Job's That Need Doing

"You for Hire?" I was sleeping off a pretty bad drinking binge. Someone noticed one of my blades had the logo of a unit well known around Palesco (the planet I was currently cooling my heels on) and so I hadn't paid for a drink all night. I wound up more than a little still drunk after the evenings festivities. The man in front of me said some kind of farmer, I had no idea what he expected me to do, I hadn't done any kind of labor my entire life.

"Depends on the job."

"Easy, it would be blade work." Being exoticly skinned had more than a few unwelcome job offerings come my way, I had made it clear after I almost gelded a man I wasn't fond of the insinuation I was a whore for hire.

"Biological or mechanical." I was delaying hoping that sobriety would just come on, but I knew it wouldn't. I'd be lucky to walk straight when I stood up, but he didn't have to know that. Figured I could sell it as swagger if need be.

"Biological I think? I dunno never seen marks like this, something eating my cows." Cows of course being short hand for whatever meat animal he looked over. I'd seen in my year since the war lots of things listed as cow that had nothing to do with the base animal.

"All right." I stood up and fell down immediately, my shorter sword went skittering across the floor, the only other drunk in the dive bar chortled out a laugh.

"You ok?"

"Just a little," I paused, I almost threw up my lunch, "A little under the weather is all, just show me to where you're parked and we can get going to your farm." He had to help me to the transport, a beat up looking military scout vehicle. I could see where he'd painted over the unit signal with his farm's logo, it was a fairly poor paint job. I did my part to help it out by vommiting all over it during the ride up.

"You sure you're ok."

"I'm feeling better, just show me where your animals are missing from." We went around the back from the main entrance and all I could see was slaughter, I didn't see one standing cow, just blood and bones.

"There you see my problem."

"I don't see any cow left alive."

"So can you help?" I tried not to vomit, and nodded my head.

"Naturally or I wouldn't be here." Bravado in the face of slaughter though to be honest I didn't have a gods damned clue what had happened at that farm, or even if it could be killed, but I knew that I probably shouldn't have stopped drinking. That much was obvious.