Recruitment

“GET TO YOUR PODS!” The order came loud and screechy some lieutenant on a bridge deck above was worried. The worry extended to the Ark Hunters who had assembled to hear Von Bach give a speech about an ego device and what that meant to them. An Irathient, Xanthiana Roeyka, worried more about the drop pod, she hated enclosed spaces they reminded her too much of the sleep pod she had arrived to earth in. She was so worried about it she had missed most of what Von Bach had set about the ego device, and then everyone was rushing to the pods.  She settled in between a Sensoth and a human amongst the row of pods. The Sensoth she didn’t know, the human male was an engineer named Rico who had taken an unnatural interest in her personally to the point of her having to almost crush his testicles to dissuade him of his affection.

“Don’t worry babe I’ll protect you.” She shot a look his way and snarled he just smiled back, she thought she heard the Sensoth laugh, but couldn’t confirm it because her pod shut suddenly and she was ejected from the ship to the land below.  While she plummeted to what she hoped was the bay area below she recalled how she wound up on an Erep vessel in the first place.

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“Roeyka, Xanthiana!” The named was barked out of a small temp tent that had most likely been a field hospital in the war. It was a month prior to her ill-fated trip on the Erep ship, Xanthiana was amongst a lot of assorted humans and Votans waiting to see if they would be picked for a job Von Bach industries had recruited them for.  They were outside of the capital Erep city of New York, in one of the dirty run down suburbs. All Xanthiana could see was poverty, everyone was in tattered dirty clothing, wielding rusting or damaged weaponry and grumbling about having to wait around too long. It was especially sad in comparison to the bright lights of New York. Xanthiana hadn’t been there personally, but she had been told it was quite the city before the war and remained that way despite the Ark fall. She made her way to the front of the dirty throng and was welcomed into the tent. Inside was a Von Bach employee with a name tag that identified him as Rickard, there was a plastic table, two chairs and a filing cabinet. Rickard took his place on the side of the table with cabinet and motioned her to sit down.

“You Roeyka?” He was chewing on a cigar she hoped he wouldn’t light it.

“I came when I was called didn’t I?” He smiled and went to light his cigar.

“I’d prefer if you didn’t.”

“Mess up your sense of smell?” Rickard was some kind of former military, most employees of Von Bach were, his flat top haircut and crisp dress were big signs.

“No contrary to your people’s belief that Irathients are a humanoid version of cats I don’t have increased ability to smell anything; I just don’t like the smell of smoke, cigar smoke especially.” Xanthiana herself was former military though her dress was considerably less crisp, poverty and a stint in the internment camps post armistice had considerably diminished her clothing. She was down to a pair of camo pants that were too baggy, a bra that was too tight, and a shirt that was too small about the only thing she liked amongst her belongings were her shoes and she already had to kill a man to keep those.

“Fair enough I can respect that.” He took the cigar out of his mouth and left it on the table.  He took up a pen and his clip board, “Ok Ms. Roeyka, is that your real name?”

“No I made it up, my actual name is difficult for anyone outside of Irathients to pronounce.” He wrote something on his form and then moved down to the next box.

“Experience?”

“Are you asking me what experience I have for the job you are offering?”

“Yes.”

“War.”

“Is that to say you were a soldier?”

“Yes.”

“Which side?” The room smelled funny, not just cigar smoke, it was the stench of sweat of several different races. Lots of people had been in that tent asked these questions and not all of them responded nicely.

“Seen a lot of Irathients fighting for the ERC? I was in the Votanis Collective, my squad disbanded in Denver.” Denver, lot of unpleasant memories of that place for Roeyka, the memory caused her to shudder.

“You were interred post armistice?”

“Yes.” They all were, some made it, some didn’t, that was the reality of the world post armistice. He marked down some other things wrote something else and then skipped to the bottom of his form.

“You inoculated?”

“Against the plague or whatever they want to call it? Yes got the shot in some town in the Midwest part of a mandatory program.”

“You remember the name of that town?”

“Nope.” There had been some resistance to the inoculation, she wasn’t one of the people who fought back but she left all the same after getting her shot. She’d been interred she knew that forced inoculation was the start of bad times and decided it best to leave before anything worse happened.

“Do you have any kind of implants?”

“These are all real.” Her chest had gotten her unfortunate attention in the internment camp, and had also been a pain in the ass in the war; body armor isn’t kind on breasts no matter the species who made it.

He frowned, “Not what I meant, I mean body augmentation.”

“No.” She did have piercings in her nose lip and ears, but she figured he didn’t mean those either.

“Are you averse to getting augmentations?”

“You mean some kind of cybernetic enhancement? Yeah that’s not going to happen.” She’s seen people with cybernetics it made her skin crawl.

“What about an Ego device?

“A what?”

"Enviromental Guardian Online, its an implant injected into the base of your skull to enhance your combat and communications abilities, basically an onboard computer in your head, I believe it was developed by Indogene doc's during the war surprising you hadn't heard of the tech." Xanthiana had heard of the device but never what it actually did, it was above her pay grade.

"Can't say I was privy to that in my service, I wasn't exactly a high rank when the war ended." That was putting it politely. Xanthiana was more slave than respected soldier, the property of a particularly cruel Casti officer who took sport in demeaning her.

"Well would you be adverse to getting one implanted?"

"Is it a requirement of the job?"

"Yes."

"Then no."

"Ok we're done here, see the Seargent on the way out for your gear and get your implant appointment set up." He stood up and pointed to the exit.

"That's it? Not being very selective are you."

"Frankly we need bodies for this op, besides the EGO implant has a potential failure chance of at least 50/50 don't worry if it doesn't take you'll only be mentally retarded for life."

"At least I'll finally fit in with the rest of the Earth Republic." He smiled at her comeback and then called out to the next applicant. She had heard that they were basically accepting warm bodies into the program and that suited her just fine, it was better than dying in starvation anyway.

 

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"Guidance Failure please input new coordinates." The drop pod's onboard computer woke her from her memory and reminded her she was plumeting to earth in an iron coffin that she now apparently could not control.

"Shtako." Was all she got out before impact.