Kip had a light bulb go off. He did not watch much network holo but it was always on at his bar. This must be the woman that got the credit for saving the Emperor.
Kip sub-vocalized to his symbiont, "CLYX old sport, it seems we are no longer unique."
The Syrt heard and responded. "You still do not fully appreciate all that you are, Kip," responded CLYX. “However, she does have a strong relationship with her meld mate.”
"This is Eva Quan. She is a Colonel assigned to my personal guard. Please excuse all the deception, but you will understand the need as we go along, I promise." He turned to Smith and Dennis. "Thank you gentlemen, I think you will find that Colonel Garcia has tea prepared in the conference room. Please ask him to make sure all of his suppression equipment is functioning. Colonel Quan will remain and should be adequate protection in this room. Please consider the vocal and optical security need to be max5 anytime any of these three people meet with me in the future."
Shadow Major Dennis grimaced, looked at Eva, and said to the Emperor, "Excuse me Your Highness, but you wanted to know my personal assessment about Mister David when our segment concluded. I like him and definitely think he can be trusted. However, if he goes off the deep end in the future, I am not sure that you would be safe in one room with Mister David even if Colonel Quan and my entire team were in here with you."
"Double ditto that, Highness," said Smith. Both turned and left though the door to the busy room that the Emperor had entered.
Will gestured to the cozy group of chairs once again. Ben and Eva joined him and Kip after they sat across from each other. Kip noticed approvingly that Eva sat on the edge of her seat facing him with her feet positioned for a quick explosion out of the chair if needed. She still managed to look relaxed.
Kip couldn’t resist. He looked at Eva innocently and asked, "How long ago did you leave the Shadows to join the Emperor’s Guard, Eva? You are the Major Quan lauded for saving the Emperor, are you not?"
She looked unsurprised when she gave him an amused smile and asked, "Actually, it is Colonel these days. Am I that obvious, Mr. David?"
"On the contrary, Colonel Quan, you are not at all obvious. In fact, you and your people seem to be very good at what you do. I take it that you already know about the CNT I have in my ankle holster? I am surprised you and Mister Dennis let me keep it."
Her smile was amused this time. "Yes, you have a fresh clip in the butt and a needle in the barrel. But a charged needle thrower needs an electronic spark to catalyze the charge and there has been a field damper trained on you since you entered this room." She looked at the Emperor. "Please forgive my arrogance, your Highness. I was cautioned about Mr. David. He was, uh, unique among Shadows."
"Pardon me, Miss Quan, why don’t you just let me give you the CNT. You may not have been cautioned enough. You see, I have never used a charge in my CNT."
Eva’s eyes widened and she held out her hand while staring hard at Kip. She had heard the myth about Shadows so good with a needle thrower that they could use the silent little gun to kill without the electric charge that started a reaction that turned each needle into an explosive sliver of metal atoms suspended in a plastic needle. She discounted the stories though because she, like every Shadow, was proficient with a Charged Needle Thrower or CNT. Like all before her, she had tried shooting it without the charging battery and experienced the same frustration. It required incredible hand eye coordination to put an uncharged sliver within an inch or two of a bull’s-eye from more than fifteen feet away. Eva could do it one hundred percent of the time from fifteen feet and could often reach over ninety-five percent from fifty feet. At one hundred feet, the frustration started.
To fire it accurately enough to feel confident that you could hit a vital organ any time you shot would require super human hand eye coordination and strength – even for a Shadow. Shadows were not allowed to carry a personal weapon that they could not qualify with at the ninety-five percent accuracy level each month at distances up to one hundred feet. Eva gave up when she missed qualifying at that level for three months out of five.
In the charged mode, the CNT was a hit-and-forget weapon. But all Shadows were intrigued that it could be almost undetectable if you didn’t take the powerful little battery with you. It was almost completely silent for as much as it kicked. The problem was the recoil. It was bad enough on single shot but on triple-shot, it was almost impossible to control. The miniature railgun shot a three quarter inch needle. Only when the gun’s battery created a field the needle went through after firing it, did the needle became a flying sliver of pure explosive energy. If a charged needle hit you in the torso, you died – messily. If it hit you in an arm or leg, you lost the arm or leg and probably enjoyed some other major damage.
Firing a CNT without the charger was ineffective and suicidal unless you used uncharged break-down needles. A regular sliver fired without charge would just go through the person you shot at leaving a pin-sized hole all the way through them, and probably whatever was behind them including buildings, cars, animals, and other people.
One always wanted to load breakdown needles if intending to shoot the CNT uncharged. Breakdown needles were weakened diagonally in the middle to let the needle break into two parts at impact. The first half of the needle would go through the body, bones, and most armor. The uncharged needle starts collapsing after penetrating. The front part of the leading half of the needle is lighter and of a more porous material. It the heavier back portion crushes the first segment as a target provides resistance. A multifold Teflon coating is applied lightly to just the very tip of the first needle-segment. Thus, the first needle in the breakaway penetrates almost anything while expanding. It usually enters the body as a pinhole and exits the diameter of one’s little finger. The incredible speed leaves most the surrounding tissue and bone jellied from absorbing the impact.
The second needle segment, the part that brakes away, is made of even heavier material. It usually does not make it all the way through a body. It tends to wreak a fair amount of damage as it spins to a stop inside the body. Unless you hit the heart, liver or brain directly, one shot often was not lethal. Two hits near a vital organ were usually lethal because of the massive tissue damage and internal bleeding. Four or more uncharged hits between the chin and pelvis would cause death almost every time. Nevertheless, like the range Sergeant always said, combat never gives you time for more than one good shot at a target. It has to be right the first time. If he was that good that an uncharged CNT was the only weapon he carried, then she had indeed not been cautioned strongly enough.
Kip stayed seated and raised his leg and ankle holster. She slid the flat little gun out of the holster and put it into a pocket in her jacket.
Kip looked at the Emperor and spoke earnestly.
"I apologize Your Highness. I would not knowingly have brought any kind of weapon into your presence. I did not want Eva to have to spend the rest of our conversation worrying if I would consider using that weapon on you. Now she can enjoy the conversation. I also did not want Mr. Dennis and Mr. Smith to shoot me if I forgot and scratched my ankle."
"Kip, I asked you here to talk to you, not to have you treated like a potential assassin or even a questionable member of the realm. You have earned many medals in the service of the Empire. I trust you.
"Eva, is it possible we are erring too far on the side of caution? After all, you vetted him backwards and forward and he had no idea I would be here," said the Emperor with a smile and a twinkle in his eye.
Eva bowed her head slightly with a guilty little quirky smile playing at the corner of her mouth. "I am sure you are right, Highness. Of course, just because a tiger has not eaten anyone in a few years does not mean that you should not respect his ability to do so. I apologize for delaying our conversation. I do trust Mister David—with my life, yours, and the Empire."
"OK, then, let us get to it. Kip, your entrepreneurial ability, the fact that you are a Shadow, and your well-documented
leadership ability make you the obvious ideal candidate for the most important new job in the Empire. I want to recruit you to start a very big business with a very secret agenda for the Teaman Empire. In its secondary role, I want that business to be the biggest, most secret, and most effective information gathering organization we can now imagine. In its primary role, I want to help humanity, become a benevolent employer, and become so large and intertwined with the economies of all our potential and current enemies that they would have to hurt themselves economically to harm us."
The Emperor looked at Kip, saw that he had his undivided and serious attention, and charged on. "This group will be your unofficial board of directors, brainstorming group and sounding board. Unfortunately, it is doubtful that this group will be able to meet together again soon. You will be more or less on your own. I will have to trust your judgment. Your primary contact point will be Ben. That is a natural since he will be your primary banker. Eva’s role will become more clear and defined later on."
"No one else, not even the P.M. for a while, will know about the true nature of your operation. You will not have an unlimited budget, so we want you to make profits. I will fund most of this out of my own pocket so there is not an audit-trail to any government budget. If Ben thinks that a loan that meets all his criteria is the best way to fund an operation, you can consider it.
“You will avoid doing any business with the Teaman Empire Government directly for at least two years. I could easily influence contracts for you but that would be traceable. You must appear to be beyond reproach. You will own much of the business with me as a partner. You will appear to build wealth but put most of the profits, over eighty percent, back into the program. Split the remainder among us four. You and I will own thirty percent each and Ben and Eva will own twenty percent each. I am having legal documents prepared to that effect. We will call the main corporation GalTech. Each of us will limit the personal wealth we derive from GalTech to four billion credits. All the rest will be invested back into the company and its mission."
The three were speechless at what the Emperor had just said. There were only a handful of billionaires in the Teaman Empire. All were about to deny the need for such wealth when he plowed on without allowing interruption.
"I doubt that any of you would enter into this to just get rich. Before you start denying that you want to profit from our cause, think about it. Someone is eventually going to find out who owns GalTech. If it is tremendously successful and you do not have the trappings of wealth, it will be seen as a sham and be investigated by many. Since I will be an owner, it will get more attention than we want. Also, if you are perceived as wealthy, you will be expected to surround yourself with bodyguards and that will make your real mission easier to disguise. In addition, if we are all going to be seen as close friends, you will have to be able to afford to play on my level."
"Kip, for the Empire, we have to do something bold now so we are not eaten later by the bigger animals in our forest. As an empire, we do not yet have the population or the resources to try to grow a large conventional space fleet. Super dreadnaughts are just too expensive and need too many crewmembers. Teaman’s four principal strengths are our banking industry, our insurance industry, our superior educational system and our research and development industry. We have traditionally invested in brainpower and financial services rather than in a military or manufacturing."
"What military might we do have has been purposefully focused on small, mobile, attack-teams that are geared toward insurgency. Sure, we call them counter-insurgent teams so none of the other empires will get nervous and wonder why a tame little empire like ours would want to have anything as aggressive as insurgent teams. The best way to train people to be superior insurgents is to first train them to be counter-insurgents. Thankfully, our bio-enhancement process seems to remain a secret. The Galaxy still thinks that Shadows are mechanically enhanced. The Frank Empire managed to kill off about two dozen military volunteers over a five-year period trying to make use of an aggressive, invasive form of Symbionts they happened across in their Cherry System. They proved so invasive and controlling recipients rarely lived for thirty days. The Cherry System is still quarantined.
Keeping Bozzay’s Moon and its Symbiont population a secret will continue to be a top priority. Recruiting Shadows to either resign their commitments and join GalTech, or take a leave of absence to work at GalTech, will probably be the only area where I can pull any strings for you."
The Emperor shook his head gently back and forth before continuing. "You know; the cost of the Shadow program is a real steal. We can train a million highly specialized expert insurgents and maintain them at readiness for ten years for less that we could build two super dreadnaughts and operate them for the same period. When you add new warships to your fleet and claim to have a solid defense, you make people notice and fear you. They would have to ask, “What if you turned that defensive might to offense? What if you went after them?” People are most dangerous when they fear. Committees or political groups of any kind serve as amplifiers of the group’s fear. All the worst wars are started out of fear."
Will sighed and gently shook his head. "If we could design some effective small ships that could successfully swarm and defeat dreadnaughts and still survive, I would probably reexamine our military policies. My think tanks are not having much luck in that regard but continue to work on it.
"On the other hand, our little bands of "counter insurgents" are pretty much planet bound, don’t carry nukes or hurl planetoids, and do not foster much paranoia in our Alliance partners or our general population. However, they would make an imperialistic aggressor think twice about chewing up the Teaman Empire. It would not be pleasant to anticipate sending in troops to secure your conquered prize when you realize that our Empire’s sole military pastime is to produce experts in making your life miserable once you have won. They would have to question their definition of winning. The monetary assets of our Empire are in the form of electronic credits that can easily be moved to somewhere else by Tel-K generators within five minutes of even hearing of an invading fleet. It is hard to capture and run a service industry whose main asset is a base of knowledge workers. Workers can decide to get less "knowledgeable" rather than do effective knowledge work to make the conquerors rich."
"So we have a defense in place that works today. Our empire has invested heavily and quietly in our education, R&D, and financial services industries. We have a clear and unchallenged lead in those areas. We are careful not to flaunt that lead and to even encourage the less able to compete with us. R&D has led us into hundreds of small profitable high-tech niche industries. For many projects, we seek to involve other empires as investment partners and minority shareholders. That also is a calculated defensive move. We now have the option to take some of that successful R&D and introduce it through GalTech into our Alliance partners and other Associations. That is a way to get them to tolerate full or partial foreign ownership of local corporations."
"It is now time to quietly go on offense. The throne has been a partner and financial supporter of almost every successful niche industry created by our R&D industry. The throne also owns a controlling interest in all Teaman banks and is extremely well off right now. My personal holdings at this time rival the total government holdings of any two individual empire governments. I think Ben put it aptly when he described me as "filthy stinking rich with purpose." Eva knows me well enough by now to agree but might trade the word "purpose" for "attitude."
Eva bit her lower lip to stifle a laugh.
"I have a goal and now a vision to secure our empire, consolidate our Alliance into an operationally effective star empire, and make the other empire’s fortunes so intertwined with our own that war is all but unthinkable. It will not happen overnight. War will flare between Alliances in the future. I see the Teaman Empire’s destiny is to be the fire suppression field that gently and almost invisibly quells the flames. My role will have to be limited to th
at of a strategist, visionary, unseen facilitator and cheerleader. I have had to work almost alone because of the need of secrecy. Ben and I, the PM, and now Eva, are the only ones in the know. I have bounced my thoughts off of them because I needed to have a check on my own thinking and I know I can trust them with my life and the fate of the empire."
Kip’s mind raced. He was receiving big dump truck loads of information. Any shovel full of this information could get a man killed. Bless, but this is interesting: scary but interesting! More interesting than an old Terra John Wayne movie. He was experiencing a rush that surpassed combat. He had hundreds of questions but decided to remain calm and listen.
"Kip, there is a time when the strategy is laid and the strategists must turn the vision over to the tacticians and trust that their preparation and execution are good enough to survive the first few minutes of combat. If I can believe a certain author that was required reading while I was at Shadow basic training, “tactics cannot be effectively driven from far away or by one who is far removed. Tactics have to change with the vagaries of combat and adapt as situations unfold.” Since you were the author, me telling you that is akin to any of us explaining music to a concert pianist." He nodded toward Eva and Eva took the floor.
"Mister David, my job was to screen for the best possible field commander we could find to run the business and covert operation that will someday accomplish the Emperor’s vision. We, as the initial committee of three, decided that of all the candidates I came up with, you are the absolute best person for the job. You have authored the very tactics we intend to use to win a war fought mostly in the private sector with very aggressive military style operations, planning and organization. You proved those tactics in combat. You taught them to others. You left the battlefield and used those tactics to become successful in business. You did that in the very arena in which we want to operate. Ben, I believe this is where you take over."
GalTech and the Shadow Warriors: Growth of a Star Empire Page 6
