The Question's Story

Thirteen mercenaries.
They were each paragons of company training, every one of them having spent longer than six years in the programs that the SEC offered, and the best, at that. They were the elite, but they didn’t look the part, each seeming more similar to a white-collar worker, with a quiet, sober feeling apparent in all of their faces and the air around them.
Some of them stood, others sat quietly, but they were all close together, grouped around a minimalist seating area. A few were lightly resting, leaning on the backs of the others reading magazines or sitting quietly with wired earbuds plugged into their ears. Each of their jackets had their names, sprawled across their backs and on the breast of the coats, followed by a small circle-and-bar logo with the company letters stitched carefully over them.

“Waller. Hey, Waller.”
One of the mercenaries, dressed in the plain gray parka and pants, same as the others, grips onto an older comrade’s shoulder, shaking him slightly from his sleep. The man, Waller, holds his eyes closed for a moment, then snaps them open, tilting his head slightly to look into the younger coworker’s face. He says nothing, just looks expectantly at the boy.
“We’re not going to get boxed up by the soldiers here, right? They don’t mind if we’re carrying… cargo with us?”
Waller thinks for a moment, then responds. “Well, son, if they’re doing cargo checks I’d assume they’d be looking for things like our hardware. I don’t know if they specifically care, though. Were you sure to ask Command-” “No, Command hasn’t gotten back to us since our ship hit the docks. Is that a usual thing?”

Waller doesn’t respond for a moment, but points at one of the drones some distance away. “Ask them.”
It wasn’t long until they had to board the Elevator, and the mercenaries aware of that shook awake some of the others, each rising silently and picking up their bags from the pile they had beside the bench-like structure. Hall, the fellow who had woken Waller, walks unsurely over to one of the drones that isn’t preoccupied, and pauses awkwardly in front of it.
“Uh, hello. I’m Ben Hall, with the Security and Exchanges PMC group. We were contracted to show up here, on, uh, Kurdi, and we brought along with us some firearms and combat hardware. We don’t have any in our carry bags or anything, but they’re in some of the containers we sent ahead of us for… freight shipping, or something. Are those going to be OK? I mean, will we be able to pass because of it?”

The other mercenaries, standing some distance behind him, are gathered around, staring up at an airscreen. A woman, the name “Bailey” across her parka, turns to Waller and quietly asks, “Did the management board for this mission even brief us on what ship we’re leaving on?”
Waller shakes his head, then whispers back, "I don't even know who we're supposed to meet here."
Turning and addressing the group, Waller raises his voice and asks, "Has anyone gotten in touch with an Administrator board, or the briefing team from Command?"
There's no response from anyone in the group.
"Great."