Allen ran his hand through his curly black hair. “Well, first off, we are running low on funds. You keep handing out bonuses like they are candy, the purchase for this building requires twenty percent upfront, and there’s a problem with selling cores to Mr. Perez.”

  “What problem?” Luke asked as he climbed out of his power armor.

  “He can’t afford to pay for all the cores we have. He wasn’t expecting us to gather that many so quickly and doesn’t have the funds yet. He wants us to hold on to them for his next trip a week after Wednesday.”

  “That’s ridiculous, we are just going to have more cores by then. Tell him we’ll sell him cores by then, but in the meantime, set up a sale through KaliBay for everything we have today. We won’t get as much selling them on the open market, but like you said, we need the money. Also, while you are at it, check out what we can sell this hydra skin for. The taxman just said it was worthless, but we should double check before I use it as target practice.”

  “Great, will do. But that’s not the end of our problems. Somehow our company website got popular and I’ve got hundreds of emails from fans and cranks. More than fifty people applied to work for us, even though I didn’t publish the salary. I rejected most of them, but we still have fifteen good candidates we need to interview on Wednesday. Four of those are your friends from larping. Are you sure you want people who are used to playing pretend with foam swords to go to an alien planet where monsters are actively trying to kill them?”

  “Most of my larping friends come from the military. Even though some of them come from the Air Force, they still have real training in fighting and won’t freeze up in combat.”

  Allen sat down heavily, and wrote some notes on the laptop. “Alright, fine. But we still have to decide on how many we are hiring. You said something about two or three teams eventually, but can we afford to pay them all? How steady will the supply of cores be? I don’t want to hire two dozen people and then have to fire them a month later because of overhunting.”

  “Good question. I need to talk to the Seer about Jinx on Tuesday anyway, I can discuss sustainable monster culling with him at the same time. Anything else?”

  “We still need to nail down lots of details for the new hire packet and there are so many insurance options we need to discuss. Health insurance, life insurance, business liability insurance, property insurance. There is a lot we need to discuss.”

  “Can’t you make those decisions on your own?” Luke groaned.

  “I could, but I need info from you. Pull up a chair. We are going to be here for a while.”

  They spent the next few hours with paperwork and making decisions about the future of Monster Jaeger Inc. While he was there, Luke also decided to make a new magic drone. His Machine Soul resource had regenerated by then. It looked like he would have a new ‘soul’ to work with every day and a half. That would be perfect for scouting missions so they could track down the Hive Wolves. He made the new drone using some of the Stone Beetle parts. Hopefully it would last longer than the previous one.

  Despite the amount of work needed, Allen and Luke decided to take Monday off. They hadn’t taken a day off since founding the company and there was no reason to burn out.

  Luke spent most of the day relaxing, watching TV, and playing with Jinx. She ran in and out of the apartment at will and terrorized the neighbors by appearing in closed rooms. He hoped that the Seer would have some ideas on how to manage her in the future. The day ended up with Allen and Luke meeting up at Rodizio Grill where they stuffed themselves with Brazilian steaks. Their new company paid for the meal of course.

  Tuesday was a Kalibutan day. Luke stopped by Kruro’s place but didn’t leave Jinx with her. He tried to, but every time he walked away, she phased through the walls and followed him out. Eventually he gave up and took her along with him. Luke took his new magic drone and started surveying the peninsula with Jinx on his shoulder and Bumblebee watching his back. Shepard and his crew spent the day sweeping the Crystal Golem caves, making sure they had gotten all of the kobolds. Allen took their mana cores and spent the day at the KaliBay private meeting room, selling batch after batch of cores.

  Luke's scouting didn't find anything interesting, other than a few small herds of monsters. He showed up to Seer Theobaldine's place on time for their meeting, but the dwarf was busy. He apologized and they arranged to meet for breakfast the next Kalibutan day. Luke had brought Earth spices as a gift, and the dwarf promised to cook them into a meal for them to share.

  Shepard returned with eight mana cores, slightly upset that it wasn’t enough for a bonus. Allen was in a fantastic mood. He had sold all the cores and the company now had enough to complete the purchase of the warehouse ahead of schedule and still pay salaries, including signing bonuses for everyone they hired the next day.

  ???

  Luke leaned over and whispered to Allen. “This is way too many. How come you didn’t cut more before interviews?”

  “I did cut a lot of them. But so many applied and their resumes look good. Plus, Shepard had a bunch of friends he wanted me to hire on his say-so. Getting them into the interviews was a compromise.”

  “Alright then. No way I am doing that many interviews today though. Time to thin the herd.” Luke said.

  They were gathered at the main field of Rolland Moore Park. Since they couldn’t interview people at the Norfolk Complex, Allen had reserved the field and a tennis court for the physical part of their interview. He set up cones and rings, copying the football tryouts he had failed in college. Luke wasn’t sure if he thought it would be a good test, or if he just felt like torturing jocks. Shepard approved of the obstacles, he suggested it be even tougher next time.

  Luke clapped his hands to get everyone’s attention. Thirty-five pairs of eyes turned his direction. He waited for everyone to move closer and said, “Thank you all for coming today. This is the physical portion of the interview for Monster Jaeger Inc. If you haven’t already, check in with Allen there so we have your details. We are going to put everyone through a series of physical tests and cut half of you before we start the interviews. We will only be hiring six people today, so competition will be fierce.

  Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

  “Before we get started though, I wanted to read off a list of names. Gregory Jarvis, Christa McAuliffe, Ronald McNair, Judith Resnik, Richard Scobee, Marcus Simons, Samuel Edwards, and Ellen Degrassi. These are the people that have been killed by monsters over the last four years.”

  Luke waited for that to sink in before continuing. “This is a deadly job, people. We will do our best to protect you, but the monsters on Kalibutan have centuries of evolution and literal magic on their side. If you don’t want to risk your lives, this isn’t the job for you. We are intentionally not providing life insurance. I don’t want anyone to risk their lives just so their family can get paid when they die. I am sending everyone back to their car to empty your pockets and get ready to run. If you are unsure if this is the right thing for you, just don’t come back. No one will say anything. For the rest of you, line up by those cones when you are ready.”

  The group broke up then, spreading out to go to their cars. Luke gestured to two of them to hang back and talk to him first.

  “Vanessa, what the hell? You want to fight monsters? You never told me you were interested,” Luke said.

  The redhead smiled widely. “You never said you were hiring. I called and talked to Allen and he said it would be fine to try out. Don’t you want me around?”

  Luke rubbed his neck. “No, I mean yes. I mean...” He took a big breath. “I thought you and I were going somewhere. You aren’t supposed to hire someone you are in a relationship with. Would you rather fight monsters or date me?”

  Vanessa put a hand on his upper arm. “Why can’t it be both? This isn’t corporate America, there are no rules for your own company. I want to keep dating and smash monster’s heads in.”

  “Alright. But you have to promise not to be upset if you don’t make the cut today. There are a lot of people here today.”

  “All I ask is that you give me a chance,” Vanessa said.

  “You got it.”

  She popped up on her tiptoes and gave him a quick kiss. Luke smiled stupidly for a minute before turning to the next person he wanted to talk to.

  “That’s a stupid idea,” Sandwich grunted as he watched Vanessa jog back to her car.

  Luke nodded. “Yeah, maybe. But what about you? I thought you swore off monster fighting. What changed your mind?”

  Sandwich looked away. “My wife thinks it would be good for me to get back to work. Bumblebee’s been bugging me too, trying to convince me to join up since the day I left. I always wanted to fight, but I thought that wouldn’t be the right thing. It wouldn’t respect their memories. But Bumblebee convinced me that there is more than one way to honor the fallen. Thanks for reading off their names, by the way. It helps that I know they aren’t forgotten.”

  “Do you feel like you can handle the job again? We’ll be fighting twice as often as you are used to.”

  “I do. I’ve been missing it to be honest. And there is this other thing.” He lowered his voice. “My assessment period ended that day. It was part of the reason I took the risk. I want to use it, you know?”

  Luke’s eyes widened. Sandwich had a class now. He immediately wanted to ask him all about it, but hesitated. SPEAR had made him take that oath of secrecy. Was he even allowed to talk about classes with people?

  The thought made the exact wording of the oath come to mind. There were parts about being loyal to America and obeying SPEAR, but nothing about keeping his class secret from humans. He just wasn’t supposed to let the aliens know the full extent of his power.

  The wording seemed a bit loose now that he thought about it. The government organization was clearly trying to keep the fact that a high percentage of humans got classes when they went through the portal. Agent Brown had written a custom oath, he must have made a mistake.

  Luke smiled. “Well, in that case, welcome to the team. We’ll get you leveled up in no time. And I just decided that the company will pay for the threshold sacrifices. Glad to have you aboard.”

  “Sacrifices? Wait, backup. You want to hire me without an interview? Just like that?”

  “Just like that.” Luke put a hand on his shoulder. “You’ve done this before, you’ve even led a squad on Kalibutan. I don’t want to waste your time with an interview, in fact, will you help us narrow down the choices?”

  Sandwich blinked and shook his shaggy blond hair. “I can help, no problem. Looks like you already have a good setup here. It’s a physical job. Another thing I wish we could have done was have people try out the power armor before we hired them. Some people are naturals with the magictec, others really struggle to get used to the armor.”

  “Already ahead of you. We’ve got one in the back of that van over there. We’ll let people try it out after the physical portion of the test.”

  Sandwich pointed at him happily. “I knew you were the smart one. This is gonna be great. We’ll get some real good fighters today, I can just feel it.”

  When the candidates lined up, Luke was pleased to see there were only twenty-eight of them now. Seven people had realized they didn’t want to risk death. Good for them. It should be giving Luke pause as well, but he didn’t really feel the risk. He knew it intellectually, he had almost died to that hydra. When he thought about fighting monsters, he was only excited, not scared.

  They had the candidates run the obstacle course over and over again. Luke and Shepard cut the most uncoordinated of them, but kept the rest. Then he sent the remaining twenty-two people on a run around the park while they set up the trio of tennis ball machines.

  When twenty of them returned, Luke had them line up on the opposite side of the court and told them to avoid getting hit. Then he, Allen, and Shepard started firing tennis balls at them.

  It wasn’t really fair of them to shoot tennis balls at them after exhausting them from a run, but monsters wouldn’t be fair. This would test their ability to avoid ambushes and monster attacks even when they had a long day of fighting.

  They only cut three more people after this test, most people still around were fairly fit and agile. Next, they played a bit of fruit ninja. Allen and Luke had a collection of swords and spears that they handed out to the candidates and then threw apples and oranges at them.

  They would receive weapons training before they headed out to Kalibutan, but this would test if they had any familiarity with melee weapons, and if they were able to control the sword’s edge so they cut instead of splatted the fruits. Vanessa was still in the running, and she showed everyone how it was done with perfect edge control every time. There were four candidates they had to cut because they just couldn’t get a hang of it.

  While they cleaned up and snacked on the fruit remains, Luke collected the magic power armor they had brought along. The remaining thirteen candidates were amazed at the hulking mech and the glowing runes. The eight foot tall mech was the smallest one they were using, the custom ones Luke had made were even bigger.

  Everyone had a chance to try it out and they cut two more people. One guy refused to get in, saying it wasn’t what he signed up for. Which was dumb because the website he applied to had a picture of Bumblebee in the Mark I suit. The other guy they cut because he couldn’t stay standing, even after they gave him time to adjust. He kept over-correcting.

  When it was down to eleven, it was time to do the interview portion. Allen led everyone to a pavilion and Luke brought snacks and drinks over. They did a panel interview with Allen, Shepard, Luke, and Sandwich while the people not interviewing ate and rested.

  Luke decided to start with Vanessa’s interview first. It was going to be awkward, but he just wanted to get it out of the way.