In the training area of the Drone Controller's bay that had been hastily renovated for the purpose of hosting their volunteer pilots, Dave stretched his freshly upgraded cybernetic body and frowned at the crowd of idiots in front of him. He had come here to help out after he dropped the girls at school, but he had expected a slightly higher standard of personal hygiene.
Even when he was living in the slums next to Max, making sure that nothing serious happened to the boy until he was ready to be picked up by the Academy, he had rarely seen anyone who had so thoroughly neglected themselves.
The smell of the crowd was overpowering, and those who actually cared about themselves were clearly uncomfortable.
The task of operating the drone bay itself had been left to maintenance, but the number of staff assigned to oversee the process was insufficient. They had enough to take care of the machines, but not the horde of people who had shown up early, in hopes of getting more drone time.
Dave leaped up onto the supervisor's platform and grabbed the intercom phone off the wall.
[Listen up. These pods will be used twenty-four hours a day. The upkeep and user comfort are incredibly important to the war effort, we can't afford to have pilots distracted by the stench of unwashed bodies and unwiped arses.
If you cannot pass a basic sniff test, you WILL be sent home to shower before returning. That includes those of you who believe that perfumes and body sprays are a bath substitute. Be considerate to those coming after you, who might have sensitivities to strong scents.
You come from a hundred different species, and we all have differences. This is not negotiable. Now, if the first rank will move to your machines, the staff will come by and clear you in before activating the pod.] Dave informed the crowd.
Many of the people below looked incredibly offended, and there was some shouting, but there were also soldiers with guns at the pods, and for all their online bravado, not many were likely to take their keyboard warrior status offline to test it against actual professionals.
The maintenance worker at the terminal beside the phone buried his face in his arm so that his laughter wasn't heard over the intercom, and the crowd began forcibly shoving some members back toward the door.
[Do not shove. We don't need injured pilots, we need clean ones. If someone near you requires maintenance, there is a barracks shower next door, and coveralls will be provided.] Dave informed them.
Technically, the barracks shower was a coed facility, but he didn't see many women in the crowd, so if there were some more sensitive cultures in the group, he was sure that the staff could come up with something.
His motivational speech seemed to work. A lot of the volunteers either lived in other cities aboard the ship, or on the second level, so going home to shower wasn't an option. But going next door to wash up and change into clean coveralls was fine.
"You know, just having everyone shower and change when they get here would be a great idea. It would save a lot of time and issues later, plus the change of outfit will help them get in the right headspace for the situation." One of the observers suggested.
Dave nodded. "We can do that for the next shift. They will likely start arriving not long after this shift starts, so we will have plenty of time to get them going. Just keep a close eye on the productivity. If someone is getting tired and drops off in efficiency or isn't as good as they claimed, kick them, and we will replace them."
"Do you even have the authority to do that?" The observer asked.
Dave shrugged. "Is there anyone here who is going to stop me from doing it? I might not hold a formal rank, but I am the Commander's Godfather. I'm sure that if I call him or Subcommander Nico, they will give a formal approval for whatever I want to do."
The observer chuckled and nodded. Connections were everything in this world, and if you had them, rank and seniority didn't really matter all that much.
The plan had worked incredibly well, and the entire crowd was moving next door toward the shower stalls, not wanting to get punted to the back of the line for poor hygiene.
The dignified few had already started the tutorials that had been created for the first day so that everyone was familiar with the controls before they began, and the others were filling fast with young volunteers still damp from the shower and freshly clad in a pilot's black coveralls and boots.
Someone had created them patches that read [Intern Drone Pilot] and the volunteers were wearing them proudly as they returned to the room.
Gone was the crowd of bedraggled shut ins. Now that they were uniformed, the whole attitude of the crowd had changed. They were focused and determined to make a difference. All of them had a mental image of how they could become heroes by intercepting an enemy attack and saving thousands of lives.
Perhaps they would even get an award, and an official Pilot post after the fight. It was a prestigious job, and not only the pay, but the benefits were insane. The Drone Pilots got to live in the Pilot's community, with all the greatest of the city's luxuries right nearby. They had all been there at least once for the nightclubs or the gaming pods with all the newest features, but actually getting to live there was a dream.
The first wave of them were finishing the tutorial now, and sending out drones from the base. That was an advantage that the first wave got over everyone else. When the others came, they would take over a drone in progress, after getting a status and mission update from the Pilot they were replacing.
But this wave got to send them out from the base and sort through the combat reports and mission priorities that had been set by Subcommander Nico herself. To gamers, she was a living legend, and now they were on a real battlefield, following her actual orders, to hunt real targets from the Great Enemy.
