Corporate Synergies is a modestly epic 14-part space opera of questionable ethics and dubious morality centred on the ongoing conflict between two mega-corporations and their quest to dominate the retail landscape of Earth’s ever-expanding colonial reach.

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7

NEW EMPLOYEE ORIENTATION III

Training of new recruits to the Emerging Markets Division of UniRe had always been something of a crap shoot.  Usually there were a handful of recruits who excelled at some things and were competent at others – these would be the kind of recruit who would form the backbone of the EMD, it was hoped – but there was a sadly growing percentage of recruits who excelled at nothing and were competent at nothing.  These too could play an important role in the EMD, and that role was cannon fodder.  Regardless of whatever corporate buzzword bullshit they wrapped around it, the Universal Retail EMD – like that of their rival Global Consumer Group – was a private army, designed to fight a war.  Every war had its casualties and every war had those battles where the leadership knew going in their army would suffer tremendous casualties even if victorious.  And so every army needed cannon fodder.

The recruits themselves were never told this.  Nor were they told that their personnel files were being marked with codes that would prioritize their service within the EMD based on competency and thus prioritize their selection for cannon fodder-type assignments.

Informing the recruits of such things would serve no purpose – it would just adversely affect employee morale.

There was one further code marking certain personnel files.  This code identified those recruits who were either competent or incompetent and all aspects of training, but excelled at one specific element – killing.  Simulated killing, of course, as carrying out recruit-on-recruit live fire training on Earth would have been a political and public relations nightmare (though UniRe had been working diligently to establish an off-world facility for just that purpose).  Individuals so identified, whether psychopaths, nascent serial killers or even in some instances actual serial killers not yet identified as such by authorities, would be assigned to very special roles.

Strategic ground-level asset reduction was the official, media-friendly term for it coined by Zalia Rushworth.  Not that strategic ground-level asset reduction operations, or SGL Ops in UniRe’s propensity for cool acronyms, were ever discussed publicly.  No one wanted to have to explain that it really meant wet work.  Up-close and often messy killing of GCon personnel, both military and otherwise.  SGL Op teams were assassination squads.

Molly Morgan was not going to be shortlisted for SGL Ops.

Molly Morgan was well on her way to cannon fodder status.

To be fair, she wasn’t outright horrible at most aspects of EMD training, but in order to be an effective soldier – or whatever politically correct term UniRe and GCon had adopted for their soldiers – one was required to be able to shoot straight. An ability to actually hit a target was generally helpful as well.

As her latest shot whizzed over the target and impacted the rear wall of the indoor shooting range with a loud, metallic twang, Molly stamped her foot and sullenly stuck out her lower lip.

“You have to aim a little lower than your actual target,” said Helion Creek.

The ‘nice guy’ Chocolate had met on her flight to Bangladesh, Helion, being a large black man, had initially made Molly nervous.  Growing up in a lily-white suburb in the Incorporated States of America, her experience with racial diversity started and ended with her grandparents’ Mexican cleaning lady.  Not until the age of fourteen did Molly encounter her first black person – an elderly man who stopped his car and called to Molly and her friends to ask directions to the town hall.  The girls’ eyes had bugged out and they’d run away in fear without saying a word.

The elderly gentleman, a retired judge with more education than Molly’s entire family put together, had simply shook his head in disappointment and found the town hall on his own.

Despite Molly’s substantial misgivings, Helion had in fact turned out to be a nice guy just as Chocolate had said, and had proven to be a great help to both girls.  Helion had been part of the Emerging Markets Division of UniRe once before, having enlisted… sorry, UniRe doesn’t like that term.  Too military.  Helion had accepted a position with the EMD straight out of high school, serving… shit, sorry.  Working for four years in order to pay his way through university.  He had returned to UniRe because, as he had told to ladies over lunch early on in their New Employee Orientation Program, society cared more about how much shit you could sell in a month than how deeply and thoughtfully you could analyze the social and political motivations behind the formation and implementation of the first professional police forces in Western history.

Earth’s Western history, to be specific.

Lots of planets have a West.

Not all, though, which is kind of interesting.

Molly had simply smiled and nodded and pretended to know what Helion was talking about then, but she always listened regardless.  She just never knew when he would drop some snippet of information that would help her in the NEOP.

“The recoil is kicking your muzzle up a couple inches,” said Helion.  “You can compensate by aiming lower.”

With a nod, Molly shouldered her rifle, picked her spot, then aimed slightly lower. Sighting down the iron sights of her UniMag Lightning, she gently squeezed the trigger just as Helion had shown her the day before.  The rifle bucked as it fired and Molly flinched as she had every other time she’d fired, but this time rather than flying wide the round hammered into the target not far from where she’d intended.

Squealing with delight, Molly jumped up and down, raising the Lighting above her head in victory.

Helion grinned and ran a hand over his bald head.

“See?  Told you it would help.”

“Handy to have someone around who’s been through training before,” said Chocolate from the next bay over.  Though she hadn’t had any trouble with her shooting – she’d been in the top five of their class almost from the very moment they’d been handed rifles.

But she was right.  Both she and Molly had relied heavily on Helion’s experience to prepare themselves for each new aspect of training they’d faced.  At first, to Molly at least, it had felt like cheating and she’d been reluctant to take part in the info sessions Helion was doing for Chocolate, but she’d quickly changed her mind.  She was, she’d discovered, not at all prepared for training and she was finding many parts of the regimen difficult.

Luckily for Molly and Chocolate, the EMD’s primary concern was getting warm bodies into uniform and getting them deployed.  Academic integrity was relatively low on their list of criteria.  That was, perhaps, one reason for the turnover rates within the Emerging Markets Division – poorly-trained soldiers and soldiers who cheated their way through training, were not particularly good soldiers.  And “turnover” in this case meant dead recruits.

Helion knew this, which was his main motivation for sharing his knowledge.  Aside from the fact that the more prepared his classmates were, the greater the odds of his own survival out in the field, he really just didn’t want to see those people die unnecessarily.  And Helion was very likely the only one thinking that far ahead.  Most of the other recruits were still treating the whole process like a game, goofing around, enjoying the resort-like amenities of the training facility while all but ignoring the training itself.  Starting new lives with the EMD, so many recruits were so focused on reveling in their apparent freedom – freedom from spouses, family demands, old jobs or even just the doldrums of a normal life – that everything else took a back seat.  The number of times Helion had been awakened in the night by people trying to organize orgies was absurd.  How anyone could participate in a late-night orgy and be awake enough for training the following morning was beyond him.

“Looks like we’re getting another speech,” said Chocolate, trying and failing to stifle one, then two, massive yawns.

About to fire off another shot, Molly paused and followed Chocolate’s gaze.  Their training officer, whose name Molly could never remember, strode into the room and all the Lightning assault rifles immediately deactivated.

“So,” said the training officer, addressing the assembled recruits.  “Now you should have a good idea of how to handle your UniRe UniMag Lightning.”

He beamed at the recruits as they listened intently.  His hair was perfect.

“A few important facts about your Lightning.  First, since it is part of the UniMag Personal Defense System, it can utilize magazines from any other UniMag PDS weapon.  That can be a huge benefit in problematic engagement situations.”

Molly’s brow furrowed slightly.  Though she’d gotten used to the… unusual terminology that everyone in the EMD and Universal Retail as a whole insisted on using, some turns of phrase still blew right by her.

“Second,” continued the training officer.  “The UniMag Lightning has a Smart-Detect trigger – human DNA is required in order to activate the weapon.  The Lightning can’t be fired by non-humans.”

He continued, presenting to the recruits what was no doubt a well-rehearsed speech, chock full of corporate-mandated talking points, but Molly, open-mouthed and staring, was stuck on his last statement.

The Lightning can’t be fired by non-humans.

The Lightning can’t be fired by non-humans.

The Lightning can’t be fired by NON-HUMANS.

Once her mind had fully processed the sentence, it moved on to the following thought, repeated approximately eight times in rapid succession:

Aliens aliens aliens aliens fucking aliens holy shit aliens.

TO BE CONTINUED…

Enjoying CORPORATE SYNERGIES?  Check out my full-length novel that involves fewer douche-bags, Radko’s War!