits, but assure them that I’m not completely convinced of their son’s guilt (partially true, anyway) and to think of me as a free private investigator. It takes a bit of talking, but they come around to believing that I am who I say I am and look ready to cooperate.
Pa holds the door open and steps aside, saying wearily, “You’d better come in, then.”
I squeeze inside. Their home is like every other company apartment in existence - all concrete and drywall, with some decorations to soften it and make it seem like a home rather than a temporary holding cell between shifts at the plant. There’s nowhere for me to sit, so I just stay standing while they take the threadbare couch.
We talk for a while. Mrs. Horsebreaker spends the conversation on the verge of tears. The man of the house is made of stone - gridlocked between worry and cold rage at his own impotence. They tell me about their son. Like I expected from his writeup, he’s a quiet boy, doesn’t get into trouble, and as his dad puts it, “not exactly the brightest lamp on the street”. They’ve only seen him use his magic a couple times since he was twelve - he doesn’t appear to have a lot of natural power or any particular inclination to use what he has. Doesn’t have a ton of friends, spends a lot of time alone listening to music, which is one of the only things the kid’s ever shown active interest in, apparently. Ma says he’s getting pretty good on the guitar. Dad sarcastically says it’s about time he showed a bit of enthusiasm for anything at all. They love their son, even though he’s slow, hard to relate to, and more than a little dimwitted.
This is all very interesting, but it doesn’t get me anywhere - until I ask if he’s shown any unusual behavior within the past few weeks.
After blowing her nose, Ma says with a motherly razor in her eye, “Nothing really. Well, except him hanging around that Littlerock person.”
My oculars instinctively narrow. This is the cyborg equivalent of perked ears. “Littlerock?”
Pa’s brow furrows. “Monnert Littlerock. Some Lowlife drifter that’s taken to skulking around. I’ve met him. He’s a mage too. And a scoundrel, and a thief. Not good for anything ‘cept compost. I haven’t the faintest clue why Aklei started mixing with folk like him, but we were both against it. And I bet you my last credit that damn crook has something to do with this. I’ve tried looking for him, but no luck. Probably back underground doing who knows what.”
Cha-ching.
I fold my arms contemplatively. “Littlerock is one of the other missing mages. The other pyromancer. I don’t think you’re wrong, Mr. Horsebreaker. There’s no way it’s a coincidence.”
He looks surprised. “Littlerock is missing too? Just like that?”
I nod. “I didn’t know he had any connection to your son. But the fact that they knew one another is very interesting. Your instincts weren’t off - the man has a record. As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough to make Littlerock my prime suspect. Do you know anything about him at all, or what exactly his relationship with your son is?”
Mrs. Horsebreaker replies, “Aklei would sometimes go drinking with his friends after work. I think he said he met Littlerock there, at the bar. Some of Aklei’s friends already knew him.”
“Hm. Anything else?”
Pa grunts, “Not really, other than reputation. We didn’t like them associating, but… hell, Aklei wasn’t ever any good at making friends. We don’t like pressing on his privacy. He’s a grown man, he can pal around with whoever he wants. And dammit we shoulda pressed on this one. I knew I didn’t like that smarmy son of a bitch. He buzzes around like a fly, always trying to sell drugs to the plant workers. My crew knows better than to give him the time of day, but… Aklei isn’t on my crew. I shoulda been firmer. God dammit.”
This feels like one of those times where I should try and reassure someone. I’m not used to speaking to the loved ones of missing people - most of my quarry is unliked, unloved, and unfettered by many meaningful personal relationships. I don’t have to show any concern, to anyone. There’s just the hunt, and then I go back to sleep. This is different. These people’s son is missing. They love him, and want him back, and they’re finding ways to blame themselves for something completely out of their control.
It’s exhausting, having to show sympathy. Having to feel it, at all, especially for people that aren’t mine. The effort of it. The facial expressions, the words that I just haven’t had the time to feel. But I don’t have a choice here, do I? What would I be if I didn’t at least try?
Yeah, you don’t have to tell me. I’m not super ecstatic about some of my thoughts either. If you want a hero, go read another story.
I take a deep breath and say, “We shouldn’t speculate, Mr. Horsebreaker. Not yet. We don’t have all the facts and we can’t form a complete picture. Let’s focus on the now and later rather than the earlier, and find Aklei. Alright?”
He seems to be looking in himself, and so is she. He nods to me, but doesn’t meet my eyes. There’s a little bit of self-consciousness there. A bit of shame for showing regret or doubt to me, and for what he thinks he’s done.
After a bit more talking, the Horsebreakers manage to put their heads together and give me the location of a spot where Littlerock was known to have done his deals - a bar a few blocks over, where the plant crews go after their shift.
I thank them, and even though they really have no idea who I am, they want to hear me say that I’m optimistic, that there’s no need for them to worry, that I’m doing everything short of digging for God to bring their son back to them. It doesn’t really cost me anything to say those words, so I do. The computer part of me really hates saying things that I know the facts don’t represent. Thankfully for everyone that has to interact with me, I don’t let that part behind the steering wheel very often.
Stepping out of their house and down the street, I take out a lollipop. I’m feeling strangely blue about all this and in need of guidance. And sugar. Give me a sign, candy oracle.
Hm. Strawberry. Basically the opposite of blue. I always associated the tangy flavor and color of strawberry with blood, for some reason. The taste always struck me as somehow… arterial. Suddenly I’m not so sure about my chances, if I ever was. Still tastes nice, at least.
The sun’s going down and the streets are starting to settle. It’s a normal night. Shift just ended, people are either going to their post-work places or to work itself. It’s not what I’d call quiet, but there’s that kind of early evening shimmer to everything. There are people talking, lights coming on, things being moved, but it seems quiet, even though it’s not. I always loved this time of day. It always feels like reality is being run through a filter and held up in a bottle for inspection. Hanging and clear.
Time to think. It’s gonna take me a bit to find this place, and I need to soak in the data and come up with an approach vector.
From the top, I guess there’s the most important question: Who the fuck is killing these people?
I think this is one that bears repeating. Yes, after factoring in the evidence that my own eyes have supplied me, the list isn’t actually that long. But it doesn’t really add up. It’s possible that it doesn’t have to add up at all - if the perps are crazy enough to murder the son of a Sector Lord with magefire, then they probably stopped listening to logic a while ago. But something Deepwell said to me a few years ago comes to mind: “There’s no such thing as no reason.” Writing off a perp’s motivations as the random thermal motions of a mind bubbling with insanity is easy, sure. It’s also incredibly reductive, and does nothing to progress an investigation. There’s always a reason why people do things, even if those reasons are completely unreasonable.
Assuming these maniacs aren’t maniacs, then… what’s gained from these deaths? I can’t see a mage of any stripe getting anything at all out of Sidri Rediron’s charred skeleton.
Hmm… it’s true that the foundries employ a lot of pyromancers. Being around molten metal all day doesn’t bother them. If Rediron Jr. was starting to make the foundry bigwigs sweat… it could be that they started leaning on the employees about it. Reprisals for anyone that showed support for Rediron and his campaign for benefits. The mages would be especially vulnerable to this - getting hired anywhere else might take months, if anyone would take them at all. Could they have used their connections to somehow collectively coerce Littlerock into taking the job for them as a fall guy? He seems pretty expendable. If the foundry mages pooled their savings and made a pile big enough for Littlerock to switch from drug peddling to assassination… and Littlerock brought a patsy of his own along for the ride… maybe. I don’t know. Still seems like a stretch - too many links in that chain for me to have much faith in it.
And this is leaving out the other corpse. It’s possible that this Stonecutter woman has nothing at all to do with our firebugs. I don’t really know a damn thing about her yet. Possible isn’t the same thing as probable, though. Once I’m done here, I need to figure out a way to dig up anything I can on her. I’m not content with allowing any cog in this machine to remain a mystery.
If these killings are related, I’m having one overflowing toilet of a time trying to figure out how. The Brotherhood don’t give a scumbird’s ass feather about political issues that they gain nothing from meddling in, and I don’t know how Sidri and the foundries correlate to them. There could be some kind of mechanism linking the two, but if there is, I can’t even begin to guess, much less figure how Ms. Frosty Foreigner and the Flamethrowers found their way into it.
I need more information. Hopefully this is where I’ll get some.
Outside of this joint looking at it, you’d probably think it wasn’t much of an establishment. I’m looking at it right now, and I absolutely agree with you. What a dump. And this is an entire district of dumps, so they must’ve really gone the extra mile to make it stand out. The door’s being held on by two wires, for God’s sake. I take a deep breath and walk inside, out of the cooling alley and into what you could probably mistake for a pub if you were extremely nearsighted and already extremely drunk.
This place is about as sheet metal as it gets, and I mean that literally. I’m not even sure this actually is a building - the walls are so thin that I’m pretty sure this ‘bar’ was hung up as an illegal addition to the larger hab block it’s stuck to. Imagine an old tin of sardines that’s been left in a gutter for a few months. That’s what it looks like in here, but big enough to fit forty or so people in it. Kind of a shame that there are about sixty of them, then. Almost entirely men, slabs and skinnies, drinking, playing pool, throwing darts, and being extremely smelly from a long day at the trash plant.
Thankfully, no one pays me much mind. Some clanker slab in a dirty canvas coat doesn’t mean much in Seventeen, even if he’s not from around here. I pick one of the less-corroded reinforced stools at the bar and sit.
The bartender is a greasy-looking guy with a wide mouth, fat neck, and long, hairy arms. Kind of like if you crossed a frog with an orangutan and then hit the resulting abomination on the top of the head really hard with a mallet. He lopes over to me like a buttered wolf.
“Drink, stranger?”
“Beer.”
“Good or bad?”
“Bad.”
“How much?”
“Enough that it starts to taste like the good by the time I get to the bottom of it.”
This gets a smile out of him. I wish it didn’t. His teeth look like an industrial accident. He grabs a slab-sized glass stein (closer to the size of a bucket, for him) and fills it from a tap. It’s yellow, it’s foamy, it smells like metal and tastes like very sad metal - that’s right folks, a warm, sudsy round of applause for vatbeer. Just strong enough to make you aware of everything that led you to this point in life, and cheap enough to trick you into thinking that it might’ve actually been worth it.
The bartender shimmies the full stein onto the bartop with both hands, then brings a money box up from below the counter. I pull my (only) credit chip from my wallet, scan it, and watch the little red number inch that much closer to zero. Apparently satisfied, Beerslinger the Hygienic goes off to slop another hog.
Vatbeer is terrible, but it does have the upside of making everyone who drinks it into an absolute master of their own mind. If you don’t have the mental discipline to force your tongue to completely ignore the chemical effluent you’re polluting it with, you’re not ready for vatbeer. I take a sip, taste nothing like the cerebral juggernaut I am, and start scanning my surroundings.
I’m looking for anyone that might have made a habit of buying from Littlerock. So, I’m looking for symptoms. If Littlerock’s the kind of cheapo I think he is, he’s probably not selling what I’d call luxury products. Scrub, dirty thermogenic uppers like thump and crackle, maybe some blackout if he’s in touch with a reliable supplier. Bad skin, too much sweat, eyes that won’t stay still, blackened teeth, jaundice from the liver shredding any combination of these will inevitably give you.
Shit. I’m in a low-income district of Sector fucking Seventeen. Everyone here looks like they’ve been run through a high-pressure acid filter then dunked in a vat of rendered corpse fat. Maybe two genetic rungs away from stepping off the human ladder altogether. I wish I had the money for a spectrosniffer like the one Ten bolted onto Featherlight 2.0. But I’m not a hotshot professional automech fighter. I’m an oversized imbecile with the paycheck of a mono-breasted prostitute with political opinions.
But wait. Something occurs to me. If drug deals are commonly made in this establishment, then the person running the joint has to know about it. Or he does if he’s got more awareness than a heavily concussed tortoise. And if he’s ambitious, he’ll be charging the dealer a fee for letting him do business under his roof without calling the Watch. Thank you, avarice, for throwing me a thread to tug on.
I flag him down and he flops his way over.
“Need another, champ?”
He’s polishing a stein with a rag that looks like it’s a few microbes away from starting an armed insurrection in the name of germ’s rights. Thank every god I’ve got a killer immune system, otherwise I’d probably the first casualty of the uprising.
“Not quite yet. I like taking the time to savor. I am wondering if you know a guy named Littlerock.”
The drinks peddler narrows his puffy, froggish eyes at me. “Who’s asking?”
“A buyer that would prefer to remain anonymous, for obvious reasons.”
He scans me for a minute. Probably reasoning to himself (astutely) that there’s no way I could be an undercover Watchman. Still suspicious, though. I’m a suspicious-looking guy no matter what angle you look at me from. But his urge to skim a little more off the top kicks back in, and he relents.
“Yeah, I know him. He ain’t been through here for a few days, though.”
“I heard he stops here pretty regularly.”
“Yeah. But he hasn’t been. Haven’t seen him since last week.”
“Know where he is?”
He raises an eyebrow. “Plenty of dealers in this city, pal. Why you need Littlerock specifically? Got a crush on him?”
I shake my head. “Nah, I like my men a little cleaner. Too many scars.” I wrinkle my nose. “I’m poor as fuck and his shit’s cheap, is all. You don’t know the next stop in his rotation?”
“Nope. Not smart to give out that kind of information in his line of work, you know. But Littlerock is kind of a dumb fuck, so I know where he hangs out when he’s not working. I been thinking about paying him a visit. He owes.”
I nod understandingly. “Want to share that knowledge with me?”
He scoffs. “No. I’ll sell it to you, though.”
People just don’t know the meaning of the word ‘charity’ these days.
“If I’m poor enough to have to dig Littlerock up from his hidey hole, do you think I can afford to buy his location from you? Help a guy out, here.”
“No dice, pal. Sludge and lint.”
A Sector Seventeen phrase. Sludge and lint make a mint, meaning “grab every single iota of worth you can squeeze out of a situation, no matter how minor”. Used to illustrate the value of shrewdness and frugality. And extortion.
I sigh. “Okay. Tell you what. We’ll trade. You tell me where he is and how much he owes you, and if I find him, I’ll shake it out of him for you.”
The greasy tapper frowns and puts a hand where most humans have a chin. “Hm. You’d do that?”
“Sure. Look at me. I’m pretty good at making things shake. Sometimes I don’t even have to touch them. I go scare him for you, and come back with his debt. I get drugs, you get money. Win win.”
He mulls this over for a moment. “Hmmmm. Ordinarily I’d say no, but frankly, Littlerock’s been a bit of a mooch. Never liked the guy much. Plays fast and loose, not dependable, keeps breaking my damn glasses. I don’t think I require his patronage anymore. I’m tempted. How do I know you’ll come back?”
I take my ID out of my wallet and show it to him. Names have power in situations like this. He’ll know mine and I won’t know his, which will give him an inherent advantage over me if I welsh.
Both his eyebrows go up when he sees the purple plastic. It means that he doesn’t just know my name - he also knows he can look up my address in the Registry. So can the rest of the damn city. I’m not really concerned. Another drop in the bucket.
I pocket it again. “Now you know where to find me. We got a deal?”
“It’s a deal, Mr. Featherlight.”
We shake on it, and he tells me what he’s heard from eavesdropping on Littlerock’s drunken conversations in the bar. Apparently the pyromancer makes his home in a sunken bank vault under the border between sectors Eight and Thirteen. A lucky find for a Lowlife that can defend it, which Littlerock is prone to bragging about. If he’s lucky, his boasting might just save his life. And uh, put him in prison for murder. Maybe. Still working out all the details there.
For the record, I have no intention whatsoever of recovering the bartender’s money. I’m not a thug. Well - okay, I am a thug, but I’m not that kind of thug. He really should have known better than to take my word for it. He can bring as many friends to my front door as he wants. It’ll take a quite a merry few to make me regret my deception.
I leave the bar and start my way home. Littlerock’s bunker isn’t terribly far from here, but it’s not going anywhere. Sun’s down. I can afford to get some rest and come back early in the morning when the Lowlifes are sleeping and less likely to spot me.
As I cross my way back over the yawning, empty backlot behind the processing plant, a voice calls out behind me.
“Featherlight!”
I stop, and turn around.
​
[this story has over 30 posts now, which you can find through my reddit profile. hundreds and hundreds of pages of ol' Featherlight. and i update pretty much every week, so you can look forward to more ♥]
[you can read this story on Royal Road too, if that's the kind of thing you're into. reviews would be greatly helpful for a new guy on the scene ♥]
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[and thanks for reading ♥]

You may answer based on the title alone if you don't want to read the rest.
An overview of what I know based on advice and my work / internship experiences so far:

• Fancy think tanks (esp USAID and WB-funded) are cool, but are largely engaged in 1-year vanity projects + producing beautiful policy recommendation documents with zero impact because nobody with an iota of power takes them seriously. I can heavily attest to this.
• In terms of government jobs, unless you take the CSS, you'll end up as a "pencil-pusher" with little scope for either upward mobility or ability to influence the system.
• Some NGOs are a good route if you want to tackle education or health, but even the best ones operate in isolated capacities with no impact on policy.
• The financial consulting sector (where I am now) is a good way to bring to life / push forward specific government projects you believe in, but you'll barely land one per year since the bidding process is so tough and corrupt, and projects get delayed / cancelled constantly, so corporate projects will be 90% of your income.
• Actively pursued the 'akhbaar walay ishtihaar' process for sarkari naukriyaan, only heard back from NAB for a data analyst position. Never even saw a test date for most of the rest. The NAB test took place 5 months after I applied, got to know I passed two months later, then received no follow-up afterwards. Was informed this is a pretty common occurrence.
• Burgers, no matter how well-read or how well-meaning, are thoroughly ill-equipped to navigate the coarse realities of Pakistan's political + policy sphere, and may not belong there at all.

I guess I'm looking for guidance from people who have experience working in sarkari positions and understand the machinery of policy, power, and influence well: How do I assess my options when thinking about a domain-unspecific public service career with a propensity for genuine long-term, meaningful change? Is the CSS my only bet? Or are there other paths available to me?
My dad, a CA, is urging me to attempt the CFA L1 exam and stick to finance (maybe an MS in social finance), because after a lifetime of working on projects like motorways, high-rises, and big IPOs, he thinks I'm much better off trying to help my country this way rather than a pencil-pushing government job. Any thoughts on this?

The Ant

Issue #3: All the Small Things
Written by: dwright5252
<Last Issue **Next Issue>
Melted ice trickled down Janet’s forehead as she leaned back in her chair, waiting for Bill Foster to give her some information on the assholes who bested her in Scott Lang’s home. They had been searching through the street camera footage, hoping to find a distinguishing feature on any of the goons that kidnapped the wayward thief, but so far had come up empty handed. The ice Bill gave her for the cut on her head was starting to disappear, and the pain was returning.
“Fuck Bill, how can these guys be this boring?” Janet lamented. “No tattoos, no scars, nothing! And their damn sunglasses are messing with the facial recog software.”
“That could tell us something, actually,” Bill stated, an epiphany dawning on him. “They might not be ordinary sunglasses.”
“What, you think they’re made to scramble our ID program? That would take some serious tech.”
“Exactly,” Bill cracked his knuckles and began typing furiously. Several pictures appeared on the screen, including a photo of Tony Stark, looking cocky as ever.
“Ok, I’m picking up what you’re putting down here,” Janet said. “You think someone in the tech industry is responsible.”
“Circle gets the square,” Bill nodded, clicking again to cross off some of the pictures. “We can rule these few out, as they wouldn’t have the manpower necessary for this type of operation. Stark is out too since he can just ask for the particles, he wouldn’t need to steal them. A few of them aren’t working in anything remotely close to what Pym Particles would be used for… That leaves us with…”
Four pictures remained on the screen, their smiling faces seeming disingenuous when stacked next to each other. Janet could sense a menace in their eyes.
“We have Justin Hammer, CEO of Hammer Industries, Kenjiro Fujikawa from Fujikawa Industries, Darren Cross of Cross Technological Enterprises and Jonathan Cardinal of Cardinal Technologies. Each of these CEOs have their hands in a pie that would become extra tasty when Pym Particles are added.”
“Any of them with grudges against Hank?” Janet asked. “We can’t rule out a vendetta aspect of this as well.”
“Well, that’s the thing.” Bill shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “They all have one reason or another to hate Hank. Whether he turned down funding from them or just outright refused to work with them, any of these fatcats could be out for his blood.”
“I mean, four people won’t be too hard to look into,” Janet responded. “How long could that take?”
“Miss Van Dyne, he’s ready for you now.” Janet stood up from her plush seat in the Cross Technological Enterprises waiting room and smiled at the receptionist. Clad in her finest “company man” pantsuit, Janet straightened her jacket and walked through the doors into the CEO’s office.
This was the third CEO she had visited in a matter of weeks, as it had taken forever to schedule meetings with “very busy individuals” as one personal assistant put it. Fujikawa had so far ghosted her inquiries, making her most suspicious of him. However, she still had to cross Cross’s name off her list, just to be safe.
She was getting really tired of playing nice, but Bill assured her they were on the right track. She just had to suffer through two more blow hards and then she’d find the particles.
“Agent Van Dyne, a pleasure!” Darren Cross rose from his chair, feigning surprise as he greeted her. “To what do I owe this visit? SHIELD has already looked into the break-ins plaguing our facilities.”
The only way Janet had managed to get her foot in the tech company doors was using her SHIELD credentials to brute force her way into a meeting with the CEOs. So far no one (besides Fujikawa, that bastard) had questioned the meetings due to a recent string of robberies at all of their buildings. Janet wasn’t in a hurry to correct their misinformation.
“Yes, I’m just here to close out some bureaucratic stuff for this case,” she replied smoothly, making sure to emphasize the dullness of her duty. “Crossing the T’s, dotting the I’s, you know how it is.”
“All too well, I’m afraid,” Cross laughed, putting a folder he was glancing through on his desk. “Are you ok to walk and talk? I’m needed to oversee a big step in one of our projects.”
“I know your time is valuable.” Janet held the door open for the CEO and they made for the elevator. Janet scanned the tech mogul for any signs of nerves, but only saw a slight rigidness to his movements. From the intel that Bill had gathered on him, Cross was off on medical leave for a few months after suffering a stroke. She noticed the palsy was still affecting the left side of his face. Cross seemed to be noticing things about Janet as well, staring at her forehead with great interest.
“That’s quite the gash you’ve got there,” he remarked. “What happened, if you don’t mind me asking? I know SHIELD has some need to know missions.”
“Funny story,” Janet said, forcing a chuckle. “I dropped a pencil underneath my desk, went to grab it and someone came in and startled me. I jumped up, and metal desk corner collided with forehead in the meet-cute of the century.”
“Metal desks sure are a liability,” Cross said, the words seeming forced to Janet’s ears.
“Not to waste your time, but have you or your company experienced any other significant events since the break-in?”
“Significant events?” Cross pressed a button labeled SL7 as the elevator doors slid closed. “Like birthdays or retirements?”
“I mean in terms of amping up your security detail to ensure the incident didn’t occur again.”
“We haven’t had time to, I’m afraid,” Cross lamented. “Our resources were already stretched thin enough with our factory expansion in China. Most of my top employees are overseeing the process across the world. Honestly the break-in couldn’t have come at a worse time.”
Janet pretended to write the information down in her notepad while observing Cross. He stared straight ahead, as if willing the elevator to arrive at its destination.
“And your other employees still in the States? Have they been working on anything in particular?”
“Now, Ms. Van Dyne,” Cross chuckled darkly, “you of all people should know the benefits of keeping confidential information quiet. All of our public contracts can be found with my receptionist, should the mood strike you.”
Cross quickly hit the button for the lobby as they passed the 3rd floor. The doors parted open, and Darren held them for Janet.
“I apologize, but I’m needed down in R&D. Talk to my assistant if you need to set up another meeting.”
Janet nodded and exited the elevator. Cross gave her one last smile before the doors closed.
Walking out of the lobby and onto the busy New York City sidewalk, Janet whipped out her phone and dialed Bill’s number.
“It’s him,” Janet spoke into her phone as the line clicked open.
“You’re sure?” Bill asked, an edge of excitement in his voice. “What gave it away?”
“I can’t pinpoint it, but something seemed… off. He was too quick with his answers, like he prepared them ahead of time. Plus he was doing the shifty stuff that Hammer and Cardinal pulled, but there was something behind his words, I could tell. I’ll come back tonight and do some digging.”
“Great, that’ll give me just enough time to work on the finishing touches of my surprise.” Janet found Bill’s enthusiasm contagious, and stifled a laugh at how ecstatic he was.
“Finally finished the stingers, huh?” Janet asked, knowing full well Bill had been trying to keep them a secret. She heard him deflate over the phone.
“... Just get back to the lab and I’ll show you,” Bill defeatedly replied.
The wrist gauntlets Bill had whipped up for her fit comfortably and seemed weightless as she shrunk her way past the CTE’s security. Cross was right: the building was lightly guarded for having just experienced a brute force break-in. Only two rent-a-cops patrolled the lobby, with one actually sleeping while the other lazily walked back and forth across the marbled floor.
“This is gonna be way too easy,” Janet remarked as she guided the flying ant towards the elevator shaft. Buzzing past the sleeping guard’s nose a little too closely caused his hand to swat out in tired confusion, knocking the ant’s flight pattern off kilter.
“Don’t underestimate him,” Bill responded over her helmet’s commlink. “You’re only in the lobby, nowhere near the secret stuff.”
“My bet’s on some shady shit going down in sublevel 7.” Janet directed the ant through the small opening in the elevator, revealing the massive vertical corridor that seemed to descend deep into the earth. Flying straight down, the ant picked up speed as gravity aided their journey.
“Hope the elevator doesn’t turn on while we’re in here,” Janet murmured, gripping the ant tightly. On the wall next to the elevator doors, she saw the levels written in stenciled spray paint: SL3, SL4, SL5, SL6…
“Sublevel 7, here it is.” The ant flew through the gap, revealing a modest waiting room guarded by two armed guards. Unlike the security upstairs, these goons wielded some serious firepower and tactical armor. They stood at attention, neither making any movements as Janet flew past them towards the sound of machinery hard at work.
Through the doors, Janet was greeted by a sight that almost made her fall off of her ant. The massive factory was in full swing, with workers and automated systems alike hard at work creating what looked to her like copies of Iron Man’s suit.
“Bill, you getting this?” Janet whispered as she flew through the factory. “How can they have this big of an operation under their building?”
“Wait, what’s that pipeline?” Bill pointed out. Janet saw her helmet’s display highlight a small tank near the control room of the factory, containing a familiar red liquid.
“Bill, it looks like they’re loading up these suits with Pym Particles!” Janet exclaimed. “This is too big for us, we’ve got to get-”
Suddenly Janet found herself surrounded by walls that enclosed around her and her ant, blocking all view of the factory.
“Looks like I’ve caught myself an intruder,” Cross’s voice echoed through the small box Janet now found herself in. She quickly attempted to grow, but found her suit nonresponsive.
“Don’t try and grow your way out of this one, Pym.” Cross shook the box, tossing Janet into her ant as they tumbled around. “I’ve had some time to study your particles, an interesting take on our work together for sure. But I’ve replicated it, and also found a way to neutralize it.”
He thought she was Pym.
“Bill, can you hear me?” Janet said quietly. “I’m trapped and need help.”
Bill didn’t answer. Janet looked around the box as it shifted up and down, a sign that Cross was carrying her somewhere else. Her helmet scanned the walls, looking for any weak points or areas to escape through. Nothing.
“Oh do we have so much catching up to do,” Cross said, forcefully placing the box on a surface. Janet lost her footing and fell on her back. Remembering her stingers, Janet prayed they were strong enough to bust through the box. She had one chance at this.
Pointing her stingers at the wall, Janet flicked the projectiles to their highest intensity and braced herself to fire.
BOOM! A gaping hole burst out of the box, letting the light of the factory into her former prison. She jumped out, with her ant flying away in fear. Growing to normal size, she charged Cross, only to be stopped by the armed guards. Darren Cross looked at her, confused.
“Van Dyne?” He asked, taking her head in his hand and turning it left to right, as if examining her to see if she was real. “Where’s Pym?”
“Right here,” a voice echoed through the control room.
Suddenly a figure appeared from nowhere, knocking the guards back with metal tendrils connected to a yellow armored suit. A terrifying helmet hid the face of the attacker, who deftly grabbed their rifles and snapped them with a surprising strength. Once the guards were incapacitated, the figure took off its helmet.
“Hey Janet,” Hank Pym greeted her, ruffling his hair with a confidence Janet couldn’t remember him ever displaying. “Looks like you need some help!”

First Previous Next
Sheila’s new Federation Class Twelve Cargo Vessel dropped out of hyperspace and T’sunk’al crowded the viewing port.
“What is this place?” he asked as he surveyed a massive debris field.
“Oh this? This is the Saralan system,” Shelia said in a matter of fact manner.
“The Saralan system?”
“The site of The Battle of All the Marbles. This is where the combined Juon Empire and Republic fleets went head to head with the Collective Armada. This is where we broke their backs,” Sheila said as she surrendered the controls to Samuels, the team’s best pilot. “The victory was expensive though, almost phyrric. Out there is around twenty five percent of what was then the Republic’s entire fleet including two Vengeance Class carriers, like the Retribution, along with roughly thirty percent of the Empire’s including six Imperial Dreadnoughts… But they took with them almost all of the Collective Armada. Hundreds of thousands died but the tide of the Great War changed in just two days. We stopped them right here.”
“You lost carriers?” T’sunk’al asked. “I thought they were indestructible.”
“Nothing is indestructible if you throw enough anti-matter at it. They weren’t vaporized, just trashed to the point they weren’t salvageable. The bugs actually fucked up and tried to board them, which didn’t work out too well for them. They lost most of their warriors in the attempt.”
“It sounds truly horrible.”
“Oh it was,” Sheila said as she bared her teeth in a grin. “It was Hell made manifest. In the end all the plans and strategy broke down on both sides and it turned into a pure slug fest, a dogfight with battleships and hand to hand fighting inside them.”
“Were you there?”
“Nah, I was having my own little party on Corvux Seven,”
“Corvux Seven?”
“Didn’t follow the war at all did you? We took the Corvux System based on the intel that the bugs were up to something big on the surface. They even had queens down there. It all went smooth and we put a lot of forces on the ground after softening them up with bombardment and airstrikes. We wanted those queens,” She said with a rueful smile. “What we didn’t know is that the big thing they were doing on Corvux was making a massive supply depot and command center for their main armada. About two weeks into our campaign the whole fucking armada rolled through. We were cut off and stuck on that fucking rock for over two years… two fucking years...” Sheila paused looking off into space for awhile. “Not many of us survived that.”
“I’m surprised that any of you did.”
“So am I.” Sheila laughed. “We all thought we were toast. Some people tried to hide and wait for rescue. Others, however, decided that we were dead and that we were going to do as much damage and take as many of those fuckers along with us as we could. We threw together a gang of Terrans, Juon, a few Kalesh and whatever else managed to survive those first few days and were up for a fight and we brought the pain.” Sheila laughed again. “The really funny thing is that the ones that tried to hide were wiped out and groups like ours were the only ones that survived. Life is funny sometimes.” Sheila paused to take a sip of coffee. “Actually a lot of my crew are from Corvux. We looked each other up after that bullshit treaty with the Feds. We don’t exactly go feral like you z’uush but certain experiences give us… perspective… that serves us quite well in our line of work.”
“Yeah, the Terran doctors have other names for that ‘perspective’,” Samuels laughed.
“I prefer to call it an ‘alternative mentality’,” Sheila said with a chuckle. “Anyway, it’s nothing that a bottle of whiskey and a blunt can’t fix… And the next job, of course. Speaking of, I understand we have been put out of business by our beloved Republic. We need to come up with a new angle.”
“Pity,” Samuels said. “You z’uush made us a lot of bank.”
“Are you displeased that our plight has come to an end?” T’sunk’al asked as he flicked his eyestalks in their version of a raised eyebrow.
“What? No. We would have done a lot more if we could but we are just one outfit. We were able to get you arms and provide a means to pay for them but that’s about it,” Sheila said. “The fact that we were able to profit from the whole deal was a nice plus. Running our own little private war ain’t cheap. Not only did you finance your cause but you provided us with the means to continue ours as well. Our mission involving you is complete. Now we just need to come up with a new one,” Shelia said with a predatory smile. “Don’t worry. We will find another nice juicy soft spot to strike soon enough.”
“You do all of this just to continue to fight the Federation? Do you hate them that much?”
“You are goddamn right I do!” Sheila snarled. “Those shitstains sat back and let us and the Empire bleed ourselves white fighting back the fucking bugs even though their asses were next if we failed. They just sat back and watched as we protected all of civilized space,” She spat as she stood up and started to pace. “Then what do they do? After we damn near broke ourselves stopping the biggest goddamn threat in our generation, after we lose over seventy percent of our fleet, ninety four percent of our marines, and sixty eight percent of our army, what do they fucking do? They stab us in the back! They launch a surprise attack on our shipyards, repair stations, and military garrisons! I lost friends! Good people! People who survived Corvux, survived here, survived the whole goddamn hell that was the great war only to be murdered while they were sleeping in their bunks or drinking a cup of coffee! They had made it... They survived… They… m-my people were supposed to be safe… GODDAMN THEM TO HELL!” Sheila slammed her fist into the bulkhead with tears in her eyes. T’sunk’al backed away instinctively as he witnessed a Terran on the brink. He glanced over to Samuels and saw something even more terrifying, a completely blank, totally emotionless void where a bright bubbly person once stood. Samuels was gone and something else was standing there instead.
“We don’t care that the Republic decided that they were done with the Federation. We don’t fucking care. We aren’t done! We will never be done! The Federation will fucking BURN!” Sheila shouted as blood dripped between her fingers and onto the deck.
“Goddamn right, ma’am.” Samuels quietly replied. “We will watch them burn… all of them.”
T’sunk’al stood frozen to the spot, unable to breathe. Something deep within him clicked as Sheila screamed. Images of friends, family, the love of his life… worked to death in the mines or killed in their desperate struggle… Senseless deaths… Needless deaths… He had never really stopped to think. He never had the chance. But he realized that he was angry. Oh, he had known he was angry but only then did he fully realize he was fucking enraged. She was right. They had begged the Federation for help, multiple times. The result? The pleas always fell on deaf ears and the z’uush that made the attempt were always imprisoned and “re-educated”. When things got so bad they finally had to take matters in their own hands what did the Federation do? Send fucking warships. She was right. They had to burn. It was the only thing that made sense. They had to burn.
“You are right, human-friend Sheila,” He said in a calm even voice. “What they allowed to happen to us, what they did to us, what they would still be doing to us except for you and the Republic, it was… it is unforgivable. So many of us died and not just in our war but in what came before. They aren’t what they claim to be. All of their supposed ideals… are shit. They need to be hurt the way we were hurt. They need to be punished… D-do you… Do you… Do you have an opening in your crew?”
Sheila looked at T’sunk’al and sighed sadly.
“You are a phenomenal pilot and amazing in a fight. I would be happy to have you but are you sure? Right now you are a noble freedom fighter, a fucking hero. Run with us and you trade that in for something a lot darker,” Sheila said as she laid a hand on T’sunk’al’s scarred carapace. “There is no going back.”
“There is already no going back. I’ve already ‘changed’ thanks to the Federation. I’m not the same person I was before all of this. I’ve lost everything, including myself, thanks to them. I’ve been wondering for quite some time what would happen to me if we won and now that we have I still have no purpose beyond what I have become. I’m a blockade runner, a drug dealer, and a killer. I can’t return to polite z’uush society and to be perfectly honest I don’t want to. I want in.”
“Ok, sounds like you really thought about it. It has to be put to a vote but I’m pretty sure-”
“He has my vote even if I don’t like the competition.” Samuels interjected. “That’s a compliment by the way.”
“A vote? Aren’t you in charge?” T’sunk’al asked.
“Me? I can barely control these animals on a good day,” Sheila said as she walked to the medical supplies. “I’m ‘in charge’ in tactical situations. When we plan and perform an op or the shit hits the fan I call the shots. In our day to day operations we decide things by consensus. Everyone has their area of expertise or official job and any questions beyond that go to a vote. That includes new partners but we could definitely use another kick ass pilot and navigator. We will make it official once we reach our destination as our first order of business,” She explained as she bandaged her hand.
“Where is our destination?”
“In there,” Sheila said with a grin as she pointed towards one of the greatest concentrations of debris. “Our destination is the Vengeance.”
“Wasn’t it destroyed?”
“Oh it’s a burned out hull now but once the Terran recovery teams finished clearing out or destroying all of the classified stuff or anything else they wanted they abandoned it. It was just too fucking huge to vaporize. It was more trouble than it was worth. Enterprising individuals refurbished the main power plant and sealed off enough of it to make one hell of a space station, completely off the map. It’s a great place to buy and sell munitions, equipment, and ships or to just lay low for awhile. The hotels and restaurants are a bit pricey though. We usually just stay on the ship unless we feel indulgent. Even a brigand can use a spa day.”
“We just got the latest approach. Our guys are holed up at Kolvac’’ksa and Smith’s Salvage and Recovery.” Samuels said over her shoulder as she laid in the new course.
“That’s another nice thing about the Vengeance. There is so much debris, unexploded munitions, and other assorted hazards around it that without the latest information getting to it is a long, slow, and dangerous proposition,” Sheila said as she grabbed a mango from one of the pallets of Terran produce filling the Class Twelve. “That’s why we like it there. You can jump out once you are clear but it will take days to get in there without the latest map. We could also go to Saralan 2, The bugs never got their hooks into it so it is still a nice place but with all the orbital debris the approach is pretty hairy on the best day and the prices suck. Only reason to go down there is if you are desperate for outside and you are so much of a fugitive you can’t go anywhere else. That being said we did have a nice camping trip down there once for exactly that reason.”
“Got their hooks into it?”
“You don’t know a lot about the Collective do you? The Collective doesn’t conquer or enslave. They terraform. Any pre-existing life is just an inconvenience to them. The first thing they do is completely eliminate the existing ecosystem and put their own in place. Most of the worlds they took are complete wastelands now,” Sheila shrugged. “I’ve never seen a bug world but from what I hear they suck even whey they are finished. They didn’t make it to Saralan 2 so it’s still intact. Since it has been mostly abandoned the world has become true wilderness again. The sight of nature reclaiming the empty juon cities is absolutely beautiful,” Sheila said as she looked over at Samuels at the helm. “You know, we should get back down there sometime.”
“Only if you do the piloting. I’m not doing that shit again. We almost got wiped out by what was left of a Shrike or did you forget that part?”
“Hey, that’s what we have the new guy for,” Sheila said as she gave T’sunk’al’s carapace a rough slap.
“If we all die then there will be nobody left who can find me at fault. I’m game,” T’sunk’al said with a casual shrug.
“Hey, you’re fitting in already,” Sheila said with a laugh. “I’m going to grab a grapefruit. Anyone want anything while I’m back there?”
T’sunk’al’s eyes, all of them, dilated in surprise as they approached the wreck of the Vengeance.
“I knew that your carriers were big… but damn...” He said in awe.
“Yeah, everyone has that reaction the first time they see one up close. The thing actually has a slight gravitational field. That is why all that stuff is sticking to it.” Sheila said as they got into their place in line.
“I am surprised. I wasn’t expecting so many ships.”
“Oh this system is pretty busy. Think about it. With twenty five percent of the Terran fleet, thirty percent of the Imperial fleet, and all of those Collective ships, this is a scrounger’s paradise. If you are willing to brave unexploded mines, armed nukes, auto-turrets with self contained power cells, and whatever abominations the Collective have in their shit you can still find treasures here. Hell, the scrap metal alone is worth trillions. There are scores of scavengers out there on any given day.”
“And the Empire allows this? Isn’t this their territory?”
“Yes it is and no they don’t. This system is officially off limits but once the Empire and the Terran recovery teams were done securing the good stuff and blowing up what they could the blockades went on their way. They will come through every now and then and throw out some mines but it’s really more trouble than it’s worth for them. They are much more interested in patrolling the borders and rebuilding than they are guarding a pile of debris that kills a lot of the people stupid, greedy, or crazy enough to go digging around in there.”
Samuels veered out of the line as a huge set of doors opened in the side of the hull. She easily fit the Class Twelve into the cavernous opening. T’sunk’al just stared as they entered.
“How thick is that armor?”
“Around five hundred meters give or take. They say they actually beefed it up on the newer ones. The Retribution’s armor is so thick that Federation scanners can’t penetrate it even if the shields are down. It just shows up as solid on their readouts.”
“How can it even move?”
“I have no fucking idea,” Sheila shrugged. “The carrier’s propulsion and main gun are some of the most closely guarded secrets the Republic has. Nobody I know has even seen the engines and if you get too close or they catch you trying to scan them you can expect to suck vacuum for your efforts. Seriously, you have a better chance of getting into Terran Intelligence Headquarters than you do getting into a carrier’s engine room. Here, they turned the huge gaping hole the recovery teams left in the engine’s place into a really nice greenhouse and some lovely villas. Don’t know much about the engines except that they were huge.” Sheila said as she cut into another mango. “I haven’t seen the engines but I have seen the power plant. This place can damn near feed a planet. It could be just pure Terran brute force. It has the power for it.”
Samuels expertly landed the ship next to the Paper Tiger. Sheila winced. Her ship was partially disassembled with parts laying everywhere. Samuels looked over at Shelia and grinned.
“Looks like the chief is at it again, boss,” She said with a laugh.
“Goddammit… This happens every fucking time I turn my back on him,” Sheila grumbled. “I wonder how much of our money he spent this time.”
Sheila opened the hatch and stepped out into a huge hangar bay. Some z’uush children ran past kicking a ball and a few more were playing with a strange furry creature that ran around squeaking excitedly as some local vendors wandered about hawking their wares. The adults had set up a camp fashioned from shipping containers and tarps and most were standing around a large open fire grilling meats and vegetables on long skewers. A z’uush female ran up excitedly.
“I am so glad you are all safe! I feared I would never see you again,” She addressed the entire group but her gaze was fixed firmly on T’sunk’al who shifted uncomfortably.
“Oh, we got away eventually… No worries…” T’sunk’al mumbled shifting back and forth. Sheila grinned at him. She hadn’t seen him get nervous in quite some time.
“Oh! Your shell.” The female said as she reached out and touched the fresh cracks on his carapace. Apparently a z’uush can blush. Who knew.
“No… no big deal. I just… I just grabbed some repair resin when we were on Terra. It’s good as new,” T’sunk’al mumbled and actually hiccuped once. The female giggled and quickly pulled her manipulator away.
“You were on Terra?”
“Yeah, we had some business there… no big deal.”
“Wow!” she enthused and then hiccuped. “I’m… I’m going to go and check on the children...” she giggled and ran off. Sheila elbowed T’sunk’al.
“Looks like someone could have a little fun there, T.”
“Wha? P-please… She is half my age.”
“She legal?”
“What do you mean… Oh! Y-yes… She c-can c-consent… (hic)” T’sunk’al was hopping back and forth like he was on his first arms deal.
“Well… run that blockade, dude!” Sheila slapped him on the back while the reassembled crew laughed. “Chief! Where the fuck are you!” A eyestalk popped out from under one of the engines.
“Down here.”
“What are you doing under that engine that clearly isn’t one of ours, right next to those other two engines that clearly aren’t ours?”
“Um… they are now?” The rest of the crew chuckled as they backed away.
“Oh those are very nice engines,” Sheila said dubiously. “Juon seraphims. Very, very nice.” The chief quickly pulled his eyestalk back under the engine. “Exactly how much did those cost?”
“We got a great deal on them.”
“How much?”
“The improvements to our performance will be amazing.”
“How much?”
“Our old ones were getting worn and I couldn’t change the drive signatures again without extensive retooling.”
“How much?”
“...fortyfivemillioncredits...”
“FORTY FIVE MILLION CREDITS?!?!? WHAT THE FUCK! GET OUT HERE!”
“No. I think I will stay under here for awhile,” the chief wisely replied. Sheila stomped over to the engine and threw herself down onto the deck halfway squirming under the engine after him.
“It wasn’t just the engines,” The kaleshi engineer said defensively as he retreated further into the machinery. “We got a great deal on the engines but the power plant wasn’t big enough so we got a new one and then we had to buy some structural components so we can handle the new thrust. Of course now our acceleration is much better so we needed some new inertial dampeners,” The chief paused for breath and then continued. “Kolvac’’ksa had this great new hyperdrive and cloak that we could get on the cheap that we could now power with the new plant so that was a no brainer. Of course the new hyperdrive needed a new navigational computer to handle the extra jump range so we absolutely had to get one of those. After all that I figured why not get a new control console and comms so our signature will be completely different.”
“That’s more than the fucking ship is worth! We could have bought a whole new ship for that!”
“Yeah, but it wouldn’t be nearly as badass as this one will be once I modify and install all of this new gear!”
“That’s nearly all of our operating budget you jackass and we are out of fucking business! The Republic just ended the z’uush insurrection once and for all!”
“… oh…”
“Yeah, asshole, that’s right.” Sheila fumed. “You better fucking hope I can get a good price for that class twelve and it’s cargo or it’s ramen noodles for all of us.” She rose to her feet and confronted the rest of the crew. “And you assholes just fucking let him do this shit?”
“We put it to a vote and decided it was a good move. The new engines will let us take off in less than a minute and the new hyperdrive and navcomp will let us jump in half the time we used to. After our last little adventure we kinda thought that was a good idea,” Greg, the quartermaster, said. “If we could have done that we wouldn’t have had to bust your ass out of jail. We could have just shoved the z’uush on board and gotten the fuck out of there. Abandoning you didn’t sit well with any of us.” Sheila just sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose. They had a point and nobody expected the Republic to swoop in like they did.
“Well, you knuckleheads have done dumber things with our cash and that launch time will come in handy. We also got a pretty decent payday from Republic Intelligence for that data grab so we aren’t completely broke,” Sheila said with a shrug. She looked around. “Where is Roberts? He get here yet?”
“Yeah, he beat you here by two days and we already sold the Starlancer he boosted so that’s a bit of coin in our pockets too. He’s in the main station with some of the z’uush getting groceries and some toys, clothes, and other sundries for our new guests. They didn’t bring much and a lot of that was left behind when we had to scoot.”
“Nice of you guys. Well at least we are all in one place and with all of our bits still attached,” Sheila said with a smile, “Even if our war chest is damn near empty thanks to you asshats.” She then turned to face the single eyestalk cautiously peeking out from underneath the engine. “How long to get the old gal back together?”
“Should take less than a week. We have the run of Kolvac’’ksa’s shop. He has been surprisingly generous with his tools and equipment,” the chief laughed.
“Oh I bet he has,” Sheila said with an exaggerated eye roll. She then turned to T’sunk’al and wrapped her arm around him. “Before you assholes give me a stroke I need a vote on something...”
“Well that’s settled then,” Sheila said after what was probably the fastest vote in their history. Everybody knew T’sunk’al and what he could do at the helm and the shoot-out after their last deal went sideways sealed the deal. “We got a new number two pilot and primary navigator. Sorry Jacks. You are warming the bench for now.”
“No worries, boss,” Jacks said with a shrug. “T is solid.”
“Ok, T, go grab some gear. We still have a mountain of stuff we didn’t offload before that cruiser showed up.”
A large shambling white furry mound waddled up and extended four beefy arms.
“Sheila! Glad to see they sprung you. I was worried.”
“You should be more worried that I escaped. Forty five million credits? Kolvac’’ksa, I should shank you,” Sheila said with a smile as she settled into a huge warm furry embrace.
“You object? Your company was quite specific in their order,” Kolvac’’ksa sa said as Sheila practically disappeared into his body.
“Yeah yeah. I’ve already had a chat with my crew,” a muffled voice filtered out through the deep fur.
“I heard. I figured I would give you guys a few minutes before I greeted you this time,” Kolvac’’ksa laughed as he allowed Sheila to escape.
“So, buddy… My old and dear friend,” Sheila said with a big smile as she gestured at the class twelve. “What do you say we just do a swap and call it even?”
“Oh, you Terrans and your wonderful sense of humor. I can’t give you more than five million for that.”
“Five million? Have you been sniffing coolant again? Just look at that beauty.”
“I am. Federation Class Twelve Cargo ships are used solely by the Federation. They don’t sell them on the civilian market. While I am truly impressed that you snatched one, it is and will always be clearly stolen. Just swapping a few components and recalibrating the engines won’t cut it this time my friend. My only hope is to scrap it for parts.”
“Don’t give me that. You can sell it anywhere on the edge. The Federation doesn’t touch Imperial space and the Empire doesn’t give enough of a shit to do anything unless they park it next to the palace,” Sheila said as she scratched his chin. “Hell, I bet you could sell it to scavengers and it would never leave the system.”
“Your scritches won’t sway me this time temptress,” Kolvac’’ksa said as he growled in satisfaction and leaned forward for more. “Ok, for you I will make some inquiries and see if I can find a buyer. Twenty-five percent commission.”
“Thanks sweetie,” Sheila said with a big grin. “So how is Ms. Smith doing?”
“Growing like a weed. She is nearly as tall as her father was,” Kolvac’’ksa said preening with pride. He had raised her as his own ever since her father, his first business partner, died while exploring a Collective warship. “It is clear that she inherited her father’s technical ability and business savvy. She is already a valuable business partner and will do the Smith name justice.”
“Great, I will have to deal with two of you again if one wasn’t enough. Where is the little sprout anyway?”
“Not sure. She should be assessing salvage but she is probably running around with the z’uush children again. I shouldn’t be so indulgent but it isn’t often she has so many creatures at her point in their development with which to cavort.”
“Well aren’t you just a big old softy.”
“Considering how cruelly you take advantage me you should already know that,” Kolvac’’ksa said with a laugh.
“Oh please...”
At that moment a tween with a wild tangle of red hair wearing a greasy jumpsuit ran up.
“Kolvac we have a problem!” She grabbed him, pulled him away, and started frantically whispering at him.
“Well, let them in,” He said in a rather grave tone. He turned to Sheila. “It appears that we have a guest. More precisely you have a guest. I am out of here.” With that Kolvac’’ksa beat a hasty retreat as the atmospheric retaining field flicked on and the massive bay doors started to open.
The doors opened completely and nothing happened. Nothing seemed to enter. Then, they could all hear the faintest humming noise and a stiff breeze blew past. Suddenly a long, lean, jet black frigate appeared before them, less than fifty meters away.
“Well, fuck.” Sheila said in a quiet calm voice. Nobody moved or spoke except for T’sunk’al.
“Shouldn’t we arm ourselves?”
“No point,” Sheila said quietly. “That is an Imperial Stalker, a Nightguard ship.”
“Nightguard?”
“Fuck, I like you T but I don’t feel like another lecture right now. They will kill us. All you need to know.”
“Besides,” Greg said, “we have a hangar deck full of civvies and there is a very firm law here saying that you don’t directly oppose the Juon Empire when they show up. We won’t be welcome here ever again if something happens even if we do survive.”
The Stalker made a perfectly silent landing. A hatch opened without a sound and two Juon exited the ship and approached. T’sunk’al cocked his eyes curiously. He had never seen one before.
“They are so wriggly,” he whispered.
“Yeah they look funny but don’t be fooled. They will fuck you up. Now please be quiet,” Samuels whispered back.
“Showtime,” Sheila whispered as she stepped forward to meet the Juon.
Captain Zzuural stepped onto the deck along with Lieutenant Guzzala. The Captain calmly surveyed the scene before him. A Federation craft along with several humans wearing no uniform. Surely the Federation wouldn’t be so stupid as to trespass so deeply into Imperial space but stupid did seem to be the Galactic Federation’s stock in trade these past few years. While not officially at war, the Empire held the same view of the Federation as the Terran Republic and for exactly the same reason. Those Feds were about to die.
“Is everyone ready, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, Captain.” Zzuural briefly glanced back at the Lieutenant with satisfaction. She was a promising Juona, already a Nightguard officer at her age.
“Good. Keep ready with that stopwatch. Hopefully we will get to have a nice little live fire exercise. I relish the chance to cook some Federation long-pork.”
“Long-pork?”
He glanced back at her. “You are unfamiliar with the term? It’s what our Terran friends call the humans in the Federation. They are also called ‘porkies’. They are quite the slurs. I recommend adopting them.”
“Yes, sir. I will at once.”
The captain wrinkled his eyes in a smile at her response. He found her formality amusing as always. One of the humans approached them. He casually flipped open the catch on his blade. The human’s courage was admirable. He would reward them with a proper death. Porkie or not courage should be respected and deserved ceramic. He felt his pulse starting to rise. He lost a lot of human friends on “Red Sunday” and it would be nice to spill a little blood in their honor.
He suddenly stopped and stared in complete surprise. His chromatophores unconsciously flickered and yellow pinpricks of surprise contrasted starkly against his normal disciplined nightguard black hide.
“Stand down. Repeat. Everyone stand down.”
“Sir?” Lieutenant Guzzala asked. She was shocked at the speckles of color on her captain’s skin. She had never seen that before, regardless of the situation.
“These aren’t porkies.” The captain said, his eyes scrunched in the biggest smile she had ever seen.
The captain increased his pace towards the human female. The female stopped and her eyes widened. Guzzala wasn’t completely familiar with human body language but it was clearly a deviation from how she moved a second before.
“Major Donovan?” Captain Zzuural said as his skin started to ripple with yellow waves of astonishment.
“Holy shit! Commander… fuck. Captain Zzu!” The lieutenant looked on in shock as her captain rushed forward and wrapped his tentacles around the human who returned the embrace. She was so stunned that her skin shifted from Nightguard black to a muted charcoal gray for a full five seconds.
“Captain?” The woman asked as she hugged Captain Zzuural. “Damn, exactly how much semen did you have to drink to get that on your collar?” The lieutenant's skin flashed red ever so briefly. Her captain just laughed as he released the human.
“Oh, only as much as your grandfather drank every single day as he knelt before us,” Zzuural laughed as he swatted her playfully.
“And exactly how did that work for you? Has the Imperial honor recovered from the ass kicking we handed you yet?”
The lieutenant couldn’t remain silent.
“You did not ‘kick our ass’! We graciously decided to negotiate a peaceful-”
“Kid, I was there and I know an ass kicking when I receive one. We lost,” The captain laughed, rippling with amusement. “We lost and we lost big time.” The lieutenant couldn’t control her chromatophores and green rings of irritation danced across her skin.
“Yeah,” Sheila responded, “We weren’t conquered and you didn’t lose. We each allow the other their illusions but in truth, the Empire totally rolled over us like a laden transport and later we completely mopped the floor with your ass.” The lieutenant's skin now had green rings rippling past green rings.
“Relax, lieutenant,” Captain Zzuural said with a smile. “There is no lost honor. We were fighting the Terrans, a very fearsome opponent, on their home turf.” He patted a tentacle affectionately. “The Imperial honor can handle one loss per thousand years as long as it is against something like the Terrans. We’ll get them next time.”
“In your dreams, Zzu.” Sheila snorted. “Too bad we have so many other asses to kick before we can have that rematch.”
“Yes, the universe seeks to keep us quite occupied in that regard,” Captain Zzuural said with a grin. “Speaking of, would you mind enlightening me concerning that Class Twelve. We thought you all to be porkes and were about to have a luau.”
“We stole it,” Sheila said returning his grin.
“Stole it?” Captain Zzuural said in confusion.
“Sir, you need to see this,” Lieutenant Guzzala said as she handed the captain a data tablet.
“Wow, Sheila," the captain said as he read the report, "I suppose congratulations are in order. You’ve seem to have made the most interesting transition to civilian life.”
“Yeah, we like to keep busy.”
“I’m astonished. For you, of all people, to abandon the Republic, to become a… a…”
“A hardened criminal?”
“Yes. The Sheila I knew was many things but a criminal?”
“I resigned my commission immediately after that horseshit treaty. When we decided to just stop and let them off the hook that was it. My whole fucking battalion was massacred on Red Sunday. Boris, Twitchy, Glitter Eyes, Susan, Skittles… Colonel Lassiter and his entire family... All of them just wiped out. The only reason I’m here is because I decided to… Decided to take the weekend off.”
Captain Zzuural laid a tentacle on Sheila’s shoulder. “There was nothing you could have done.”
“They survived Corvux. They survived Corvux and all the rest only to be killed in their sleep, Zzu. A lot of good people were murdered for absolutely no good reason after we damn near gutted ourselves stopping the bugs,” Sheila said with hate in her voice. “Then, after a little slap on the wrist we decide to let the Feds off? Fuck that. I just took a walk.” Sheila grinned wickedly. “So… After becoming a civilian I came across some like minded individuals and...”
“Just like Corvux...” Captain Zzuural said his skin rippling with amusement and malice.
“Basically. We decided that the Feds got off light and we were going to do something about it. And we have.”
“You say that but I’m not seeing that here, just slimy stuff like a lot of drug trafficking, piracy, and illegal arms sales. Not exactly the noble cause you describe.”
“Hey, waging our own little campaign is expensive. Drugs pay the bills, not to mention that poison goes right into the veins of the porkies. Our drugs have killed more porkies than our bullets ever could. Those arms sales? Those have all gone to the hands of the right people. We’ve supplied a lot of guns, rockets, grenades… nukes… to people who either want to make trouble in the Federation or take a shot at the Federation itself. Arms dealing is a force multiplier. As far as the piracy goes I can assure you that the targets aren’t random,” Sheila said as she looked at her old friend. “I can see your disapproval but the ends justify the means. I walked away from honor when I walked away from the uniform. These days, anything goes. If we can do damage, any damage, or make a buck at their expense then we do it.”
“I cannot condone your actions. I nearly weep to see what you have become but I do understand your decisions and considering your motive,” Captain Zzuural said as he looked at the tablet in his tentacle, “you have done damage, a pretty good bit of it.”
“Yeah, and you probably don’t have the latest information. We just drew blood. We are laying low after what was the single best strike we have ever made,” Sheila said with a grin. “We also are no longer wanted by the Republic. I just got back from Terra after having a long heart to heart with some people. As long as we don’t get caught doing something stupid they won’t be looking for us anymore.”
“Ok. I believe you. Again, I won’t say that I approve but I accept it. These are dark days and I will not judge. You do what you must.”
“Sir, you can’t possibly...” The lieutenant interjected.
“Can’t possibly do what?”
“We can not ignore this. These are wanted-”
“I determine that this is an independent para-military group opposing the Federation, not simple criminals. They aren’t wanted in the Empire and they maintain that they are not wanted in the Republic. They are officially not our concern. We investigated a Federation craft in Imperial space and have determined that they are not Federation agents and a stolen Federation spacecraft is again, not our concern.”
“But, sir, you only have her word for it and-”
“Careful, lieutenant. I said they are not our concern. I know this human very well and I know when she is lying and she isn’t.”
“How do you know her?”
“I was on Corvux. I ran with her for two years. She is a real soldier and worth the benefit of the doubt.”
“You were on Corvux?” The lieutenant asked in surprise.
“Yep. My ship got blown apart and by some miracle my escape pod survived Collective target practice and made it to the surface,” the captain said matter of factly. “I met the Terrans and worked with Major Donovan and Colonel Lassiter for the whole time. She can be guilty as hell and I would still let her walk but I do believe her.” The lieutenant's skin radiated misery. The captain smiled as he laid a tentacle on one of hers.
“Look, if it will smooth your colors I will make a level one query to Imperial Intelligence. They will know the truth,” he said reassuringly and then he gestured to the Paper Tiger. “Besides, look at their actual ship. They aren’t going anywhere soon. We have time to figure all of this out.”
“Well, I do have one way of verifying my story,” Sheila said with an impish grin. She remotely opened the Class Twelve’s cargo hatch and beckoned them inside.
Captain Zzuural’s eyes widened in happy surprise.
“By the Empress,” He whispered in awe as he beheld the cargo.
“Clearly we have been to Terra and recently,” Sheila said as she grabbed a coconut and tossed it to the captain. He snatched it out of the air and tucked it under his body as his beak started tearing through the husk. His skin rippled with pure delight as he started slurping away at the coconut water.
“Oh yeah,” he said happily as he demolished his prize. “Yep. They have been to Terra.” Sheila then tossed one to the lieutenant who caught it and looked at it dubiously.
“You like coconut?” The captain asked knowing the answer. Coconut was a flavor universally adored by the juon.
“Yes, sir?”
“Well, you haven’t ever actually tasted real coconut before.”
“I have, sir,” the lieutenant said rippling with irritation. “When I graduated officer school my creche celebrated with a cake covered with real shaved-”
“Just be quiet and eat.” The lieutenant cautiously put the odd thing she was given underneath herself.
“No, like this,” the captain said as he grabbed another coconut and tilted himself back revealing his damp glossy beak. The lieutenant was scandalized at her captain’s inappropriate display. She had never seen his beak before. Rippling with embarrassment she copied the way he ripped into the coconut.
Moments later her eyes scrunched nearly closed as waves of joy danced across her skin.
“This, my dear lieutenant, is a real, fresh, juicy, delicious coconut straight from beautiful Terra herself. Our dastardly villain has indeed been there." He glanced over at the lieutenant and wondered if she even heard him.
“I think she needs a minute,” Sheila said with a laugh as she rolled another coconut the lieutenant's way.
“My dear comrade, any chance you may be willing to sell a few pallets of these treasures to some hard working loyal servants of the Empire?” The captain asked.
“Absolutely not!” Sheila said with a smile. “You take what you want, old friend. Your guys deserve a treat. In fact, let’s have that luau.”