Axle stood over the shoulder of one of the orcs, who was using a large device with a screen in the center of it to control the drill bit.

“Something has it!” The orc exclaimed. “It was evacuating the pipe without incident, but it suddenly stopped and is no longer responding.” He reached up a hand and tugged at one of his lower tusks, forehead furrowed with stress.

“Redline the engines, it should let go. If something has it, it’s Sleem, and they don’t like heat. Heat up the engines.” Axle pointed at a control on the device and the orc immediately punched it with a big, green skinned finger.

I stepped up behind them to watch, with the other orc and human in their group. They both had furrowed brows, and the orc nibbled on a thumbnail.

“It’s moving again.” The orc near Axle said. “Slowly, but it’s moving.”

Axle clapped him on the shoulder. “See? Heat up the engines and solve any Sleem problem.”

I was watching on the device over their shoulders, as a large blinking drill icon slowly crawled its way back up the pipe we had just installed. Suddenly, it stopped again. The generator sparked and wound down with a quiet hum, as thin smoke rose from its seals.

The orc using the device immediately hit the button again, but the drill had no power. The fear, nerves, and stress around me peaked, as each of them became silent and watched. Once the drill let go of the final patch of piping, it was gone forever, and the orc holding its control device slumped with a sob. The generator tipped over as the cable attached to it was yanked out and vanished down the pipe.

Axle looked between the work crew and me with wide eyes. “I do not understand how, but the Sleem have taken the drill bit. We cannot retrieve it.”

I shook my head. “An orb maybe? They’re significantly stronger than the other Sleem.”

Axle nodded, a grim look on his face as he approached me. “Perhaps. Over here, please.”

I walked behind the hulking, humanoid hyena as he approached the partially hovering ship again. He stepped behind one of the engines and gestured me over. All sound on the other side of the humming object was drowned out by its soft, background buzz.

“Can we replace that drone?” He asked.

I blinked in the helmet, then shrugged. “I have no idea how much one of those things even costs.”

Axle did some manipulation of his own BuyMort screens, and suddenly another item arrived in the affiliate purchase queue. The price-tag on the drone was just over fourteen million, far more than we had left in the operational fund.

I shook my head as I looked at it. “Not with what we have.” With a small sigh, I pulled my phone out again and thought of Mr. Sada’s face when the psychic deity within stared at me.

My former boss turned current partner answered after a few seconds. He was laying in bed, and I could hear the TV behind him. At least he looked sober.

“Hey, Mr. Sada. You’re not gonna like this, but we have a bit of a situation downstairs and need some morties,” I started.

He glared at my helmet on his screen, a frown forming at the corner of his lips. “How much?” The question’s tone was tired and told me he wasn’t likely to be in a helpful mood.

“Fourteen point one-two-five mill, to be exact,” I answered.

His facial features reacted as though I had slapped him. His head started shaking before he spoke. “And what is this for?”

“A work crew that we hired lost their drilling drone to our Sleem.” I held the phone out so Axle could see it and waited.

Mr. Sada’s head kept shaking. “No, Tyson, we don’t replace their equipment. That’s just a risk of the job.”

“Yeah, about that. We actually hired these guys to dig us a well, and this other job was extra, on the side. They cut us a hell of a deal on the dig, but now without their drone, I think they’re in serious trouble.” I glanced over to the work crew to see each of them staring at Axle and myself. The orc who had been running the drone’s control device was silently crying, moisture rolling down his cheeks.

Mr. Sada’s expression hardened, and he shook his head again. “Risks of the job, Tyson. I assume you told them what they were drilling to?” When I nodded, he clapped his hand and cocked his head to the side with a grin. “Well, there you go. Risk understood and accepted. Not on us.”

“We have more than enough morties to fix this, and we can replace them quick, with the Sleem farm these guys helped us get up and running.” I did my best to keep the growing anger out of my voice.

“We? I have the morties to fix it, Tyson, and I’m saying no. Part of being the money-man is making hard decisions with it. None of this is our problem, and I don’t want to risk our lives with frivolous spending.” He didn’t bother trying to act like he wasn’t angry. His face was getting redder the longer we talked, and I was clearly upsetting him.

I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders. “Mr. Sada. Anthony. Partner.”

He frowned and scowled, but I continued, “We cannot allow these people to die because they chose to risk helping us for a little bit of extra pay. Not when we have the ability to do something about it.”

“Oh die?” he scoffed. “That’s awfully dramatic, Tyson. Partner.”

My jaw muscles stiffened at the mockery.

“I hate to have to tell you this, Tyson, but those people aren’t our problem. They took their chances, and this kind of shit is just what happens sometimes.” He finished with a wave of his hand. “Let me know if you need morties for something serious, something real.”

And then he disconnected his phone. The psychic deity hovered in his place, shaking his head sadly.

I pocketed the device and sighed. Axle looked between me and the work crew.

“Should I?” He started, motioning with his free hand to the crew. They were still staring at us.

“No,” I growled. Without hesitating, I turned and pointed at the ship in our hangar. I was done letting him hurt people, and put them at risk for his greed. From this point out, only Anthony Sada would suffer from Anthony Sada’s poor judgment. “BuyMort, I’d like to sell that.”

I ran the sale through my own personal account, even though it would have made us more through the affiliate. Anything sold through that went into Mr. Sada’s account, primarily. I couldn’t risk the ten percent I would get access to being too little to cover the drone, and I assumed the ship would net me a windfall.

Purchase: Space-flight capable vehicle. Tortusian light cruiser, flicker drive enabled. Rarity, common. Condition, poor. 25,999,999 Morties dispensed.

Sadly the purchase only earned me a little over twenty-five million and change. As the drone entered the underground chamber to warp the ship away, my heart seized in my chest for an instant. I knew this meant bad problems between myself and Mr. Sada if he found out.

The ship warped away in a rainbow beam, and I took a deep breath when I saw the morties. It would work, but I needed to scramble to get the morties back and buy Mr. Sada another ship. I pushed the thoughts away and hurriedly approved the purchase. I used most of Silken Sand’s account, but left a few thousand in place to keep Mr. Sada’s suspicions off me, and then filled in the rest with my personal account.

Silken Sands' operational budget dropped to nearzero — and time slowed to a fraction of its former self. Humans, monsters, aliens of all shapes and sizes but wearing suits and ties stepped out of every conceivable hiding place, words and numbers on their lips.

Fucking loansharks.

Welcome Tyson, level 30 poor shopper. Your affiliate seems to have run low on morties. Lucky for you, BuyMort Loans and Lending has you covered. Affiliates of every shape and size are here to help you survive. For interest. With collateral. Here at BuyMort, no project is too minor, no dream too insignificant to be considered —

"Nope." I interrupted. The loan officers froze. "Fell for that once before you assholes came here. Not doing it again."

I dumped more morties into the affiliate account, topping it off any time it got low. I was not about to deal with BuyMort SameDay Loans, whatever nightmare that all encompassed.

It worked. At the end of it all I still had eleven million morties in my own account and no one was dead.

Axle nodded when he saw the purchase and stepped away to tell the digging crew about the good news. As I watched, the pod that had taken the ship turned back half-way across the hangar and deposited the new drilling drone. BuyMort appeared to use the drones as needed, with a proximity based response system. That explained why the wait time between different transactions was so disparate.

The digging crew became ecstatic upon arrival of the new drone. The hobb even hugged me at one point. A faint, echoing fart sounded from the open pipe jutting from the floor and reminded us of an important detail. The Sleem were coming straight to us.

Axle barked a few guttural words and the crew started moving again, working with efficiency and precision. They still had worried expressions, but nobody wanted to get eaten by the Sleem. A few minutes with the tools and equipment that had been purchased, and a large vat was seated in place on the top of the newly laid pipe. The entire construction was tucked up against the wall, almost dead center between both hangars.

It had several offshoot ports, holes at the top where other pipes were meant to be fitted. There were eight separate holes to weld pipes into, and we all pitched in to help. I was able to at least hold the pipes in the air as Axle and the orcs worked in a frenzy with their welders. The pipes were all sealed at the end with a simple guillotine door system, and we left that one for last.

As we worked to seal the last pipe in place and connect it to the blast chiller, I heard the slopping fart sounds of Sleem coming up the pipe again, much louder. Orange gelatin suddenly rushed into the vat’s bottom, and I shoved the last pipe in place. Axle hurriedly swept the welder over the seal, and we stepped back with a sigh of relief.

The work crew began packing up their equipment to leave, and Axle showed me something he had drawn on his device. It was a still-image map of the hangar, and Axle had sectioned it off with various lines and squares.

The first refrigeration unit fit perfectly into the square closest to his drawing of the pipe system. He had worked out the available footage from the Fumble-Bee footage, then drawn in squares for blast chillers, and lines for the necessary piping.

According to his calculations, we could eventually fit a massive amount of blast chillers in the space we had available. Just under two thousand separate units. Axle assured me it was a sizable Sleem farm, and that our cavern below could support that much volume easily, if we fed them a regular diet.

Another BuyMort drone interrupted us, arriving, and tracing out an area on the ground before opening a rainbow beam. The work crew said their thanks and goodbyes, gathered up their equipment, and started walking into the beam one by one.

Axle stood in silence as they departed, but as soon as they were gone, he raised his snout to me. “We should figure out power. The charging station you bought is fried. It would not have been enough for our needs at any rate.”

I turned to glare at him, which was thankfully hidden by my helmet. “Awesome. So, what, I just bought junk?”

Axle shrugged. “Maybe. Plenty of scam sales out there. Maybe BuyMort just sold you something that cannot operate in this planet’s unique radiation signature. It is a gamble, at times. BuyMort scans about planet suitability are often generous in the interest of furthering commerce, but never falsified. There is very little that cannot be salvaged in some way or other, I will take a look at it later. Right now, we need something that can power the entire facility. Residential blocks as well, if at all possible.”

I pulled up my Afflqwst app and stared at it. The quest for becoming a real affiliate was almost complete. All that was left was a power source for the Sleem farm. There wasn’t much of anything substantial left in the affiliate account, so this one would be all on me. As would most things, I suspected, until those Sleem sales started rolling in.

With a deep sigh, I swung through my ad history and pulled up something specific.