Company Man
The Company doesn’t discriminate. Company can’t afford to discriminate, really. Outpost turnover rate is thirteen percent. Fatality rate fifteen percent. Incarceration rate five percent. Retirement rate two percent. Promotion rate point-oh-one percent. Adds up to a lot of need. Applications welcome, apply now for an exciting career in scraping some poor bastard’s brains out of his rig twelve million miles from home. Take his bolter after, never too many retirement options. The Company provides.
Third year at Zero-Seven-Pisces. Five grunts under me. I hated one and favored another but they all did good work. We unloaded and reloaded what the rigs brought, transferring outpost supplies to their crew leads and reloading what needed to go deeper out. Very little came back though that was also our purview. Those parcels were massive, needed the full crew for those lifts. Whatever was in there usually locked up tight. We didn’t get paid to ask questions and I never did. I kept myself busy and all other times kept myself drunk. The Company looked the other way on certain illicit activities, otherwise work would never get done.
Big, slick rig slid in. Twice as big and came with a squad. Driver wasn’t your normal spacer. She was some sinuous shaved-head bitch, barked orders at black-glassed Company brutes. All armed with beautiful new bolters. Things must have been a year’s salary. Full kits, extended rounds, auto-track scopes, fully collapsible. Linked personal orbs hovered close by, probably had all of our readings behind those face shields. They didn’t speak to us. Possibly couldn’t. Company likes to keep the chain tight. Blacks fanned out to supervise our unload.
Jaws of that rig cracked and widened and right in its’ belly was a mess of translucent tubes pumping liquids, metal piping going every which way, and panels each an indecipherable spectrogram. I’m sure it made sense to someone but me and mine exchanged looks of puzzlement. Well, Company doesn’t care if you know or don’t so we rigged that thing and took it off. Read t manifest and it told me I wasn’t qualified to know anything other than how to load it onto the next one. Figured it was some stupid bullshit bound for deep space. Half right.
We had that thing off for about fifty seconds before industrial bolters filled the blacks with holes. Driver was able to cack one of the assailants, then her arm lost its tether, then leg, then well I didn’t feel a need to keep looking. We didn’t have time to react. Didn’t really have much of a care to, either. It started one moment, finished the next, then we were faced with the mess hall staff except they weren’t dressed to cook. Big John always gave me extra portions on account of delivering his special spices. Might’ve been why he didn’t kill us all.
“Barle. I’ve been waiting for this one. Very, very good spices in this one. You mind if I take it?”
“Well.” Looked at the thing. Looked at Big John. “What’re you gonna cook with it?” He laughed, his people laughed, mine laughed, I laughed. Their bolters were still trained on us.
“A big, big roast, I think. I haven’t decided yet. You have to take a deep whiff sometimes, crack open the jar and then sort of… let it come to you. You know?”
“No.”
“Fair enough. You’re no chef.”
“I imagine you aren’t, either.” His eyes hardened at that. Smile never left his face but his voice became joyless.
“No. Not a company man. Not a profiteer. Not any of your business.”
“Fair… enough.” And it was. I was getting paid for the conversation. To not know. To have no part. “Be on your way, then?”
“Don’t mind if I do. Please, just do me a favor and load this thing right back up. I might even have a tip for you.” All had a good laugh at that one, too. We worked double time. Something about danger and mystery and absurdity and death got us fired up to do the job. Best I ever felt on the outpost. Best work I ever did for the Company. Maybe not for the Company, but you know what I mean. The kitchen took off with weapons and the package and the rig. Found outpost security office ablaze, stench of burning fat wafting out of busted windows. Whatever happened there had driven everyone else to hiding. Came out of the woodwork when the fire died down.
Company didn’t appreciate what the kitchen did to their package, not one bit. Upside, though, was they appreciated our cooperation quite a bit. No detail was too small. Security records were all gone then and our stories were all they had to go on. Big John figured it would be easy to flee with whatever the fuck he took as long as his trash was taken out. Fly off to a payday, retire homeside, feel the original on his face.
Course, I don’t see him here with us, do you? He might’ve had a better appreciation for this than you. Definitely better than me. Pass me another one. God, I love that sunset.