Spark: Sins of Grievance (Part 2)

 Spark: Sins of Grievance

Part 2

Carlton opens up the door into his office and sighs. Same everything as always day in and day out. Some days he wished that there would be a slave or another guard hiding somewhere in his office waiting to kill him.

It wasn’t that he wanted to really die, as far as he could tell based on all the death he had inflicted on those unfortunate slaves throughout the years that dying hurt. At least in the manner Enforcers extracted it. He summed up his feelings as just plain tired.

He walked further into the room and sat down at his desk. He leaned forward and looked at a scribbled on sheet of paper containing recent numbers of both slaves and Enforcers Grievance had to how much energy they were producing that week.

“Numbers are getting a little low. I better crack some skulls… literally, if I don’t want Victoria breathing down my neck,” he said quietly enough for his helm to actually keep his voice normal.

He leaned back in his chair and put his feet up on his desk. What to do, what to do, he thought.

There were the two girls he got yesterday and he would need to babysit them until he was sure they could both handle being an Enforcer while handling the slaves properly. He guessed that he could set them up in the east wing with the more experienced slaves. They were less likely to be unruly and would do the work they were told to. It would be a good place to start.

The two girl’s shifts would start two hours from now, it was 6 AM. Carlton himself didn’t need to be awake for another hour. As of late he found it very difficult to sleep for long periods of time. After tossing and turning during the broken six or seven hours of sleep, he would wash up and throw on his armor.

Suddenly his door burst open and he dropped his feet to the floor quickly and stood up. His chair spun around as a result of him getting out of it so hastily.

It was unfortunately Victoria who had entered his office, unannounced as always. She looked almost the same as the rest of the Enforcers except her armor was much nicer and accommodated for her having breasts where as the rest of the females had to squish into their armor. Her ego was expressed in the manner of a long cape flowing behind her that just touched the ground.

Carlton knew that he was on great terms with Victoria and that she valued him more than any of the other Enforcers, but still became nervous every time they came in contact with each other. It wasn’t like she had come over to bull shit about how her day was going so far. There would be no conversation about how she was unhappy with being unmarried but had hit it off with one of the clients she worked with. No, it was never about anything like that.

“Carlton!” Her voice boomed at him through the voice modification she had in her own helm. She had never been one to have much of an inside voice and was always yelling carrying her voice to the deepest corners of any room regardless size.

“Yes Victoria, what can I do for you?”

“Why did you purchase two more Enforcers when we are at our capacity?”

There wasn’t a real limit for Enforcers unless it was that all their suits of armor had owners and they didn’t. He wasn’t sure what exactly she meant but answered as he felt he needed to and talked to her on the level of sophistication that she demanded.

“We needed replacements for two of our guards, Victoria. I apologize if this was something I should have brought to your attention prior to buying them.”

She gestured loudly by waving her arm through the air. “How exactly would two of our fine Enforcers be in need of replacement at the same point in time?”

Time to lie a little. Carlton knew that these weren’t things she invested time into checking up on, so he was safe telling a fib or two. The truth was that they didn’t actually need anyone else at the time, but Sampson had been so pushy on selling his girls to him. Also, at the low price he was willing to let them go for was too good to pass up.

“One of our slaves tricked them into investigating a fight between slaves. When they showed up the Enforcers were knocked unconscious and stripped of their gear by the first slave and one other. It was the intention of the involved slaves to impersonate the Enforcers and escape. Fortunately another of our guards happened on the scene and informed me. It was immediately taken care of by fatally beating the two slaves that were part of it. The two guards were disciplined for losing their armor by having them replace the slaves that were eliminated.” Hopefully she would buy the detailed explanation. It was something that had sort of happened before so it should constitute as a good lie.

Victoria put her hand to her mouth to think. “Carlton, again you please me with how you have dealt with these situations.” She pointed at him threateningly. “I expect you to have these two new Enforcers trained in our ways by the end of the day or place them with the ranks of our workers.”

“As you wish.” Now to say what he felt he always was expected to do and say. “I won’t let you down my lady,” he bowed down on one knee with respect.

“Very well,” she said. He looked up as she turned around and exited his office, leaving the door open.

He rose and walked over to his door and looked out of it. He saw her proudly walking the pathway back to her grand chambers.

In a way he envied her for the respect her very image demanded but in the same way feared her for what she could do to him. There wasn’t a single person that felt they had the balls to tell her off or even attack her. When a person thought about the kind of business empire she had and how she ran it, it was natural to fear that person for what they were capable of doing to you on a personal level.

He was also sure that if he wasn’t willing to do what she wanted of him that there would be others who would be eager to get her favor and take his place.

Carlton sighed again under his helm. Despite all the things wrong with Grievance. He liked who and what he was, while at the same time hating it and himself. It was such a complicated emotion for him, and due to not fully understanding it was the reason why he stayed without trying to leave.

“Enough,” he said out loud scolding himself. He had to get his brain back on task. If those girls are going to make it till night as Enforcers, than I better get them up and ready now.

They hadn’t had a very long day previously. He showed them around and made sure that the other Enforcers knew they would need some minor instruction. Being the type of people that he would expect the guards to be after proving they could make it in an environment such as Grievance, he warned them not to give the new guards a hazing and to treat them as they would him. It was something he always said each time they had new Enforcers. He personally didn’t care and knew that it wouldn’t help, but felt that in the position of power he was that he had to say something like that. It also wasn’t something he said because he knew the two new Enforcers were female.

Before he went to the guard’s personal quarters he went back into his office and grabbed his rod from the weapon rack. Lately he had been favoring the lighter of the bunch, liked how he could swing it faster.

It was only a few short minutes later when he was knocking loudly on the door of Rachael’s room. He readied his rod to teach her a lesson.

The door opened up and Rachael sleepily peeked around the door with her long nightshirt on.

Carlton nudged the door open more and thrust his rod forward hitting her in the shoulder. She yelled out in pain and fell backwards. Now on the floor holding the spot he struck her she looked up at him sobbing lightly.

“Rule number one: Never answer your door without your armor on. Rule number two: Learn to equip yourself quickly so as not to make whoever may be at your door wait. Get your gear on and stand where I am in no more than two minutes.”

She sniffed and nodded quickly.

Carlton closed the door making sure it was shut all the way and walked two doors down to where Melanie was at. He pounded on the door and held his rod the same way as he had before. He was certain that she too wouldn’t have on her gear and he would have to swing at her as well.

There wasn’t the sound of any movement inside so he banged on the door louder. As soon as he regripped his weapon the door opened up and Melanie too was dressed the same way without her gear on. He stepped forward pushing the door open and swung his rod at Melanie. She dodged it so he swung again, the same result.

From behind his helm a smile made its way across his face. Maybe this one would be better than he thought. He swung the rod at her legs letting the rod slip through his grip until he caught it at the very end. The rod smashed into her and she fell to the ground.

He repeated the same lecture as he did for her sister and exited the room. He looked over to the side and saw that Rachael was standing there fully dressed in her armor hanging onto her iron rod.

“Good. I see you have gotten the hang of it better.”

With the same modified voice that they all spoke she said, “I took some time before I went to bed to practice getting it on and off. I’m much better at it now.”

“Good. Effort like that will get you far here. I suggest applying it elsewhere today.” He hoped that he wouldn’t be let down further into the morning.

Rachael nodded at him.

After a minute Melanie came out of her room fully dressed but without her rod. As soon as she was out she noticed Carlton and Rachael standing there waiting for her.

Rachael raised her rod and coughed. Melanie got the message and went back into her room to retrieve her own rod. After she had it, she stood over by the other two.

“Ok. Very fun day planned.”

“Really?” Melanie asked.

“No. These dang helms filter sarcasm,” Carlton said.

Rachael laughed and her own helm made an eerie cackling noise. “I don’t think I will get used to it making a laugh sound like that,” she said.

“Well, this isn’t a place with much laughter in it, so you’re in luck.”

Already Carlton was annoyed with his situation of babysitting the two.

“Ok. I’m not going to be the only one showing you the ropes today so I’m going to do something that is going to help me recognize you as well as you know each other. Don’t worry; it won’t be something others will catch onto.”

The two girls stood still. If he could see the expressions on their face he was sure they would be confused.

He leaned down supporting himself with his rod and grabbed a handful of loose dirt. He stepped in front of Rachael and smeared the dirt on her right shoulder. He took another handful of dirt and rubbed the dirt into the front of Melanie’s chest plate.

“Isn’t being covered with dirt going to make us stand out?” Melanie asked looking down at herself.

“No,” Carlton answered quickly. “Now follow me to the east wing. These slaves have been here the longest and are doing tasks that require more skills than most other jobs. You won’t need to know much about what they are doing; only what they shouldn’t be doing. They should be busy with their tasks and also will know better than to give resistance.”

They both nodded and randomly Melanie let out a yell.

“It’s funny how the cooling system always seems to go off in a moment of silence. You’ll get used to it.”

They walked to their destination and had to use several elevator systems to get far enough down into the Earth’s crust. Melanie mentioned about how were they expected to know how to get around and he simply answered that if they didn’t learn it right away they would become slaves instead, and if they didn’t get the jobs they had to do as slaves, they would just be killed. Simple as that and it shut them up right away. After he told them what he did he noticed both were looking around a lot, likely to make note of their surroundings.

They rounded the corner to what Carlton told them was the location that the slaves would put the produced energy from the storage cells into smaller battery like canisters.

Right away Carlton saw that things weren’t right. He was hoping to give the girls a view of a normal setting before they had to be more aggressive, but it wasn’t going to happen that way.

“Enforcer!” Carlton called out to one of the guards about to strike a slave.

They stood at attention quickly and spoke. “Sir. The laborer carelessly dropped a canister and broke the valve system on it. I was about to punish them.”

Carlton walked over to the guard and for whatever reason both girls stayed where they were. “At ease,” he told the guard, “get back to work overseeing the latest shipment and I’ll have another Enforcer do the task.”

“Thank you sir,” they said and walked away to another spot in the area. Carlton really hated being called sir, but it was really the best thing for anyone to call him based on his position. Either way, as long as he wasn’t called his own name he was fine with it.

Annoyingly he waved for the girls to come over to him. The slave cowered from the ground probably expecting the group beating that Carlton had in mind for him.

When they were standing next to him he gestured to the slave and told them, “Well, get to it.”