TS6 - Chapter 25

Michelle ran two steps forward, cocking her arm and throwing the tennis ball wrapped in her grip as far as she could.  Hans exploded from where he was sitting, galloping after it in an avalanche of fur and energy.

Kat shook her head, smiling at her younger sister as Michelle ran back to the plastic box they’d left on the park bench with all of their belongings.  Before Hans could chase the ball down, she’d grabbed another tennis ball from the container.  The dire wolf puppy snatched his ball from the grass and turned around, running back toward their group.

Michelle chucked the second ball about forty five degrees away from Hans.  The wolf tracked the ball with its eyes for a second before sprinting after it.

When he reached his quarry, Hans whined in confusion, unable to comprehend why he couldn’t pick up the tennis ball in the grass with a mouth full of ball.  Kat chuckled, turning away from the big dog’s antics to where Kaleek and Belle were chatting about their plans for setting up a minaaq breeding and distribution system.

“Coming up with dastardly plans to circumvent galactic law?”  Kat asked.

“We are circumventing nothing,” Belle replied.  “Galactic law allows local planets to define most of their own laws.  Minaaq transportation may be restricted and their possession on most planets may be illegal, but so long as they are farmed and sold on Earth, it is perfectly legal for us to vend them.  Kaleek has come to me with some great ideas for minaaq based products such as psychedelic sushi.  I am sure that they will be a hit and with any luck we can turn Earth into a tourist destination, especially if we combine the minaaq sales with other attractions such as casinos or amusement parks.”

“I’m sure that Jaalin and Dorrik will be thrilled about that,” Kat said with a chuckle.  “So long as we can make sure that the drug sushi doesn’t end up with zonked out aliens blowing up residential blocks with space lasers, I’m on board.”

“Great!” Kaleek said happily.  “It’s good to know your plans for Earth’s future are fun and exciting rather than dull and drab.  There are too many new worlds that are all trying to be cookie cutter ethnic enclaves as they try to develop very basic industries.  Everyone is making their own sub par version of shuttles and hover cars rather than trying to find their own specialties.”

“Entertainment earns money,” Kat responded, “and money can be used to buy education and capital products.  At some point, we can use that money to develop the specialities we need to stand on our own.  I’m not so arrogant that I’m willing to throw aside a tool that I could use to lift my world up.”

“Precisely,” Belle agreed.  “Our history is filled with stories of colonies being exposed to their richer and more technologically advanced neighbors.  Every one of those countries that let itself become reliant on selling minerals and resources in exchange for trade goods rapidly transformed into a poor oligarchy with a thin upper class of the extremely rich that control access to the minerals while no one else has anything.  As one of those extremely rich people, this wouldn’t be the worst thing, except for the fact that these rich people are often displaced or killed either by foreigners or revolutionary groups.”

“The only nations that succeeded broke this model,” she continued, “through revolution, trade deals, or sound economic management they took goods from the outside and build themselves up so that they could stand up on their own, so that they had more than one or two industries that could easily be monopolized by a small cadre of the rich.”

“I don’t get it,” Kaleek replied, shrugging.  “Everything you’re saying makes sense to me, but that’s because my motives have always been to elevate my pod and my race.  Sure, I like having a good time, but I work a stressful job because it helps advance desoph science and development, not because I need the credits.  That’s me.  That doesn’t sound like you Belle, I can call you Belle, right?”

“You may,” Belle said, her voice slightly stiff.  Kat suspected that the older shareholder wasn’t exactly thrilled with being addressed by her first name, no matter what she said.

“Five years ago, no-” she corrected herself with a shake of her head.  “Even one year ago you would have been completely correct.  I was buried deep in the politics of GroCorp and its subsidiaries.  My only goal- to a certain extent the only thing I thought about was expanding my corporate portfolio and power.  I was willing to lie, kill, and steal to get that power.  Now that I’m here, more or less at the pinnacle of the world, it all seems less important.”

“I’m not going to say I’m wrong,” Belle continued with a half smile and a shake of her head.  “It took every dirty trick I knew to put myself into a position where I could sit where I’m sitting today, but at the end of everything, it was simply my relationship with Shareholder Debs that pushed all of that over the edge.  So now I am stuck trying to reconcile who I am.”

She leaned down, pulling a can of sparkling water out of the small cooler that their group had brought to the park.  Cracking it open, she took a sip, eyes distant as she weighed her words.

“I am clearly the sum of everything that came before this point.  I would not have survived long enough to help Shareholder Debs without being ruthless and cold.  Similarly, Shareholder Debs would not have succeeded without my willingness to dirty my hands gathering the intelligence she needed to act decisively.  At the same time, all financial and political power is fading away to meaninglessness as Shareholder Debs and Mr. Jackson race toward level twenty four.  That emptiness was… unwelcome.  It was hard for me, someone whose entire identity was clawing my way to relevance to both be dependent on another and irrelevant.”

“But then I allowed myself a moment of grace,” Belle took another drink from her water.  “I have accomplished much, but if I let things end as they were, there would not be any legacy other than one of my many children tearing me from power and erasing my name from the history books.  I have all the credits I could spend in a lifetime.  All the power I need to achieve any personal goal I could think of.  There is no need for more.  What drove me was pride, naked and unadulterated.”

“Once I came to that realization,” she continued with a half-smile.  “Everything snapped into focus with a level of clarity I thought impossible in this murky and morally dubious age.  My goal was to achieve something, to leave an imprint on the history and world that would echo through the ages.  A monument to my arrogance and narcissism.  That cannot be a question of wealth and power.  Wealthy and powerful people die every day with little more than a notice in an entertainment stream and years of arbitration as their heirs fight for the scraps they left behind.”

“Now,” Belle leaned forward, her eyes glinting with conspiratorial light, “what if I were to help forge a better world?  Sharehold- Kat taught me that it was possible.  That there were people that I could trust and that trusted me in a non transactional way.  I know exactly how systems corrupt and fail.  I’ve destroyed enough of them to be an expert on the topic after all.  But here I am, in the prime position to put together something that will last.  A government that gives its people enough slack to let them innovate and breathe without letting it turn into the chrome plated chaos that we live in right now.  A world that could actually join the Consensus as a peer, all while retaining its own culture and flavor despite consistent interference from galactic powers.  Now that?  That is a goal worth achieving.  Something that only an extraordinary group could achieve.  Any accomplishment less than that would be too shallow and petty a legacy for me, and the both of us should be honest.  Kat aspires higher than that.”

“Hey!” Kat interjected, feeling the conversation starting to slip away from her as Belle monologued onward.  “I feel like I should at least be involved in the conversation if we’re talking about my hopes and dreams for the future.”

“Quiet dear,” Belle replied, shushing her with a wave of her perfectly manicured hand.  “You are not an ordinary young woman and you will not have ordinary accomplishments.  If I have to drag you kicking and screaming to the apex of our cluster or sector or however it is the aliens designate our region of the galaxy, I will do so.  You may not enjoy leadership as much as someone like me, but that is all the more reason for you to take up its mantle.  I have seen how you’ve managed to turn a crashed spaceship into a veritable commercial empire in a bid to keep your family safe.  Honestly?  You may have more talent for governance than you do as an assassin.”

Kat forced a frown on her face, fighting back the giggle that threatened to erupt at any moment.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve killed people for less insulting accusations than that,” Kat responded.

Kaleek immediately started laughing, but Bell continued undaunted, a faint twinkle of mirth curving the corner of her mouth an eyelash upward.

“Nonsense, Katherine.  You were simply performing routine surveillance on those individuals.  Their deaths were nothing more than the incidental outcome of ordinary operations.”

That pulled Kat over the edge, she flopped down next to the two of them, chuckling and shaking her head.

“Okay, you win,” said, still shaking her head.  “Now what is going on with Mr. Jackson?  If I have to become a warlord and rule over this sector with an iron fist at some point, sure, whatever.  Until then, we need to track that lunatic down and kill him.  He’s absolutely trying to do the same to me, and I’d like to remain alive long enough to rule over whatever empire you’re going to force me to assemble.”

“Then grab a water,” Belle replied, nodding toward the small cooler.  “We’ll be here for a little while.  Your sister needs to work off the dire wolf’s energy anyway.”

Kat chuckled, leaning down to grab her own drink.  “He’s a blessing in disguise,” she said.  “Making sure Michelle hit the gym had been a nightmare.  Now she needs to keep herself in good enough shape to take that prehistoric monstrosity for hour-long runs in order to tire it out.  I’m not sure if she’s runner material, but we’ll make a proper tower climber out of Michelle yet.”

Belle leaned back, her brow furrowing.

“Maybe I should try the same with my children,” she responded thoughtfully.  “Buy them some sort of dangerous pet like a leopard or a bear and put them in charge of rearing it?  I’m sure the process would keep their reflexes sharp at the very least.”

“There it is!” Kaleek chimed in.  “That was the attitude I was looking for.  All this talk about leaving a mark on history was starting to make my fur stand on end.  Now that we’re back to chatting about forcing small children into cages with hungry predators I finally feel like the conversation is on firm footing once again.”

Kat cracked open her can of sparkling water and took a drink.  The side of the can said that it was supposed to taste like lavender grapefruit, but the flavors were muted to the point where she could barely taste anything.  Maybe a hint of citrus, but that just as easily could have been her imagination.  For the life of her, Kat couldn’t figure out why Belle liked to drink the stuff, but at least it wasn’t as offensive to the palate as the high sugar, high caffeine nightmare concoctions that Whip liked to drink.

“Maybe we’re back on firm footing,” she replied, “but we’re still pretty far afield from what we should be talking about.  After all, figuring out how to deal with Mr. Jackson was one of the major reasons we decided to meet in person.”

“And it was a good idea too,” Belle said, taking a sip from her water before setting it back down.  “We have completely separated our communications networks, transferring all updates via physical media in person.  Atop those, Stoller and your security agents have worked together with me to create a false network that appears to be transferring classified data.  Most of it is accurate, but key details have been falsified.”

“None of our organizations have managed to infiltrate Millennium deeply,” Belle continued with a helpless shrug, “a courier here, a regional dead drop there, but no one privy to the inner workings or plans of the organization and definitely no one at their headquarters.  Still, they are circulating and acting on the false information that they only could have skimmed from the false network.  It is clear as day to me that they have full access to anything electronic we possess, no matter how many layers of obscurity and protection we try to heap on top of it.”

“I could’ve told you that,” Kaleek interjected earnestly.  “I think Dorrik is too much on the up and up to try to infiltrate your communication networks, but I was trying to pirate some of your entertainment streams so I sliced my way in.  There were certainly some interesting defenses, but really nothing you have can even begin to match modern computing power.  Honestly?  The biggest problem was trying to find a way to interface my hand screen with your older tech.  Once I figured out how to fab an adapter, I just had to look through about a hundred different designs for the actuators you use in those battle suits of yours before I was able to plug in and start downloading some of your game shows.  Love Battlefield is stupendous by the way.”

Kat shared a glance with Belle, and the older woman couldn’t do anything but sigh deeply.

“I suppose step one of our master plan will be acquiring better computers and the security subroutines needed to protect them,” Belle said with pursed lips.  “Transferring data via runners and dead drops can work if it is a simple matter of reports and orders, but there is no way we could do any sort of real time coordination.  I cannot begin to conceive of how one would manage a spaceport without the ability to make purchase orders or request maintenance in real time, and those communications would be worthless if they could easily be hacked by a third party.”

“I don’t know about efficient,” Kaleek quipped, “but it sure would be funny.  Can you imagine ordering a dozen crates of gutter ale to be delivered to a friend’s spaceship on their tab?  Priceless.”

“What about if someone interfered with your order for fuel, resulting in the wrong grade being delivered to your ship and fouling your engine only to leave you stranded in deep space only for pirates that had been pre-alerted to your circumstances to pick you up?”  Belle asked, raising a single eyebrow.

Kaleek sighed, running a single hand through the hair at the side of his head.

“Significantly less funny.  I think I understand your point.  I can probably help with the basics as soon as Kat ascends, but don’t expect me to stop any sort of serious hacker.  I mostly use security software bought in open marketplaces so it’s nothing special or truly powerful.”

“It would be appreciated,” Kat chimed in.  “None of us really have a whole lot of information about the galactic community except through my conversations with you and the small amount of data that Jaalin and Dorrik have relayed, and you know them.  They want to keep us as ‘culturally pure’ as possible.  No outside influence, the whole shebang.”

“Anyway,” she continued, nodding toward Belle as she tried to redirect the conversation.  “Not that I entirely dislike the wild tangents this conversation has taken, but I think we were originally talking about Mr. Jackson.  I wanted to know if we had any idea where he was because things feel like they’re starting to come to a head.”

“Pretty sure the stallesp put a hit out on Kat in the Tower,” Kaleek chimed in.  “Nothing we can’t handle so far, but it’s pretty obvious that they are taking active efforts to track her down and knock her out of the competition for ascendancy.”

Belle frowned, lifting her can of sparkling water to take a drink only to pause, shifting her ire to the water for a second before responding.

“That is unwelcome even if it is not terribly surprising.  None of us expected Mr. Jackson or the stallesp to play by the rules, but if he is so unafraid of retaliation that he is willing to attack both in the real world and the Tower of Somnus, that is a bit worrying.  I think I must agree that we should prioritize tracking him down so that we can make an attempt to take him out.”

“Still,” she continued, “we must look for positive news where we can find it.  The fact that Mr. Jackson is still trying to take you down despite the threat of Consensus involvement means that he is not confident that his level advantage will carry him through.  He might have resumed clearing dungeons after you damaged his team, but I doubt he is moving anywhere near as quickly as you are.”

Kat grimaced.  Belle wasn’t wrong, but-

“He still has a pretty absurd advantage,” she replied.  “Every level you climb means one more dungeon to clear and the dungeons worth clearing are further and further apart.  We’re moving as fast as we can, and I genuinely can’t remember the last time our team stopped to take a rest, but it still feels like our best won’t be fast enough.”

“Then we have a plausibly deniable asset kill him,” Belle said, finality weighing heavy on her voice.  “The trackers on him have traced him to South America.  He’s shown up in a number of places in the Amazon as well as Rio De Janeiro.  Right now we are trying to ramp up the number of informants and observers we have in the area, but none of them have actually caught sight of him.”

“What about the agents we already have inserted into Millennium?”  Kat asked.  “Have we been able to get anything out of them?”

“Unfortunately not,” Belle said with a shake of her head.  “None of them are in the organization proper, just subsidiary groups that don’t officially have connections with Millennium given that their samurai teams are all officially labeled as criminals.  Given that our connections are stronger in the Chiwaukee area, almost all of them are either here or St. Louis.  We currently don’t have anyone keeping track of him in South America.”

“So you’re blind?”  Kaleek questioned, turning his attention back to where Hans had tackled Michelle for not throwing her tennis ball in time.  The big wolf stood atop her, mercilessly licking her face as she tried to squirm to freedom.

“We’re blind,” Belle agreed with a sigh.  “We’re doing everything we can to rectify the situation, but at this time I have no idea where he is, what he’s doing, what level he’s at, or who his allies are.”

“Crap,” Kat replied, a sentiment that earned her a series of exhausted nods.

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