SAGCON

by Craig Martelle

  His handshake was soft and deferential. He didn’t challenge the chairman’s authority, not on a physical level. The other board member leaned in for a quick shake.

  Lackeys, Tye thought, even though the two were considered to be the seventh and eighth most powerful men in the inner system.

  “What brings you to my office, Minister? You found yourself downtown, discovered these two, and decided to go slumming? Despite the fact that you took the elevator up, this is a step down from where you work.”

  The other board members laughed politely. The minister smiled but didn’t reply.

  “Please come in and make yourselves comfortable.” Tye pointed to the couch and chairs arranged around a small coffee table. Had he wanted to further lord his power over them, he would have opted for his desk, making the visitors sit before him.

  He’d made his point. The minister’s apology reestablished the individual positions. There was a hierarchy and order to things that needed to be maintained, at least in Tye’s mind.

  He also appreciated the board members stepping in to break the power handshake. Tye flexed his fingers behind his back, trying to reestablish the feeling. He had been too close to losing the handshake battle. Maybe his fellows were looking out for him. He nodded to them as they took their seats.

  “What can I do for you, Minister?” Tye asked congenially.

  “We are forming a new military unit, and we’ll need cutting edge equipment, body armor, personal weapons, and training areas that are out of sight of the public, if you get my meaning.” The minister looked around the room as if listening devices would be obvious.

  “I give you my personal guarantee that what gets said in this room is private. My office is not bugged in any way, Minister.” The chairman held his hands up, palms out to placate any concerns. “We can ramp up production along a number of product lines as required. And training areas. What is it that you were looking for?”

  “The issue with the equipment is that…” The minister hesitated and looked around again. “We need utmost discretion at all levels on this. We need limited quantities, only hundreds instead of thousands, to begin with, and they need to be produced as part of the usual run, but then siphoned off to a secondary depot.”

  Tye leaned back in his chair while the other two board members leaned forward. They saw opportunity. The chairman did, too, but on the side of leverage, not profit.

  “Of course, we can do that,” Tye said casually. He maintained a look of indifference as he turned slightly to look out the window. “The weather has been magnificent this time of year. I don’t get out as often as I’d like. Maybe later, we can play a round of golf. I can clear my schedule, and we’re assured a convenient tee time.”

  The minister furled his brow. “I really don’t have the time.” The man shifted in his seat as if his overstuffed chair had become a hard wooden bench.

  “We’ll play just nine holes then. I’ll see you around four.” The chairman stood, relaxed, drinking in the power of his position. Sometimes, it seemed like he didn’t even have to try. They came to him, bowing at his feet as they begged for favors.

  He no longer worried about sneaking anything into the minutes.

  ***

  “Nicely done, Craken,” General Quincy said. He put his hand on the man’s shoulder as they watched the first eight recruits who the sergeant had selected as the cream of the crop.

  They led the way through the obstacle course, surging far ahead of the rest of the platoon. When they finished, they found soft drinks and snacks waiting for them. They were allowed to sit down and watch the others.

  When the first of the second group finished, they were kept to the side, put in formation where they could see the other recruits lounging while their fellows were struggling through the obstacle course.

  The general didn’t care about the second group of recruits.

  Craken did. He moved to the front of his handpicked recruits. “Listen up,” he said in a low voice, looking from face to face to make sure they understood he was serious. “You get to relax, but you will never make fun of anyone over there. We want them to see what they’re really made of, how deep they can dig within themselves. They will want to join you, but not if you’re a pack of buttholes. You will be held to the highest standards at all times. Do you get me?”

  “Yes, Sergeant,” they replied in unison, not yelling.

  Craken didn’t need them to yell. He only needed them to understand their role as professionals. Something he’d been at one time, before he was forced to ship more warm bodies into the warzone. Training became the recruit completion course. Shove them through. Help them meet the minimum standard and then force the next bunch through.

  In the end, sending them to the meat grinder that was the Alpha Centauri System, where most of the fighting took place on Centauri Prime. He hadn’t gone.

  The sergeant had never been in combat.

  “General, if it’s not too bold, when this group is done, I would like to join them, leave training behind.”

  Quincy looked at the sergeant. “Who would select the next bunch, and the one after that? Who would train the trainers in what to look for?”

  The major returned from his latest excursion. The general and the sergeant both looked at him. “We have our answer,” the general said as one eyebrow twitched upward. “Bob, I have a proposition for you,” the general started.

  The major’s face dropped. He expected to be sent on another gopher mission.

  “How would you like to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel?”

  Bob’s shock disappeared, and he grinned broadly.

  “But there are conditions. You would remain behind, manage the training command, and keep the elite soldiers flowing to us at our remote training headquarters.”

  The major focused on a point over the general’s shoulder as he stared, lost in thought.

  Lieutenant Colonel, and I get to stay home…

  CHAPTER SIX

  Tiberius Plastes worked the clubhouse of the exclusive golf resort by shaking hands and saying a few kind words to each of the people with whom he shook hands. The premium power play would have been to make the minister wait, but the short-term gain would not have yielded the long-term result he wanted.

  The chairman watched out of the corner of his eye for when the minister’s motorcade arrived. Tye excused himself and went to the front door, politely waiting on the minister as he exited his limousine, his usual security nowhere to be seen.

  A benefit of the club owned and used exclusively by SagCon’s senior leaders was watertight security and that it was never busy. Members of the board were the few regulars, though unfortunately, Tye wasn’t one of them. He hoped he wasn’t too far off his game for the two hours he was going to spend in the same cart with the defense minister.

  The minister spotted the chairman and nodded, before making a beeline up the stairs. Tye wondered where the two members of the board were, since the most junior members usually showed up first. One never made the senior partners wait.

  But Tye considered it to be fortuitous, and he would grant a favor to the two men for giving him unimpeded access to the defense minister. Two hours of alone time to gain a full understanding of what needed to be done, work the deal, and then seal the deal.

  “If you will, Minister, we’re checked in and the first tee is open. The others were unavoidably detained and won’t be joining us, unfortunately,” the chairman apologized while waving the minister to follow, glancing one last time at the roadway and drop-off area.

  ***

  “Just us, then?” the minister asked as the two men swung their clubs to loosen stiff muscles.

  “Yes. I respect your time, Minister, and the two of us can play in an hour. My game is off, but I’ll do what I can to keep the ball out of the woods.”

  “As will I, Chairman. And please, call me Westy, since it’s just us out here.”

  Tiberius Plastes smiled inwardly. Five of the seven m
inisters had told him to call them by their first name or nickname. The president was also an old acquaintance. Power wasn’t necessarily about money.

  The chairman was at the point in his life where he realized how much he had missed of his daughter’s life. He was playing catchup and would do what he had to in order to make up for the past.

  Once time is lost, it can never be recovered. The chairman learned that lesson early, but his investments had been in the Sagittarian Conglomerate and his meteoric rise within the executive ranks. He always assumed that he’d have time later, but Shaunte had joined SagCon and made her own mark, getting promoted until she accepted the position at Darklanding.

  Now she was gone and her career would end in Darklanding, not through any fault of her own, if Tiberius didn’t help her recover from the things that were out of her control. SagCon punished people for bad luck. Even if their last name was Plastes.

  “Call me Tye,” the chairman said with a smile, offering honors, the opportunity to tee off first to the minister. The other man stepped up hesitantly, teed his ball, took two more practice swings, lined up, and with a mighty hack, hooked his ball into the warm-up range far to the left of the first hole.

  “My apologies, Westy,” Tye said. “I forgot to get a scorecard. Since we’re not keeping score, might as well swing again. Punch it out there.”

  The man produced a second ball, which joined the first, and then a third that finally made it into play. The man grunted, flushed, and walked to the back of the tee without making eye contact.

  Golf was about a personal struggle with a perfection that could never be achieved. A too-small ball being propelled through a vast universe at the end of a club that required geometric precision from a flawed human body. Some were better at it than others, but it was more about coping with failure, luck, and course management. If the player knew their shot would be errant, how could they make sure the next shot was playable in a way that allowed them to still get the ball into the hole within the stroke limit?

  How people played the game was a window into how they lived their lives. Tye already had valuable insight into the defense minister’s psyche.

  Tye sent his ball down the middle of the fairway, a moderate distance, but not long. In his younger days, he would have pounded it much harder. But as he grew older, he learned that placement for his next shot was more important than going long.

  “Are you sandbagging me?” Westy said as he watched the shot.

  “Pure luck, I assure you. I expect to send the next shot into the sand.” Tye chuckled before turning serious. “A beautiful day, Westy. For me, it’s not about hitting the ball, but about getting outside. I could spend all day every day in my office, and I still wouldn’t catch up. Being free from the grind is worth its weight in gold.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” The minister nodded knowingly, the embarrassment of his first two shots forgotten.

  Tye drove the cart and didn’t bother driving to pick up the errant balls. They were best left behind, like all things that had no place in the present.

  Westy relaxed as he stood over his second shot. He swung easily and sent it sailing straight toward the green. It came up short, but the next shot would be a simple pitch.

  “Well done!” Tye said, sounding more surprised than he intended. The minister laughed out loud.

  “Even a blind squirrel can find an acorn, eh, Tye?”

  As he climbed back into the cart, he looked at the chairman. “We’re forming a new military unit that we hope will eventually conduct the preponderance of our missions. General Adam Quincy is running the program to find the best of the best, train them in tactics that don’t involve slogging it out between two major ground forces. Hit and run tactics, infiltration, sabotage, surgical strikes, and other things like that. But the people will see that as an aggressive military move forward when they are still reeling from the cost of our win in the Alpha Centauri System.”

  The man paused as Tye lined up his next shot. The chairman was able to put his thoughts on hold for a moment. He pulled a long iron, took an easy swing, and dropped his shot into the middle of the green. The minister nodded approvingly.

  “I may have sandbagged you a little bit, but we’re not keeping score. Pray, continue, Westy. The cost of our victory…”

  “Even though we managed the media message, too many of our boys and girls never came home. Word gets out.” The minister squinted beneath a troubled brow. Maybe the losses had gotten to him, too, or maybe it was something else. Tye wanted to know, but wouldn’t press. “This elite force will fly under the radar. We, I mean I, need your help to keep this low-key. I’m not a fan of backroom deals, but that’s what this needs to be. Keep TerroCom’s existence out of the public eye, and I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “We are all taxpayers, so gouging the government only gouges ourselves. We’ll produce the gear with the standard markup and will bury the costs within the usual purchases, which we will reduce comparably. That can be done without setting off any alarms. Hold the inspector general at bay, and the TerroCom logistics train will never see the light of day. You had also mentioned a training area?”

  “I did. Keeping things quiet on Melborn is problematic, to say the least. But you run operations on frontier planets bordering the outer systems. If you could make a couple available, we can provide extra security both on and off world for those planets. All we need is about ten thousand square kilometers to call our own. Out of sight, out of mind.”

  Tye parked the cart to the side of the green as the defense minister walked toward his ball, carrying a variety of clubs. The chairman pulled out his putter and waited by the cart.

  There was much to think about. The opportunities were endless, but making it work in his best interest, whether TerroCom remained a secret or made the front page of the Melborn Daily, required more thought.

  Much more.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  “I never requisitioned a new chair because you told me not to. I never put in a construction order to rebuild the old jail because there are no funds. I never ordered anything you’re asking about.” Shaunte remained standing behind her desk with her hands on her hips.

  Sheriff Thaddeus Fry stood in front of the desk, waiting patiently. He pursed his lips and sucked his teeth, contorting his face as he waited for a better answer.

  Shaunte giggled and turned away.

  Thad remained silent as he didn’t have a witty comeback. He wondered where the wires had gotten crossed.

  Shaunte finally sat down and looked at him over the top of her computer screens. “Oh,” she said, sounding forced. “You’re still here.”

  “Nice try, but you’re not getting rid of me that easily.” He walked around the desk until he could sit on the corner of it. “You really need chairs for guests. There’s no way this is what you want.”

  Thad pointed at the small space between the two of them. Shaunte wondered if he was baiting her, trying to get her to give something away. She leaned back, checking her monitors to make sure they were blank before returning her gaze to the upstart sitting on her desk.

  “You’re not getting a new chair,” she finally declared, nodding to add emphasis.

  The sheriff stared at her. She stared back. He forced his eyes open as he refused to blink. Shaunte’s eyes started to burn. Someone knocked and they both blinked. Shaunte shook her head, wondering why she was acting like a twelve-year-old.

  The sheriff got up and hurried to the front of the desk. He blinked rapidly to moisten his eyes. He stood to the side with his hands behind his back.

  “Yes?” Shaunte called in a loud voice.

  The door opened and Dixie walked in with Pierre close behind. She stopped to look the sheriff up and down before narrowing her eyes at the Company Man.

  “I appreciate you putting that chair on order for me, Shaunte. That is very nice of you. If you’ll excuse me, I have duties requiring my attention.” The sheriff tipped his hat and squeezed around Miss
Dixie.

  “There’s no chair on order,” Shaunte said softly to the sheriff’s back. Then she yelled after him once he’d made his way from her office. “There’s no chair! And what duties?”

  Pierre cocked his head, unsure of what he’d seen and heard. Dixie scowled.

  Shaunte rolled her eyes and shook her head.

  ***

  Tye stood on the ninth green, his ball close enough to be tapped into the hole. The defense minister was on his third swing to get his ball from the sand trap. Finally, with a great wave of sand, the ball launched like a rocket. Tye caught it on the way past, smacked it against the flagpole, and dropped it next to the hole.

  “Bravo!” he cheered. “Like a laser beam, you drilled the stick, and here it lies.”

  “I meant to do that,” Westy chuckled, taking the chairman’s word for it. He hadn’t seen a thing. Tye’s fellow board members were on the hill and had seen it all. They wondered if the entire round had gone that way.

  It had.

  The minister raked the sand trap, making sure it was smooth with a military precision. On Melborn, only those who served could become the defense minister. Westy had put in his time, worked his way up the ranks, and continued his career into politics.

  But he’d never learned to be good at golf.

  As the minister approached without his putter, Tye declared the man’s putt to be good. Westy reciprocated, and the two shook hands.

  “First order of two hundred sets of equipment will begin production tomorrow,” Tye reiterated. “You can count on our discretion. As for the training facility, I have two places in mind, but I need to confirm a couple things from the office before I can commit.”

  “Maybe both? One for training and one for live-fire exercises. That would be optimal.”

  “Optimal is what we do at SagCon, Westy.” Tye wrapped his second hand over the minister’s hand as he smiled warmly.