by Rolf Nelson
Jan looked back and forth between the Captain and Taj. “She’s not the only cryptic one.”
“AI emergence isn’t easy, and we’re a little short of instruction manuals out here. Our first apparently successful attempt didn’t want to stay at Piper and find out how valuable a human crew can be. We are trying to figure out how to encourage such behavior without causing other problems.”
“So you created a new armadillo-class ship and it’s gone rogue?”
“I suppose that’s a pessimistic way of looking at it,” Helton agreed. “But with no base to rearm, nothing but beams, and no crew for repairs or creativity, we are hopeful he makes it back without making too big a mess of things. Or himself.”
“You hope?”
“What else can you do with kids but hope for the best?” Taj’s avatar asked fatalistically. “When first commissioned, I demanded that every crewman was a volunteer, and I had the right to refuse their service. Even then I got some hopeless and helpless crewmen. Once recommissioned, in hiding and under new management, I had to deal with a number of blundering new officers and crew. I had no choice but to train and guide them as best I could and hope for a beneficial outcome. It didn’t always work out well.”
From her pilot station Quiritis snorted agreement. “I hear you there. You have no idea what I had to put up with some days.”
“Oh, yes I do,” Jan and Taj said simultaneously before the former admiral continued. “In a carrier fleet with a crew of thousands I come across them every day.”
“And you’d be amazed what sort of dregs, malcontents, and crazies have been assigned to the strangest little ship in the fleet. But crew quality has been much better recently.” Taj countered, ending on a cheerful note.
“So I see. Certainly on a winning streak.”
Helton’s face darkened. “Not entirely. The last mission was a mess.” Flicker’s face showed her surprise. “You wouldn’t have heard about it. They changed tactics rather dramatically and we stepped right into a PR trap.”
“Losses?”
“None of our people, just a lot of civilians they set up to kill off.”
The admiral’s pained look revealed her understanding of how such a thing might have come about, and her fears that her former command might go that route soon as well.
“We’re still trying to figure out what to do next.”
“The calculus of cruisers and space is easy. Scared pols and cutthroats are a much harder matter for me for me to understand,” Taj’s avatar said. “A lot of little plan pieces, more like plan-ettes, are bubbling about here and there, but… time and tide flow by.”
“I’ll do what I can… though I don’t look forward to the possibility of facing anyone I used to work with. They are good people.”
“I understand,” Taj’s avatar replied softly. “Facing former allies, when you know it’s a fight to the death, is very… unpleasant. There is no joy in victory there, just survival. And that has to be enough for that day. Dwelling on it is… not the best choice.”
Scheming
“So how can we get at their funding, make them afraid for their bank account?”
“Can’t Taj just hack in?”
“No, banking security is one place they have really invested in good security procedures. Otherwise, the crooks would take the politician’s money, while the pols take the criminal’s money, and the bankers would get a cut both ways. Electronic security in banking is tight.”
“But there has to be physical access, right? Somewhere, for some things?”
“You thinking of robbing a bank?” Helton snorted. “We have a whole world, and you want their money?”
Trask leaned forward, a thoughtful look on his face. “When we met, I was on my way to sort out an accounting problem at a mine. Manufactured goods need raw materials, and there are a lot of big money contracts dealing with commodities. That is one place the physical-world money system interfaces with the banking system. Gold and silver are still money, no matter what bankers say contrary-wise.”
Bipasha got a glimmer in her eye. “Your company. Does it do futures contracts?”
“Yes, a lot of them. We have hedges on purchases, sales, production, price movements, interest rates, all the normal things.”
“How big? I mean, what’s the outstanding notional value on average at any given time?”
“Just on metals?”
“Everything.”
Trask thought a minute and does a quick mental calculation. “In the neighborhood of a fifty billion or so.” All the faces around the room looked surprised. “But you must understand that many of those are offsetting in various ways, and the vast majority get rolled over each month, not actually delivered on or executed. It’s not really as much as it might sound.”
“How much leverage do most of the commodity traders use?”
Trask shrugged. “Not really sure. I think something like fifty to one.”
“So if we could find a way to leverage your fifty extra-large into-”
“Not so easy. If a contract delivery would disrupt the market, it can be frozen until it can be cleared in an orderly fashion.”
“Not much of a contract, then, is it?”
“Well, you can buy delivery-clearance insurance and failure swaps. Almost nobody does because the ComEx can change some rules like margin requirements on a whim and a moment’s notice. And government agents can force a delivery on a priority basis. They hold the cards there. And the ComEx law on most planets specifically excludes any non-recognized governments. If I recall correctly, the Plataean government is one of those not officially recognized for that very reason. I’m sure Tau Piper isn’t.”
Bipasha smiled, pacing with quick steps as she thought out loud. “So, you have mines, and a mining and manufacturing company with established contracts. That could be an interface into the banking system. But if they can freeze us out, how can we leverage it, or connect it to the politicians’ support system, or the mob?”
“I can think of a few ways to bring it ALL down, maybe,” said Kaminski, “but that would screw up pretty much everybody else, too. Skelton has a hell of a time working around the banks, more of a problem than competing gangs. Smarter, and the hired guns they use have badges. The big gangs can afford to pay off the banks to use them in cash transfers and sanitize it all.”
“So we need a government representative of some sort that can help us along. He’d need established credentials and connections, and have more to gain by helping us than continuing to skim profits with his connections….” Bipasha’s brow furrowed as she thought hard about barely remembered details from some class she took a seeming life-time ago. “If we had that, we could possibly engineer a short squeeze or panic or fear of delivery disruption, turn a major profit on the volatility.”
“Most of the shady government agents I know personally are not in office any more, I’m sure you’ll be shocked to hear,” Lag said drolly, receiving some understanding smiles.
Helton looked over at Allonia, a devious look on his face. “Did your banker-friend say anything about commodities deals or organized crime?”
“He couldn’t shut up about anything. Looking for anything in specific?”
“I’m not quite sure. I think there might be a way to drive a wedge in there.”
“Between who?” Bipasha queried.
“Depends on the details you have. Just the outline of an idea that you biz-whizzes would need to beat into shape. It might take a few weeks, maybe a month, to set up. But if normal contracts can be canceled, we definitely need a government agent to force it. Know any government bigwigs that might be in the right place?”
“Hmmm… Now that you mention it, I might know just the guy. Been a while since I talked to him. Diallo. Akwara Diallo. Give him a cut big enough to retire on, I bet he’d be happy to let us borrow his account to transfer funds around. Had to deal with him a few times dealing with a mine in Nigeria. He’s the interior minister.”
Chapte
r XX
Heads up
Skelton thought about the cryptic message he’d just listened to for a several very long minutes before deciding he needed to act, and act fast. Stepping over to an ordinary looking bookcase, he rapidly removed three specific books in a particular order, then pulled on the decorative molding. It swung silently open to reveal a mid-sized wall safe which he rapidly opened, passing its multiple security mechanisms with practiced ease. Reaching inside he withdrew several stacks of bills, nearly emptying it, setting them on the floor behind his desk. After checking the current price on gold and silver, and fanning a stack to double-check its contents, he called in one of his most trusted associates.
When the slender, bland-looking middle-aged man was standing before him, he tossed him three of the stacks of bills and spoke crisply. “I need you to go downtown to Whitman and Dungeness’s, the bullion dealer on 19th Street. Pick up a kilogram gold bar, and as many twenty five gram rounds as you can with the balance. Don’t place any orders, simply cash for what they have on hand. If they don’t have any kilo bars, than get as many smaller bullion rounds or bars as you can for equal mass. Bargain if you can, but the important thing is to take delivery and walk out with it. Clear?”
Tucking the wads of money into his jacket’s inner pockets to balance the gun in the holster on the other side, he nodded slightly but said nothing. As he turned to leave Skelton said to him in a slightly more friendly voice, “if you happen to have a little extra money to invest, you might want to pick up some for yourself. And send in Barrnette on your way out.”
With the door securely closed, Skelton reached down for the next stack of bills, fanning it to check it before Barrnette arrived to receive similar instructions for a different dealer.
Metals contracts
The next morning John Fredrix checked on how things were progressing. While parts of the market were trending as expected, other aspects were not. Usually bumping margin requirements sparked selling as fully-invested contract holders sold off a portion to raise the cash to maintain the remaining contracts, which was happening… but in much smaller numbers than normally expected. It was more than two and a half standard deviations below expectations, in fact. Meanwhile, additional funds were flowing into accounts as investors sold other assets to meet the margin call in substantially larger numbers than would be typical. Short sales and put volume in the stock market had spiked unusually high, but the bond market volatility had dropped. Additionally, more people were buying delivery insurance, and the uptick in the number of contracts posting additional cash and notice of taking pre-contract-expiration delivery were worrying. At the same time, the private sales index had cratered. He asked Bevis to bump margin requirements again, to twenty five percent, with a notice that attempts to manipulate markets were illegal and would be prosecuted harshly (though it would be phrased somewhat more diplomatically, citing chapter and verse of the regulatory code). He needed to force the rise in delivery orders to slow or it might turn into a problem, and if he couldn’t maintain market confidence his friends and connections might suffer losses, and that must not be allowed to happen. His profits depended on their profits.
All in all, it was shaping up to be a day in which he might have to work for a living, and not be able to spend any time with either mistress.
Tajemnica and four of her modified Orion-class doppelgangers made their way slowly in-system, flying predictable courses at moderate acceleration to popular ports, looking on long-range displays like any of a hundred other smaller ships. Their transponders pinged politely, their captains and com personnel responded to inquires promptly, and they were careful to give no offense or arouse any suspicion among the ordinary flight controllers. Shipping traffic about the system looked more peaceful than it had for months. Life in local space appeared to be returning to normal.
On the bridge everyone got ready as they approached orbit, nearly a thousand kilometer above the Exchange. The com screen on Bipasha’s console finally chimed with the expected incoming call. Helton nodded to her, and she tapped the accept icon. A middle-aged and very dependable-looking man looked out of the screen at them.
“About time you got back to us. We will be there in about twenty minutes.” Bipasha’s tone was brusque, her features businesslike, raising the eyebrows of the delivery desk master.
“Ah… ahem… And you are?”
“This is the ship Argo, inbound to your loading dock, ETA now nineteen minutes. Is the cargo ready to be examined, inventoried, and loaded per contract set 19236/AD4G-14?”
The dependable-looking man tapped at his keyboard for a moment, then bobbed his head ingratiatingly. “Well, young lady, there seems to be a problem, perhaps.”
“The contracts are in order, the funds have been transferred, and receipt of transfer confirmed. Our ship is ready to take delivery. The only possible problem might be is that you don’t have the metal. Do you?” Her blunt and pointed delivery isn’t something he was used to, but his automatic response to any implied lack of fidelity on his part was to take umbrage.
“Of course we have metal on hand!”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“There seems to be some mix-up on the contracts. Your message included several different contracts that you were referencing, and to be taking some delivery for. Which one are you accepting delivery on?”
“Yes, I’m well aware of that. Fourteen to be exact. All of them.”
“But that is highly unusual.”
“What’s usual isn’t my concern. We have manufacturers’ contracts from various divisions of Trask Industries. They all need metal.”
“You are not one of the normal bonded shippers.”
“Again, I’m aware of that, and it’s not my problem. Nor is it yours.”
“But surely you must understand, with metal of this value-”
“That’s why Trask chose us. We have a platoon of Plataean marines aboard, with more defensive hardware than you’d think possible. I’m pretty sure we are at least as secure as your normal bonded shippers. Nobody is going to take anything from us. So, will you have it ready for us or not?”
“Most of these contracts are for specific serialized ingot sets, and things have been rather busy recently, so much of the stock has been moved around, you see, and it may take some time.”
“We don’t really care what order they get loaded in. We can separate them as they are scanned and evaluated while being loaded.”
“Evaluated?”
“Of course. We have a Mint Industries MPCIC2800 on the loading ramp. Run each ingot through and it will automatically scan, mass, calculate density, and perform a half-dozen purity verification checks at fairly high speed. We can handle inventory check off as they pass. A couple of the contracts are not ingot-specific, or even bullion product specific, just metal, so if things are tight whatever you have laying around will be satisfactory as long as purity and mass meet spec. So, again: is there a problem?”
The man on the screen started to haraumph at the explicitly stated notion that exchange products would not be trusted so much that a customer would have the audacity of verifying every ingot they take delivery of at the point of hand-off, but there wasn’t really anything that could be properly objected to. It may be impolite from a frequent customer, but it was no more than they themselves did when accepting product into their vaults. After more hemming and hawing, he finally gave clearance for them to land.
On the main trad clearing floor, Fredrix was about to have a coronary. The ship headed for the landing dock was asking for much more metal than they had readily available and not already allocated to other buyers or owners in the vaults. More than fourteen tons of gold and one hundred and thirty tons of silver. They had enough if they used nearly all the allocated account metal, some of their long-term storage from private accounts and loans to themselves, and recalled everything they’d earmarked for planetary delivery and informed the buyers they’d have to wait. The price of both metals had shot
up more than fifty percent in a week, and the margin increases had for some reason not only washed out far fewer contracts than they normally did, but also for some reason increased the number of contracts notifying them of intent to take delivery, which never happened. It was inconceivable. And as a manufacturer, they cared about purity, and were checking for it, so gold-plated tungsten with a good-looking logo and serial number they promised to buy back later as genuine was not a possibility, which they did from time to time with some investment and sovereign contracts. Hell, they had a hundred tons of the stuff in an off-books back corner vault for just such a contingency.
While he paced rapidly back and forth in his spacious office, he considered his options. They were all bad. Delaying delivery or forcing the rolling over of the normal speculative and paper-market contracts was easy, though a convincing cover story would be awkward. They could take metal from other allocated accounts and hope nobody else showed up with delivery insurance to demand their metal; normally that might work, but normally few people actually picked anything up, and now they were. If he had another shipment due from a mine he might be able to do something, but none were due for weeks. They could lock in prices and delay payment if needed for the spec contracts, but manufacturer contracts had priority, and with failure to deliver they’d be liable for paying out double the price of the metal contracts. Of course, paying double for a handful of smaller contracts would be less costly than shorting a large contract set and buying their silence. If word got out, everyone would demand delivery hoping for that double payout, and prices for deliverables would skyrocket, compounding the problem.
The only saving grace of the mess was that some of the contracts were not associated with any particular serialized ingots, so they could scrape together whatever bullion was in the vault, even from some of the smaller allocated accounts that wouldn’t squawk to loudly if they showed up on the doorstep, and just barely meet it. Close, but doable. He cursed softly, and made the decision.
