ODD JOBS
By
Jason A. Beauchemin
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Jason A Beauchemin
All rights reserved.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 1
I liked white work the best. It was not any easier than the other types of jobs I accepted. Oftentimes, white work took quite a bit more effort. I liked it because the primary motivation was pure. There was no moral dilemma involved. The execution might have involved actions that would have normally fallen under gray work or red work but the core, the essential task, was undisputedly... for lack of a better term... good.
“She’s just a little girl, Mr. Jobs. I can’t stand to think about what could happen to her... all alone... in this place,” Mr. McKellen said.
He was a small man, as far as humans were concerned. He stood a hair above five feet and his frame was thin, bordering on sickly. I had not thought much of him at first glance, but my opinion began to evolve upon closer inspection. His manner of speech suggested a moderately expensive education. He wore the coveralls of a common laborer but they were made of a higher quality material than was usual here. His hands were constantly moving, tapping and twitching and clutching each other like drowning spiders. My eyes kept getting drawn to the movement. I watched those hands more than I watched his face over the course of our conversation. They were pink and uncalloused with clean, well-kept fingernails. They were not a laborer’s hands. Mr. McKellen had obviously come from money and he probably still possessed a good chunk of it. It made me wonder what in the holy blue hell had caused him and his family to end up here, at the most scum-ridden spaceport on the most bumblefuck planet in the galaxy.
“How long has the girl been missing?” I said.
“Penelope. Her name is Penelope. We call her Penny,” Mrs. McKellen said. It was the first time she had spoken since they had walked through my door. She was a mountain of a woman. I was six-feet-tall and I had to look up to meet her eyes. She was not obese by any means, just muscular. She had the body of someone who was no stranger to manual labor but her coveralls were of the same high quality as her husband’s and her hands were just as clean.
“How long has Penny been missing?” I said.
“Three standard-months,” Mr. McKellen said.
Ninety standard-days... that was a long time for an innocent kid to go unaccounted for here. Shit... one day... twenty-four standard-hours would have been long enough to justify some serious concern. I did not have high hopes of returning little Penny to her family.
“We went to the sheriff first but he wouldn’t help us,” Mr. McKellen said.
“Of course not. This isn’t the kind of thing the sheriff handles,” I said. The spaceport sheriff did a very specialized form of blue work, i.e. police and military jobs. He did not enforce laws because there were no laws here. If the kid had had a bounty on her head, tracking her tiny ass down would have been considered blue work, but the sheriff still would not have helped. He did not chase bounties. The only thing the sheriff and his handful of deputies did was maintain order in the spaceport. He made sure the violence was not too extreme and the thievery was not too rampant.
“He said that you might help us,” Mr. McKellen said.
“I do almost anything, as long as it pays,” I said. The only type of work I had not dabbled in was pink work... prostitution. But... never say never. It had been way too long since I had fixed. The first few tendrils of withdrawal were beginning to creep through my body. My eyelids were drooping, a light vibration was thrumming in the muscles of my arms and legs, and a subtle nausea was poking me in the belly. It was only going to get worse the longer I went without a shot. Whenever the withdrawal got really bad, all of a sudden, pink work did not seem so taboo. I had not made the jump as of yet and I hoped that I never did... but, like I said, never say never.
“Will you take the case, Mr. Jobs?” Mr. McKellen said.
I really did not have a choice. Necessity dictated that I snap up any work that came my way. “I’ll find your girl,” I said.
“Penny. Her name is Penny,” Mrs. McKellen said. Maybe she thought that repeating the kid’s name would humanize her in my mind and cause me to see her as more than just a payday... either that or the enormous lady was a retard and repeating her kid’s name was an obsessive-compulsive speech pattern.
“I’ll find Penny. It’ll cost the standard daily rate for white work plus expenses. I need two weeks in advance, non-refundable if I finish early,” I said.
Mr. McKellen nodded while I rattled off my quote. I was confident that I had landed a paying gig. There was just one little piece of unpleasantness that needed to be cleared up.
“The fee is triple if I bring her back alive,” I said.
A frown creased Mr. McKellen’s brow. Mrs. McKellen’s entire body winced. They obviously had not considered the possibility that little Penny might have been shot or stabbed or run over or trampled or eaten or had fallen prey to any of the million other ways a living creature could become a rotting lump of meat in this place.
I was not slapping them in the face with that harsh reality in order to be cruel. I just wanted to make sure that I got paid if the end result was a less-than-favorable one... which I was pretty confident the result was going to be. This place was a meat grinder. Fully-functioning grown-up creatures were killed every day. I was positive that I would only be getting my base rate... no multiplier.
“I understand. I hope we pay you triple,” Mr. McKellen said.
“I hope so too,” I said, and I meant it. It did not make two purple shits of a difference to me if I brought the kid back in one piece or if I brought her back in a bucket. I just really needed the money.
Mr. McKellen handed me two weeks’ pay. Mrs. McKellen handed me a holo-identifier chip that contained the girl’s image and biometric data. Then, with a couple head-nods and one half-smile, they departed my tiny office.
The shakes hit me as I latched the door behind them. The muscle spasms were violent enough to chatter my teeth in my head. I clenched my hand around the door handle to steady myself and tried to keep from collapsing as the spell rolled through me. Mercifully, it eventually passed. But the spells would return. That was how withdrawal worked. They would keep coming and coming, worse and worse, until I was reduced to a shuddering, delirious, snot-leaking, bile-spewing mess. I was going to have to rectify this issue if I was going to be any use to anyone.
I scanned my office for the stuff I would need to complete the job. There was no telling when I would get back. My office was a repurposed shipping container, like so many other businesses and residences here. It had been equipped with basic utilities to make it habitable and anchored in place to keep some shady motherfucker from coming along with a forklift and stealing it. Aside from those basics, it was simply an eight-foot by eight-foot by twenty-foot steel box. Getting all my shit in a pile should have been an easy proposition but I was not a tidy fellow under normal circumstances.
My office was a disaster area. I had been experiencing a dry spell in my cash flow as of late and, therefore, had been suffering more withdrawals than usual. Cleaning up was the last thing on my mind. There were drifts of accumulated garbage and debris covering the floor, with narrow walkways of clear space leading to the door and
the few pieces of furniture.
The office door was at the far end of the box. It was steel, the same dingy brown color as the walls, and blank except for the latch and a rectangular peephole at eye level that was equipped with a sliding cover. The couch that I slept on was along the wall beside the door. It was so faded and covered with stains that it was impossible to discern its original color. Its upholstery was frayed and stuffing was coming out in several places. What few articles of clothing I owned were strewn across the couch at random. I rummaged through them until I found my trenchcoat.
My desk was a beat-up chunk of metal that I had found on a trash heap back when I first arrived on-planet. It sat in the middle of the box, cutting my office in two, and was so big that I had to press myself up against the wall and side-step to get past it. Two rusty metal chairs sat facing the desk on the side closest to the door. I had found them on the same trash heap where I had found the desk.
The other side of the desk was my workspace. There was a chair that I had actually purchased, way back when I had money to spare on such things. It was cushioned and it swiveled and leaned and would have rolled if the mounds of garbage and debris on the floor were not in the way. A few overflowing filing cabinets ran along the wall. There was a hygiene unit in one corner. It was a pre-engineered combination of a toilet, shower, and sink that I had seen mainly on starships. It had been installed in the box before I took ownership. It was a convenient amenity... one of the principal selling points of the box when I bought it. It made it so I could shit, shower, and shave all at the same time if I wanted to... although I usually did not want to. A waist-high safe was anchored to the floor in the opposite corner. I had not used it in years because my office got broken into on a regular basis and the safe always got broken into along with it.
I moved along the path between the garbage piles and sidled past my desk to my workspace. There were four items that I needed before I could get on my way. The first two were in my top desk drawer, readily accessible in a moment’s notice.
My pistol was a replica of an antique. It was a revolver, capable of firing six .45 caliber rounds before it required reloading, modeled after a similar gun that had been popular on Old Earth way back in the day. It even used gunpowder as a propellant, although that was neither rare nor a reflection of any sentimentality on my part. Chemical reaction-propelled projectile weapons were cheaper than those that used magnetic propulsion and way cheaper than energy pulse weaponry. Like everything else in my life, my gun was a reflection of my financial situation. I was not self-conscious about it, however. It killed things just fine. Plus, it made a really loud noise... and that was fun. I scooped it up out of the drawer, checked to make sure it was loaded, and tucked it into a holster that was sewn under the arm inside my trenchcoat.
The second thing was equally important but for a slightly different reason. A thin, metallic tube about as long as my hand was in the drawer next to the spot my pistol had been in a moment before. It was the hypo-injector that I used to deliver synthetic opioids to my bloodstream. I guess it was pretty similar to my pistol... they both needed ammo to function and they both helped me avoid having bad days. It was empty now but the money in my pocket promised that it would be loaded soon enough. I picked it up and tucked it into a pocket inside my coat.
The next item was not readily accessible. It had been quite a while since I had used it so I was not entirely certain of where it was. I rummaged through my desk, pushing papers around, dropping crap on the floor, until my hand closed upon my portable holo-identifier. It was a small black cube that fit in the palm of my hand. There was a screen on one side, a narrow slot beneath the screen, and a row of tiny buttons beneath the slot.
I popped the chip that Mrs. McKellen had given me into the slot and the screen began to glow. Personal information scrolled across the screen: Human; Female; Twelve standard-years old; Five feet, zero inches tall; Eighty-four pounds; O-positive blood type; Left-handed; A long-ass line of numbers and letters that I knew was representative of her DNA sequence but I was not intelligent enough to decipher. There was more... much more. I would have known her better than her parents did if I had taken the time to read it all. I did not read it all though. I really only needed to know what she looked like.
A miniature Penny McKellen appeared, hovering an inch above the cube. My eye was first drawn to her shock of bright red hair and a face so full of freckles it almost changed color. Then I saw her bright green eyes... and the innocence within them. It was so striking, so rare a quality in this place, that I was surprised I had not noticed it sooner. Twelve was not very old but those eyes made her look much younger. I felt an unfamiliar shred of emotion stirring in my gut. Was it sympathy? Compassion? Nostalgia? It had been so long since I had felt anything that I could not identify what I felt now. All I knew was that, all of a sudden, I hoped that one of the inhabitants of this place had not killed and/or eaten her. I killed the power on the holo-identifier and tucked in into my trenchcoat.
The last item I needed was the easiest to find. My hat was resting on top of one of the filing cabinets behind my desk. It was a replica of a fedora... like my pistol, it was a remake of something from Old Earth. With my hat and trenchcoat, I looked like images I had seen of private investigators from back when humanity had been confined to a single planet.
I had an affinity for all things Old Earth. I used to have quite a collection of artifacts, before I sold most of it to keep my creditors at bay. Old Earth had been a simpler time, way back before the era of economic galactic exploration, before the Great Bank and its subsidiary corporations, before the discovery and domination of all the various sentient species in the galaxy, before humans became the giant fucking assholes of the universe. My affinity was uncommon, to say the least. Most people viewed Old Earth as a primitive and backwards time. Most scorned our collective history. My reputation for embracing it was part of the reason people called me “Odd.”
I put on my hat and headed for the door. My mind was already out of there, thinking ahead to how I should go about tackling the job. Before I did anything else, I would have to make a stop at Evelin’s Café and pay a visit to the only drug dealer on-planet that I did not already owe money to. I could get to work after I took care of my dope sickness.
I threw open my office door and stepped out... and almost collided with a massive pair of legs. They were as big around as tree trunks and covered with greenish scales. They ran from two humungous feet, each ringed with nine claw-like toes, up to an equally humungous crotch that was swathed in a ragged scrap of graying cloth like a giant baby’s diaper. If I had kept walking, the crotch would have smacked me in the forehead. I did not keep walking, though. I jumped backwards and slammed the door shut. Those were the legs of a grindle... a species that had evolved from fish, although that was kind of hard to believe, despite the science, because the only fishy parts of them were their faces and their scales... the rest of their parts were fucking gigantic and distinctly un-fishy... and there was only one grindle that would come looking for me at my office.
A deafening animal roar split the air outside my door. The universal translator implanted in my head instantly filtered it into my own language. I had gotten the implant decades before but I never quite got used to the duality of hearing an alien language and the human translation at the exact same instant.
“Jobs! Come out here!” the grindle roared.
It was Fluffy. He did green work... money matters... for Lord Fairfax. Fluffy specialized in the debt collection side of the green work spectrum.
“Jobs! I saw you! Get the fuck out here!” Fluffy roared. My whole office shook as the grindle banged on the door.
“Jobs! Why do we have to do this every time?” Fluffy banged on the door again, shaking the office even harder than before. One of the filing cabinets fell over behind me, spilling all of the crap inside it onto my already crap-filled floor. So far, the lock on my door was holding but I did not expect it to hold for much longer. Flu
ffy was getting pissed.
“Fluffy” was not a nickname. That was his given name. All grindles had cutesy names like that. The tradition dated back to when the Great Bank had first conquered their planet all those standard-centuries before. It was a psychological subjugation tactic. Grindles were fucking huge so humans gave them house pet names to make them feel small. Now... hundreds of standard-years after grindle emancipation... for some reason I had never had the balls to ask about... the grindle race kept the tradition alive. That’s humanity for you... royally and permanently fucking up everything we come in contact with since some random naked chick plucked an innocent-looking apple off of an unreasonably-forbidden tree.
The office shook again. A large fist-shaped dent appeared in the center of the door. The door latch groaned like it had eaten some bad seafood. Fluffy was going to be inside soon. I did not want to be here when he made it through. I had plans for my newfound money and they did not involve paying any vigorish debts.
I moved over to the hygiene unit in the back corner. I knelt beside it, reached behind the toilet, and yanked a hidden lever. There was a loud click and the toilet swung away from the wall, revealing a hole in the floor. It was bigger than a normal drain. Not huge... it was just barely big enough to accommodate an average human body.
I got down on my stomach and backed into the hole, sliding myself across the floor until my shoulders bumped against the rim. The sound of running water... or running fluid of some kind, at least... echoed up from the darkness beneath me. I squirmed my way deeper, my body oozing along the pipe, trying not to think about what kind of noxious goo was coating the sides. When my head passed the rim, I reached up, grasped the lever on the back of the toilet, and pulled it back into place, sealing me in darkness. I wriggled and squirmed and shimmied until the pipe sloped downward enough for gravity to take over. Then I slid through the muck for about ten feet, eventually emerging in the sewer below my office.
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