After a thirty minute longer wait than they had hoped, a knock rapped on the outside of the pod hatch. Harvel spun the wheel that sealed the door from the inside. He knocked on the hatch once and it was pulled open from above. To his dismay the first voice he heard was that of his least favorite person in the world.
"Hiya Harvey!" exclaimed Selby Klagbender, his voice dripping with enthusiasm. "You had enough time in the can? Or should I just seal you back up and go get a drink?" He continued, his dashing good looks and roguish personality emanating from him in waves. Selby extended a hand down to him as an invitation of help. With some reluctance, Harvel took it and hauled himself up out of the hatch.
With Selby beaming in that incessantly heroic way he always did, it was almost hard to notice the rest of team 6. Sure, being the most celebrated of the teams, they all had a bit of a glow to them but none so much as Selby Klagbender. With his bright blonde hair, quaffed to perfection, and his can-do attitude that made Harvel look like a depressed sloth, he outshone nearly everybody he came into contact with.
It pained him to admit it, but Selby was the real deal when it came down to it. A hero of the wastewalkers, through and through. Even when they were alone in a room the worst thing Selby had ever said to him was that his fly was undone. He'd even been telling the truth.
He'd actually been bunk mates with Selby during training. Getting their coats mixed up had probably been the one mistake Harvel had ever seen him make. It had been a rather fortunate mistake in the end but he didn't hold it against him. Selby helped the rest of team 5 out of the hatch and dropped his own pack down the hole.
"How was the ride down?" Harvel asked, genuinely curious. Selby stretched his back, a couple of muffled pops between his grunts.
"Uh, bumpy honestly. The tracks in level 2 are starting to rust at the joints, so you get that grinding sound for about 35 minutes, halfway through the trip. Bring headphones is my only suggestion." He said positioning himself on the ladder.
"Damn, and we'll probably be the ones replacing those in a week or two." Said Dibbuk, stretching to her full height of nine feet. The members of both teams murmured in reluctant agreement. All the other teams knew team five got stuck with all the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs.
The truth wasn't that team 5 was bad at what they did, in fact it was quite the opposite. The only other team that held a candle to them in skill was team 6, but team 5 was well known to be the expendable one. Good enough to get anything done that team 6 could, but not quite good enough to not get killed doing it. Therefore team 5 was made up of a lot of 2nd bests. He was the second best scout, Dibbuk the second best tank bearer, Don and Mary the second best engineers, so on and so forth.
Even with their bad reputation among most of the administration, Team 5 was at least respected among the rest of the fatburg teams. Even team six knew that while they were busy making promotional videos with huge, but benign, fatburgs in level 2, team 5 was on level 3, right underneath them, exterminating hundreds of davy ants as a distraction. It was a broken system, but it worked.
The less people knew about how many people died down here the better. As it was, recruitment had dropped nearly thirty five percent in the last few years. Most newbies were convict service contracts like Harvel. Captain Lier had made a point of not letting them, or any of the other teams for that matter, forget that.
As Harvel and the rest of the team began preparing and loading their weapons he overheard a voice from the other team he was unfamiliar with. New members joined and dropped out regularly on most teams but team 6 was generally made up of static members. They didn't get new faces often.
"Is it going to fucking stink in there? They have a fucking dino on their team." The voice said from behind a much older, wiser member. Before Harvel could move Dibbuk placed her claw around his free arm. Selby, still on the ladder, gawped a bit before scrambling to get between Harvel and the man.
"Harvel, no need to be rash. He's new." Selby explained, turning Harvel around by the shoulder.
"Oh, that's very nice Selby. Does he know about the tradition where new recruits get their teeth knocked out?" Harvel asked, never taking his eyes off of the newbie.
"Don't." Dibbuk insisted, knocking on the top of Harvels helmet. She put her claw in front of his chest for good measure.Selby walked over to the more senior member and leaned in.
"Get Sternum in the pod before Harvel knocks his, um, Bloch off would you? And, tell him to keep his mouth shut." He whispered, intentionally keeping his eyes off of the newbie Sternum. As the veteran member hurriedly shoved Sternum towards the hatch, Selby turned back to Harvel and Dibbuk.
"He'll be re-trained concerning his unprofessional language. Sorry about that." He apologized, shooting Dibbuk a sad smile.
"I'm sure he will. Now, Harvel. Anything you want to say?" Dibbuk said, prodding Harvel in the back a few times.
"I'm not sorry." Harvel said, watching as Sternums head dipped below the rim of the hatch.
"Not that. Try again." Dibbuk said sternly.
"Fine, it won't happen again. Just keep him out of earshot of me will you?" Harvel said, sighing and sucking on his teeth. He truly would have liked to knock the mans head off, but that would have only meant an extended sentence. He'd really just wanted to scare the man.
"Will do. Been getting a lot of ex rich kids coming down the pipe. Can't see what Lier finds useful about them, but right now I guess we have to take who we can get. With a sense of self preservation that skewed I doubt he'll last long down here." Selby said, shaking his head in disapproval.
"Eh, he'll learn hopefully. If not, I'd be glad to teach him." Harvel said, ducking to avoid the inevitable flick Dibbuk aimed at the back of his head. He listened to the tell tale swish of her claw missing and wondered why she still did it. He'd dodged the last five times she'd tried.
"You guys take care. I've got some training to see to." Selby said, whipping himself onto the ladder again. Before he'd even gotten all the way down they could hear the beginning of an argument erupt from the hatch.
As the rest of team 6 disappeared down into the hatch they exchanged assorted versions of "good luck" and "stay safe". As far as they were concerned it might be the last time they saw each other. Harvel lowered the hatch back down onto the opening and rapped on it twice. He heard a short two knocks back and then the wheel spinning into place to seal it up.
Harnessing his pack to his body and zipping up the rest of his environment suit, Harvel directed the rest of the team to an immense steel staircase reaching up into the darkness. He racked his shotgun and clicked the safety into place, the former echoing around the blackness. It was going to be a long climb. It was going to be a long ride. It was going to be a long day. Hopefully he'd get some sleep on their way back up top.