Slumrat Rising

Truth felt poleaxed. Well, he didn’t know what a poleaxe was. He felt shocked. Betrayed. Unable to think. All those thousands of hours of studying. Of training. The months and years invested in his dream of Talisman Maintenance, and she just wanted to toss it away for what? A glorified night watchman? Maybe a mall cop in some high end store where he could save for a lifetime and never have enough to buy a single thing?!

“You are thinking I want to make you a mall cop, right?”

“You don’t?” Truth was proud of all the swears he didn’t say.

“Amazing. I think I heard fifteen swears in a two word sentence. That may be a new record.” She grinned at him.

“I’m an overachiever.” Truth growled.

“You really are.” She turned serious. “The System had to double check some of your information. You grew up in the South Side slums? I heard the police only go in there in squads.”

“I did and they didn't.” She looked confused. “They don’t come in at all, except to burn down Ghūl statues. Then they come in the dozens.”

“Incredible. Just incredible. Passed your specialization, set yourself up for a decent little career, then in your one year of national service you, and I can’t believe I am reading this right, won a classified Military Merit Medal, along with a frankly shocking number of merits for a conscript. In that any number greater than zero is a shocking number for a conscript.” The recruiter shook her head in awe.

Truth shrugged. “I can’t talk about it.”

“And I don’t want to know. I mean, I do, but it’s not worth my job.” Truth nodded. The recruiter continued. “Point is that any number of Military merits more than one gets you an automatic ten percent pay boost. You have five, which makes it a twelve percent pay boost. After the first, they are worth less. There is a table explaining it in your employee handbook. You spent your Civic merits bumping yourself to full citizenship, which was the right call. That means that you don’t have to spend your much more valuable Military merits to do it, and that pay multiplier is permanent. No matter how high you rise in the company.” She shook her head in envy.

“On top of that, you finished your service as a corporal. Which is an NCO, which means that you automatically qualify for a shift supervisor position.”

“Really?” Truth was excited.

“Standard stuff. Where your record gets particularly spicy isn’t any of that.”

“Not even the merits?”

“That’s pretty spicy, but no. The spiciest part is your Army qualifications.”

“Huh?” Truth looked boggled.

“Unsurprisingly, you earned the Army Talisman Maintenance Technician qualification. Which, in Starbrite, rates you an extra pat on the back. Only one, but you do get it if you know to ask.” The recruiter smiled.

“Gosh.”

“Overwhelming, I know. But. You also qualified on seventy three separate weapons systems, including fifteen from foreign militaries. You are rated as Expert on no less than five systems each for Land, Air, Sea and Space combat, and more than fifty systems total. You are also rated as Expert in unarmed and melee combat. Do I have to explain how completely insane that is? Or that it should be impossible for an eighteen year old kid to learn all that during boot camp?”

The recruiter threw up her hands in defeat. “Congratulations. The Army doesn't have a separate award for it, but Starbrite does. You are now, officially, a Master of Arms.”

“Uh, did I? I am? I mean, they did try me out on a lot of different things, I guess, but they were pretty simple. Weapons are meant to be used by morons, right?” Truth scratched his head awkwardly. Master of Arms sounded awesome, but there was likely a screw up somewhere.

The recruiter gave him a gimlet look. “You rated as an expert ten minutes after first seeing our Starbrite Arms Fury of Stanthorp class orbital drop armor. Orbital. Drop. Armor. Ten Minutes.”

“Was… that the time we went up very high in a flying carriage, then they had me jump out wearing the full seal spell suit?”

“You know, I bet it was.”

“I mean, that was basically just “Wear this, fall out of the carriage, don’t die. Try to land in the circle.” I dunno about expert.”

“I will be sure and pass that on to the design team. Fun fact, the internal testing team says it takes…” Her eyes rolled up in her head as she checked with the System. “twenty-five hours of ground training before you can make your first drop. We aren’t going to talk about this any more, as it makes my head hurt. You are, absolutely and unquestionably, a Master of Arms.”

“Alright. That does sound awesome.” Truth grinned.

“Oh it is. You get a special badge, special job and training opportunities, and another ten percent pay bump. Congratulations, Mr. Medici. Your one year as a conscript earned you a permanent twenty two percent pay premium for the rest of your career.”

Truth’s jaw hung open. He just… they kept giving him new things to try, and they just made sense to him. The talismans were different but they all did basically similar stuff, so how hard could it be to figure out? Apparently, very. Twenty. Two. Percent.

“Of course, there is a catch.”

Ah. Bye bye, good feelings. Hello rusty iron pole of “deep love.”

“You only qualify for the bonuses that go with your military merits and Master of Arms title if you join a department where those qualifications would be relevant. Namely weapons testing, weapons design, and security. And I am very sorry to say, without a couple of advanced degrees, you don’t qualify for weapons testing or design.”

“Ah. That… actually makes sense.”

“The people who qualify as Master of Arms are usually old timers near retirement who have been working in their department for decades. It’s the only way they could get the necessary time on tools that most people seem to need. It’s a nice way to end their career and give their retirement a little boost.” The recruiter looked sardonically across her desk at Truth. She was still not over the drop armor thing. She might never be over the drop armor thing.

“Ok… so… I guess it’s an extra twenty percent and risk getting shot in a store robbery or take the permanent loss of income but have a safe civilian job? I don’t know if it’s in my file, but I do have dependents. Security really isn’t that great a fit for me.”

“Well, about that. How much do you understand about our pay structure?”

“I know that a trainee Talisman maintenance tech makes sixty grand, and a qualified one makes seventy.” Truth said, pointedly.

“Not… exactly. We’ll get to that. Short version is that different jobs, even within the same department, are on different career tracks. Different tracks let you go higher up the pyramid, earning you more money, more benefits, more permissions with the System. Which, let me tell you, makes the other reasons look very petty in comparison.” The recruiter sounded uncomfortably sincere when she was talking about the System.

“Each strata of the pyramid is its own tier, going from A to F. Each career track is sorted by its terminus tier. So, for example, I am on a D track, as Head of External Recruiting and Placement, Municipal, Harban City, is a D tier position. Within that track, there are grades, from nine to 1. So I would be D-5, as a senior recruiter. Each grade is divided into upper or lower positions depending on the position’s seniority in the department. So I would be D-5-L because everyone makes Senior Recruiter with a few years in the position. By contrast, the President and President Emeritus are the only two A-1-U grades in Starbrite.”

“OK…”

“Hang in there a minute longer. Now, anything B tier and up is considered an upper management or highly-significant-individual position and would have regional, national, or even global, impact. They are strictly recruited internally. There are no tracks that terminate at B tier from recruitment. It is always a lateral transfer from the terminus of your first career path into the start of a new career path. One that ends at B or even A tier. And not every starting path has a terminus that lets you make a transfer to higher tier jobs.”

“Think I am starting to see where this is going.”

“Talisman Maintenance Technician caps out at C-3-U. It’s a technical job so there is a grade premium, and when talismans break it’s a huge problem. Lucky you, you start at C-9-L. BUT. Anything above C-3-U, and you start going into facilities management, stationary or operational engineering, that kind of thing. You need a lot more qualifications than you will earn as a technician. So unless you are OK stalling out there for half a decade as you go back to school, you want to find a career with more upward mobility.”

“Which is Security?” Truth asked skeptically.

“Starbrite Security. In addition to our in-house night watchmen and, yes, mall cops, we also run a very successful PMC. A mercenary company, to be blunt.”

“What? Why have I never heard about that?”

“Because it’s a company with one client- Starbrite. It costs a blinding fortune to create a combat capable soldier, and a bigger fortune to make an elite soldier, and the biggest fortune of all is what their healthcare and benefits cost. No one department could eat the cost. So the whole company shares the PMC. The departments hire a few soldiers, or the whole section, on an as-needed basis. For everything from bodyguard duty, to hostile extractions, to securing the companies’ rightful interest in contested locations.” The recruiter made it sound like Security was holding Starbrite’s spot in a queue when they slipped away for a piss.

“And Security caps out at?”

“C-1-U, with not one but seventeen lateral transfers to upper B tier tracks, and two to A tier. Which, if you haven’t guessed already, is C-Suite. None for the very peak, I’m afraid, but… did you really plan on running Starbrite one day?”

“I thought I would be running diagnostics on ventilation systems, and I was pretty happy with the idea.”

“The benefits alone completely blow away the Talisman Tech role. You said you have dependents? The PMC gets a 80% discount of housing for dependents, 80% discount on education, 90% discount on healthcare on top of the already subsidized insurance AND a 50% of your highest pay pension for your dependents if you die. The PMC division also gets more credits per grade than you would as a maintenance tech.”

She took a deep breath. “Did I mention that the pension vests in forty years for the PMC instead of the usual fifty? And while generic Security does start at F tier, no System, no lapel pin, lousy pay, worse benefits, you, as part of the PMC, will be starting at C-9-Upper. Plus the twenty two percent bonus to pay. Plus the PMC gets access to some extremely fun parts of the System which I’m not even qualified to know about. And cultivation aids like you would not believe. So. Yeah. Join Security.”

She was almost panting at the end. So was Truth.

“Credits?”

“Starbrite has its own internal economy. Once you get the lapel badge, which is C tier and up, you will never touch cash again. Flash the badge anywhere and Starbrite will cover the cost of whatever you want to buy. You want to buy an orbital cruiser staffed by everyone you ever had a crush on? Starbrite will cover it. Your own island somewhere tropical? Starbrite will cover it. Gum from the little kiosk next to the subway? Pick your flavor and show ‘em the pin. The only limit is how many Starbrite credits you have. And each credit is worth a hell of a lot more than a wen. So… yeah. PMC, C-9-U, with your bonuses, starting salary of ninety three thousand credits per year. In wen, that would be- “I said “I want five,” not “How much does it cost?””

Truth sat there, slack jawed. What do you even say to that?

“Next swearing in is in three days, by the way. For Security. Not sure when the next openings are coming up for Maintenance. Some time in the next few months. Probably.” The recruiter smiled with “honest” warmth.

If Truth’s brain was working a bit better, he would have remembered what the career soldiers in the Army said about recruiters. What he actually said was-

“I want to join Security!”

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