They were a DeRegger CEO on their own private ship with the usual, mistreated, crew hauling a load of captured, unwilling, women to the new Dereg colony. The ship, trying to take a short cut by sneaking through the edge of Alliance space, went down due to several micrometeorites getting through, it happens when a person cuts corners on safety. The CEO learned quickly that, once on an isolated, if somewhat safe, haven-like planet, no way to force obedience and all the cages are open, their money meant nothing when it was either work or starve. -- Lessons
Good news, bad news. Good news, they had all survived the crash. CEO Mukkys hit the release button on his personalised wearable life pod. He had been thrown from the wreckage, and the air read as breathable. The bad news was that there was nothing left of the executive suites. His swimming pool was ruined and all his wine had spilled for sure.
Good news, the larger superstructure had survived. Bad news, the cargo hold had split and all the livestock had got out. The soldiers had been overwhelmed by sheer numbers and those who were conscious when he arrived were quick to point out that they weren't allowed to damage the merchandise. So now all the females had gone into the wilderness with some of the essential workforce. Worse, one of the guards' corpses had had his armour cracked apart for the scanning hardware.
Good news, they had food. Bad news, all of his staff had fled with the cargo and nobody left at the wreck site knew the first thing about cooking it. Good news, the control units were still in place. Bad news, the boss unit to inflict punishment on the pain centers of the cargo... had been destroyed with the executive suite. No matter. Authority had its place and he would rise again. He ordered the dead stripped of their flesh and that flesh preserved in salt. He authorised two guards to get into the surviving computer systems and figure out how to cook. Two more were assigned shelter fabrication. The most important thing was, naturally, his new mansion.
What was a king, after all, without a throne and a crown? What was a CEO without his mansion, suit, and office? The rest of them could live in the ruins of his yacht like lost animals, or huddle in caves like the cargo, but he was important. He had standards. The first problem came when his mansion team turned out to be incompetent.
"We don't know nothing about building, sir."
"Then find me the best surviving room on my yacht until you learn it! I'm the boss around here! I demand treatment according to my status! You will obey me or you are fired!" That last threat worked an entire week, when he gave them their wages and the next question arose.
"There ain't no shops to spend it on. Where're we gonna buy stuff?"
Oh. Oh no. All the builders and staffpeople and unskilled workers had fled the hold. There were no shops. There were no malls. There was no infrastructure. Worse... there was still no mansion.
The guards dribbled away from his supervision in a matter of days. Well. They'd come back. They'd all come back when they realised that they were lost without him. LOST! Without a true leader, the lot of them would collapse like a house of cards. In the meantime, he could lower himself to cooking his own food and -ugh- building a better quality shelter himself. He was a ruler. He should never be lowered to doing -yuck- manual labor.
They'd come back. They'd see that they needed him. The cream of society always rose to the top...
The available supplies on the yacht lasted half a year, and CEO Mukkys had not built any kind of shelter for fear of blisters. He had converted the former guards' barracks into a suite more suitable for his status, using salvaged material from the ruins of the executive suites. It wasn't a patch on his former lifestyle, but at least it was better than slumming it in a bunk, or washing in a shower.
Mukkys was still waiting for them all to realise how lost they were when he noticed that he only had a week's worth of supplies left. Two weeks if he finally ate the salted flesh of the dead guard. His attempts at hunting and gathering had not gone as well as he'd hoped, and farming was for dregs. He hadn't the faintest idea how to till and a hoe was the soft and pretty kind that he used to be able to buy.
On the other hand, he knew where those lost and leaderless losers had wound up. They were thriving in spite of his absent guidance. They'd even built a kind of shanty town. Cute. Imagine what they could do with his leadership and finances.
Mukkys gathered up all his cash, all the luxury items, and all his supplies onto a loader and drove it all the way to the rough wooden walls of Loserville, as he named it. Not that he would call it that aloud. He had standards, after all.
Someone rang a bell as his loader approached. They had a bell? How could they get a bell without a mining operation? Who was even running things?
There were guard towers, but they weren't using stunners any more. They had bows and arrows and spears. So adorable how they played at being civilised people. They'd never know the luxury of a fine silk suit. They'd never understand true financial independence.
Then an arrow went right through the windscreen, the HUD screen, and only stopped in front of his nose because he was wearing his livesuit. Offended, he got up out of the pilot seat and shouted out the window, "Hold your fire! I'm buying this establishment and everyone in it! I am your CEO!"
There were three arrows aimed at him. "We know who you are, and we don't need you," said an unfamiliar voice. Oh no. Who gave those females permission to speak?
"This is an abomination against your gods," Mukkys raged.
"He ain't cursed us with bad luck," said one of the bowmen. One of the former guards. "I got a home. I got a wife. I got a business. I got a little one on the way. All without you."
"I still have control," he lied. "I found and fixed the boss unit! I could have you all in excruciating pain."
"Go on then," said a different lowlife. "Do it. Or we aim for the heart."
Records of the newly-established Freedonia state that CEO Mukkys was screaming about financial responsibility when the arrow pierced his sternum. The colonists stripped the loader, keeping the machine for heavy lifting, and stripped Mukkys' body of anything remotely useful before feeding his body to animals they kept for both meat and manure.
They had been patiently waiting for Mukkys, for this confrontation, so they could get on with dismantling the wreckage of his yacht.
Four generations would come and go before they re-united with space travel. By then, they had built a much better world without the "help" of upper management.
[Image (c) Can Stock Photo / mmaxer]
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