With each question the bulked-up elf asked, Captain Dern held up a hand and raised one finger. Index, middle, ring, pinky. Then he started lowering the fingers again, in reverse order, as he answered each one.
Pinky: “There is no modern subterranean infrastructure on the Middle Waterway. But these are beetles. Their lair may be burrowed fresh, or may leverage nineteenth century infrastructure for which records have been lost. In either case, we don’t know the layout. We took in GPR, but whatever they’ve done down there is too deep for an accurate read - all we could verify was the existence of extensive works. So we don’t have a pre-planned alternative exit. That said, Fitz will be leaving a nice little trail of Semtex breadcrumbs behind us, which will effectively screen any tactical withdrawal.”
That woke the little guy up. Easily the smallest person in the room - by weight even more diminutive than the chocolate-skinned dwarf - his chair was leaning at a dangerous angle against the rearmost wall. He’d dozed through Dern’s opening statements, cigarette wedged between the fingers of one hideously scarred hand threatening to burn down to his knuckles if it didn’t fall to the floor first. But talk of explosives always found its way into his ears, bringing a light to his eyes. If such a thing was possible with cybernetic replacements.
Ring: “Parker will be handling the drone network. And while I’m sure your own wisdom and experience is greater than all ours together, we do kill bugs for a living and are fully aware of their weaknesses. Specifics of our remote array, however, like much of our SOP, are strictly proprietary.”
Talk of high explosives over, the unshaven little man tried to go back to sleep. His appearance was not unlike that of a junkie. Sunken eyes - one of them purplish-black and grotesquely swollen. A sallow, yellowish complexion that almost matched his tobacco-stained nails and teeth. A grotesquely emaciated frame that threatened to disappear into the ancient brown leather bomber jacket that was clearly too big for him. He was tired, not fully recovered from the previous night at The Poop Deck. Thing was, the troll hadn’t known about the little guy’s internal air tank. But the other thing was, the little guy hadn’t known the lateral valve was stuck again. But by the time he found out, his face was in the tub, two weeks pay was on the table, and he had the trog’s time of six minutes thirty-seven to beat. Piece of cake a decade earlier, but it wasn’t a decade earlier, and things had started to blacken around the edges of his vision. He’d started to wonder if you could get at the oxygen in the water if you maybe sucked in just a teeny tiny bit and sort of rubbed it really hard between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. It did occur that he could get all the air he wanted just by lifting his head out of the water, but that dog wouldn’t hunt. So he'd been working on telekinetically fixing his internal air feed - he didn’t know if he actually had telekinetic powers, but he’d never definitively ruled it out, and now seemed like a good time to give it a shot - when everything had gone black.
He’d opened his eyes to a glaring constellation of LED drop lights. He’d never seen them all on before - they usually kept things pretty dark there in The Deck - but when a wet mop butted against one of his Doc Marten’s on its way past, he’d realized it must be morning. Everything had hurt like a royal son of a bitch. And still did.
“They worked you over good, Al. There’s coffee here if you can get up.”
“Make it a beer an’ might be worth the effort.”
“Whatever.”
He’d dragged himself up and over to the bar, where Gladys popped a Grolsch for him. She was forty-five going on sixty and had more make-up on than than a Ringling Brothers clown.
“They worked you over good Al.”
“Yeah, but did I win?”
“Sure, you won. Kept your head in that tub till you went limp. Then Ace, he called time. They contemplated whether to pull you out for a while, and they decided they would after Ace hollered at them some. Hell, they even paid you, shoved the scrip right in your pocket. Laughed while they did it. I guess they’d already decided what was coming next. The beat on you for a while until they got bored, then took their money back. Then yours. Then your ‘link, your knife, even your smokes. They even tried to get that mouldy jacket, but lordy lordy bless, that’s when you started sleep-fighting. Never seen anything like it. Out like a light but rolled into a ball and kicking and scratching. They gave up then and left.”
“Well, hell’s bells, ya got that big feller on the door…din’t he see fit ta do nothin’ on ol’ Al’s behalf?”
“The guy on the door? You mean the one named Evan that you always call Tusker Trog Tom?”
“Awww…din’t mean nothin’ by it….”
Middle: “The role of the local contractors is two-fold. First, secure the entry point in as unobtrusive a manner as possible. It is a busy public place. We need to know our exfil point is uncompromised by hostiles while at the same time not alarming the patrons. Alerting the populace to the presence of bugs in their midst is always contraindicated. You’ll maintain a non-descript presence in the club. This will put you in position for your second role, which is to act as a reserve force. Should opposition below exceed expectations, you’ll be called in to assist. And, as a side note, you’ll be on our secondary tac-net and all use of heavy ordnance must be pre-approved by myself or Gardner.”
Damn, the little guy thought, this is gonna be one loud party. Well, they certainly had ticked all their diversity boxes - the good guys were about half skirts and had both of the regular-sized types of point-ears. And the bad guys they’d lumped him in with, well, not a round-ear among ‘em, and they’d pulled not only the dark little halfer but the righteous-big ingentis sitting over there on the floor. Hell, he thought, damn if we don’t look jist like America.
Honestly, if he’d known it would be this sort of rainbow coalition, he might have said no. Like he’d done in the first place.
“Woman, I got a double-shift with Hun’s crew tonight. That’s real OT, honey.”
“Al, you’ll make in one night more than in six-months on that forklift.”
“Silk, baby, ol’ Al’s head is not turned by filthy lucre. Shadowrunners? Delusional wannabes an’ pedophiles all of ‘em. I’ll take an honest day’s work if I can git it. An’ I can.”
“But I haven’t told you what the job is.”
“An’ I don’t care. I got a job.”
“You like Mission: Firewatch, don’t you?”
“Same as you like all them badass-lookin’ designer duds.”
“Well, this is work for a real-life Ares Firewatch team.”
“……..They gon’ kill bugs?”
“That’s what they do.”
“Shit woman, ol’ Al’s tangled with jist ‘bout ever’ type o’ demon an’ abomination on this benighted orb, but never had me a crack at the six-legged sort. But I’m a Thespian. What they need me for?”
“They need someone that knows the Sea-Tac docks. I told them there was no one better than you.”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
Index: “Use of insecticides and catastrophic munitions has been ruled out. The reasons you might understand are political. This is Seattle, not Detroit. Sensibilities here are different. There are environmental concerns for the local government, and of course PR issues for Ares. The more important reason, one which apparently does not concern you much is that we are Ares Macrotechnology. We are not Mitsuhama. We are not Aztechnology. We are Ares and we are Firewatch, and while the rest of the world cascades down morality’s slippery slopes, we will always be there to pull it from the brink.”
As one, the other Firewatch troopers grunted a spirited boo-rah!
And for his part, the little guy nearly fainted. He’d seen this moment a hundred times on the trid, whenever some short-sighted middle manager had tried to compromise their mission with cost cuts or promotional considerations, and was always put in his place with this very same speech. it was a bit like glimpsing deity.
“Boo-rah!” he echoed, the frog-like croak earning scornful looks from the others and the attention of Captain Dern. “You, you’re the guide, right? What do you know about this Anarchy place?”
“Alouicious Harlan Guthrie, esquire, at yer service, Cap’n. Northwest corner o’ East Third an’ E F Street, as yer honor knows. Reckon yer right ta hold off on the heavy stuff - that Nu Star Energy outfit ta the west an’ north, them tanks’re filled ta the brim with black market gasoline. Place’s a front ta move the stuff fer the Vors. An’ they safety protocols ain’t exactly up ta spec. Inside ya got yer typical pack o’ hippies an’ degenerates - it ain’t a dockworker hang-out. Attracts hipsters an’ so forth, think they’s cool slummin’ it with the workin’ folks. Some mighty colorful characters in there though. Some real damned individuals. In there last month, saw this one feller whose mouth worked sideways…an’ place ain’t none too clean. Roaches ever’where, an’ one time I stepped on one an’ you’d thing I’d spat on the Pope. Damned bunch o’ vegan free-lover-tree-lovers, ya ask ol’ Al.”