Welcome Citizen, to a new life of adventure, including meal plan and hazard pay!
Because Grotto Corporation is heavily invested in exploration and military ventures there is always a place for stalwart citizens, twenty-five standard years or younger, willing to risk life and limb for incredible wages and a sense of accomplishment.
As a REAPER, your primary function will be to serve as foot soldiers and salvage specialists for militarized expeditions into regions of both mapped and unmapped space in search of raw materials ready to be exploited. To claim or re-claim machinery, equipment, and building materials from former battlefields, space hulks, and otherwise abandoned facilities.
Base wages for training and transit time are nearly twice that of the average workforce assignment, and all recovery and combat duties come with additional hazard bonuses.
See your local recruiter for details.
Sign up today!
Ben took a deep breath and put the data-pad and card back in his jacket, then left the bar to walk into the evening streets.
2. MINING UNIT 5597
Basic had been hard on Samuel, as it was on every new recruit, though particularly so for the young man who had just put everything on the line for his budding family. Or at least that’s what Samuel continued to tell himself as he fought his way through the sweaty grind of physical training, the scorching heat of the salvage tool orientations, and the concussive repetition of firearms assessment and operations.
In truth, it felt somewhat like a defeat, as if he’d retreated from an unhappy life and a dismal future rather than taking an opportunity to carve out a better one. It felt selfish, and though Sura had spoken only words of encouragement and support, Samuel could see disappointment in her eyes and could sense a growing distance between them as she constructed emotional walls to protect herself. Just as Samuel trained his body for war, so did Sura harden her heart for the long haul on the home front.
Samuel knew enough about himself to know that he was more of the ‘strong, silent type’ when it came to matters of the heart and part of his personal quest during basic REAPER training was to become a better communicator. In the end, communication was all that he and Sura had left.
In the last few days of training he had been informed that the newly founded Baen REAPER fleet had already been issued marching orders. There would be no time to see their families or have shore leave. Basic training was to continue to its conclusion on board the massive tug ship that would serve as both home and base of operations for the Reapers.
Samuel and Sura were allowed video streams and audio contact as each marine quarters came equipped with a com-deck, and the spouses did the best they could through the mediums available.
It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Samuel looked ahead at his friend Ben Takeda and smiled inside his helmet. The few months between their conversation in the bar and now being deployed on their first mission had been hard, but Ben had helped Samuel through it all.
Ben had found that he was indeed well suited to the life of a soldier and showed an early aptitude for the heavy machine gun. Samuel often thought that it was the positive shift of Ben’s newfound zest for life as a REAPER that helped Samuel keep himself together.
During basic training the entry level REAPER pay rate was not only more money than either man had ever earned before, it was more than either of their parents had ever made.
Ben had run the numbers and discovered that with the base rate he would be able to clear his life-bond within five years. Ben insisted that after five years as a REAPER he had little intention of going back to being a Grotto civilian. Working for Grotto, he would still be on the waste disposal detail, so for him at least, the plan was REAPER until death or retirement.
As Samuel met other new recruits in basic, the exotic beauty, Jada Sek, and the exceptionally average, Spencer Green, for example, he discovered that Ben’s attitude was common. Samuel had little desire to be a soldier for the rest of his life, though when he calculated the life-bonds for both he and Sura on top of the expatriation fee, he was going to have to survive nearly a decade of service.
For Samuel and all of the rest of the recruits, the real game changer was the hazard pay bonuses. If a REAPER spent even just half a standard year officially “deployed” on an operation, whether it was combat or salvage or both, the pay was nearly double the standard rate.
Samuel had never wanted war, though when he compared five years of deployed hazard time to ten years of basic service to accomplish his goals and get his family away from Grotto, he found himself very willing to take up arms. So long as the paychecks kept clearing he would keep fighting.
It was this vision of his future life and future family that kept him warm in the cold of space, and though he knew it was just as much of a daydream as anything else, he clung to it. There was strength in his goals, a purpose beyond himself that he hoped would push him to excel in combat and to survive whatever the universe had in store for him.
So it was that Samuel and Ben were rolled into Tango Platoon, along with orphans Patrick Baen and Aaron Baen. Their squad leader position, known as Boss, was filled by Maggie Taggart. The marines called her Boss Taggart to her face, but thought of her as Mag when they weren’t addressing her.
Mag was a tough-as-nails veteran, as was Boss Lucinda Ulanti and Boss Wynn Marsters, assigned from other Reaper fleets to be leaders for the Baen 6 founding fleet. It was these veterans who set the standard for what it meant to be a REAPER. It was they who would not only lead the marines, but also teach them through action, how to take what the new recruits had learned in basic and execute it in the field.
Samuel’s grip tightened on his combat rifle as he looked behind him once more into the darkness of the tunnel, silently hoping that the training had been enough.
“Everybody watch your corners, just because someone already swept it doesn’t mean something hasn’t show up in the meantime,” Mag growled into her com-bead as she raised her combat rifle to point the muzzle into the darkness of the corridor in front of her. The mounted light on the rifle illuminated a small bend on the right that indicated a side passage. “We don’t want to get flanked if there really is something in here with us.”
“Copy that, Boss,” said Samuel in a low voice, partly through the com-bead and partly to himself, as he’d certainly not double checked either of the last two passages they’d come through since entering the labyrinth of corridors that made up the underbelly of the compound.
His imagination threatened to conjure up any number of horrors from childhood stories, and he retreated into his firearm routine to calm his nerves.
Ever since basic, he habitually checked the safety of his weapon, and then looked at the ammunition read out on the side of the gun. He had not fired a single shot outside of training, and certainly not twenty minutes into his first salvage mission, but the young man took an obsessive comfort in the assurance that he had control of his weapon and a full magazine.
The fleet had set anchor in low orbit around a small planet with no name beyond designation M5597. In the pre-drop briefing the shift manager had informed the marines that fourteen years prior, a mining branch ship was sent to this planet in response to data returned by unmanned probes revealing large deposits of biridium and mordite gases. As both resources were labor intensive and time-consuming to extract, a ship outfitted with the ability to found a mining compound was dispatched. After several years of acceptable levels of production yields, communication with M5597 abruptly ceased.