“This-this rusty clanker,” the spittle flew from the man’s lips, “is the delivery monkey that screwed up the Colonel’s order last week. I got reamed for that!”
“I am uncertain to whom you are referring, Specialist Quartermaster O’Malley,” Gammon said.
“This guy, the one I’m pointing at. The delivery bitch for the food supply company with the worst service this side of the galaxy. I’ll never forget that smug face.”
Thorn held up his hands in confusion, as if to say, “who, me?”
“Are you referring to Recruit Thorn Farmer?” Gammon asked the Quartermaster. Without waiting for a response, she turned to Thorn and asked him, “Recruit, is your name ‘delivery bitch’?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Crrrk. Crk.” Korakis, perched on Thorn’s shoulder, seemed to disagree. Thorn didn’t need his System to translate the loud series of squawks. The damn bird was mocking him.
“Do you work for Stellar Eats?” Gammon continued.
“No, ma’am.”
“Specialist Quartermaster, I believe we have a case of mistaken identity.”
The Quartermaster was blinking slowly, looking back and forth between Gammon and Thorn. His face reached an amusing shade of red, and just before his head could explode, he screamed.
“Jemison!”
A harried woman ran around the corner and scrambled to a stop. The Quartermaster pointed at Gammon and Thorn, then turned his back on them, arms crossed.
“Corporal Jemison, I’m escorting the new Recruit here and need him fitted with appropriate kit ASAP.”
“Understood, Chief. This way,” Jemison said, leading them deeper into the warehouse.
“Chief?” Thorn asked Gammon after they were around the corner and away from the irate Quartermaster.
Gammon looked at him sideways.
“One second,” she said, then Thorn received a comm. It was a data packet, and not a small one. Thorn asked his System to summarize and to comment on why the Corporal had referred to Gammon as Chief. He’d heard her title multiple times now.
Thorn had known that Gammon was pretty high up, but he hadn’t really understood what that meant.
“Oh, sorry, uh, Chief,” Thorn said. “Is that your preference?”
Thorn thought back to how Sergeant Lee had corrected him earlier.
“Sure, it beats ‘hey you,’” Gammon said with a snort. “You’ll find that the Crows are much more relaxed in terms of discipline in some areas, at least compared to what I’ve heard of other guilds. Maybe relaxed isn’t the right word… Flexible is better. But respect is always important. And since you’re always going to be offline, it would behoove you to memorize the faces and ranks of the officers on base so that you don’t spend a weekend scrubbing toilets after inadvertently disrespecting a senior officer.”
Thorn nodded. He wasn’t a fan of bowing and scraping, and if he was being honest with himself, he’d admit that he had deep-seated issues with authority. But if he thought of it as respect for the Crows that were more experienced than him, that he could get behind.
That didn’t mean he was going to go through the effort of memorizing faces and titles though; that seemed like a good job for his System to handle.
“But what was up with you and the Quartermaster back there?” Gammon asked. Corporal Jemison perked up at the question, also obviously interested in the answer.
“He screwed up his order. Wanted me to comp free product to cover for him, and I didn’t,” Thorn said.
“So did you bring them back later?” Jemison asked. “The Colonel didn’t take no for an answer when the number of boxes he’d requested wasn’t there, and I know he eventually got them, since ‘ole Pubert still has his job.”
“Don’t let him catch you calling him that.” Gammon chuckled. “But no, Thorn gave them to me on his way out of the outpost. Made me look like a hero.” She laughed and shook her head. “I knew you were cooking something up when you gave me those extra boxes of sausages. You might have made an enemy for life, but, damn, if that’s not funny.”
Jemison chuckled guiltily. The Quartermaster couldn’t be a great boss to work for.
“Let’s start here,” Jemison said, pausing at one of the aisles. All of the aisles looked the same, rows and rows of ten-meter tall shelves, brown boxes stacked on pallets.
Korakis shifted on his shoulder, not wanting to stop at this aisle. He pecked Thorn, directing him to continue. Thorn brushed him off.
“Since you’re not connected to the Guild’s networks, I need to see your badge,” she said, and Thorn complied. Jemison walked down the aisle and grabbed onto one of the vertical shelf supports. Using a System Skill, she rose in the air until she reached the shelf she needed, and pulled a box down. Once back on the ground, she handed it to Thorn.
“Here’s your standard uniform issue,” she said. “Beyond that… Normally recruits are all processed together in a group, but your System is offline, we don’t have a training op scheduled, and you don’t have any preferred Roles indicated on your sheet. This is pretty irregular, so what else are we looking at?”
Part of that question was directed towards Gammon, as the senior ranking officer, but Gammon just directed her gaze towards Thorn and raised an eyebrow.
Thorn racked his brain for what he might need and also queried his System at the same time to generate ideas. This felt like another interview, or a test.
“Does the standard issue include underwear? Boots? Poncho or all-weather gear?”
“Nope, I can add all of that to the list.”
“Pack, knife, rope, water bottle, filter?”
“A standard rifleman kit would cover most of that.”
Korakis was bored, apparently, as he hopped off of Thorn’s shoulder and began to fly down the aisle.
“He can’t be alone in here,” Jemison said, pointing at the raven.
“Korakis, get back here,” Thorn called out.
“Crrzrrk.”
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
Korakis looked at Thorn, looked further down the aisles, then flew back to Thorn. For the time being, at least.
Crisis averted, Thorn got back into the details with Jemison. He didn’t know what his upcoming mission would be, but he continued rattling off all of the things he would want or need if he was going on a hunt with Lief. Then he paused and thought about his System, and his Skills, and how he might want to use those as well. He decided to ask Gammon first, however, before he accidentally gave out details of his System.
Gammon couldn’t stop from snorting when she received the direct comm.
He could barely keep up with the antics of one beast. He wasn’t planning on growing his flock by attempting another machine tech field surgery any time soon. Besides, using Splinter in that way used up a custom agent, and he’d only had one of them.
Gammon cleared her throat. “I would suggest additional gear for jungle environments. We stage a lot of missions to the north, along the equator, out of this branch.”
“How about machine tech sensors: visual, infrared, and of a size that Korakis here could easily carry?” Thorn added.
That got nods of approval from both Gammon and Jemison. “That’s doable, but it will be a requisition, and not covered under your standard issue.”
When Thorn didn’t seem to follow, Jemison clarified. “You’ll have to pay extra.”
Thorn nodded. “Also, and this might be out there, but some kind of quintessence-signature disrupting tech?”
Jemison concentrated on her System interface. “Best I can do for your rank and budget is a passively enhanced poncho, standard jungle camo pattern. That will also be extra.”
“Give me two,” he said, then fell into thought.
Getting new gear was great; he’d love it more if it wasn’t so expensive. He thought back to this morning, when he thought he’d done well at the shooting range, and it had barely met the standard. And then when he’d done the simulation, and it hadn’t gone as he’d hoped. Or as Gammon had hoped.
All this basic gear they’d been talking about was great, but it wasn’t going to give him a leg up. He needed something more.
The best idea he had was somehow using Concentrate to mimic the quintessence patterns of tech that used quintessence, like his pumpkin shield. To do that, he would need to see more examples of tech in action.
“How about…” he was just about to ask, when Korakis was once more out of patience, however, and took off flying down the aisles.
“Stop, you stupid bird,” he called out, then took off after him, trailed by a worried Jemison and an amused Gammon.
Korakis took a few turns down the aisles, entering a different section. Instead of boxes and pallets on shelves, this area had tall, metal cabinets built into the walls. Some of the cabinets were temperature controlled; all were under lock and key. Korakis stopped and pecked at a drawer near the floor, turning to look at Thorn expectantly.
Thorn let out a sigh.
“What’s in that cabinet?” Thorn asked. “If it’s beast cores, I’m gonna strangle him.”
“No, it’s not cores. Those are always stored in the Bursar’s office,” Jemison said. “This area holds our inventory of harvested beast parts.”
“Huh,” Thorn said. “I wonder what he senses.”
“Let’s take a look,” Gammon suggested.
Jemison moved forward and knelt down in front of the cabinet. Korakis flew out of her way, taking back his perch on Thorn’s shoulder. With a wave of her hand, the drawer opened with a hiss. Thorn leaned over and peaked down inside.
Horns. Or tusks? Thorn couldn’t tell. Ranging from ten to twenty centimeters in length, pointed at the end, thin enough to grasp in his hand, and a dull, ivory and brown color.
“These are the spines of a type of beast that ranges in the deep jungles on the northern continent,” Jemison said. “They grow through the skin overtop of the beast’s vertebrae. They are decently rich in quintessence, but are mostly sold to artists who carve them.”
“Why do you want this, Korakis?” Thorn asked.
“Hrk, hrrrk. Czrrkkk.”
“Huh.”
“It really seems like you’re talking to him!” Jemison said. “Can you understand him?”
“Eh…,” Thorn said, eyeing Gammon. He waved his hand side-to-side, indicating he could, at least partially.
“You must have a beast taming System,” she almost squealed. “Those are so rare!”
“Thorn’s under orders not to talk about his System,” Gammon cut in, saving Thorn.
“Of course,” Jemison said. She looked down at Korakis. It took a moment for Thorn to place her expression: one of envy.
“Well, uh, how much does one cost?”
“A couple thousand quints. Not much. We sell them by weight, so the smaller ones are cheaper.”
A few thousand quints wasn’t much? Thorn took a deep breath and looked over at Korakis. The raven had helped them down in the dead zone; he could justify spending a few quints. He told himself Korakis wasn’t asking for a full core, either, like he usually did.
He reached in and grabbed the smallest one of the spines. It felt warm to the touch.
Korakis flew down and pecked his hand, making him drop it.
“Hrrrk, hrrk.”
“Fine, you greedy little ball of feathers,” Thorn sucked on his hand. That last peck had stung. “Do either of you have any more recommendations? I think we’re done here.”
“I assume you’ll be staying at the barracks, so you’ll need things like sheets, a blanket, and so forth,” Jemison added. “Normally you could requisition things like that through your System, but I can do that for you.”
“That would be great.”
“Do we have any information tablets for offline users or pre-System minors?” Gammon asked.
“Why yes, we do.” Jemison replied.
“One of those, then.”
Jemison nodded. “Alright. I’ll need you to verbally authorize the additional requisitions, which total… 17,445 quints.”
“Yes.” Thorn winced at the price tag. He could afford it though, even after spending more for his weapons.
“If you can wait right here then, I’ll pull all of these things together, and I won’t have to make a delivery later, okay?”
Thorn and Gammon waited a few minutes as Jemison pulled all of his items together.
“What’s next?” Thorn asked.
“That’s it, for now at least,” Gammon replied. “I’m still working on getting you better access to the Crows’ internal information networks, but I haven’t resolved all of the issues yet. Until then, use that tablet to find your briefing room and other things.”
“Will do,” Thorn said. He might be a member of the Crows Guild, and he had a badge and a bunch of new gear, but he didn’t really know how things inside of the Guild really worked. He had some homework to do. First things first, though.
“Alright then. You should be all set, for now at least.”
“Thank you very much for showing me around, Chief,” Thorn said. The day he’d met Gammon, he had tried to get into the Crows Guild and been rejected. She’d seen something in him though, something that said maybe one day, he would be good enough to join. That day had come.
“Just doing my job. For what it’s worth, I expected this day to come. It came a little earlier, that’s all. I’m happy to see you join the Crows.” Gammon smiled at him, then Korakis.
“Just don’t start saluting me or anything now; we don’t do that at the Crows.”
Thorn gave her a mock salute. Her laughter echoed in the warehouse as she walked away.
Jemison returned with his gear. He packed as much as he could into a pack, and carrying the rest in his arms, he followed the directions on his tablet to his room in the barracks. His badge opened the lock on the door.
The room was small, musty and underground. No windows. A desk, a bed, and a dresser were the only furniture on the cold stone floor. A communal bathroom was down the hall.
He dumped all of his new gear on the bed. When was the last time he’d slept in a bed? The walls of the room were solid stone; he wondered if he could sink pylons into the walls to hang a hammock. With a pang, he remembered his truck, left burned and gutted in the woods.
Thorn felt his fatigue set in, and he sat on the floor. Korakis flapped around the room, clucking with disapproval. He pecked at the packet with sheets, pulling them out and over to a corner of the room to make himself a little nest.
Thorn had a bunch of new gear to go through, inspect, unpack, pack, and repack. After his gear was ready for the mission tomorrow, he should probably get his living area situated. Then he needed to examine all of his tech pieces while using Meditate, and attempt to recreate their effects using Concentrate.
He had other devices to examine, but he’d also try again with the pumpkin shield; he had more time now, and was no danger. If he could create his own shields on demand, then he’d be like a walking piece of armor, without the armor. He wouldn’t need the machine tech integrations that his System wasn’t giving him.
All of that could wait for a moment.
“Crkkk?” Korakis called out.
Thorn didn’t need a translation.
“Yeah, buddy, I think you’re right. That’s enough of a break, and screw unpacking. It’s time for cores.”