Out of the Soylent Planet (A Rex Nihilo Adventure) (Starship Grifters Book 0) by Robert Kroese

Author:Robert Kroese [Kroese, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: St. Culain Press
Published: 2017-07-13T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

The sun was setting as Stubby Joe led me through the fields to a clearing where several large cabins had been constructed for the wranglers. The rest of the workers were gathering in a mess hall for a dinner of SLOP, but as neither Stubby Joe nor I needed to eat in the typical sense, he showed me to my bunk. It was in a large cabin with some three dozen other beds.

“I don’t actually sleep,” I said.

“I know,” said Stubby Joe. “But you’ll need a place to be at night when everybody else is sleeping.”

“I could work at night,” I said.

“Nothing to do. The shamblers go dormant at night. Can’t move them and they get irritable if you try to harvest them. You’ll just have to lie in bed and wait it out until sunrise.”

“Sounds like a blast,” I said. “What about you?”

“I’ll be going dormant shortly myself. I spend the night in a nutrient bath. Gives me a full day’s nutrient supply so I can work all day without having to put my roots in the ground.”

“All right, then,” I said. “Guess I’ll see you in the morning.”

Stubby Joe waved a tentacle at me and went back outside. I sat on my bunk for a while and then decided to head over to the mess hall. If I was going to be spending the rest of my life with these people, I figured I should probably learn to socialize with them. I approached a table where three of the men I had met earlier sat, slurping on SLOP packets.

“Um, hi,” I said. “You guys mind if I sit here?”

One of the men, a big, dour-looking guy, shrugged. I sat down next to him. Across the table was a small, weasely guy with long, ratty hair, and a man with an oddly round face and crossed eyes.

“I’m Grompers,” said the big man. He pointed at the weasely guy. “That’s Figgles. And this dummy is Jim.” Jim grinned a bucktoothed smile at me and waved.

“Nice to meet you,” I said. “I’m Sasha.”

“No you ain’t,” said Figgles.

“Um, yes. That’s my name.”

“That was your name. We gotta give you a wrangler name.”

“Oh, okay,” I said. “That sounds like fun.”

“So what do you want to be named after?” Grompers asked.

“Uh, I don’t really know. What are my options?”

Figgles shrugged. “Some wranglers is named for somethin’ they like to do, or somethin’ they used to do. We gots a Doc, a Digger, a Smokey, a Pipes and a Tinker. Some’re named for plants. Some’re named for animals. Just depends.”

“I see,” I said. “What do you call the little mouse that runs between the shamblers?” I’d seen the tiny rodent while Stubby Joe and I were walking back to camp.

The three men looked at each other meaningfully. “We call it K’trath tar-Kathagra,” Grompers said. The K’trath tar-Kathagra is a very brave and clever creature. There is a legend that a wrangler known as K’trath tar-Kathagra will overthrow the repressive Ubiqorp regime and give the wranglers their freedom.

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