“Jada, before the Boss found you, what happened down there? What did you see?” asked Samuel in a quiet tone as he laid his hand gently on her shoulder, only to have it shrugged off as she turned away from both Samuel and the window so that she would walk over to Ben’s unconscious form.
“It was the bottom of the world, Prybar,” Jada whispered as she looked down at the wounded marine, “Where the sins from our way of life sink down to pool and fester.”
Samuel remained silent and watched as Jada moved her hands delicately over the outlines of Ben’s new face.
The marine had sustained a grievous wound, though Boss Marsters had not witnessed exactly how it had happened. From what the field surgeons had told Samuel it seemed as if Ben’s jaw had been sheared from his body with a semi-sharp blade and a tremendous amount of force, which lined up with what Samuel had seen the bone worms capable of doing.
Despite the gore and mess, it was the force of the blow that had made the cut somewhat clean and prevented any tearing of Ben’s windpipe. With Boss Marster’s approval, the surgeons had cleaned the marine up provided Ben Takeda with an apparatus that most marines called ‘the grim’.
It was a small miracle that the grim was covered by the standard Reaper health plan, and Boss Marsters had opted not to upgrade the device with anything out of the plan. Now, Ben’s face had a molded ceramic face mask, with armor plating on the cheeks, chin, and forehead, covering his head from his brow to the base of his neck. The eye holes allowed Ben to use his unaltered sight, and the apparatus was small enough that it still fit inside the standard issue Reaper combat helmet. Once in place, the grim looked like a black skull face grafted to the flesh of his best friend, and more than anything he looked like the Grim Reaper himself, hence the name for the mask.
In his years with the fleet Samuel had only seen one other person wearing a grim, Gannet, from Epsilon Platoon, and Samuel knew it was going to take some getting used to. The grim would assist Ben in breathing and was retro-fitted to allow for a liquid diet, which Ben would be on for the rest of his life.
“I didn’t see George die,” said Jada suddenly, “Boss Lucinda was already carrying me by then, but I could hear him, roaring as loud as his flamer before they killed him. He was gasping, and then nothing.”
“And Vol?” asked Samuel, careful to keep his tone gentle, as if speaking too strongly would spook his comrade and close her back down.
“He found us. Killed the ones who…” Jada whispered before she paused for a moment, then took a deep breath and squared her shoulders, looking once again like the fierce marine that Samuel knew. “He took the fight to them, gave us a chance to make a run for it.”
Jada looked as if she wanted to say more. She opened her mouth, closing it again as the duty light on Samuel’s belt buzzed and started to flash green. The marine depressed the acknowledgement stud and the light ceased to blink. Jada, still in hospital scrubs, walked over to the marine and gave him a swift hug before stepping back and sitting on the stool next to Ben’s bed.
“Duty calls,” said Jada as she made herself comfortable and flashed Samuel a weak smile.
“You’d think after the downspire campaign Vorhold could do without Tango Platoon for at least another day,” grumbled Samuel, though he half-smiled as he said it. The smile faded as he took one last look at Ben’s grim new face. “If I’m not here when he wakes up…”
“I got this, Prybar. Don’t worry, I’ll ease him into it,” Jada said as she brushed her hair out of her face, inadvertently revealing the scarred claw marks on the left side of her face, “This is the job.”
Samuel nodded. “This is the job.”
10. THE ELLISIAN LINE
Samuel was in the briefing auditorium of the Reaper tug, listening to the shift manager make the initial informational reports to accompany the data presented in the briefing packet that had been passed to every marine in attendance. Samuel had already read through the concise information. His mind had wandered back to the near month he’d been able to spend back home after the grueling tour on Vorhold.
The Reaper fleet had been sent back to Baen 6 for a rest and refit period of thirty-five days, which marked only the fifteenth time he had been able to see his family since becoming a Reaper so many years ago.
Sura had been distant, over the years they could not help but grow apart in small ways, though he could tell she was trying her best to make him feel welcome and loved. His son Orion was growing up so fast and the marine did his best to forget his troubles in the warm embrace of his family. However, that warmth soon faded; as such things did, when he and Sura had to face the hard reality of their situation.
Thanks to the extended hazard deployment on Vorhold, Samuel had banked enough of his Reaper pay and hazard bonuses to buy off Sura’s life-bond and as well as his own, which he’d been chipping away at ever since first shipping out. For several days all of their options looked grim, in that it was simply more of the same.
More soldiering for Samuel in the cold dark of space, more time for Sura and Orion alone on Baen 6; both of them knowing the longer Samuel stayed a Reaper the more his chances of survival dwindled. They had learned over the years that there were very few retired Reapers, as nearly ninety percent of them remained trapped in the debt cycle, or simply could find no better work planetside and died on the job.
The Reaper death benefit program, in its own strange and brutal way, provided the marines with an assurance that if they died on the job they left their families, or whomever they chose, with a sizeable lump sum. It was common for marines to think of the benefit as their final sacrifice for those they left planetside, which worked well for Grotto as the hardened veterans represented much in the way of a return on investment.
Apparently Grotto Corporation had heard their prayers for another combat deployment mission as one became available to Reapers across Grotto space who had achieved enough hazard service hours. The Baen 6 fleet had seen more combat since it’s founding than most Reaper fleets by a modest margin, and it had been tapped as the flagship for the operation.
Each Reaper who qualified was invited to attend on a first come first aboard basis until the full complement of one thousand marines were mustered. The list filled up within hours, as the hazard pay was doubled, with an unprecedented bonus award easily the size of a full death benefit upon mission completion. The threat level was Alpha Class, and beyond the skirmish with the Helion elites on Tetra Prime the Reapers of Tango Platoon had not faced a threat so aggressively classified.
Still faced with a grinding slide into debt even after six years of battle and no closer to changing Orion’s future of life-bonded workforce servitude, there was little discussion of the matter between Sura and Samuel. They had to make a play, risk and reward, because the safety net had never been there in the first place, and they had finally seen the truth of that. Samuel and Sura agreed to a paper divorce, so that Samuel’s medical debt became his own. They used the remaining funds to pay Sura’s expatriation fee. Orion had not begun compulsory school so he had no pro-rated life debt.
After the expatriation of his now ex-wife, Samuel used what they had left to purchase a long term lease on an orbital space station just on the edge of the Baen system. It was a modest sized station that functioned primarily as a fueling point for ships moving in and out of the Baen system in addition to a secondary function as a trading post for the various smaller industries that moved goods through the handful of warehouses and retailers on the station’s main deck. There were several hab-block style compartment clusters that were mostly used as temporary housing for ship crew during docked repairs.