The Yellowstone eruption, and subsequent grounding of his freight lines, meant he was moving virtually no goods, making virtually no money, and watching his daily operating costs eat him alive. “Two billion. Today alone. Two billion.” It had probably been no help at all to launch even the two freighters that had made it through the brief window the GAA alerted them about. Between the efforts to rush two ships off the ground, and the reports of the apparent damage they had suffered flying through skies that were still full of ash, no matter what the morons at the GAA said… hell, he’d probably lost money on the flights.
“Ash damage. They’ll need major overhauls… God, not more overhauls…”
Walter ran a hand through is hair. He’d been just four years away from selling the company and retiring to Verdant, his biggest and best customer. Years of setting up accounts, setting up employees and an office presence in Verdant… not to mention people to help smooth his entry and buy him that hard-to-get citizen’s visa… now, thanks to a damned volcano, it was all unraveling before his eyes.
His roof gave out a soft groan. Security told him that there was a good four inches of rock on the roof by now, roughly equal to the weight of eight feet of snow. He would have to leave the building in another day at this rate, before it collapsed under the weight.
“Taking me with it…”
No, he needed to do more than leave the building. He needed to salvage what was left of his fortune, and get to one of the satellites. Now. He couldn’t wait four years… or even one. His mandatory retirement began now.
But he still didn’t have the visa. The process generally took years, even when you had the financial resources to beat the U.N. lotteries and bribe your way in. And there was bound to be renewed pressure now, with everything shutting down and more people clamoring to go…
But wait. President Lambert had gone to Verdant. And as it so happened, one of Gordon’s employees had been cultivating a relationship with Lambert for years, whenever he visited Verdant for a few days. She was the unofficial member of Walter’s lobbying staff, paid to do whatever it took to get on the good side of those in charge. Lambert was stuck there now, so…
“She must have access to him.”
Walter reached for the com, and found the number he was looking for after a moment fumbling in the dark. A few moments later, his desk screen lit up, and he looked down at the face that stepped in front of the camera.
“Hello, Shay. Tell me you’re logging some quality time with Lambert.”
“I was the first one they called, Walter.” Shay Vaughn smiled up at Walter, and brushed a lock of her hair away from her eyes.
“Good. Good,” Walter said. “What are they doing up there?”
“They’re not happy,” Shay told him. “They’re trying to force immigration quota increases, but Lenz isn’t having any of it, from what I can tell. Lambert’s off discussing it again with Thompson and the boys, right now.”
“Shit. That’s not good. I need that visa.”
“Maybe not,” Shay said. “I’ve been talking to Lambert about using the trade companies to put pressure on Verdant. I’ve dropped your name. If you can get a flight up here, you can work with President Lambert to secure a place for more immigrants. Like, for instance, yourself.”
Walter’s eyes widened and seemed to glow with determination. “Shay, you’re amazing. Do whatever you have to do, whoever you have to do it to, to clear me a temporary visitation visa. Get me up there, and I’ll buy you your own compound, y’hear?”
Shay smiled wryly. “Just make sure they don’t boot me off.”
~
“…Well, long story short, the freighter landed okay, and the damage wasn’t that serious. But once it was parked, the Captain found the Wasp pilot, and the two of them had blows right there.” Aaron Hardy took a sip of his drink, as Kris Fawkes looked on with a shocked expression. “Reya—Eo Luis—managed to show up then, probably keeping them from fighting some more. But she told me later that another of our regular visitors told her that tensions are getting worse among most of the Earth-to-satellite crews.”
“Oh, Aaron,” Kris said with appropriate concern. As she was sure most people would realize, she was a “diplomat” in title only, and not considered part of the official U.S. diplomatic corps… in fact, she was a Verdant resident, hired specifically to take advantage of her valuable talents. But to her credit, those included much more than simply being pretty. Kris had an innate ability, honed further by years of training, to be able to read a person through their body language, their vocal tones, their speech cadence… the kind of talents that, once upon a time, made fortune-tellers, witch doctors and mentalists a healthy living. Her ability to ferret out information using these talents was nothing short of incredible, and she had had years of regular assignments in the industrial sector before being put on retainer by the U.S. government to work on Verdant. Although this was the first time she had ever been sent into CnC, she had expected her abilities would be up to the task of finding an insider and working her way into their confidence.
On the other hand, Aaron had turned out to be easy to maneuver, she had discovered, and getting him to ask her to dinner had required not much more than a smile. He was the sort that fancied himself a good man for any woman, and believed his lack of female contact was mostly due to missed opportunities and bad breaks. In fact, she was already sure that he had little going for him, other than the notoriety of his position, and unless he turned out to be a complete surprise in bed, Kris just hoped any time spent with him would turn out to be worth the information she got from him in the long run. “It must make your job so much more untenable.”
“Well, animosity from the flight deck is never good,” Aaron admitted. “But I’m more concerned with the shipments that don’t get to Verdant, than I am with the crews that manage to get here. Fortunately, that freighter was carrying vital migraponic chemicals for our farms, some important gear for the science section, and maintenance parts for the trams that have been backordered for months. And it’ll carry back an allotment of fullerene carbons that’ll pay a lot of bills up here.”
“Well, that’s good, at least,” Kris agreed, taking a sip of her wine.
“Yeah… anything to give us leverage against your boss,” Aaron smiled. “I mean, I know he wants the quotas changed, but if we can at least show him how much we can do for those who are still down there, maybe he’ll lighten up on us.”
“You know,” Kris said, lowering her voice to keep it at their small table, “it seems so hard to believe on the surface that Verdant can’t support more people. I mean, how difficult would it be to bring even a few thousand more people here?”
Aaron shrugged. “I know it seems that way… but the numbers don’t lie.” He idly waved a fork in Kris’ direction. “Y’know, it’s so hard for people to look around this satellite, any satellite, and really get an impression of how finite it is. I mean… it’s got space! Look at the volume, all that empty space! But in reality, this satellite’s available space, compared to Earth’s, is the barest fraction… less than a millionth of the land volume of Earth, and there’s more air over Everest than there is from here to the far side of this floor.
“On Earth,” he continued, “you have the land, the forests, the oceans, the micro-organisms, and all that atmosphere, working together to provide sustenance to people on the ground. It’s all interconnected, self-supporting and self-regulating. On the satellites, we have to do all of that manually. We’ve never managed to create an environment that is self-sustaining, at any scale. I don’t think we ever will. So, for every single person we bring up, we have to carefully balance all those manually-handled resources, to make sure we don’t starve, or suffocate, or freeze to death. And still, we have to bring up more from Earth, to make up for the areas where our expertise is still lacking. It’s very hard.”
“Well,” Kris asked, “don’t you think we’ll get it figured out sooner or later? Maybe this crisis will be what the s
cientists need to work all that out.”
“I’m sure we’ll continue to improve things,” Aaron nodded. “But there’s only so much we can do.”
He paused, and something about the tone of his last sentence caught Kris’ attention. It suggested he was expecting something to change… possibly soon. But that he did not want to talk about it. Kris suspected she had found her angle of attack, the crack in the wall that she needed to start picking at. She wanted to start picking at it soon. And there was only one thing for that.
She looked down at the table significantly, at their empty plates and mostly-dry glasses. Aaron noticed this, and glanced at his watch. “Oh, yes… it is late. I guess we should get out of these guys’ hair.”
As Aaron pulled his credit card from his pocket and waved it at the service interface, Kris said, “I have soenjoyed the time I’ve spent with you, Aaron. I couldn’t have asked for a better escort. Thank you so much.”
Aaron focused carefully on her words, as she’d hoped he would. He smiled tentatively, and after a pause, said, “Well… there’s no reason it has to end just yet… does it?”
Kris smiled, as much to herself as to Aaron. “No. It doesn’t.”
The service interface pinged with its acceptance of Aaron’s payment.
~
Shay felt her body joyously losing it under the ministrations of Lambert’s tongue inside her. The sensation was conspiring to arch her body like a bowstring, and he responded by wrapping his arm tighter around her waist as his other hand worked alongside his mouth at pleasuring her. It was making it devilishly hard to maintain the rhythm of stroking and sucking him, but she squeezed her eyes shut and fought to bring him to climax with her. The hot, taut skin and hairs of his abdomen tickled her nipples constantly, the sensation adding to the rising ecstasy inside her, and causing her pelvis to buck with a mind of its own.
At once, they reached a crescendo, both of them issuing muffled cries through filled mouths and heaving at each other, once, twice, then quivering in simultaneous release. Shay took his release and sucked it down greedily, just barely aware that he was also taking in a mouthful of her juices. A moment later, Lambert pulled out of her grasp, spun about to face her and brought most of his full weight down on Shay, a near-smothering sensation she could not get enough of, and showered her with sex-sticky kisses as she wrapped arms and legs around him.
When he finally came up for air, Lambert said, “Ah, Merde, woman, you could do that to me all night long.”
Shay regarded Lambert with an amused expression. “Forget it. I wouldn’t want to be arrested for assassinating a sitting President.”
“I may take that chance,” he said, levering himself up on an elbow until he hovered almost over her on the bed. “Besides, I wasn’t sitting at the time.” He let an idle hand trace the generous contours of her breasts, and she responded by using a hand on his neck to draw him back down to her, and kissing him wantonly.
When Lambert pulled back, Shay gazed at him and smiled contentedly. “I wish you never had to go back to Denver.”
“I know what you mean,” Lambert replied, and the double-meaning was clear. “But when my tenure as President is over… which may conceivably end sooner than I’d intended… maybe I could wrangle a diplomatic posting here.”
Shay kissed him again. It was true, she was being paid to do this for her boss, Walter Gordon… but truth to tell, she would have jumped at the chance to spend any time with Gaston Lambert. Besides being the leader of one of the most powerful countries in the world, he was intelligent, handsome, charming, French, and great in bed. Being with him wasn’t a duty… it was a pleasure. And she was sure he could tell the difference between the average power-groupie intern’s blunt attentions, and her sincere attraction to the man.
In fact, Lambert could tell the difference. There was a reason, after all, that he made sure Shay had access to the Compound whenever he was on Verdant. And in fact, he also thought about their future. He had naturally been presented with her dossier the day after they’d first met: Given name Siobhan St. Croix, American of African-English descent; officially changed her name at 21; used a generous inheritance to pay for a modicum of college, a great deal of body sculpting, and a bit of plastic surgery. The result was a body that men liked to play with… enthusiastically… and at times, she had publicly sported the marks to prove it. She had bounced around what was left of Europe for six years, and had apparently become learned in quite a few areas of expertise, many of which were not polite to discuss in mixed company. Then she had returned to the U.S., worked as an intern for a year, then a successful lobbyist for five years, before being hired by RPI to represent their interests on Verdant. She would make a fine trophy wife, if he ever decided to settle down and pick one of the many prospects at his disposal (or she, for that matter, the many prospects at her disposal). And if he never left Verdant again, she would be at the top of his list.
“Thinking about staying here?” Shay asked. “I can see it in your eyes,” she added to his unspoken question.
“Yes,” Lambert admitted. “But in what capacity depends on what I can manage in the next few days.”
Shay nodded. “I mentioned getting help from the freight companies. My boss, Walter Gordon, would love to come up and help you along with Lenz. RPI is one of Verdant’s largest freight suppliers. But he needs a temporary visa to be able to visit. If your people can arrange that with Verdant, you’d have an influential ally in the effort to get the immigration quotas eased.”
Lambert smiled down knowingly at her. “And how long have you been waiting to do that… that thing you did, in order to put me in the right mood to spring that request on me?”
“Gaston,” she purred, “there aren’t enough days in the month left for me to show you all the things I can do to you. But if you say ‘yes’, I’ll be glad to show you another one tonight.”
“Go ahead,” Lambert said. “Twist my arm.”
“We’ll save that one for tomorrow.”
8: Research
08Aug2229
Calvin wished fervently that a good night’s sleep would have helped him with his new assignment. Unfortunately, it hadn’t: He’d revisited Ceo Lenz’s force field data from Tranquil, and it looked as outlandish now as it had when he was half-asleep.
Still, he had the feeling that they had been on to something, though whether it corresponded to a force field, he was not sure. He also knew he was not the expert on such things. Although he had a good general scientific background, his specific expertise was mathematics. He’d given the material a cursory look from that standpoint, trying to see how it could work simply by the numbers. But for him, the numbers just didn’t add up. Still… as a good researcher, he knew the value of having someone else look over your work for something you might have missed. Lenz had given him full access to Dr. Silver’s staff, and as it so happened, he knew exactly the person who had similar expertise in his field. She would be the perfect person to start with.
It took Calvin a bit of time to track down her location; she’d moved from the last lab he’d known of, and he wasn’t familiar with the layout of the section where her workstation had been moved. He was on Floor 2, just one below the main office floors, with a correspondingly flatter curve to the floor than on Floor 1. Spending time on the satellites meant that you had to get used to walking on the curved floors that filled every space, as well as the differing curvatures of each floor. The human body was actually capable of adjusting for the change in orientation with little difficulty; unfortunately, the input from the eyes tended to contradict input from the middle ear and feedback from a person’s feet, generally causing newcomers to walk around clumsily until their brains sorted out the conflicting signals. You could always tell someone who was new to a satellite by their staggering, almost drunken gait on the upper floors.
Finally Calvin found the appropriate room number, and knocked. He heard a voice call out, “Come in,” and he slid the door open and went inside. T
he room was not large, filled primarily with a standard workstation outfitted with heavy-duty processing equipment, and a 3-D display column in the far corner. This was fairly typical of a mathematics or theoretical “lab,” not so much a layout of tables and physical apparatus for doing hands-on experiments, as much as it was a place for heavy number-crunching and virtual modeling systems.
The workstation sat with its side to the door, and the occupant between the desk and the near wall. That occupant looked up and smiled in surprise. Calvin smiled back and said, “Hey, Val, how’s it going?”
“Cal! Long time, no see!” Valeria Epstein got up out of her chair, and gave Calvin a fraternal hug. Calvin and Valeria had attended the same online courses for a time, and had finally met for the first time years after graduating. They had become good acquaintances since, especially when Calvin had discovered she had moved to Verdant a few years before he did.
Valeria took him by his shoulders and held him out at arm’s length. “You look good as ever, Cal. Do you ever age?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” Calvin said honestly. As far as he was concerned, she was still as good-looking as she had been in school, and she hadn’t let her figure go with the years, as so many of their colleagues had. He’d occasionally entertained the idea that, if he hadn’t met Maria first, he could easily have married Val. “How’s the work?”
“Oh, not bad,” Valeria replied, releasing Calvin and pointing him at a chair in front of the desk. She sat on the edge of the desk, close to him. “We’ve been getting some interesting projects lately. Jacqueline,” she continued, referring to Dr. Silver, “has some automated freight project that requires extensive coordination calculations.”
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