SWNOVELS Chapter PGI - Zealous Service
Grass rustled as it could only be caused by movement. Hasty, stamping footsteps mingled with it and betrayed the fact that the ground was firm. A shadowy figure flitted through the green. A second followed, a third and fourth. They all had one thing in common - they were all human and wore the elite high-tech armour of the Rangers. Those who belonged to this force were among the best in the galaxy, and they needed to be, because trouble clung to their heels. Whistling energy shots echoed through the air and grenades exploded around the Rangers.
One by one, the men and women shouted to each other:
“Move, move!”
“We’re right behind you, Captain.”
“Look out, enemy advancing!” The captain pointed to a row of grey boulders. “Take up position behind those rocks!” he ordered, goading his soldiers. “Let’s clear them out of the way!”
Together, the remaining Rangers replied, “Yep!” and they all jumped and rolled towards the thick stones. Meanwhile, the assault rifles were still being drawn and placed on the covers.
Spellbound, the group stared at the horizon, at a clearing full of lanky trees. A pack of ragged mercenaries emerged from between them. They consisted of humans and Galig, the amphibious inhabitants of the water-dominated planet of Aran, and they wore their face-concealing glass masks, as was customary and necessary for their species.
Not impressed, the rangers unsheathed their weapons and exchanged a sneer. “I hate these scum ...”
“Don’t worry, we’ll take care of them.”
“We are the elite!”
The battle was about to begin and was initiated by the united shout of the group. “WE ARE THE RANGERS!” Together they all unleashed their firepower and it quickly fell victim to several vagabonds.
It was a bungling move by the vagabonds, but even when they changed tactics and took cover behind a thick line of trees, it was only a futile and fatal mistake. The rangers’ penetrating shots pierced the wood, taking down mercenary after mercenary until only a few were left alive. Desperate, the survivors sought their salvation in flight, disappearing into the fog of destruction.
“Cease fire!” the captain ordered with an appropriate hand signal to that effect.
Creaking, the damaged trees burst as dark smoke billowed around them and tiny fires smouldered on their surface and around them.
The sight was decidedly satisfying to the captain. “And once again we have triumphed!”
“Did you expect anything else, Captain?” a Ranger asked confidently.
“No!” the captain clarified, rising to his feet. “No one defeats us!” He jerked his right arm high in the air, presenting the Ranger insignia on his forearm, the golden meteor encircled by lambent flames. “VITA!”
“VITA!” echoed in the chorus, and everyone imitated the arm gesture - this was the Rangers’ motto and was synonymous with a belief in immortality. So the elite soldiers stood there as a raspy voice, muffled by a mask but still loud, rang out from behind, “So this is where you all are!”
United and hasty, without being driven by fear, all the Rangers turned. “Sir!” they saluted as if they had known he was there: their Galig general.
The commander stood on the highest rock, which seemed like a perfectly prepared stage, and he raised his arm. “Vita!” he shouted, and as the Rangers’ silent arm salute followed, the general assumed a taut and observant pose. “I see you have defeated the enemy as expected. Not for nothing are we the figurehead of the galactic community, the guardians of security and order! Only the High Sentinels stand above us, but they’re lone wolves, not a sworn army, unlike us.”
“Vita, sir!”
Looking at it more closely, it all seemed a little surreal, this whole scene. None of the rangers had even a scratch from the fight or were dirty because of the meadows and woods.
A male voice, clearly not on the scene, commented. “Come on, are you serious?!”
No, none of the rangers had heard these words and the general continued unhindered. “There is nothing we can’t do and nothing that will stop us. Anything is possible!” he said sternly. suddenly pointing forward as if addressing a spectator. “And what about you? When are you joining the Rangers? Help us! Protect the galaxy - like the legendary Magna!”
“Change the channel already!” the absent male voice complained and now it was clear - the Rangers belonged to an advertisement and were flickering on a high-definition screen.
“Yes, yes, in a minute,” a woman’s voice waved off.
The Rangers’ sign swirled around the general and his soldiers until it settled among them, etched like an iron stamp. “We are the best! We are the protectors!” the general repeated. “Join us today! We want you!” Again he pointed forward.
“Will you finally change the channel?!” grumbled the male voice and the commercials disappeared in a confusing rush of constant channel changing.
“Are you happy now?” asked Kysaek. She was human and aligned her swivelling chair with her watch partner, Jim Baker. Her lips formed a cheeky smirk and she stroked her short brunette hair.
Jim was a middle-aged man and turned his chair as well, although his rotation was slower because of his massive corpulence. “We have a clear rule: no zapping!”
“Zap, don’t zap ...” Kysaek shrugged. “Over 10,000 channels on this planet and from the nearby clusters, and still there’s nothing decent to watch.”
Jim reached for a steaming mug of coffee. The caffeinated hot beverage from Earth was popular in the galaxy and tolerated by several species. “So I do like the lesson with the Fugian.
“Kysaek looked less than enthusiastic and switched off the screen. “You mean, where you feel even more stupid afterwards because you can’t keep up with those super-intelligent plants? I’d even rather look at House Earth.”
Jim shuffled from his cup with relish. “Watching a bunch of idiots in a house with cameras for a year? No thanks!”
“You’re right in a way,” Kysaek admitted. Her job consisted of watching a bunch of screens night after night anyway. “I guess PGI made me a voyeur.”
A thought occurred to Jim. “Speaking of watching,” he said, scooting closer to the security console, which was populated with a multitude of surveillance screens. “The update should be coming any second.”
“True.” Kysaek nodded and took her place beside her partner. She called up a digital wall glowing blue. It was the floor plan of the building where the two of them sat. It was round and divided into several rings. “Do you have our beloved Security Chief One on the screen yet?” she asked sarcastically. She didn’t like SC1.
Jim was already going off camera after camera. “Let’s see ... Where is he, where is he?” he grumbled. “As if we’d miss him ...”
“Don’t make it so hard on yourself,” Kysaek said, scanning the areas of the outermost ring. So dots appeared on the map each time, the homing signals of other guards. “Found it!”
“Where is he?”
“At patrol two. I’ll bet you ten foreign currency he’s stomping them.”
Loosely, Jim nudged Kysaek’s shoulder. “Bet you call that? It’s his rite. And today he’s in a particularly bad mood.”
“Who’s surprised?” retorted Kysaek, not taking her eyes off the plan. “Must be because he didn’t become SC2 today” Now she also made herself a mug of coffee and drank. She placed her other hand over the floor plan and enlarged it.
The details and number of rings, five of them, stood out. From the outside in, the sections were divided. It started at level one and ended in the centre at level five, which took up the largest area of the building.
Spitefully, Kysaek blurted out her thoughts on the scheme. “Do you think our SC will ever accidentally stray to level two and get shot by the bots?”
“Oh, Kysaek!” Jim shook his head. “I’ve been working with him here for three years. This is and always will be a dream.”
Kysaek had only been working for PGI for six months and waved it off. “You have some dreams. Any above level five too?”
“Do you want to start another what-is-well-in-level-five discussion?”
“After all these years,” Kysaek grinned, “don’t you care what you’re guarding?”
First Jim put down his coffee before raising his finger admonishingly. “I only know one thing - I get my foreign currency every month and that’s all I want to know. The job is easy and well paid.”
“Don’t forget boring ...”
“I’m telling you - easy,” Jim repeated, “It’s the kind of job everyone dreams of!” He threw his arms up gingerly. “We practically get paid to sit!”
“Can’t argue with that. You win.”
“Kysaek, Jim,” a young male voice announced over the console. “SC1 is on his way to you and he’s in the best of moods again.”
Kysaek and Jim’s eyes met, but he took over the reply. “Were you guys nice to him too?”
“Yes. We gave him kisses,” the voice exaggerated. She was radioing on a channel SC1 couldn’t hear. “And he’s giving them to you now.”
“I don’t need that,” Kysaek shrugged off the voice. She glanced at the clock on her vortex cuff. “I thought we’d elude him today, but there’s still seven minutes until our shift is over.”
Jim teased. “Are you in a hurry?”
“Indeed I am. I want to go to the Eternity.”
“Eternity?” marvelled Jim, “Do you think they’ll let you in?”
“It’s a long shot, and if they don’t, it’ll just have to be a bar.”
“Better hurry up then,” Jim suggested. “Run another patrol round and then you can go straight to the changing rooms without seeing SC1.”
“Good idea.” Kysaek walked to the room entrance where the weapons locker hung on the wall. She could only unlock the secured box via a code box on the side before taking one of two plasma rifles, complete with ammunition, from the cabinet.
Jim watched Kysaek put the handy ammunition cells on her weapon belt, next to her plasma pistol. As he did so, he remembered something. “Oh, Kysaek! If I let you go early today, but tomorrow you’ll finally tell me about when you joined the army and then how you ended up at PGI.”
Nodding, Kysaek loaded her rifle. “I will,” she promised, though she wasn’t particularly eager to chat about it, and there was a reason for that. She felt her short time in the army had been a great failure and she wanted to keep that to herself. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Jim.”
“See you then, Kysaek. Have fun!”
“Thanks,” Kysaek smiled, adjusting the flashlight on her shoulder and slipping her helmet on. Guilelessly, she flicked the switch of the automatic sliding door and almost ran into her superior, who was human like her.
Douglas Phonor could be frightening, mainly because of his scarred face and stern eyes. The silver-grey and flat-cut hair completed the stereotypical image of the nasty commander. “Where are you off to in such a hurry, Kysaek?”
“SC1!” stood Kysaek at attention. “I wanted to make one last tour before my shift ends.“At the reply,
Douglas glanced at his companions. There was Ten’Dis, a silent galig. The other was a human called Mac and always showed humanitys bad side. “Why a tour?” asked Douglas, looking with derision at Kysaek. He had never made a secret of his disdain for her before. “We exist for walkabouts and you can park your ass back in the seat next to Baker.”
Outwardly Kysaek kept her composure, but inwardly she was seething. She would have loved to give the guy a piece of her mind, as she often did. “Excuse me, sir,” she began formally, adopting a haughty tone. “Tours are part of our employment contracts. If you are uncomfortable with this, you will need to contact Human Resources.”
“SC1! Apparently Kysaek is underutilised,” Mac jumped into the conversation. “We should have her do something useful ... the caretaker probably needs help cleaning.”
The suggestion appealed to Douglas. “Yes, that would be something,” he nodded, but downplayed the idea. “However, that would be an insult to the good man.”
Kysaek stuck to her line despite this. “Sir, you haven’t answered my question - may I do my work now or use my time talking until my shift is over?”
Douglas was not wearing a helmet, it was hanging from his belt and his eyelids narrowed. “Get out of my sight and do your job properly!”
For Kysaek, SC1′s statement was a boon and she went one better. “Sir,” she saluted and started her patrol.
Outside the surveillance room it was much darker and the only more light Kysaek got was from her shoulder lamp. So many times she had marched through these corridors and still they were eerie to her. As always, everything seemed so sterile, clinically clean and not a soul came her way. There hadn’t been any real action or a serious problem here for a long time, but in the end Kysaek didn’t complain and agreed with Jim. The job was easy and still brought in enough foreign currency and she was going to spend some of that later at the Eternity because the end of her shift was here.
In the empty and quiet locker room, she sat down on a bench in front of her locker. It was a good time for her, which she often used to switch off and think or rather daydream.
What would it be like if she ever hit the jackpot? If she had enough foreign currency in her account to really enjoy life? Or if she were simply someone of note - an entrepreneur, a heroine, the toast of the town or even a rough-and-tumble number among the criminals and not just who she was before and now?
But Kysaek came back to reality and got rid of any equipment and the rather practical underwear at her locker. Every now and then she looked down her naked body and tugged at the skin. Kysaek was far from fat, but she found her body was only slightly toned since she had left the army.
“The things we could do ...” murmured Mac suggestively. The would-be macho stood with his arms crossed at the corner of a row of lockers.
Kysaek didn’t care and she deliberately gave him the bare back, cold shoulder and leisurely got dressed again. “For a little scumbag like you, unisex locker rooms must be paradise.”
“They have their merits.”
“Of course,” Kysaek screwed up her face. “You never get anything out of naked women otherwise.”
“Don’t worry, sweetie,” Mac evaded with conviction. “There have been plenty of ladies who have had the pleasure of being with me.”
“Imaginary notions suit you. After all, no one would believe you had anything like that happen in real life.”
“Your sharp tongue, that’s what I like most.”
Kysaek didn’t respond to the innuendo. “Did SC1 let you off the leash? Or why are you here?”
“Apart from the view?” grinned Mac, looking unabashedly at Kysaek, with less and less skin to be seen. “I’m off work now too, and I was wondering what else you were up to?”
At last Kysaek slipped on her tank top and finished dressing. “Nothing with you.”
“Come on,” Mac demanded discreetly, pushing off from the corner. “If you’d just be a little nicer to me, I could have a word with the SC and suggest you for his patrol team. That’ll give a few more foreign currency.”
Not for a second did Kysaek think of accepting this offer. “Even though I would like to have more foreign exchange,” she admitted frankly. “I’d sooner clean up the slimiest Nyrnka than be nice to you in any way.”
Mac’s conviction was unwavering and even growing stronger. “Sooner or later you will, believe me,” he opined and left.
Kysaek was not deterred by this, however, and she still dressed up for the upcoming night out. Finally, she slipped on her black jacket and fished a packet of cigarettes out of its inside pocket.
Kysaek only lit one of them outside, however, as smoking was absolutely forbidden in Research Complex One. Annoying for her as a smoker, even if she was not as addicted to it as some others. Nevertheless, she enjoyed the taste of tobacco all the more while the wind blew hard and she shivered a little in the darkness because of it. To distract herself from it, Kysaek tried to fixate on the near horizon - the magnificent skyline of Auranis.
An ascending and descending row of thin office towers that were clearly visible even on a night like this. Their architecture was invariably by the Talin, who used soft shapes and sublime construction. They were eggshell-white palaces in skyscraper form, coupled with the modern technology of the interstellar age.
That view helped Kysaek get over the cold as she reached the company’s heavily guarded entrance gate and here the wind did not pull as hard.
At the compound entrance there were many guards, heavy guns and various scanning systems. Just the checks, whether she went out or in, took Kysaek almost fifteen minutes. Each time this led her to wonder why such a check was actually necessary. Especially after she was finally outside and she looked back at PGI’s three main towers, of which the central one was the tallest, this thought came to her: PGI - what exactly are they up to here? Apart from the huge production hall for spaceship parts, Kysaek did not know her way around the site. Everything else PGI guarded well, and every time she saw the enormous fortifications around the company headquarters, her curiosity grew and yet she wanted to heed Jim’s advice - shut up and make money. Besides, the nightlife of Auranis now awaited Kysaek and that was rapidly taking over her mind.