The next morning, Fleer slumped at his desk, arms hanging down by the sides of his chair.
He felt bad about lying last night. But he couldn't bring himself to crush them. Not while everybody was celebrating. Especially Mrs. Meade. And Oliver. It would have been like kicking a puppy. A nine-foot tall puppy.
So that was that. Now he'd have to pick himself up and go tell them they'd failed.
Fleer sighed and he turned his face away from the door. They needed to know. He had to tell everybody.
Then again... did he have to tell everybody today?
After all, Pearce wasn't going to file the default for another four weeks. They couldn't earn the money, but they could still work. He could let the Riotfish enjoy these last few weeks as a team, at least.
Yes, that made sense. He could get a little head space to think up a good way to break the news to everyone, and they'd have the opportunity to do a little more work in the interim.
He nodded to himself. Yes. That was a good plan.
Relieved, he pulled up the Guild's open jobs board, and spent a few minutes idly spinning through the long list of glossy jobs with six-figure fees, briefly lusting after them. He put them away.
Focus on today's work. For all that it mattered.
He didn't even look at the spec jobs board. He was just running down the clock, there was no point getting the Riotfish into something too dangerous for them to handle again.
He clicked on the "SMALL TEAM" filter, and the list shrank sharply, as did the fees. He clicked on the "NO AIR SUPPORT" filter, and the list shrank again. "NON-TRADITIONAL TACTICS", "NO CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP", "SHORT TERM", "APOLITICAL"; the list dwindled with each click. Finally, he clicked "NO GUILD ASSOCIATION" and was faced with only three jobs.
Three.
It was good that they weren't depending on steady work now.
The first job was an extraction from a prison camp in the Midwest. Political prisoners, but they weren't picky about who got them out. The pay was... well, it was good that the pay rate was irrelevant.
He straightened up, put on his best sales face, and pressed the call button.
His desktop happily chirped at him and showed him a video feed of his own face while he waited for someone to pick up on the other end.
bleep beeble-bee bleep
bleep beeble-bee bleep
bleep beeble-bee bleep
"We're sorry, the party you are trying to reach is unavailable. Would you like to leave a message?" the computer asked.
"Yes!" he replied. "My name is David Fleer, of Riotfish, Inc. We're a mercenary outfit operating out of Concordium, and we specialize in small operations and tricky situations. I'm contacting you today in response to your posting on the Guild board for a prisoner extraction. Our team has decades of experience in just your situation, and we're well-equipped to--"
Suddenly an official-looking seal appeared on the screen, followed by a robotic voice, interrupting his spiel.
"We're sorry, the detainee you are trying to reach has been terminated. This message box is now owned by MEDICORP. MEDICORP thanks you for your interest, and hopes that you will trust MEDICORP in the future for your detainment needs. Goodbye."
And the line went dead.
Fleer deflated. Well, that was why the Guild insisted that customers pay for the listing in advance, he supposed.
He clicked the next job, straightening himself.
bleep beeble-bee bleep
bleep beeble-bee blee--
"DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES TO BECOME THE ULTIMATE CHAMPION? X-S GAMES HAS YOU COVERED! PLAY THE TOP RATED CYBER-COMBAT GAME, JUST LIKE A REAL MERCENARY! MANAGE YOUR CREW AND LEAD THEM TO--"
Fleer slapped the disconnect button, and viciously jabbed the "Report Spam" link on the listing.
Wearily he clicked on the third listing. Something about perimeter defense, and the point of contact was someone whose name looked as though he had sprayed random vowels across the screen, sprinkling in just enough consonants to make it pronounceable. Probably another foreign scam. Fleer clicked in.
bleep beeble-bee bleep
bleep beeble-bee bleep
"Halo?"
Fleer started. Usually these scams were shut down quickly, with the perpetrators arrested and their line disconnected before anybody could get through.
Not that the image made the client seem any less sketchy. The video was choppy, with terrible artifacting, and the image in the video was upside down, meaning the camera had been mounted wrong. As difficult as it was to make out any features past the technological hurdles, Fleer could see that the speaker was a weathered old man, rough and lumpy and toothless and wearing bib overalls.
"Hello? Yes! Yes, I'm sorry, I may have gotten the wrong contact. I was calling for a Mr..."
He paused at the name Daugereaux.
"Mister, uh, Dow-gear-ee-ax?"
"May, dass not my name," came back a rusty voice thick with a Cajun accent. "You say it Doh-zhuh-row, shah."
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
"Oh, I do apologize, Mr., uh, 'Doe-juh-roe'. I'm calling you today about--"
"'Bout de awlmen, I know."
"About the what now?"
"Dem awlmen done come back on my land. I got to get 'em out, dey about to worry me half to deat'."
"Awlmen... you mean oil men?"
"Dat's what I said, ain't you speak no good English?"
"Yes. Sir. So. Oil men?" Fleer was completely lost. "Like... men made of oil?"
The old Cajun blew his lips out. A man with no teeth has a lot of lip to blow out, and Daugereaux had refined the practice to a rich art form that had its own subtleties and overtones.
"No. Like, de men dat come on your land and try to take it from you for de awl rights? Awl men?"
"Oh! Right. Yes, sorry. Petroleum execs. You say they're on your land? What are they doing there?"
"Well, dey ain't execs. Dese boys is de soldiering kind. Dey ain't wanna talk to me much. I done run 'em off last time, but dey brought more fellas dis go-round."
"Last time? They've been on your land before? When was this?"
"Aw, shoooo, hmm. I guess de firs' time dey come was... fifty-five years ago? Maybe only fifty, shah, my memory's not so good. Den after dat, dey don't come back for a long time, den dese new boys start showing up about two weeks ago."
"Wait, wait, so you haven't had any trouble for fifty years, then suddenly troops started showing up? Are you sure they're from the same oil company?"
"Shah, listen, I live me in a swamp. Out here, it's de awl rights or nothin'. I mean, de catfishin' is pretty good, but it ain't dat good."
"Interesting. Which corporate territory are you in? Can't you call in local security to deal with them?"
"Oh, we's un-corp'rated out here." Fleer blinked. "We jus' doin' our own little thing."
"Unincorporated? Interesting. I didn't realize there was any unincorporated land left in North America. Or anywhere, for that matter." Fleer perked up a little.
"Well dat is why de awl companies is all hot and bothered to get dey hands on my land. Don't belong to nobody but me an Ma Daugereaux."
"Interesting. I'd be curious to hear how that happened. In any case, I'll send you an information packet on our company. It has some details about our operations and our crew. I'll also send some instructions on what data you can send us to help the process along, if you choose to work with us. In the meantime, I'll discuss this with my lead strategist. Can we schedule a time to talk again?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna send you all dem details. You jus' call me back when you want to come on down, shah. Bye!"
The screen blipped off, leaving Fleer bemused.
Unincorporated. His brow twisted in thought. Something very strange was going on here. He couldn't put it together yet, but a tiny flicker of hope sparked in him.
Perhaps this job was more than it seemed. Perhaps he could find more here than was obvious from the surface.
Perhaps he wouldn't have to tell the crew about his call with Pearce. If they could earn enough to get some leeway from Pearce... well, it wouldn't be dishonest at that point to keep quiet about their situation. Would it?
He pulled up some geographical records to research.
----------------------------------------
It was later that day when Fleer and Oliver met over the projector table.
"He's been looking for someone for a while," Fleer began. "He sent us over a workup of what he needs. I think he was a little confused about how to do some proper tagging on the Guild jobs, so almost nobody saw it."
"Or perhaps they considered what he was paying," Oliver suggested, eyeing the price listed on the contract. "30,000 credits? That's hardly enough to cover our expenses."
"It's something, Oliver."
Oliver nodded grimly, and Fleer continued.
"So he and his wife live on this property down near the Gulf. It's mostly swampland, but it's their home, and he's worried about someone he calls 'the oilmen'."
"Ominous," Oliver muttered.
"He seems to think some petrocorp is angling for the mineral rights on his land. It sounds like he's refused to sell to them before, so they're sending heavies to soften him up. He wants to hire someone to come out and secure the property, run off any troublemakers, and keep an eye on things for a while. With a little luck, we could stretch this out, earn a little more."
"At that rate?" Oliver asked.
Fleer shrugged.
"I'm not sure I understand how this helps us. We would need to transport the entire crew nearly a thousand miles to watch over a senile Acadian in a swamp for nearly no money. How can we possibly make a profit on this?"
Fleer grew very still for a moment, and Oliver instantly regretted his tone.
"Negotiations are still open," Fleer said quietly. "We can at least talk to the man. What else would you have me do?"
"Right, right, of course we can talk to him," Oliver hastily agreed. "Sorry, I just, you know, was thinking about the, how we could, um. Yeah, let's call him."
"Besides, there's something else going on here. I think there could be other opportunities hiding in this."
Fleer punched up Daugereaux' contact information and patiently waited out the beebley-bleeps. The old man's face appeared on the screen again, right side up this time.
"Statue?" Daugereaux asked.
"I'm sorry?" Fleer asked, taken aback.
"S'datchoo?" Daugereaux repeated more carefully.
Fleer paused for a moment.
"I'm sorry, I really don't--"
"Is. Dat. You?" Daugereaux said slowly. "You dem fellows wit' de guns and all?"
"Oh! Yes! Yes, I'm David Fleer, with Riotfish, Inc. and with me this afternoon is my lead strategist, Oliver Gutshell." Oliver leaned into the view of the camera and waved awkwardly.
"Hooo you a big boy, aintcha?" Daugereaux observed. "Now if dat ain't a thing. I ain't met me a orc since, oh must be since 'ninety-five or so. Well, go on wich you."
"Yes, we received the data and the maps of your land; thank you so much for that. We had a few questions about the workup. This property you're wanting to secure, it belongs to you alone?"
"Oh, yah. It was deeded to my great-grandaddy in about, oh, 2327 I think. My parrain passed it on to me in about '86, when I was jus' eighteen years old." Fleer's eyebrows shot up, and he listened with half an ear as he started pulling up his research and flicking data onto the projector table. "We been living on dis land since den. Dem awlmen tried to take it, but we done showed dem de error of dere ways, good and hard."
"Interesting. Tell me more about these oilmen."
"It's dem dang corpratations! Dey been coming around wanting de awl rights on all my land. Dey come and try to scare off de old folks, so dey can take dat land on the cheap. But me and Ma don't scare so easy."
"So they're trying to intimidate you?"
"Well, dey used to would come around at night and fire off guns by de house, or dey would cut up a old dead dog and leave it on de porch, things like dat. But dey ain't doin' all dat no more."
"No more? They've stopped trying to intimidate you?"
"Well, chief, dis new crew ain't doin' all dat. Dey just got a bunch of more men, cuttin' trees and making dem catches all over my proppity.
"Catches?" Oliver asked.
"Catches, you know, wit' guns and all."
"Oh, weapons caches," Fleer replied, beginning to catch on to the Cajun's speech patterns. "Strange, if they're looking to intimidate you, why stockpile weapons?"
"May, I don't know, but some of dem guns gone for a pretty good price."
"You've been... appropriating goods from their caches?"
"Me? Naw, I never appropriated nothin'. I been stealing dey guns, though. I don't think dey'll notice, dey got like fourteen of dem catches by now."
Fleer and Oliver looked at each other.
"Fourteen weapon caches? Are you sure about that?"
"Yep. Could be more now. I'm getting too old to keep up wit dese young bucks. Dey cuttin' down a bunch of my trees and stompin' all around on my land scaring away de birds and fish, so a man cain't hardly catch him nothin' to eat."
Fleer was frantically shuffling data around on the table. He peered very intently at it for a moment.
"These trees they're cutting down, Mr. Daugereaux, are they doing it in a more-or-less straight line? North-south? Close to the west side of your property?"
"Dat is ekzackly correct. Now how you knowed dat?"
Fleer forced down a manic grin, keeping his face calm, professional.
"I think I have an idea of what's going on, Mr. Daugereaux, and I can say that Riotfish, Inc. would be happy to accept your contract to secure your land." He held up a hand as Oliver opened his mouth to object. "...pending approval from our lead strategist, of course. However, there are a few items I think we'll need to discuss, especially around consideration of expenses..."