Grunt Work

The Dressing Down

'I'm not mad, just disappointed,' said the Kaptain. 'But also mad.'

We were all lined up in the main foyer of the base. The orange glow from the lava - or is it magma? - was the only light in the large room. The Kaptain marched up and down in front of us, no one daring to look him in the eye. I'm sure I speak for everyone when I say we were disappointed in ourselves for disappointing him.

'You let,' he paused, 'whoever it was that snuck in - escape. After having let them in. And then they escaped! Madness. Utter madness. And no one saw anything? Anyone?'

I hung my head in shame. I myself was the one to have found the two unconscious guards at the eastern staff entrance. Since we were short on grunts, even me and Mr Huggles had to pull guard duty and join the others in checking each entrance.

'I'm sorry, sir,' I said, stepping forward. 'I was so busy checking on the guards that I didn't see anyone.'

'Not your fault, ah, Kaia? Kaia,' he said as I nodded, pleased that he'd remembered my name. 'Kaia is a lesson to all of you. She and her beast - Mr Huggles - managed to do the work that you all are trained for. That you couldn't. That you didn't. I'm so happy to have at least one good guard. Thank you, Kaia, you may step back. As for the rest of you - and you - and you,' he continued, pointing to every other grunt in the line up. 'You are hearby terminated, effective immediately. Winifred shall give you your severance packages.'

Winnie stepped up to his shoulder. 'Kaptain, I'm afraid we are currently in lockdown.'

'Hmm? Oh yes, right, right. Effective after the lockdown ends and we find whoever it was that broke in. No one leaves until we apprehend them.'

'Kaptain,' Winnie leaned close. 'We are on a schedule. The missions, remember?'

'Ah. Yes. Well,' he made raspberries with his mouth while he thought, then looked to us. 'Well, what are you standing around for? Get to it!'

We looked around, confused.

'Go to the armoury, arm yourself,' Winnie explained, 'then systematically search every floor, start from the bottom, then work your way up. Not a stone gets left unturned.'

'Exactly what I said,' the Kaptain grumbled, then clapped his hands. 'Hop to it! Chop chop!'

We scrambled out of the room, past the reception desk, in a dash for the lifts, packing ourselves so tightly into them that none of us could hardly breathe.

It was a relief when the doors finally opened on the fifth floor, and we all had a nice job to the armoury, fitting ourselves in our all black armour, arming ourselves with standard issue submachine guns. No one spoke, besides a few grumbles, and once we were all equiped, we filed out back to the lifts, a little more organised this time. I did briefly think about bringing some armour for Mr Huggles, but they didn't really have anything in his size and I didn't want him wearing something that pinched and felt uncomfortable. Besides, I don't think he was really suited to guard work. He's more of a go-on-missions kind of grunt.

It was a long ride to level -15, during which I noticed a few of the others gave me some unfriendly looks, but otherwise no one said nothing. I was pretty happy about that, to be honest with you. I'd already got the feeling that some of them had decided I was less one of us and instead one of them. I didn't even know who the them was, and I didn't really want to find out.

Level -15 was mainly used for agriculture, on account of being closest to the volcano. The floor was quite warm, even through my boots, though the air was well ventilated and cool, so it wasn't too bad. We went from room to room, but found nothing but rows upon rows of vegetables in their growing shelves, undisturbed save for the occasional botanists and farmers who tended to them. It looked very different to the farms I was used to, but even still the food tasted pretty good, so I won't complain.

Level - 14 was food processing, and really just an extension of the previous level, owing to the fact that, once the vegetables were harvested, they needed to be sorted and stored quickly to keep them in good enough condition to last. This was also empty save for the domestic staff. We checked their IDs against the staff list and, aside from one guy having a bad rash on his face, they all matched their pictures. We found nothing out of the ordinary.

Level -13 was the dungeon, and I don't understand why it was all the way down here, when it made much more sense to keep it on the higher levels, where the Kaptain and the security personnel could more quickly get there. I asked one of my teammates, but they just shrugged and said that the Kaptain wanted it that way, then went right back to ignoring me.

This level was a bit more tricky, on account of the extra layers of security, and because of that we split up into smaller groups.

Well, the others did. By the time I'd got round to asking each team if I could join them, they'd already said that they were full. So I just made up my own team of one, and went off to search by myself, picking one direction at random and headed towards what I think was prisoner holding.

I was a bit preoccupied making my way through the laser grid down one corridor that I didn't see who was ahead of me until I was nearly on top of her. But just a few steps ahead of me, standing on a pressure plate and a death ray pointing straight at her, was Paula.