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https://oddballmagazine.com/poem-by-nick-armbrister/

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Riga Electric (version)

 Riga Electric (version)

Riga flew her disc she had a job to do

There was a power station

It powered weapons factories

Turn off the juice and they couldn’t make missiles

The power station was medium size with four generation points

Oil provided the first line of use to turbines to produce electricity

If this system went out there was a backup coal system

Riga knew that by taking out any part of this would render it inoperable

She hovered a thousand feet over the site invisible

She studied the facility

She powered up the laser and chose a pink beam

On the screen a red target cross

She moved this with a hand controller

Riga made her craft visible

Now people would see her against the clouds

A silver disc

Alien but Earth like

She waited to be noticed

Workers stood in the yard and pointed

To the oil storage tanks

With a click of the control the laser fired

An intense pink beam lit up

Metal glowed and melted

Oil combusted and burst into flames

Bright yellow fire and black smoke coiled up

Sarah Bloodhound

Sarah Bloodhound

Sarah was in the English Army weapons factory. She was on a mission to plant an explosive charge. She was side tracked by an incredible sight. There in a large room was a missile. It was a huge Bloodhound SAM. Surface to air missile. An old weapon yet still dangerous. This one was being modernized. Sarah stood there staring at it. It was a pointy long cylinder with wicked looking fins and small wings on it. Like these had been added as an after thought. They these had purpose. To guide the missile to it's target. Several rockets were fitted at the rear. These would propel it skywards. A single main engine then took over. This thing was twice as old as Sarah. It was painted dark green with yellow writing on it. It looked almost like a lizard or a robot. Or a lizard robot. IT that was possible. What was the English Army doing with this? Sarah had many questions and few answers. She took off her back pack. It was heavy and contained fifteen kilos of mixed explosive. She'd made this herself. The original target was the weapon store. This was better though. Sarah knew this thing was armed. Her own bomb would trigger the main warhead and flatten most of the base. How big was the warhead in the missile? She didn't know. Sarah lifted the bag flap and fiddled what the the detonator. With a flick she set it to two minutes. Then shook her head. A minute!  She hid it under the rear fins and lower rocket engines. Looking about Sarah ran from the room. That would be the first to blow! All the computers and test equipment would cease to be. Sarah smirked and turned left down the corridor. An emergency exit led above ground. She followed it and kicked the door open. Alarms and lights went off. It was defeating! Shouting came from behind her. Sarah took her pistol from her pocket and left the access tunnel. There was a treeline twenty yards away. Not stopping she sprinted to it. Just then the ground shook under her feet like an earthquake. Her bomb went off as did the missile warhead. Sarah leapt behind a tree as flames blasted out of the open steel door. The ground shook three times and detonations kicked the earth. She covered her ears and held her breath. Nobody followed her. She shook her head. Nothing would survive that. The weapon store would be toast. As would the fifty or more technicians, guards and soldiers down there. Sarah caught her breath and watched orange flames and black smoke leave the partly collapsed doorway and crater. Dig your way out of that wankers!. It was still a mystery who the missile would target. Maybe it would be her home city like the Russians did in Ukraine? What went up came down with a big bang. Or did before she blew it to Hell! Sarah got her radio and sent John and Lee a single code word. Wool. Mission successful. She would hide in the woods and return home at dark. That had been easy! Bring on the hard missions...

Riga Pedro gal

Riga Pedro Gal

Some stories need to be told. Do you have such a story? I've several like that. Will the world judge if they are? One is about a gal I met in the army. She was a Level 2 sniper. This means she used a rifle with night and bad weather and indirect sights. Could shoot over hills. I was a mail man. I ran the base post office. Even in the digital age post was looked forward to. Digital comms could be hacked. Even military grade. Post was monitored and censored. Was it every letter or random? They never said. That kept us all guessing. The enemy included. As for the gal she took me shooting. We hiked into the jungle. She knew the way. There was no path. The rocks were magnetic and hindered enemy drones and scanners. Or so she said. We made love under the trees. These were Asian mahogany trees. Fifty metres or more tall and two round the base. She was intense. I'd not seen that type of energy since Riga. Riga was different. This one was named Lisa. She was aimed for battle being a sniper and more. Some things she never said. Yet she said others. Some were secret. Or were with my level of military understanding. She told me of new guns and of ammo with just the bullet. The charge was in the bullet base. She would be able to carry double the load. Double her kills. This was said as a fact. I knew not to fuck with her but we did fuck. Many times.  We screwed by a pool then swam. I cooked wild rabbit I snared with fresh potatoes and tomatoes. My skills were good. After eating we made love and then fired her mid size rifle. It was easy to use. She taught me. Don't put the sight to your face or your face will be marked. Even with a bump stock. No rush. Breath focus aim. My third shot was on target. Unlike her first. There and with me. We did other things too. Those don't matter. Later she was posted away. Always on operations. Like I was with the mail. Posted here and there with the troops. Regular troops not SpecFor unlike Lisa. Her location was secret for a reason. I wondered when would we meet again? Would she surprise me as Riga often did? Speaking of her how was she? She owed me a message. I had mail to do. I still wondered. Was every letter censored? I'd write both gals. Send Riga a letter and also my new one Lisa. Lisa's letter would wait till she was back. Such was the life of an army mail man.

**"

Riga no reply

Riga No Reply

Riga got an email from Pedro

He’d gotten into difficulties in Dassault

She read the email three times to understand

As usual she never replied it was her way

His supervisor didn’t like him and reported him

This happened four times! What bullshit

Pedro explained each of the reasons

It was all bullshit yet he’d been nailed on it

The reasons and why didn’t matter

Riga knew her ex was a survivor like her

He loved planes and making them

There were other technician jobs

Lockheed Martin was hiring skilled techs

For their F-35 and unmanned drones

Pedro said he was taking six months out

He would hike Africa, Taiwan and Russia

Interesting remote risky places

Riga almost wished she was with him

Six months was a long time

And she had her IT business to run

She dismissed saying she would go

Best let him find his own way

He was the same as Riga there

Riga went back to writing new code

For a dead line job that’d pay well

She would buy a new bike

And tour the US for two weeks

Riga no reply

Riga No Reply

Riga got an email from Pedro

He’d gotten into difficulties in Dassault

She read the email three times to understand

As usual she never replied it was her way

His supervisor didn’t like him and reported him

This happened four times! What bullshit

Pedro explained each of the reasons

It was all bullshit yet he’d been nailed on it

The reasons and why didn’t matter

Riga knew her ex was a survivor like her

He loved planes and making them

There were other technician jobs

Lockheed Martin was hiring skilled techs

For their F-35 and unmanned drones

Pedro said he was taking six months out

He would hike Africa, Taiwan and Russia

Interesting remote risky places

Riga almost wished she was with him

Six months was a long time

And she had her IT business to run

She dismissed saying she would go

Best let him find his own way

He was the same as Riga there

Riga went back to writing new code

For a dead line job that’d pay well

She would buy a new bike

And tour the US for two weeks

company review

**Company Review**

This is my review of the call centre company where I work. A mid-sized call centre occupying several floors in a modern tower block. I work on a soulless boring metrics heavy account with an emotionless robot-like team leader. He gives out NTEs like giving dog biscuits to a dog. I’m not doing tricks. Instead I’m getting QA 0 Auto Fail mark downs from the bastards in the QA dept on Floor 19. Everybody fucking hates them! We get 8 or 10 call evals a month we need to pass. Most companies only have 5. It doesn’t matter if you get maximum CSATs in a month. Get 1 or 2 QA 0s and you get no bonus that month. This happened to me a couple of times. Top CSAT scorer yet I got 2x QA 0s in June and 1x QQ 0 in July. 3x QA 0s and 3x NTEs. I got nothing in the unfair metrics heavy system. MY TL gives out a single NTE to every QA 0. I call the NTEs love letters. There is a 4-month cleansing period. If I get another QA 0/NTE I will be on Level 3 warning. I’m on Level 2 now. And a further NTE will mean Level 4 and fired from the company. I will go to a rival BPO then and apply at 3 a week. I have 9 years’ experience and feel I do good in my calls yet loath the QA side of the job. I was off work a week with bad gout. Will my robot TL give me an NTE for being out? Here’s the scripts, med cert and back to work form. Give me an NTE? I’ll do a DOLE case! Another complaint in my job is the low basic pay of only 17k a month. 24k in all. It’s not all bad. I have some good friends there and met a flirt. What will the next few weeks bring? I’ll see and be ready…

***