Tra la la, formatting, formatting, formatting...
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Sligs mouths are poorly formed for speaking Mudosian – the language used by most inhabitants. Originally sligs spoke their own unique language called ‘Sliggish’ which other inhabitants are mostly unable to reciprocate, but in the modern industrial world most sligs know little of their native tongue beyond a few curses and words commonly used as passwords on voicelocks. Glukkons do not want their underlings speaking a language they cannot understand.
Part 5
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Traitor’s Loyalty
Chapter 24
“And so the guy’s like, ‘Well don’t tell anyone else about this stuff, cus I don’t want loads of people coming here. I only take customers I’ve picked myself so I don’t get the wrong people coming. The Cartel has snoops everywhere these days!’”
“Uhuh, like the one right under his nose.”
“Right, and so the guy pulls out his entire weapon store for me! He even gives me a sample weapon he’s rigged to break if it’s reloaded. Next day we bust him.”
The other slig grunted in amusement. “Anything good?”
“Oh yeah! Mostly Grade Eights, a few unlicensed Sevens, but then they dug deep in his store and found some Grade Nines – massive things, blow-a-hole-in a-radiation-shield type guns – and even a couple of experimental things that the vykkers had never seen before!”
Stivik laughed, “They let you keep any of that?”
The first slig grinned, “Only in my dreams.”
They both laughed somewhat thuggishly. Grade Nine weapons were totally illegal; Grade Eights were used only by the most qualified sligs for the protection of the species queens and Grade Sevens could only be used by those with proper licensing. As Cartel snoops, both of these sligs were allowed to apply for Grade Seven weaponry and Stivik had a sleek-looking Grade Seven gun that could load a wide selection of projectiles.
“What about you?” The first slig, named Othi, asked at length. “Last job you pulled?”
“Huh, hardly worth mentioning. Guy was buying muds, releasing them into the wild and making out they were getting killed. The natives were giving him meat, wood and any other stuff they’d got that he wanted. I was there three days and boom, guy was arrested, and the muds wiped out; all killed or caught, like they should be.”
“What happened to the glukkon?”
Stivik shrugged. “Maggie dealt with him herself; no idea what she did to him. Half his sligs went to Skillya though so I bet he was better off than they were.”
“Huh…” Othi made an unpleasant expression; both sligs were thinking the same thing.
“Come on though, you must have a better story than that! What about that guy you got this job for? Balic?”
“Tilic?” Stivik’s demeanour instantly became more disagreeable, “Nothing to tell; bastard was helping some vykkers with plans for world domination; I turned him in.”
Othi grunted, pushed himself out of his seat and walked out of the lounge, seeking better entertainment.
It was widely agreed by all those knowledgeable that Snoops HQ, where they all spent time between jobs – which admittedly wasn’t often – was the most boring place on Oddworld. They had all at one time or another asked the glukkons to give them some sort of entertainment but nothing had been done; they couldn’t even get drunk there.
Being bored made Stivik more grouchy than usual, because it reminded him that as a scout he had never been bored; there had never been the opportunity. If Tilic hadn’t been such an idiot and…
He pushed himself onto his feet and stomped out of the room as well. Anyway, tomorrow he was moving to a new job and with any luck he’d be out of this place for a few weeks, maybe longer. A glukkon accused of selling weapons to natives; well, he could make excuses for not visiting the armoury much, take his time investigating. Out of here he could probably find ways of occupying himself, spending less time bored, less time thinking.
Without realising it he had walked to the train platform. If you looked down the tunnel you could just spot a tiny scrap of smoky sky, far off. Snoops HQ was somewhere towards the middle of one of Mudos’s cities, one much smaller than Nolybab of course but none-the-less impressive. It was a place where windows were not encouraged however, especially in buildings inhabited by sligs whose identities were supposed to be kept secret, so this was one of the few places where he could catch a glimpse of something not made by the hands of vykkers.
He turned away almost immediately, scolding himself for coming back here again. There were bigger things than the world outside!
He reflected upon the irony of this statement as he made his way towards his bunk. Ah well; by this time tomorrow he’d be far away.
* * *
The journey took five hours, even in the fastest train the Magog Cartel could be bothered to provide him with. He travelled alongside a few crates of machine parts and three other sligs, none of them anything special, all of them convinced of their own greatness. He didn’t let himself spend the whole journey looking out of the window however, but joined in with a few of their jokes and played a lot of cards, even though he lost a sizeable portion of his moolah on the journey, not being familiar with most of the tricks used by born-and-raised city sligs.
The journey was a bad one financially speaking, and he was relieved when they arrived at Bescher’s Cuisine Chemical Plant; a factory that made a number of food additives which the glukkon Bescher had patented, forcing various companies to have to start paying him outrageous prices for permission to keep making the food products that they had been producing for years. Rumour had it that, among other things, Bescher owned the patent on the Tear X-Tractor and had caused the falling profits on Rupture Farms, therefore inadvertently starting the whole terrorist uprising. His aggressive business plan, as well as his responsibility for the emergence of Abe, had obviously made him a large number of enemies, which meant that the Magog Cartel had been rather sceptical when they started receiving tip-offs that he had been supplying weapons to natives, but they had still sent Stivik to investigate. Stivik wasn’t too bothered since if the whole thing was just a lie to discredit Bescher, he could still spend a long time investigating him.
They left the train in the middle of the afternoon and were led from the station platform to a nearby security point where they were met by one of Bescher’s high-ranking sligs, named Gash, who fortunately knew enough to forgo the typical ‘you’re here to work, not sleep’ speech and pushed right on to their instructions.
“You’ll be given patrol routes in the main security office tomorrow morning. As new recruits you’re expected to watch over the cafeteria when the muds are eating. We do the typical two-meals-a-day thing here; morning and mid-afternoon. You’ll find out your own meal times when you get your patrol routes. I’ll just take you up to the bunks now and then we can head down to watch the muds eat.”
They trooped up some stairs to a small, smelly room full of narrow bunk beds where they dumped their belongings. “You’ll probably get night shift about once a week and you’ll get at least the morning of the next day off. There’s a bar for us sligs near our cafeteria but you can only use it if you’re not working night shift or the next morning. Boss’s orders.”
“Oh, one other thing,” He added as they approached the cafeteria, from which the noise of clattering plates was radiating, “Some vykkers are paying the boss to let them keep some mud girl here. She’s an experiment or something. Anyway, she doesn’t work with the other muds; you’ll probably see her around before long. She’s supposed to be keeping out terrorists or something.”
“A mud? Keeping terrorists out?” Scoffed one of the other sligs.
“Uhuh; crazy vykkers.”
This little it of information caught Stivik’s attention; he never trusted vykkers now. He had always considered them reasonable before the thing with Tilic, but if one lot was capable of terrorism then why should the rest be trustworthy? What did vykkers think they could do with a mudokon that they couldn’t do with a slig?
The five sligs emerged onto a metal catwalk. Below them was the cafeteria where mudokons were collecting food and eating in near-silence. Most of the noise was emanating from the kitchen to the side of the room.
“Most of the places where mudokons gather in high numbers have overhead catwalks for us to patrol on,” Their new superior explained and the sligs grunted their approval. There were ten other sligs up their already and they joined them, circling around the room on the catwalk, glowering down at the eating muds.
That evening, after having been shown the layout of the factory, they were resting in a lounge laid out for sligs. Stivik tactically sat himself Gash and after a while steered the idle conversation in a direction more fitting his real work.
“So what’s the boss of this place like?” He asked casually.
“Huh, we hardly see him these days. He gets more and more paranoid every minute.”
“Right, I bet someone who sets up a business like this isn’t gonna make himself many friends.”
“Nah, but he makes himself moolah,” Replied Gash, “And he pays us well, so who’s complaining?”
“Yeah, I saw the pay was good,” Stivik grinned, “Half the reason why I’m here!”
“Huh, less than half I bet. Bescher wouldn’t have hired you if he didn’t think he could trust you. Like I said, he’s paranoid, worried someone will pay his employees to do him in.”
Stivik wondered for a moment what history had been made up for him by the Cartel; if Gash was right then Bescher probably wouldn’t have hired anyone with a past like his.
“There were some weird rumours going round about him back in the city. Hey,” He called to the other sligs who were just starting a game of poker, “Any of you guys hear the rumours about Bescher?”
One of the sligs nodded, “About him selling weapons to the muds?” He looked nervous suddenly, “You don’t think any of its true do you?”
“I’ve not heard anything about him selling on weapons," Gash assured them, "Probably just rumours started by people who don’t like his business, trying to get the Cartel to bring him down.”
“Yeah, it didn’t sound likely.” Stivik replied, “But it’s better to know for sure. If the Cartel
did bring him down they’d do more to his sligs than to him.”
“They wouldn’t investigate here anyway,” Gash assured them. “They know he’s unpopular so they’d know it was all a lie.”
“I don’t know,” One of the other sligs said, “What with the terrorist scare they’d probably do just about anything. It’s been two years since Vykker’s Labs got it; they’re all just waiting for Abe’s next big move. They don’t want the muds getting stronger than they are now.”
Stivik shook his head, “People are more frightened of what he doesn’t do. They’re getting paranoid now. The job I had before this one there were a group of sligs who firmly believed Abe was living in Nolybab with a secret identity, just waiting for the opportunity to get at dear old Queen Maggie. I mean come on; the muds hadn’t given any trouble for years so obviously the attack on Rupture Farms and Soulstorm Brewery were just too sudden for them to react to. Then Abe vanishes for a year and just when everyone’s relaxed he strikes again. But we’re ready for him now; security’s tightened since then, and the technologies getting better all the time.”
“It doesn’t hurt to be ready!” Put in one of the sligs who, in the card game, had just staked a large pile of money that had that morning been Stivik’s.
“Yeah, but there’s no point going crazy, jumping at shadows, using muds for counter terrorism.” The four new sligs chuckled but the ones listening to the conversation who had been working for Bescher for a while roared with laughter.
“You tell that to the Queen of Mudos!”
“Queen…?”
“The vykker’s pet,” Gash explained.
“What gets her that title?”
“Having more arrogance than a GlockStar. Should have seen how she treated the boss when she first got here,” The sligs roared with laughter, leaving the four new-comers looking puzzled.
“The dumb gluk was happy to accept her from the vykkers, anything to boost his security! Huh, he was smiling out of a different orifice after actually meeting her!” They laughed again.
“No wonder,” Gash chuckled, “Being brought up by vykkers;
they all think themselves the true rulers of Mudos.”
“The vykkers are making an army to send against the Magog Cartel. They’re sick of obeying orders and want a new social structure with vykkers at the top. Our fearless leader is signing us up to play traitors against the Magog Cartel.”
“Huh, shock for them when the terrorists got rid of Vykker’s Labs I bet.”
“Hey, where are you going Stivik?”
“Get a drink,” He grunted and hurried out of the lounge.
F*ck Tilic! He remembered after the fight, waking up and being told Dekas was dead. It was one of the many things he had intended to tell his ex-leader the last time they’d met. The monster the vykkers had released so that they could escape, so that Tilic could escape, had killed one of their pack. Tilic had murdered Dekas, with his decision to help them bring down the Cartel.
Tilic had probably already known by then however, along with most of the things that Stivik had wanted to scream at him. Except for that one thing he’d not been able to say. Odd, how he missed Dekas and the others. He missed the wind, he missed the sun.
“Hey, you’re one of the new guys aren’t ya?”
Stivik looked up. A slig was sauntering down the corridor towards him.
“Chakke,” The slig introduced himself, and offered a cigarette.
“Stivik,” Stivik answered and took it.
“Don’t normally hand them out, but my lighter’s broken,” Chakke explained, holding his own out for Stivik to light. “What’s up with ya then?”
“Nothing. Just had one of those weeks.”
“Ah, one of them!” He chuckled, leaning against the wall beside Stivik. They stood in silence for a while, filling their lungs with tar and the corridor with smoke.
“S’not so bad working here,” Chakke said at length. “Stay out of the way of the big bros, and the High Queen of Mudos – You heard about her yet?”
“Uhuh,” Answered Stivik, flicking the end of the cigarette away.
“Well keep away from her if you can cus she’s a pain where the sun doesn’t shine, and it’s an easy job for good pay.”
“What about the boss? The glukkon?” Stivik asked, and then scolded himself. Always a spy; couldn’t give himself five seconds peace.
“Hardly see him. Just don’t bother him if you do cus he can get pretty irritable these days. No rest for the successful.” Stivik nodded but the clanking of another slig’s pants down the corridor interrupted their conversation. Chakke pushed himself up, swearing. “Supposed to be on night patrol. See you around.”
Stivik watched him scurry off and pushed himself up with a sigh. It didn’t take him long to find a machine selling beer but it needed an employee code to operate it and he wouldn’t receive his until the next morning, so he returned to the lounge empty handed. The conversation was now about gun models which he made himself listen to in case anything suspicious was said regarding his job, but it was a waste of time. He went to bed that night unhappy.
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Tra la la, this chapter contained dirty language and should not have been read by those under the age of 12, Tra la la...