by Richard Fox
“You will have nothing of me!” a Toiler woman shouted back, then gestured to the ruined front bumper of her car. “If you lack the intelligence to drive, then you should’ve let one of your Indentured—”
The man’s hand went to a dagger sheathed at his belt.
“Peace!” Daniel shot a hand up. “Peace as we are under the gods’ gaze.” He set his food on a wooden bench and walked up to the quarrelers. “Will you accept my services? I am Linker Clay and—”
The Toiler drew a silver coin the thickness of a fingertip from her purse and slapped it into Daniel’s palm.
“I am of Clan Tegal. You have my silver,” she said. “This imbecile drives about as well as he can speak—”
“These are not words of peace,” Daniel said. “This is a mediation, and if I cannot bring you two to an acceptable outcome, it is my clan and my silver that will suffer. So let us speak as equals beneath the gaze, yes?”
“She may insult herself all day and might finally speak some truth,” the Blooded mumbled. He glanced at the mess in the streets as his workers hurried to collect everything that hadn’t smashed on impact. The silver color on his face took on a slightly red hue and Daniel could tell the man was under a great deal of stress, much more than the Toiler.
The Blooded had three brass rings bound to his upper left arm, each engraved with the names of battles. This was a veteran of the Just War—as the Tyr called it—against the Eastern caste that ended almost a decade ago. He placed a beaten-up coin the same size as the one the Toiler had produced in Daniel’s palm.
“She paid first,” Daniel said. “She may speak first.”
“I was trying to turn onto Bayview Street, when this…honored Blooded cut me off. The back of his trailer caught my bumper and you see the mess. I am not at fault.” She crossed her arms over her chest and stared daggers at the Blooded.
“This city moves too fast,” the Blooded said. “I have my license. I know the speed limits. She came up behind me like a demon as I was trying to take the exit.” He motioned behind him to the traffic jam that moved painfully slow off the street and to a thoroughfare. “She hit my cargo truck. Now I’ve lost goods and one of my Indentured is damaged. I’m responsible for their medical costs so long as they’re mine. I might just lose all the profit from this harvest if I have to both replace the truck and send that one to the hospital.”
“Sawbones are cheaper than doctors,” the Toiler sniffed. “Why does a Blooded care so much about his—”
“No.” Daniel raised a hand. “This is not the time or place for that discussion. The Speakers and the Royals decided their punishment. Blooded, go to your truck. Wait for my instructions.”
The former soldier hesitated then turned and walked away.
“You two,” Daniel said, snapping his fingers at the two Indentured as they made a pile of the large seeds on the sidewalk. Their face markings were mottled, like a Dalmatian dog’s fur, similar yet incongruous to the others of their caste, unlike the near identical markings of all the Toilers still watching the drama.
He didn’t want to treat them like they were mere servants, but even one of his markings—which specialized in dealings between the castes—had to keep with royal edicts, and any Indentured was at the lowest level of the social strata.
Daniel grabbed the side of the jackknifed cargo trailer and waited for the two Indentured to come over and help him. He pulled down, using his strength to slowly reorient the trailer. The Indentured strained as they tried to help. Their atrophied muscles were of little use, but Daniel let them struggle and acted like tilting over the partially full cargo trailer was any real effort to him. Tyr’s gravity was a bit weaker than Earth standard, which made him freakishly strong compared to the aliens. The trailer tilted over and more of the large nuts bounced out onto the street.
The two servants scrambled to collect the produce, pausing as Daniel grabbed the trailer beneath the bumper and straightened it out behind the truck. One shook his head quickly and rubbed the back of his hand against his eyes to clear his vision.
“Blooded, show me your turn signal,” he called out and looked at the back of the trailer. No lights flashed.
“Now wait.” The soldier came out of the cab and walked to Daniel. “That doesn’t make any difference if I—”
“Don’t even have your taillights hooked up?” Daniel leaned around the gap between the truck and trailer where the two were joined at a hitch.
“That costs extra.” The Blooded looked away.
“See! I’m not at fault,” the Toiler said, pointing at her damaged car.
“Not yet. Let me see.” Daniel walked behind her vehicle to tire streaks on the flattened cobblestone road. “You hit your brakes twenty legs from the point of impact. New tires, yes? That means your speed was—”
“Everyone goes over the limit in this city,” she said, the silver of her skin going slightly blue with fear.
“You were speeding and couldn’t slow down enough before he merged into the exit lane.” Daniel looked to the soldier. “But if you’d had a turn signal on, she might have been able to react sooner.”
“I have a delivery time,” the Blooded said. “Give your judgment so we can move on with our lives and I won’t lose any more money.”
“You were speeding.” Daniel slapped the back of one hand against his palm with a snap. “The repairs to your car are little if you’ve a shop in your clan. Do you?”
“I do.” She put her hands on her hips and her face returned to normal.
“Then consider the matter settled and leave. No damages.”
The Toiler went to her car and slammed her door shut. She lurched into traffic and honked her way into the milieu.
“No coin for me, Linker? I will tell my priest of this and ask why the gods delivered this judgment,” the soldier said. “But I agree to your mediation. This is what I deserve. Hey,” he said, slapping the trailer to get his servants’ attention. “Help Loosa into the front. You two get in the back.”
Daniel watched as they helped the injured Tyr up. Loosa limped, barely able to put weight on his left foot.
“How long do they have left?” Daniel asked.
“Almost a year. Three brothers; they’ve done their time well enough,” the soldier said.
“Take him to the holy quarter, the Temple of Harmony, and ask for Dr. Derancha. He treats their caste and does good work.” Daniel touched his fingertips to his brow then held his hands palm down in front of the Blooded. The Tyr frowned at him then returned the gesture of respect and brought his palms up to Daniel’s.
Silver coins—the same two that both parties paid him to adjudicate the situation—fell into the Tyr’s hands and Daniel turned away, not wanting to see the Tyr’s reaction. Some of his caste were too proud to accept money they didn’t earn by the adjudication or labor. This one didn’t strike Daniel as such, but leaving the scene of the accident would discourage him from trying to return the gift.
The crowd and the traffic dissipated now that the conflict was over. Daniel went back to the bench where he’d left his food…and it was gone.
“Blast it.” He put his hands on his hips.
“Danny, where are you?” his wife asked through a communications bead implanted in his right ear.
“I’m under the gods’ gaze,” he said, reciting a Tyr saying for times of bad luck.
“Getting a lot of crowd noise…don’t talk to yourself in public, you know better. Just get back here. There’s a line already and you’re the one with the seals. Can’t have angry customers waiting for the new team.”
“On my way. Do we have anything you can heat up for breakfast?”
Chapter 2
Tyler Zike walked with his shoulders back and his head up, mimicking confidence at odds with the armed guards accompanying him. Corporate didn’t send their gene-enhanced security enforcers to “escort” executives to meetings if there was good news to discuss.
The element of fear was there; he was dim
ly aware of the vestigial emotion as he moved down the passageway. Shuttles and giant wire-framed cargo haulers moved slowly in the void beyond the portholes of the space station. A slight crescent of a sunrise on Paradise IX caught his eye and he filed away a pic from the optics integrated into his eyes for the marketing department.
His steps slowed as they came to a corner, and it took a not-so-gentle push from one of the security men to keep him on pace. He didn’t begrudge his escorts. They had their instructions from Corporate and every good employee simply carried out their assigned duties—and no one wanted a black mark on their record for failing a directive from the Chairman.
That’s all it’ll be, he thought, a black mark. I can save the bottom line, and green numbers on a balance sheet are all that matters.
Assuming the Chairman didn’t have him killed. Assuming.
“Sir!” A portly man skidded around the corner, his arms full of data slates, his thin hair disheveled. “The-the holo synch is nearly ready. I got all the earnings projections done and I—hey!”
A security guard shoved him aside and all but one of the slates clattered against the deck.
“Leave my assistant alone,” Zike said. “I’ll see your pay docked if he loses work time for medical treatment.”
“Heh,” a guard grunted and pressed a meaty hand against a bio reader next to a sealed double door. “Spaced execs don’t have much pull with HR.”
“Might be the second one this month,” the other said. “Chairman’s on a roll.”
“Sorry, did he say ‘spaced’?” asked Furst, Zike’s assistant.
“Immediate loss of all company access and privileges.” Zike smoothed out his suit and reset his hair in the reflection of the bio reader. “Which includes this station’s atmosphere and artificial gravity.”
“Oh…then I should…” Furst glanced over his shoulder, eyeing an escape.
“I need him,” Zike said and a guard gripped the top of Furst’s head. “No need to worry. The Chairman’s not known for letting good assets go to waste. The report?”
Furst thrust the remaining slate into Zike’s waiting hand, then tried to pull away from the guard’s grip—to no avail.
Zike swiped through graphs and stamp codes of relevant articles, the software in his brain downloading documents and processing information for him.
“Where’s the client profile?” Zike frowned at Furst.
“What? I thought…I thought that was a joke. There’s no way that—”
The double doors slid open with a hiss and the guards gave Zike a rude shove forward into an empty room, the floor and walls covered in a grid of rainbow-colored lines. Furst was tossed in like a bag of garbage and landed hard, his ample belly exposed as his shirt buttons failed.
The room twisted around them, reshaping into a boardroom with a long mahogany table around which sat executives in drab grey suits in oversized leather chairs. Some were hooked up to life-support rigs, their bodies too old to do much else but keep their brains alive. Others had expertly bio-sculpted bodies, like they were Greek gods that stepped off the podium to join the Corporation as the Senior Vice President of Brand Engagement or the VP for Auditing and Accounting.
At the head of the table was Chairman Getty, his bulk held aloft by a suspensor chair. Silk sheets covered his corpulence, giving him the appearance of a cloud fat with rain. Pudgy fingers tapped at control screens specially designed to match the extra space between dirty fingernails; one digit was an ugly purple, the blood flow constricted by an oversized ring encrusted with jewels. A mask covered his mouth, forcing oxygen into lungs that could barely function with all the mass pressing against his diaphragm.
“Is this the one?” His voice bellowed through speakers built into the table and walls. “Is this the little shit that ruined our third-quarter projections?”
“Chairman Getty.” Zike smiled, flashing a fortune in expert dental work. “I see this as an opportunity.”
Getty snarled and leaned forward enough that Zike feared he might come crashing down—just before pain arced through his body and he went to one knee, one hand raised beside his face, the muscle frozen.
“So he has been conditioned. He’s not trying to joke around with me,” Getty said, his porcine eyes glancing at a severe-looking woman near his end of the table.
Zike wanted to scream, but his jaw was clenched shut and his diaphragm felt like it was made of molten metal.
“Zike has a profit rating of eighteen percent,” she said. “Above average, which is why he was given the terraforming project on Astra B-X-12.”
Getty tapped a button and the pain vise on Zike vanished. Zike leaned forward with a gasp as the other executives looked at him with derision and scorn.
Zike tried to pull himself up by grabbing the edge of the table, but his hand passed right through the hologram. Getty could send whatever orders he wanted through the quantum link between his headquarters on Earth and the station, but everything Zike saw was just a projection.
“Astra…why does that sound familiar…?” Getty asked.
“We experienced some design challenges,” Zike said, recomposing himself.
Over the center of the boardroom table, a ruddy brown planet appeared.
“The terraforming efforts were…behind schedule,” Zike said. “In an effort to deliver habitable space to the client on time, we utilized an oxygen-binding procedure that was projected to convert the atmosphere to human standards within a few days.”
“That was your plan?” Getty poked a control screen and a plume of fire erupted on the planet’s surface. Screens appeared, all showing camera footage of an industrial area under grey skies. The sky went red as the plume grew to engulf the entire planet.
Workers screamed as they immolated. Some managed to run a few dozen yards out of the buildings before succumbing to the flames and burning into charcoal effigies.
“It was Zike!” A new screen came up displaying an engineer in an environmental suit, the ceiling overhead thick with smoke and fire. “I told him! Told him this was madness, but he didn’t—ah!”
The man’s screams continued as he fell off-camera, limbs flailing as flames consumed him.
Zike’s smile got a bit wider. “The projections proved incorrect,” he said.
“I’d be angrier at your attitude,” Getty said, then paused for some labored breathing, “but we adjusted your emotion spectrum to make decisions without compassion or care for others. Sociopaths, all of you!” He lifted a fat arm and swept it across the boardroom. “An entire colony world…up in smoke. A world under colonial contract!”
“The Galactic Net hasn’t heard of this yet,” said a woman bearing a striking resemblance to the goddess Venus. “Projections on public opinion of Corporate image will be vastly negative, especially if competitors can get a viral messaging campaign trending before we get control of the narrative.”
“The losses will be catastrophic,” a wizened old man said. “We might have to spin off the entire colonial division to keep our brand image. The only way we can avoid that is if negative news of the war against the Reptilians came through the core systems, and even our influencers can’t get through censorship protocols.”
Getty snarled and reached for a pulsing red icon on a slate.
“But I have a solution!” Zike shouted. “Forgive me, Mr. Chairman, but we can still deliver to the client on time and within the parameters of the contract. We’re obligated to resettle the client…we never specified that it would be on Astra.”
“Go on.” Getty pulled his hand back.
“There are several habitable worlds in fringe space, and one is within jump nexus range of the client. Furst?” Zike turned to his assistant, whose mussed hair and untucked shirt didn’t give off the most professional appearance. Zike snatched a data slate from him, pulled up a file, and flicked a finger to the holo over the table.
Getty reached out and grasped at the air, intercepting the file.
“With some minor ass
et reallocation, we could have the planet habitation-ready…with perhaps a minor delay to the delivery date,” Zike said.
“Huh…I don’t remember authorizing this project…what do you need?” Getty asked.
“A single Compliance Force, its support ship and a nexus stabilizer—all of which are in-system and can make the jump to the target planet. The unit I have in mind is dog-eared to suppress a rebellion in the Maghreb System, but—”
“Caliph Omar’s operating on credit as it is. He wants a terror drop to get his population back in line…I’ll convince him to take kill droids instead.” Getty rubbed one of his many chins. “There is the matter of the client…”
“Also in-system.” Zike swallowed hard. “The Dauphin will likely accept. I’ll message her and—”
“No! You’ll go to her yourself. Her cult requires more delicate handling than most. You insult her and she’ll put out a missive on my corporation and we’ll have problems on a dozen different worlds.”
“In…person?” Zike felt the blood drain from his face. Despite his psych-conditioning, the Dauphin had earned her reputation.
“You thought getting fired and breathing vacuum was the worst outcome here?” Getty chuckled. “Pass on my respects to the Dauphin. If she doesn’t accept your offer, then you’ll wish you hadn’t saved your skin here. Your proposal is approved. You fail again and you won’t be answering to me.”
The boardroom dissolved, leaving Zike and Furst in the middle of the grid.
“Did we…sir, you did it!” Furst went to hug Zike and got a stiff arm to the chest.
