Life of a freelancer, p.11
Life of a Freelancer, page 11
“Nova. Seriously? Talk about a bullshit name. It could only be worse if it was Star . . . or Skywalker”.
“Nice to meet you, Captain,” I gave her a respectful nod and headed for the door. My finger was an inch from the open button when I stopped. “There’s just one thing,” I turned and caught a flash of surprise on her face before she schooled her features.
“What’s that?” she replied.
“I don’t think you have much of a choice,” I deadpanned.
She just stared at me for several seconds. “Explain.”
“The waiting room,” I walked back to the seat and sat without waiting for an offer. “It’s after the lunch rush, so that waiting room should be full if freelancers are lining up for the job. You might have tossed out a line, but no one is biting.”
Her frosty exterior cracked for a second to show a hint of a smile. “What makes you think I didn’t have that room full before lunch?”
I tapped my nose. “The antiseptic smell. Most bots only disinfect at the end of the day, the place out there is sterile. That, and there isn’t one ass imprint on any of the chairs,” I didn’t break eye contact with her. “The announcement says that you’re only taking interviews today, and I’m not going to lie, the announcement ain’t exactly thrilling. If you didn’t have anyone show up this morning, I doubt you’ll have any more this afternoon. That just leaves me.”
“What does that say about you if you weren’t the early bird trying to get the worm?” she fired back.
“It says I’m from out of town and had to take the train in. You know that from my file,” I tried not to sound too cocky.
She kept looking at me, and then leaned back to cross her arms under her tits. I couldn’t help but stare. The way the movement made them press together made them look like two, fluffy marshmallows. My cock could be the Hershey’s bar. Together, we’d make a smore.
“Tell me about the lobby?” she asked.
This was the real interview. “One entrance and exit. Seven bots working the front desk. One human guard on the elevator, and not much cover or concealment against anyone packing legit weaponry.”
“The guard?”
“Off the rack suit with ballistic vest underneath. Might stop a slow slug, but vulnerable to a laser,” I shrugged, reached into my bag, and pulled out my sidearm. She didn’t even flinch.
“He was about six feet, mild build, but I saw a Corps tattoo peeking out from under his collar. Either he’s a diehard or a dumbass. Since he doesn’t look much older than me. I’d put my money on the latter.”
“The receptionist?”
“On this floor? Cute. Maybe a buck ten, admin model. Pink top, and white pencil skirt. Respectable C cup. Anything else?”
She tried to keep a straight face, but I saw the smile fighting to break through. “Not bad, but you missed one important thing.”
“What?” I asked, and tried not to swear as she pulled her own weapon out from under the table.
It was a double-barreled, sawed-off shotgun, and it was aimed right at my nuts. An energy blast from that would take my legs off; shot would do the same, just a lot messier. My money was on energy so she’d be able to get her security deposit back.
“In my defense, you never asked about what I’d observed in this room,” I countered, and slowly put my pistol back in my bag.
“Granted,” her demeanor wasn’t quite as frosty as it had been. “Do you have all the gear in the listing?”
I could have told her, but why tell when you can show. I dumped the pack and all my stuff came rolling out. If this was all a setup, and she wanted to rob me, now was the perfect opportunity. She held the shotgun, muzzle down, at her side for a few moments as her eyes swept over the gear. Her pupil lit up again. This time red instead of white.
“Multiple modes and spectrums. Nice.” If I had that kind of tech, I’d be in x-ray vision mode to see what she looked like without clothes on. It’s a good things she was more professional than me, which was probably why she was a captain, and I was struggling to get a job.
“It’s old, but it’ll get the job done,” she nodded.
“Thanks. Do I get the job?” that was the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.
“If a better candidate doesn’t walk in here in the next hour. Yes,” she’d gone back to schooling her expressions. “Thanks for stopping by.”
“I’ll just wait out front so we can head to the ship once you wrap this up,” I felt confident enough to say as I repacked my gear and headed for the door.
Once it closed behind me, I slumped against the wall. She’d had me dead to rights with that cannon. I couldn’t believe I’d missed that. I knew attention to detail was going to be the kicker, and having all the gear, but she’d brought me down to size after my little show.
“If I actually get the job, I’m going to need to clamp down on the titty fucking fantasies.”
Now that the threat had passed, I imagined her on her knees, my tip in her mouth, while she used those knockers to milk me like a thoroughbred stud. I had a very active imagination.
“Get a grip.” I’d made a decent first impression, but the battle wasn’t over for another hour. If I learned anything in the Corps, it was that anything could happen.
I took a seat out front, put my feet up on the table, and settled in. Not thirty minutes went by before the elevator opened and a man stepped out. Scratch that. A walking tree ducked in through a door that anyone under seven feet could easily pass through. He was big, like modded big. He looked like he could deadlift a battlecruiser. In his hand he carried a rifle case, and a Corps issued go-bag. He had some expensive tech around his neck, and his LINC looked state-of-the-art. In other words, a much better candidate than me.
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” I jumped to my feet.
“Good afternoon, sir. How can I help you today?” I hunched my shoulders and shuffled my feet a little to look more submissive.
The bot at the receptionist desk cocked her head in surprise, but didn’t say anything. They were usually programmed not to interrupt two humans in conversation.
“I’m here about the posting,” his voice sounded like a lion gearing up to roar.
“Oh yes,” I wrung my hands nervously. “I’m sorry, Mr. . .”
“Demon,” he growled.
I strangled the laugh in my throat. The guy might look like he could make god bleed, but he had to be dumber than rocks to name himself Demon. There was no way his momma hated him that much it was his given name.
“My sincerest apologies, Mr. Demon,” I groveled. “Captain Nova has already filled the position and is getting ready to leave for the day. We apologize for the inconvenience.”
“Stupid little shit,” he looked down at me. “When you fill a posting, you need to update the announcement. I spent twenty credits getting down here today, and that’s on you. I’m gonna have a word with your captain.”
“No, sir. You are quite right. We’ll be happy to refund you forty credits for the trouble,” I initiated the handshake, and after a moment, he accepted.
I transferred just about all the cash I had left into his account.
“Stupid little bitch,” Demon harrumphed as he took his money and headed back to the elevator.
“Have a nice day,” I waved goodbye, and waited for the door to shut before I shrugged off my submissive persona.
“That was an ethical breach of Mab administrative law . . .” the bot began.
“Whatever,” I shut her down, turned, and saw the captain leaning against the door with her arms crossed and an amused expression on her face.
“Yeah . . . about that,” I began, trying to bullshit my way out of this one.
“I’m leaving for the ship in five. Get your gear. I’ll take you to meet the crew,” she didn’t let me finish as she headed back down the hall.
“How is it possible her ass looks better than her face?” my brain screamed. Even in the baggier tactical wear, I could tell she had a ridiculous badonkadonk. “This might be a little harder than I originally thought.” No pun intended.
The bot watched me as I tried to rearrange my hard-on so it wasn’t completely obvious. All thoughts of logging an ethical complaint gone as it watched me move around my dick.
“Stop staring, unless you’ve got a Texas handjob saved in that databank you call a brain,” I snapped.
I didn’t know what a Texas was, but after selecting the feature once before, it had to be one step short of heaven.
“I’m not programmed to . . .”
“That’s what I thought,” I turned away and picked up my bag.
“Too bad. A quick handy, and some stress relief, is exactly what I need right about now.”
***
The shuttle belched exhaust directly into my face as I walked up the rear ramp. “That’s not good,” was the understatement of the century.
First off, the shuttle was an old model, and by old, I meant ancient. Most of the fleet of various megacorps’ shuttles at the Mab-1 docks used some form of power-cell energy to create lift, thrust, and those other things mankind needed to defy gravity. Not this hunk of junk.
More important than that troublesome thing Newton discovered, was overcoming Mab herself. Not only did we need to fight the pull of the planet, but we needed to resist her bitch slapping us like an angry pimp. Mab was one cold-hearted bitch. The surface was scattered with the wrecks of crews that didn’t respect that. The fact that there was probably some type of fuel leak on this bird was not comforting. Still, it was my ticket off this rock.
The captain didn’t seem to care. She strode up the ramp, just ahead of the exhaust plume, like she owned the boat. Not that it was anything to brag about.
I’d taken a few steps when the stench hit me. “You’ve got to be shitting me,” I groaned. There was no point in keeping that to myself. Afterall, we were riding with literal shit.
You’d be surprised how much fertilizer a subterranean society produced. Everyone needed good soil to grow; and what else were we going to do with all our shit? Still, that wasn’t something you typically pondered over when you were about to take a ride into space.
“Problem?” the captain looked over her shoulder, and I could tell she was holding back a smile. She played things close to the vest, but she was such a tease.
“That’s going to make some things hard.” I wasn’t talking about our work relationship.
“Nope. I’ll just let you know when I get my sense of smell back,” I joked. She didn’t laugh.
“Tough crowd,” I plopped into a seat beside her.
This shuttle wasn’t designed to carry people. A few craft over, a premium shuttle was being picked up by a set of hydraulic arms and loaded into a chute that led to the surface. That boat would have bottle service, cute bots pouring the champaign, and acceleration couches to help with the Gs. Hell, it might even have a compensator so its passengers didn’t feel a thing as they rocketed through Mab’s atmosphere.
I watched as that craft disappeared into the chute, and heavy blast doors closed with a clang. A light flashed green, and a slight shockwave rumbled through the dock. They were up, up, and away. Shuttles taking off out of any of Mab’s cities got a little extra, technological push. Like fighters on ancient wet-navy aircraft carriers, the shuttles were being slingshotted out into the elements. Instead of a cable, they were fired out of a half mile-long magnetic-accelerator. It wasn’t as powerful as the one launching cargo containers into the void, but that didn’t mean anything to passengers on board this rust bucket.
Our ship was on deck, so I stowed my gear. With no overhead compartments – those were just a safety hazard – I stuffed my go-bag into a container underneath my seat. There were eight on the cargo shuttle, but only five of them were full. Across from us were three yard hands; judging by their coveralls. Two rugged looking guys, and a rather attractive brunette. She was busy trying to fend off the advances of the crew chief. The master of the shuttle’s cargo hold looked old enough to be her dad, but that didn’t stop him from trying to get in her pants. He’d taken the seat next to her instead of the console by the door to the flight deck. It was regulation for him to sit at the console, but he could control everything from his LINC, and the extra twenty-foot distance wouldn’t allow him to creep on the woman.
With a beep and groan of overused hydraulics the back of the shuttle sealed up tight. I took my seat just in time for the arms to grab our ride and begin to move it over to the chute. Unlike a proper civilian shuttle, this boat didn’t have acceleration couches to help with what was coming. Instead, they had a five-point, webbed harness that brought back a lot of memories from the Corps. Not all of them were good. Once you’d been in one shuttle crash, you became a believer in overengineering shit. This boat probably didn’t even meet regs. Just great.
That became even more evident when I tried to buckle the harness. The lap belt worked just fine, but the other connectors wouldn’t snap in. I wondered if I was just being a retard, so I tried again. Failure. It wasn’t me. It was the seat.
“Yo, Slick,” I yelled to the flirty chief. “Your harness is jacked up.”
The man turned to glare at me; upset that I’d cock blocked his attempt to score with the uninterested woman. “Move seats then, dumbass,” he shot back.
“Fucking five-star service here,” I grumbled as I unlatched my belt.
“Launch in three . . . two . . .”
“Shit!” I threw myself back into my original seat and snapped the latch of the lap belt on one.
The launch wasn’t terrible; if having your balls shoot up into your throat was your idea of foreplay. I felt like a tanker decided to park on my chest, and it wasn’t going to let up anytime soon. If experience suggested anything, it was that it was going to get worse.
“Don’t tempt the Dark God,” I chided myself; but too late.
What can go wrong, will go wrong was a common saying in the Corps, and that applied to regular life as well. That’s why operations orders were always planned down to a T, because nothing ever survived contact with the enemy . . . or Mab’s atmosphere.
We rocketed out of the planet’s crust and into a full maelstrom. We probably weren’t fifty feet off the ground when a gust of super-chilled air smacked into us like a Kraken trying to take down an old sailing ship.
Without my full harness connected, I nearly got flung across the ship. My arms pinwheeled, and I instinctually grabbed anything that would keep me from slipping free of my seat. I didn’t want to end up like a bug splattered on a windshield. I held a death grip for a full thirty seconds before we got out of the worst of it. We still hit enough turbulence that my ass occasionally left the seat, but it was bearable.
Gradually, my mind ratcheted down from fight-or-flight mode, and the adrenaline pumping through me receded. That’s about the time I noticed my left hand was gripping something supple, yet firm.
“Please no,” I gulped, as I glanced over.
Sure enough, I had a handful of the captain’s tit gripped in my hand so hard there was probably a milk stain on her bra. My eyes shifted up to her expression, and I was positive if I didn’t remove my hand ricky-fuking-tick, I was going to lose it. My hand let go faster than the shuttle had been blasted out of the planet, which was followed by one of the most awkward silences of my life. The groans of protesting metal seemed to fade to background noise as the captain glared at me.
After what felt like a small eternity, she simply looked away. “I know you want to ask it, so go ahead. Ask.”
“Is she a psycho?” I blanched. I had been wondering one thing in particular, and it seemed she wanted to clear the air. I respected that.
“Are they real?” I went for it, and asked.
Whatever the captain thought my question was going to be, that wasn’t it.
“What the fuck is wrong with you, Mr. Mitchell?” she snapped, and her previous glare didn’t hold a candle to the new one, which looked like it would filet the flesh from my bones.
“Wait . . . you . . . but . . .” I made things worse by making honka-honka gestures with my hands.
“I’m talking about why we’re taking such a crappy shuttle,” she fired back.
“Hey,” the crew chief took offense to the comment, but snapped his trap shut when the captain zeroed in on him. I was just glad to not be the target for a second.
“Okay . . . um, why are we taking this shuttle?” I corrected.
She finished knocking the chief down a peg or two with nothing but her baby blues before turning back to me. “Efficiency, Mr. Mitchell,” she said matter-of-factly. “Everything on my ship runs like a well-oiled machine. Everything is accounted for, and we never fail.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I didn’t know how else to respond, but judging by the nod of her head, that was the correct response.
“Everything boils down to credits, Mr. Mitchell,” she continued. “The more efficient we are, the more credits we get to keep. Take your personal possessions for example,” she kicked the container with the side of her boot. “All crewmembers are authorized fifty pounds of personal gear. After that, it starts coming out of your shares.”
“Now you’re speaking my language,” the last word perked me up.
“What is my share? If you don’t mind me asking,” I was still on thin ice. You didn’t grope the captain and get to be all buddy buddy twenty seconds later.
“Shares are determined by your responsibilities. Each job receives a share. The more jobs that can be accomplished by the fewest crew, the greater your shares. If you work hard, you make more. My ship is a meritocracy.”
“Understood,” I replied. It made sense.
“That also means that if I find someone better, your ass will be off my ship as soon as we make orbit. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I gulped.
She didn’t act like any ship’s captain I’d ever met. She reminded me more of the anal-retentive SNCOs I’d dealt with back in the Corps. It was their way or the highway, and they’d use your face as a tire if they needed to in order to complete the mission.
