KING OF THE PEELER

[SLAYER LOG - DAY 2, NEURO-5]

The mess hall was packed to the brim, loud with crude laughter, shouting, and the clatter of cheap tin forks. I balanced my dark metal tray through the crowded benches, and in the back corner I spotted Jensen shoveling food into his mouth and waving me over.

I took a quick inventory of lunch. The mashed potatoes looked decent, at least I could take credit for peeling them, but the boiled greens were shriveled and slimy, and the mystery meat had been pounded paper-thin into a gray, rubbery sliver of a grease-soaked patty.

"How is it going?"

"It's goin', fresh meat," Jensen said around a mouthful of food as I slid onto the bench across from him. "Can't remember if I caught your first name between all my yammering back there."

"It's Basham, but everyone calls me Bash."

"Hey! It's the lucky guy from last night!" a voice bellowed from a table near the center. Bird, and the squad who had saved me from being Spawn food, were sitting there, and half a dozen pairs of eyes turned my way. "We honestly didn't think you'd make it till morning until we spotted you passed out on the asphalt outside the gates!"

Heat rushed to my face. The bastards had literally walked right past me coming off their watch and left me sleeping on the damp asphalt.

"Decent guy, Bird," Jensen said. "He'd have dragged you inside, but then Akers would've chewed his ass for bringing in an unvetted Slayer."

"Is she really that bad?"

"I guess you're about to find out," Jensen said, nodding toward the front of the mess hall.

Colonel Akers had stepped onto the low rusted metal staging platform near the front of the hall, Bradley at her shoulder. The chatter began to thin out immediately as more Slayers noticed her standing there, arms pinned behind her back, an icy scowl locked onto her face.

"Pipe down, all of you!" Bradley bellowed.

His voice cut through the mess hall like a siren. The skinny officer's face flushed a furious shade of red, a tight purple vein bulging noticeably along his temple.

Akers' piercing gaze swept the tables as the noise dropped to a scattered chorus of nervous whispers. She wasn't having it.

Her dark eyes darted from table to table, leveling a lethal glare at anyone whose lips were still moving until the entire hall fell dead silent.

Only then did she speak.

Akers didn't need a microphone. Her voice was sharp enough to cut glass. "The primary comm relay to Fort Craven has been dark for twenty-one days. Sector failovers are degrading. High Command is blind to the eastern ridge, and Corporate won't authorize the next supply drop until the telemetry is restored."

I felt a buzz against my wrist and looked down.

[NOTIFICATION: MISSION ASSIGNED]

[OBJECTIVE: COMMUNICATION RELAY REPAIR]

"Well, looks like you are going out there already," Jensen whispered.

"What?" I said, my stomach plummeting.

Bradley snapped his head toward our table, his face darkening again.

"Shut up, fresh meat! When the Colonel is speaking, you remain silent!"

Akers didn't even blink at the interruption. She simply let the threat of a suspended supply drop hang over the room. "Ares. Your squad rolls out at 0600 to repair the pylon."

I glanced across the mess hall toward the source of low chuckling. Sitting at a center table next to Brogan was the horse-maned man from the card game in the courtyard, broad-shouldered, in grease-smeared cargo pants and a faded black tank top. Like Brogan, his arms and neck were covered in jagged ink. He didn't even bother looking up at Akers. He tipped his chair onto two legs, propped his dusty combat boots on the table beside an empty tray, and drawled, "We'll handle it."

"Good. You'll be taking Peeps and the fresh meat with you," Akers said. "They need experience out in the field and to build up credits so maybe they can actually be useful."

Brogan jumped to his feet, his massive fist hammering the steel table hard enough to rattle the tin cups. "The last recruit you saddled us with panicked, broke from the squad, and got himself killed! Now you want us escorting two more softies out near the damn Bone Farm?"

"Enough," Ares said.

He cast a cool, warning glance at Brogan. Still fuming, Brogan unballed his white-knuckled fist and dropped back onto the bench, chest heaving. Ares turned his gaze toward the platform. "Though for once, I agree with Brogan, Colonel. Dragging two rookies greener than summer grass will only jeopardize the relay objective."

"It wasn't a request, Ares," Bradley snapped, stepping forward.

Akers' gaze chilled as she stared down the veteran crew. "High Command has made it abundantly clear that our Spawn kill counts are lagging. That means every new Slayer assigned to Fort Carmone learns to cull Spawn immediately, or dies trying."

"Tough luck," Jensen whispered as Akers and Bradley marched out of the mess hall.

I swallowed hard and looked across the room. Brogan was leaning close to Ares, gesticulating wildly and jabbing a thick, tattooed finger straight at me. Ares shifted his gaze, pinning me with cold, pitch-black eyes and a completely blank expression. After a long, measuring second, he looked away and began speaking to the red-haired woman from the card game, seated across from him. She looked about my age, her auburn hair pulled back into a utilitarian ponytail that rested against the collar of a faded gray undershirt.

"Why would she stick me with them?" I whispered.

"Because if anyone on this rock can drag a couple of dead-weight rookies through a sweep and bring them back breathing, it's them," Jensen said, his voice level. "Brogan blows hot air, but he knows better than to jeopardize their moonshine racket. Ares won't let a temper tantrum blow their cover, so Brogan will fall in line."

"What ranks are they, anyway?"

Jensen nodded toward their table, squinting thoughtfully. "Ares is sitting at rank 28. Brogan's pushed up to 30. And Lexie, the gal with the red hair sitting across from them? Last I checked, she was hovering around rank 20. You're looking at some of the highest-ranked Slayers left in this whole damn fort."

"What is the highest rank for a Slayer, anyway?"

"The highest I've ever seen with my own eyes is a rank 50," Jensen said, leaning back. "Most folks in this camp cap out somewhere between ten to fifteen. That's because the only things crawling near the perimeter are small broodies, and you don't scrape much combat experience off cannon fodder like that."

"So how did Ares and Brogan climb that high?"

Jensen leaned in closer over his tray, keeping his voice beneath the rumble of the mess hall. "Before this assignment, they got dropped onto a real hellhole rock a couple of star systems over. The Spawn there were the size of armored transports. Once that infestation got mostly wiped out, High Command transferred heavy hitters like them out here to pad our pathetic sector stats."

"So this planet is basically a joke to them?"

"Basically, it's a cakewalk for people like them," Jensen said. "Which is the only reason you might make it back to the fort at all."

I looked down at the gray patty on my tray, my appetite gone. "Brogan said something about a Bone Farm. What's the Bone Farm?"

"It's a little bit past the communication relay, right where the canyon empties into the salt plains," Jensen explained between bites. "It's a massive graveyard of indigenous wildlife. Stretches for nearly two miles. Two solid miles of sun-bleached leviathan ribs curving out of the dirt like cathedral arches. Nothing goes in there but Spawn."

"So how'd it end up like that?" I asked.

"Depends on who you're askin'," Jensen said, leaning in lower. "Some of the old-timers claim the first corporate excavation outfits slaughtered the native species to clear the drilling corridors and dumped the carcasses in the trench. Others swear a brood of massive, ancient Spawn herded the wildlife into the canyon for an all-you-can-eat buffet."

"And I'm getting sent out there?"

"Sure looks like it."

A tremor ran through my legs. Under the lip of the table, my hands wouldn't stop fidgeting, my knuckles whitening against each other.

After supper, Jensen had me back at the prep table with a damp burlap bag of corn at my feet and nowhere to be.

Jensen watched as I shucked the ears of corn, setting each one aside, then grabbed another and stripped the husk into the trash can I had placed in front of me. "You ain't half bad," he remarked. "Much better than that other guy they gave me."

I kept my flow going, silently tallying how many I'd finished. "The one that got disemboweled?"

"Yeppers, you at least seem to have a little bit of kitchen skills."

"The only jobs I ever had were working in kitchens," I replied. "What time is it anyway?"

"About 1930," Jensen replied as he walked over to my prep table, looking over the rows of corn, four rows of six, carefully placed. "How many have you got here?"

"This one in my hand makes twenty-five," I answered.

He quickly counted, pointing individually to each one. His lips silently moved with the numbers, then he did it again to double-check. "Yep, that makes twenty-five. Definitely better than the previous guy. That boy couldn't count for nothin'."

"I used to do inventory at my last job."

He walked away for a brief moment before returning with a milk crate. He carefully placed each ear of corn inside, silently counting them again, seemingly genuine in his surprise at my kitchen prowess.

"Welp, fresh meat, if you make it back alive, you might be doin' the countin' again."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, Jensen."

He gently set aside the crate of corn and turned around, leaning back against the prep counter. "Ain't personal. I don't wanna get my hopes up about keeping staff back here. It's always a coin flip if new Slayers like yourself make it through the first couple of weeks."

I pulled the last ear of corn from the damp bag, making quick work of it before handing it over. Jensen gave a subtle nod. "Well, looks like we finished up a little early. Damn, I really hope you make it."

My ZS-33 buzzed, delivering another notification.

[NOTIFICATION: MANUAL CAMP LABOR CONFIRMED]

[+1 SLAYER CREDIT ADDED TO BALANCE]

"Thanks, I think?" I replied. "So, what now?"

"Welp, it's time for a little shut-eye before your first Slayer mission," Jensen answered. "Let's head to the Slayer quarters and get some sleep."

"How are the beds here?"

"They are some of the most comfortable beds I've ever slept on," Jensen said sarcastically. "They really pamper us Slayers here at Fort Carmone."

"So what you are saying is that they suck, right?"

He smirked and gave a brief nod. "I like you, fresh meat. You can even tell when I'm being snarky. Now let's get to bed."

That night I lay awake on a mattress that proved him right, listening to the distant crump of landmines and counting down to 0600.