Missed last week's chapter cus the forums were down. However! Life goes on, and so does the story! Speaking of which...
Chapter 3
For the six sligs, mudokon scrubs had always seemed like a lower form of life, stupid and made for servitude, and the native muds were even lower. But after Stack’s death everything changed, and especially for Dekas, Stivik and Braz. The natives were savage, dangerous, murderers. Dekas would hardly seem content to have them alive: he quietly said away from Tilic that he would not rest until every mud was either a slave or dead, like they should be. Stivik quietly agreed; in him, it was the beginning of a growing, festering hate of mudokons that would always haunt his steps and his actions. Braz hated looking at the muds now, but he would never willingly back down from a fight with one.
Stack’s death was followed by months of depression, inaction; days in the iron cold bases, shouting, fighting, arguing, all half glanced at through a haze of alcohol and cigarette smoke. The hatred three of them now felt seemed to drive them away from the other two. Burn became nervous, squeamish, and Tilic never seemed to smile again. He never laughed when he was drunk and he never praised them before the world. The little money they saved slipped away to pay for alcohol and a bed each night, and they began to sell their equipment to keep living. Their lives as scouts, their lives together were beginning to fall away and they seemed only to fall deeper into their personal wells of misery.
There was a day when Stivik had gone to sell that bloody generator that had never worked, and Tilic had caught him in the act. Stivik never remembered much of what followed; it seemed that they went on shouting for hours, though he remembered little of what was said, except that Tilic told him he was selling all of them out of their lives and he wished Stivik had never been part of his group in the first place. Stivik had felt that Tilic was accusing him of causing Stack’s death, and called him an idiot, a mud-lover and every other obscene thing he could think of, calling him a terrible leader, shouting until his throat was raw. The next clear memory he had was of lying on his side on a filthy rented bed, his mind an emotional blank, broken pieces of the generator spread about the room. Burn had come through the door, told him they were all going to die if something didn’t change, and left.
An unmemorable number of days later Stivik went to a slig employment office and told them to send a slig scout to join Tilic’s pack. “He’s gotta be new, right out of training, No one with experience.” The slig at the office had looked at him suspiciously, probably because of the way he looked after months of doing nothing except drinking and smoking, but processed the request. Stivik went to Tilic and told him he was resigning, and would leave as soon as the new slig arrived.
But somehow, once he saw the new scout, a young slig called Nen who, as requested, had no past experience and was right out of training, things changed. The slig was unremarkable, naïve and eager to get going, though apparently disappointed by Stivik’s run-down appearance. Within a few hours it was arranged that Nen would not be replacing Stivik, but bringing the pack’s number back up to six now that they had lost Stack. With the addition of the inexperienced, excited slig, the other five seemed to wake up again, tidy themselves up, pull together the equipment they had left and head out again. In the end they had had to sell some of Nen’s belongings to get the money they needed, having used up most of theirs, but he didn’t seem to mind as long as it got them out into the wild. His enthusiasm was infectious.
The first job Tilic got them after the months of inaction was relatively easy, and mud-free. They were to head to some temple that the Cartel had cleared the mudokons out of months before. The place was full of scrabs ready to be caught. What the Cartel failed to mention was the hoards of fleeches squirming around, and the thousands of mudokon graves that clustered among the rocks. They were, however, used to their employers leaving out little details like that, and they coped reasonably well, apart from all of them being a little unnerved by all the graves.
They were reminded of how things had changed several days later, when they had begun to complain to Tilic of being bored with the same job. Normally Tilic would encourage them keep at it until they had got all the money from it that they could. However, this time he conceded straight away and they left the area a few days later. It shocked the four of them, and afterwards they became less inclined to complain about boredom in later jobs.
The second surprise came from Tilic when they regrouped at a bar after the job was finished. They expected Tilic to be jumping on tables and shouting praise at them as soon as he got a little tipsy, but they were shocked that it didn’t happen. They were even more shocked to find themselves disappointed that it didn’t happen. Instead, Tilic sat at the bar and, as Nen watched on with awe, ordered drink after drink and downed them all in turn, silently, until his head flopped into a pool of beer on the bar-top and he began snoring.
Things like that never went back to the way things had been. Not all changes were bad, however, as Nen proved himself to be an unusually successful budgeter, earning him the nickname ‘Accountant’ from Stivik, Braz and Burn. In a surprisingly short amount of time they had collected enough to buy replacements for most of the equipment they had lost. Stivik suspected Nen had been adding a fair portion of his own share of the wages to the money set aside as savings and had confronted him about it. Nen had grinned, embarrassed, and replied, “It’s not important. I wouldn’t have anything to spend it all on if I kept it.”
“What about the stuff you sold when you joined us? Don’t you want to buy any of it back?”
Nen shrugged again. “It wasn’t really anything important, just the sort of junk you collect in basic training.”
Stivik shrugged and awkwardly muttered something about it being important to have personal belongings, and to prove his point he went out and bought a new penknife, having sold his old one during those months after Stack’s death. He was annoyed to find the knife’s blade blunt, and spent many nights when there was nothing better to do sharpening it. Taking notes from Tilic, he also bought himself a couple of smoke grenades which he kept on his pants whenever he remembered. Tilic let out a faint smile when he saw them, but didn’t speak. It seemed to Stivik that Tilic had been particularly cold towards him since the fight they had had. When pressed, Dekas had reluctantly agreed with Stivik’s observations.
Slowly months went by and the group settled in together. Tilic became more relaxed and eventually made peace with Stivik, though Stivik’s bitterness for his leader never fully went away. A day came when Nen revealed that they had managed to save enough moolah to buy a fairly decent second-hand generator and they were thankful enough to initiate him ‘officially’ into the pack (which basically involved getting him outstandingly drunk). Stivik was surprised one day when Tilic came to him and told him, “With Stack gone we really need a sort of ‘third in command’, you know, to help me and Dekas decide what jobs we’ll be doing, and if either of us are put out of action for a while we’d need someone to help command things. Anyway, I’ve talked it over with Dekas and we decided you would be best at it; you’re more responsible than Braz and Burn never really trained, so,” Tilic gave him one of his increasingly rare smiles, “The job’s yours!”
Stivik was taken by surprise; Stack’s role in the team had never been something he’d given much thought to after his death, and he certainly hadn’t expected to find himself filling the place. He smiled and clasped arms with Tilic. Braz’s first response to learning of this promotion was, “Hey, Tilic always said you were destined for higher things!” When he heard that, Tilic gave an odd smile and disappeared off on his own for a few hours while the others ‘initiated’ Stivik.
The next few jobs they took Stivik was given input into the decision alongside Tilic and Dekas. They taught him a lot about judging the job notices, which were good choices and which were likely to rip them off my paying less money than promised, work them harder or put them in more danger than the notice made out. When Stivik found out the two of them would be teaching him to make the judgements he was discouraged, thinking of how boring his basic training had been all those years ago. But in fact he found he enjoyed the challenge of the training his pack-mates put him through, There was more to it than just judging if their employer was going to try and rip them off: they also had to judge if their pack would be suitable for the job, if the six of them had the skills between them that they would need. He was eager when Tilic and Dekas set him the task of picking a few jobs for them on his own, and he accepted their advice and criticisms without complaint.
Within a couple of months the three of them were working together on picking their work, and Stivik sometimes noticed details that the other two might have missed. He also noticed that Tilic quickly steered away from any job that would mean catching or working with mudokons, and Dekas was quick to point it out if ever Tilic missed it. Stivik couldn’t blame them as he thought about Stack, though with the number of mudokon slaves being used across Mudos this meant it was often harder than ever for them to find work. To make matters worse the day came when meeches were officially declared ‘extinct’.
At times they could spend four or five days hanging around industrial areas looking for work. It meant they sometimes were picking jobs they would usually avoid. One such time the three sligs found themselves examining a job offer from ‘Agadon Research and Development’.
“How’s this,” Stivik had asked the other two, examining a notice, “It’s a lab or something, managed completely by vykkers. They’ve created a… ‘highly valuable specimen’ which has managed to escape. They ‘suspect the creature is still alive’ and want someone to track it down for them.”
Dekas grunted disinterest and muttered, “Can’t afford the mugs. We couldn’t do a job like that on foot.” He picked up another notice without looking up.
“Actually,” Stivik began wilfully, trying to get his attention back, “They said they’d provide a jeep. I recon Nen would have been trained in how to drive on of those things.” In the recent months jeeps and other motor vehicles had all but replaced mugs for just about everything other than combat. Unfortunately the price of hiring them was still high, and the pack was still in debt for the animals they had lost the day Stack had been killed.
Tilic had doubts about any job that provided free transport but wanting to let Stivik down slowly asked, “What’s the pay?”
“That’s the catch,” Stivik answered, “It’s high. Suspiciously high.”
“That’s it then,” Dekas said and picked up another sheet of paper from the 20 or so spread across the table they sat at.
Stivik, however, went on, “It’s from vykkers though. It says the place is run completely by vykkers with no glukkons, except for the odd inspection. Vykkers aren’t that bothered about money are they? All they care about is their experiments.”
“Well they go to the bother of telling us the experiment is valuable,” Dekas pointed out, looking up at last.
“Just to get our attention isn’t it? Anyway, they sound less picky if they say the thing’s expensive. I bet you anything it’s that they just can’t be bothered to make a replacement for whatever it is.”
“Give it here,” Tilic said wearily, “Anything’s better than listening to you two argue.” He took the form from Stivik and read it over quickly. His shoulders tensed in surprise. “Odd, they're paying a lot!” He handed to the form to Dekas who also looked surprised.
“There’s no way that’s for real.”
“But think about it,” Stivik insisted, “If they paid us
half that it would be more than the job’s worth. Like I said, vykker’s don’t give a damn about cash and I bet they don’t even realise how over-priced the job is.”
Dekas read from the form, “’The creature is fast and equipped for fighting, so we will be providing fast transport to aid you in its recovery’, well there you go.”
“Keep reading,” Stivik ordered.
“’However, the specimen was drugged as it escaped and therefore should not be up to its full potential.”
“It’s a lie,” Tilic said promptly, “To try and attract us. They say it’s dangerous so we can’t get them in trouble for not warning us and say it’s drugged to stop us getting scared off.”
Dekas nodded, “If they lost it long enough ago to get a notice out how likely is it that any drug won’t have worn off?”
Stivik replied, “Well we could at least have a look. If they’re producing these things on a grand scale they should have some others somewhere. We could have a look at them and decide if we’re going after the escapee or not.”
Tilic and Dekas both winced at the word ‘escapee’. Some mudokon had escaped from a massive meat factory a few days ago and had then come back and blown the place up. Rumor Kontrol had called the event ‘the beginning of a Revolution’ and while Stivik dismissed it as over hyped rubbish, a lot of people were nervous, especially when they saw the size of the reward the Cartel had promised for anyone who brought in the mud.
“It’s not far from here, this lab,” Stivik added suddenly, “Only about 80 miles.”
Tilic and Dekas exchanged glances and Dekas sighed. “He’s not going to give up on this is he?”
Stivik grinned, knowing immediately that he had just won the argument.
Tilic pushed himself away from the table. “Come on then. It’s not like we’ve got anything better to do.”