Chương 153: CDM 3, Chapter 29: Retirement Planning

The mess hall had two picnic tables sitting outside, so even though it was past midnight, there was a place to sit. I had slept for a few hours, woken up, and couldn't get back to sleep. I decided to stretch my legs, and Hornby had the idea first, apparently.

"If you sit at the edge of the light, the mosquitoes aren't as bad," he drawled.

"Still bad. You know what I'm saying." Hornby fished a can of snuff out of his pocket.

"Want a rub?" he asked.

"I'm good, thanks."

"Wish I never started," he mumbled as he scraped a pinch of chew out of the can.

"What do you think a high constitution does for your chances of throat cancer? There has to be a study about that somewhere."

"Not foolproof, but it helps."

"My man. Come on, cowboy. You can sit." I accepted the invitation.

"Are you usually a night owl?"

"Best thing the Army ever taught me was how to sleep whenever I wanted. You tell me I have a 2-minute break? I'm catching a nap. Don't know what the hell is keeping me awake now."

"When we rolled in here, I was wrecked," I said.

"I wasn't even thinking straight. 5 hours later? I want to crawl again."

"Really?" I shrugged.

"Not me, man. I could retire right here and not once wanna go into another dungeon."

"I don't believe that," I replied.

"I'm serious. This is a job. When I don't have to do it anymore, I won't. Or are you one of them who thinks you gotta have passion or some shit?"

"I'm not. A job can be a job."

"Fucking eh," Hornby said.

"I had chickens when I was in high school. I think I'd do that again when I retire."

"Grow up on a farm?" He rocked his head side to side.

"Kind of yes, kind of no. You know?"

"Sorry. I'm not following."

"I was in 10th grade, and two things happened at once: My dad got a new girlfriend, and we got a buyout offer from the mine. Our little plot of land was at risk for subsidence, so the mine was buying every house like ours instead of risking the liability.

"Dad took the money, and we fought about it. He moved in with his girlfriend early, and I just never left the old house. I think we both expected something official to force me out, but nothing ever came. I kept paying the utilities and ended up living there by myself through the rest of high school. I got myself some chickens senior year. Liked having them around."

"Nobody did anything about it?"

"Like I said, nothing ever happened. Kept expecting it too, but it didn't. I did all sorts of dumb shit to that place."

"What kind of dumb shit?" I asked.

"It was a log cabin, so I put rock climbing grips all over the inside. I started to put in a fireman's pole but fucked up the measurements, so there was just a hole in my bedroom floor for a while."

"I was about to say I was jealous, but I could see that being shitty too."

"Christmas alone at 17 is a hell of a thing," Hornby said.

"But then half my friends were getting their shit kicked by their dads, so not having one around sounded like I didn't do so bad on the luck spectrum. Coulda been born a doomer." He looked at me slyly.

"Did you guess or did someone tell you?" I asked.

"Guessed. We got lots of doomers in Kentucky. They practically run the place."

"What gave it away?"

"I'm going to answer it, but man, how did we end up talking about all this deep shit? God damn." I shrugged.

"I don't know how we got here either."

"This is gonna sound fucked up, and I don't say it to offend you. I only say it 'cause you asked, and not because it's a good or a bad thing. When we were kids, we called it 'doomer eyes.' It's like they're seeing two worlds at once. They see what we all see, but they also picture a version where everything is covered in hellfire, and babies are gnashing their teeth and shit."

"What the fuck, Hornby?"

"I said I didn't mean-""I'm not mad," I said.

"I mean, how are you going to casually drop this epiphany bullshit on me in the middle of the night?" He laughed.

"Once I turn the mouth on, I'll talk bullshit until I starve to death. Sometimes a few turds stick." But he was totally right. I did experience my reality that way. Normal kids worried about goblin attacks in the night. I expected a demon to materialize in front of me at any moment. A well-secured home could keep goblins out, but demons could appear wherever they pleased. So nowhere was safe from Satan. I would have to wait until I got to heaven to know what safe felt like.

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"You shouldn't be that impressed, I guessed right," Hornby said before spitting into an old pop bottle.

"You said you were jealous I got to live alone. Doomers ain't known for having fun childhoods."

"My folks moved to New Eden."

"No shit? Do you know which part?" I shook my head.

"I don't actually."

"I could see someone preferring not to know," he said.

"I think I prefer that too."

"My dad is in San Antonio, Texas, with his second wife and three beautiful boys. I'd prefer not to know that."

"And the conversation gets even more serious," I observed.

"Fuck! Okay. Let me think of a joke… Wanna hear a clean joke?"

"Okay."

"Pig took a bath. Want to hear a dirty joke?"

"Yes."

"Pig fell in the mud," Hornby said and spread his arms with a ta-da flourish.

"Fuck you, man. That joke killed in the third grade. Miss Rider about pissed herself." That got me to laugh. I was late for breakfast the next morning. I came in expecting the whole party to be there, but only Megan and Giago were still in the mess hall.

"Dorion!" Megan called.

"I have a waffle I didn't eat." Hell yeah, I could eat a waffle.

"Giago was telling me about some Army ideas he had for the party," Megan said as I sat and slid her plate toward myself. She had already buttered it. Wonderful.

"You're the crux of the concept," Megan added, "so good timing." I nodded that I was listening and chewed. Megan pointed to Giago, suggesting he explain. He leaned forward.

"You're a walking assault rifle at this point, and there's a whole bunch of concepts we should think about stealing. First of all, there are types of suppression fire. There's direct and area suppression, which do what they sound like, but then there's interdiction fire. Basically, you fill a lane with bullets so the enemy can't move past."

"Interesting."

"There are also types of suppression patterns. If one of us spots an enemy under cover, we could give you the pattern that gives you the best chance of finding it with blind firing."

"I like the sound of all of this," I said.

"In a messy urban nest scenario, thinking like you're carrying a gun could help us tactically in all kinds of ways. A normal archer can't manage the volume to hunt like that, and I don't know that most crawlers need those kinds of maneuvers."

"They're void arrows, though. Don't we lose a lot of that suppressive force without projectiles whizzing by?" Megan rubbed her face.

"I thought about how they passed through objects but totally forgot about how they actually traveled." Giago sighed.

"This is fucking embarrassing. I missed that too."

"Don't feel bad," I said.

"I still forget how it works sometimes. That last run, especially. I caught myself waiting for the enemy to leave cover like I had a normal bow in my hands."

"I think most of the ideas are salvageable," Megan said. After thinking for a moment, Giago replied, "Yeah, that's true. We didn't even talk about TRPs." Megan leaned forward like she knew a secret.

"That stands for 'target reference point.'""Basically, we agree on major landmarks ahead of time. Takes a little creativity to pick good ones and get used to thinking with them, but we could do a better job of telling you where to shoot with a tool like that. Meehan learning would be good too. He'll probably see the most opportunities."

"Makes me wonder why the CDM didn't teach us any of this," I grumbled.

"That's because we weren't supposed to get these jobs," Megan replied.

"McDouglas told you that, and the job description implied it pretty strongly too." I had to reveal that we were Dungeon Divas to convince Enforcer McDouglas to consider us. The original plan was probably to hire guys like Hornby and Giago–crawlers with tactical combat experience. The CDM didn't teach us those skills because they expected the people they hired to already have them. That was the advantage of hiring soldiers.

If you understood the rank and job system, you could know exactly what the soldier you hired was trained in. That might not mean they were good at it, but for someone to have a rank, a few commendations, and a letter of recommendation, they weren't likely to be terrible.

"There's more," Megan continued.

"Giago has heard about other response teams having eight-person minimums. Six in the field and two support."

"I still think you're reading too far into it," Giago said. Megan shook her head.

"If it were Dorion and me with six soldiers who knew soldier shit, we would be the weak links by a big margin. With our party, we have a better chance of making it work."

"Sometimes I think McDouglas has a master plan, and other times it's like he has a lighter and is blindly testing to see what's flammable," I mused. A realization made me grin. I turned to Megan.

"Chapman isn't like that, though. Chapman definitely has a plan. She placed a bet on you, and in her mind, it's the smartest bet she could make." Megan frowned.

"Chapman does think like that."

"A pessimist would say we are being set up to fail," Giago pointed out.

"A full CDM party would communicate better than a mixed party that's short 2 people." My grin grew.

"You're scaring me, Dor," Megan said.

"Putting Hornby and Giago with us means we learn the tactical shit. That's inevitable with sticks in the mud like them around."

"Hey!" Giago chirped.

"The party is weighted with our people because our people know the kind of shit we do. We wouldn't get away with anything creative in a normal squad with serious people." Megan leaned back slowly. She stayed quiet for a time and said, "So that's the other half of the bet. Chapman and McDouglas both think we have a shot at doing it better. We do have more training to do when we get back to the States, but we were told that would be in-mission coaching."

"What are you two talking about?" Giago asked.

"I got lost three turns back." Megan looked to me for my vote. I nodded yes.

"Have you heard of the Dungeon Divas?"

"Sounds like some YouTuber shit." Megan laughed.

"That's exactly it, actually. If we're running together, I think it's right you know. We do wild hunts and post the videos. On our last big hunt, we redirected some of a river into an underground goblin nest."

"Huh?"

"I'll send you some links," she continued.

"Talking this through makes me feel pretty good, actually. We'll end up being the most versatile team because you and Hornby will teach us real soldier shit."

"What are you teaching us?" Giago asked as if he feared the answer.

"Diva bullshit."

"Which is?"

"You heard the river example," Megan said, thinking.

"Oh, you figured out Dorion was the one in the ogre gate. He stayed alive with Diva bullshit." I explained, "We tied ogre body parts to one end of a rope and a big fishing hook to the other. When we hooked an ogre, we threw the body part into the water for the sea monsters to grab. Drowned the ogres."

"Dorion's pretty good at not dying," Megan added.

"I am a big fan of not dying," Giago agreed.

"Alright. You guys seem a little out there, but I can dig it. Yeah, we could end up making an alright team."