Chapter 1

No one who works in waste management, at least at the bottom of the enterprise, ever expected to see any of the technology that has been making its appearance since the space aliens contacted Earth and started recruiting folks to fight for them. In a way, it's good for them (the aliens) that Earth just happens to be in the center of the advance of the creatures they call the Sa'arm 'cause otherwise we'd have told them to shove off and fight their own damn fights.

But we're pretty much in the gun-sights as it were for the Sa'arm and so we've been steadily supplying soldiers and women to make sure that there are some belligerents left (besides the Sa'arm) in the universe. After all, humanity has no intention of being Sa'arm kibble under any circumstances (though to be honest all us pukes who haul garbage will probably end up that way when the Sa'arm get here) if they can help it.

Me, ol' Joe Giovanni, I been drivin' a trash truck longer'n I like to think about it an' I know I got zero chance of bein' picked up. I mean an ol' broken down garbage trucker ain't gonna be able to compete with some college or even high school hardbody if some gal were lookin' for someone to take along as a stud. 'Sides in most cases I have the attitude of 'wimin an' children first', an' the only reason I see for sendin' so'diers out is 'cause we'd best learn to fight them Sa'arm critters 'fore they gets to Earth. So I just kept on mindin' my own damn business an' picked up a couple o' pistols an' some other stuff that will go boom if'n I buy the farm. I ain't carryin' that o' course, at least not until I get sent out to the front lines (like everyone will be) when them critters gets close to where they live.

Anyway, just as I thought, nothing much changed for the first year or so after the Average Joe TV show an' the President's speech about them Sa'arm things. I mean the President said they would take ten years to get here, but that we were sending off so'diers to see if we couldn't slow 'em down a bit. So that meant that until they landed there would be garbage to be hauled an' me, haulin' garbage was my job.

There's nothing exciting about hauling trash. Hell no one is ever gonna try to mug a garbage man! I mean really! It ain't 'cause we're so special. Oh no! We're the untouchables in any society. We always have been an' I suppose we always will be. At least that's what I thought up until the end o' the third year after the President's speech. I never imagined that there could be anything in garbage that anyone would want. Then one day a semi rolled in with what looked like a sea-land shipping container on it. I was just getting off work when it stopped near the area where the pit really starts to spread out so that there was plenty of room.

That's when I found out that that weren't no shipping container. No sirree Bob! About the time that a couple o' the big wigs got that thing where they wanted it, it put out legs at each corner and lifted itself offa that truck! Then that semi drove off an' that box lowered itself down on the ground an' started to unfold.

My shift super, Johnny Samson, caught me as I was watching that whatever do its thing an' he said, "We'll be dumpin' there Joe," an' he pointed to what looked like a sorta flattish bin that had unfolded from one side o' that contraption.

"Th' loader an' dozer operators ain't gonna like that boss," I opined.

"They still have their jobs. I expect if this replicator does what we've been told it will do then everyone will get a raise. Not that that is gonna be meaningful for much longer."

I knew that the other guys wouldn't like being out of a job even if they got to sit around and watch porn. The only way the guys would like that was if they thought that watching porno amounted to stealing. I didn't know how to express that in any way other than what I'd told Johnny. I don't understand why they feel that way but they do an' I suspect that's why most o' 'em ain't got a CAP score much better'n my dog Sheba. If'n ya judge by loyalty then my dog would have a fair CAP score an' that ain't all. Sheba is about th' brightest dog I ever did see.

Anyway I thought about all that an' then said, "Boss it ain't gonna matter. Them boys (I call all men as are twenty years younger'n me boys an' I guess I included the women as pushed a couple o' our dozers in that designation too) is gonna see it as the end o' their job."

"It really ain't though; the fact is that we'll probably be pickin' up overtime an' even another shift if'n that replicator does what the birdies, them's the friendly space aliens what tol' us as we was gonna have them swarmmy things knockin' down our door, told us is true. 'Sides they ain't been tol' yet but we're all gonna be starting up doin' drills with rifles an' that sort of thing so's we can help out with bein' ready to fight with them swarmmy things when they get here. An' accordin' to the new law the congress passed, they ain't got no choice 'bout that."

"I ain't heard nothin' like that, boss," I said, wondering just what sort of stupid shit that the gummemup had come up with this time.

"It just come down this mornin' in th' meetin' that they called me up to with the mucky-mucks from the head office," Johnny said, "I don't think anyone even knew that they was gonna do some shit like declare that everyone has to train to fight now."

"There's gonna be a riot over that somewhere, boss," I said. Shit the government (or as I often thought of them The gum-em-up) would be lucky if there wasn't a lot more'n a riot over shit like that. I knew that no matter how good that idea was, folks just wouldn't accept that we was gonna end up a military state something like Sparta in the ancient world if we was gonna have any chance of beating the swarm.

O' course I expect there's gonna be a bunch o' people who find out the hard way that there won't be any messing 'round with fools who don't get with th' program. An' like as not what got passed yesterday wouldn't get really implemented 'til the swarmmies was so firmly entrenched that we'd be lucky to get rid of them with a planet busting bomb ... I was about through thinking that when Johnny said, "Maybe they'll riot this time, but it's gonna be up to guys like you 'n' me to keep the body count down."

"Me?" I asked.

"Don't you be bullshittin' me, Joe Giovanni," Johnny said, "I know your cousin Vito. An' if Vito says someone's done seen the elephant I believe him."

That set me back some, 'cause Vito was a made man with the local mob so far as I knew. An' I didn't know that Johnny was anything more'n a bit player like me. I'd taken up driving garbage trucks as th' mob (some o' 'em as was my cousins both far an' near) ran th' local union. So when I'd done my couple o' years in the army to get outta th' 'hood, then I'd come back ta town an' asked my uncle Giancarlo if there might be something that wouldn't get me in the joint. He pointed me at driving a garbage truck an' I never looked back.

"I did six in the army myself," Johnny reminded me, "an' I can read a personnel file with the best of clerks. You did most of three on a two year tour an' got out as a sergeant with more black time in your file than I've seen in some as had done twenty," he said flatly. "So you can handle yourself in a pinch, an' you know which end o' a gun is th' business end. What I'm wonderin' is this: Can you lead men or was that stripe 'cause you was damn nearly as good as Vito thinks he is at eliminatin' problems?"

Now Vito's a careful man, an' he's a fixer o' problems that require a corpse, as I'd learned from what my uncle Giancarlo an' my dad told me. My dad was a lot like me though, rather than like Vito or Giancarlo. That is, he didn't want to be in the thick o' things so far as the mob is concerned. So he got a mostly legit job in some mob controlled union an' up an' married my mom who was the daughter o' a fellow who had a fair-sized farm at the edge of town. My parents settled down on about twenty acres o' that farm an' took up the hobby o' raising me an' my fifteen sibs. I didn't know how Johnny had gotten a peek at my 201 file from the army, but he was right. I had a dead eye with a rifle of any sort (I suppose 'cause my granddad, my mother's father drilled me with a rifle from th' time I could hold both ends of a rifle offa th' ground) an' I had a knack for making myself mighty invisible as well. Anyway, that added up to me goin' to sniper school in th' army an' then I got to go places an' make problems disappear for Uncle Sugar for a while. Now that ain't a habit that Uncle Sugar has too much of an' it was definitely something I had no taste for. Anyway, what I was thinking was that if Vito told Johnny that I was a warrior rather than just an' old broken down garbage man then he might do more'n put the arm on me to make people sit still an' listen to reason about drilling with rifles an' what not to learn to shoot for when them swarmmy things arrived on Earth.