2 Change in Management

by RJ Johnson

  Corcoran could feel her body growing colder and colder. Whatever Palmetto had injected into her was burning its way through her veins, and it suddenly clicked that she was dying. Cassandra was right. No matter how much Corcoran did to avoid it, she was going to die and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

  Corcoran began to laugh. Tears of pain streamed out of her eyes as the poison worked through her system frying every bit of her nervous system. Her breathing labored, and her eyes dilated. Her vision burst into a thousand points of light and then….

  Palmetto listened to the Ambassador’s breath catch, ease, and she was no more.

  He stripped the Ambulance driver’s uniform off and typed quickly on his ArmBar. A new face fluttered on around his head and he exited the Ambulance quickly, closing the door behind him walking away.

  A team of doctors approached the Ambulance and opened the doors. Palmetto could hear the panicked shouts of the EMT workers when they realized who they were working on and what was wrong. He kept walking and never looked behind him, thinking about the next step in his plan. Announcing his candidacy to become Ambassador would have to be handled delicately, but he currently had the best political operatives on Mars on his team working right now to shape the influencer’s opinions of how the election should go. Direct democracy was so efficiently easy to corrupt.

  He chuckled as the limousine pulled up and he got in, thinking of Meade as they pulled away. He owed the runabout a bottle of whiskey and made a mental note to send him something good.

  Meade opened the box that was just delivered to him from a courier. It had been two weeks since the whole experience at the Zero-G fight championship and he was still receiving gifts and presents from well-wishers who knew the real story about what Meade had done for them all. After Laszlo’s disappearance, Roxanne had mysteriously come up with the funds to buy the Warlord’s casino and her gift to Meade had been an especially nice one.

  Meade read the note from Palmetto, grunting when he finished. He withdrew the bottle of scotch and read the label approvingly.

  “That’s an expensive bottle, even for you,” Emeline commented as she approached him from the other end of her bar. Before the Coalition Credit authority had shut down Laszlo’s DNA coder, Meade used his access to Laszlo’s accounts to buy off her debts, and thanks to Washington keeping his promise, the Coalition authorities no interest in keeping a local businesswoman down, so they removed their restrictions on her running the business.

  She grabbed the expensive liquor bottle out of his hands and examined the label closely. She placed the bottle behind the bar on the shelf with the rest of her top shelf liquor.

  “Hey!” Meade protested, “That’s mine!”

  “It’s two hundred credits a shot,” Emeline said. “I leave it with you and you’ll blow through it in one night.”

  He held up a finger as if to protest, but realized how quickly he would lose the argument. She wasn’t wrong.

  “Besides,” she added, “I plan on selling some to pay off your tab.”

  He grimaced, “Fine, but how about you at least refill the glass I’ve got? Seems cruel to leave me staring at the bottom of an empty glass when there’s free whiskey around to drink.”

  Emeline snorted and poured him another good belt of her whiskey, “Nurse that one. You got work tomorrow.” Emeline moved toward the other end of the bar where a group of moles who had just gotten off of work had signaled her for another round.

  Meade pushed the hat back on his head and chuckled. Thanks to his recent notoriety and apparent natural skill at investigating, Emeline suggested that he open up his very own P.I. business in the empty apartment above her bar. After thinking about it for a bit, he realized that there were worse ways to make a living (like fighting in the Zero-G Fight league), so he had taken her up on the offer just to see what he could do. He officially opened for business in the morning.

  The entrance to the Last Ditch opened and a Coalition officer stood in the doorway silhouetted in light. Meade turned and shielded his eyes from the bright light outside and saw it was Sarah. The three moles she had dispatched of during her first visit to the Last Ditch noticed her immediately and ducked their heads into their beers.

  She stared at them and jerked her head towards the exit. They sheepishly left their drinks behind and exited the bar quickly and quietly. Sarah watched them go, a faint smile tracing around her lips.

  Sarah turned and searched the room for him from the doorway. Meade waved at her to grab her attention and when she spotted him, returned the gesture. She made her way towards him as Meade quickly downed the drink Emeline had just poured for him. He wasn’t sure what to say to her. They hadn’t spoken at all over the last two weeks since the Coalition wanted to keep Sarah on lockdown while they debriefed her.

  He figured that she’d get out and come see him eventually of course, he just hadn’t figured on seeing her today. She limped over to him as quickly as her injuries allowed.

  “Nice to see you made it back on your feet,” Meade said approving.

  “Still got a ways to go,” Sarah confessed, “That weapon did a number on my internal organs. They had to regrow a kidney and lung. Took forever.”

  “Did they find the assassin?” Meade asked.

  She nodded, “Coalition MPs found him after the Arena was cleared out. He was a lackey of Laszlo’s who had been deep in debt to him.”

  “And the rifle?”

  “Experimental like we thought,” Sarah said. “Apparently it was powerful enough to cut through the three feet of duraplating they line the Ambassador’s viewing box with.”

  Meade whistled lowly, three feet of duraplating should have stopped anything short of a nuclear blast. He hoped that rifle and the plans to it were hidden far from the kind of hands who would use it again.

  “I have good news,” Sarah said hopefully, “I’ve been given my own Fast Attack.”

  A broad grin spread across Meade’s face, “Congrats Sarah, I know that’s what you’ve always wanted.”

  She returned a wan smile to him, “It’s the Coalition’s way of buying me off for falsely imprisoning my father and keeping their dirty laundry secret.”

  “Did they get your father out?” Meade asked gently. He knew that after what the captain had gone through in Enzeli, there might not be much of the man left.

  She looked up at him and bobbled her head back and forth, “They let him out, but he’s not the same. The specialists say they can regrow the neurons that were destroyed in Enzeli… but it’s all experimental and…” she sighed in frustration, rubbing her neck. “I don’t know, all I care about is that he’s alive. That’s all that matters.”

  “I’m happy to hear that,” Meade said genuinely happy to hear the old man would make it. “I’ll check in on him every so often while you’re out on patrol.”

  Relief spread over her and she nodded gratefully, “I’d appreciate that.”

  Meade opened his arms for a hug and she returned the gesture as they embraced tightly.

  “You take care of yourself Sarah bear,” Meade said.

  “You too Jimmy,” Sarah replied.

  They let go and separated, she squeezed his hands, turned and exited the bar as quickly as she had come into his life.

  Meade stared after her retreating form and wondered when he’d see her again.

  A sloppy red bar rag slapped the oaken bar next to him as Emeline approached with the bottle Palmetto had sent him.

  “I figured you might be right. You ought to at least get a chance to taste what Palmetto sent to ya,” she said opening the bottle. He turned to face her and looked at his brunette friend with curly hair, cute nose and almond eyes. For a second, Meade wondered why she was still single, but his mind was quickly distracted by the aromatic scent coming from his newly filled shot glass.

  “What do we toast to?” Meade asked as she placed a tumbler in front of her, filling it with a generous serving.

  “What about the new admini
stration who kindly paid for this bottle of expensive scotch?” Emeline said holding the tumbler.

  Meade grunted and shook his head. Palmetto was the new Administration, and he had run a particularly ruthless campaign over his rivals. The man had all the votes locked up before anyone even knew he was running. He shook his head and spat on the ground, he’d sooner toast the Consortium Elders than toast to Palmetto.

  “All right if not Palmetto,” Emeline said, “then what about your retirement as a Zero-G fighter?”

  Meade looked up at Emeline in the eyes and the briefest of smiles appeared on his lips, “Retiring World Heavyweight Champion Zero-G fighter, thank you very much.”

  Emeline laughed, and he joined her. While technically true, the ZFC league didn’t quite see it the way he did. Instead, the ZFC erased any reference to the fight Meade had taken part in and already scheduled a rematch for next month. The new bout between Chau and Greene was already being talked about and built up more than the last fight if that was even possible. Meade was banned from attending and he couldn’t blame the ZFC for that.

  “How about to your new career?” Emeline asked.

  Meade stared at the expensive whiskey in his glass and thought of everything he had gone through over the last few days. He thought about how nothing was in his control. He thought about how it was only by pure luck that his choices had avoided a dystopian future for every citizen on Mars.

  He thought about how long it might be before someone else tried to figure out the same algorithm that had powered Cassandra in the first place? He wondered how long it would take before someone else figured out that algorithm again and get that kind of power under their control?

  He stared at the whiskey and realized that he’d never be able to experience it he hadn’t taken a chance and said yes to Sarah when she walked through that door. Now he was infamous, had his own business and was on track to maybe making something of himself on this world. A week ago, Meade would have laughed in anyone’s face if they had suggested that.

  Now… well, if there was one thing he’d learned from all this, it was that the universe had a plan and trying to get in the way of it only got you hurt.

  Besides, they didn’t pay him to answer the big questions.

  “Here’s to staying out of trouble,” Meade said raising his glass, “and to a very profitable second chance.”

  They clinked their glasses together again and for the first time in a long time, Meade thought he knew what it was like to feel happy.

  Congrats! You made it to the end!

  Hi, and thanks for making it through my third ebook! I became an independent author because I love to write and I hope that the adventures I come up in my head are as entertaining for you to read as they are for me to write. There will definitely be further adventures of Jim Meade and his friends coming, so please check out my Author Page on Amazon.com and subscribe to my updates. You can also check me out on twitter @rickerkioz and “like” my page on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/TheTwelveStones) for all the details on when the sequels will be released!

  Also, please don’t be shy; send me an e-mail (rickerkioz@gmail.com) and tell me what you thought! If you really enjoyed it, please help motivate me and leave a review on Amazon/tell your friends/lend out copies. Indie authors like myself live and die by the amount of four and five star reviews we get, so every little bit you can do helps me eat!

  I have two other books for you to check out if you like. Following this is the first chapter of my other the sequel to Jim Meade’s Change in Management: “Rosetta: A Jim Meade Martian P.I. Novel” and a second series I started a few years ago that I think you’d enjoy, “The Twelve Stones.”

  I highly encourage you to click the links and check it out, or just keep reading for a sample. I’d really appreciate it if you did.

  Thanks for reading. Don’t forget to support independent authors!

  R.J Johnson

  May 2013

  Other Books by the Author

  Rosetta

  As an added bonus, I’ve also included the first chapter to the sequel to Change in Management, Rosetta.

  Here’s the synopsis:

  Murder, betrayal, the fate of Humanity... it's all in a day's work for Jim Meade: Martian P.I.

  In a slow orbit around the sun, just beyond Mars, a mining colony known as Rosetta houses thousands of Consortium citizens who mine the valuable ore Humanity uses for space travel. Over the last three years, Rosetta has grown exponentially, from a tiny mining colony, into an economic behemoth that threatens the delicate balance of power between The Consortium and Coalition - two nations who are still healing from a devastating nuclear war that turned Earth into a hellscape of hopelessness and despair.

  After a prominent scientist for The Consortium dies in an apparent accident, Jim Meade is hired by the victim's family to find out what really happened to their father Dr. Sanjay Sinjakama. There, Meade finds himself caught up in a power struggle between the diabolical CEO of Nebula Mining Dimitri Koschei, and Lazarus Rincon, the charismatic leader of a vicious cult.

  With the assistance of his friend and confidant (the beautiful Emeline Hunan), Meade races against the clock to find Sinjakama's murderer and prevent a catastrophic disaster that might mean the end of all life on Earth.

  You can purchase Rosetta for your Kindle here

  Enjoy!

  Chapter One

  “You think you’ve got enough to take it down do ya?” The man’s steely eyed gazed was fixed upon him, searching for something, anything that might give away what the slouching man sitting across the table from him held as hole cards.

  “I think I have more than you do,” Jim Meade replied, a sly smile spreading across his face. He pushed one hundred credits into the pot. “Strike that,” Meade added another hundred credits to his bet, “I know I have more than you do, and if you’d ever learn how to bet Reggie, you wouldn’t be so damned easy to read.”

  The miner’s face scrunched up in anger. Shaking his head, he laughs and throws his cards into the pile, “Take my credits you sunnabitch.”

  Laughing Meade raked the credits into his pile. Flashing his cards face up, he shows the miner across from him a busted straight draw.

  The miner’s eyes open wide in surprise and he began to curse loudly in Russian.

  With a wide smile, Meade winked at the miner. “Like I said, still better than what you were holding.”

  A loud bell rang and the mood in the noisy casino suddenly changed. Every game in the place suddenly came to a complete stop as every miner in the place looked up expectantly at the rotating electronic display positioned high above all their heads. The markets were about to open and the daily price of ORI was about to be announced. Depending on the price, a man might figure it was worth going to work that day, or whether to stay and hopelessly try and win his daily ration money from one of his fellow miners. The only person who won in that deal was the House - not that it ever stopped anyone from trying.

  Meade shook his head. The last two weeks worth of ORI prices had been in the toilet. It was getting to the point where a man couldn't make a living and ended up spending more on supplies for his mining than what he made in daily ORI mining, some men were spending most of their life awake just to stay ahead of the game. The Coalition just couldn't keep up with The Consortium's recent price fixing.

  A loud female voice came over the loudspeaker. "Daysol price of ORI is expected to sell at two hundred and fifty-two credits per troy ounce. Repeat, Daysol price of ORI is expected to sell at two hundred and fifty-two credits per troy ounce. The Coalition wishes you a good Daysol."

  The grumbling became audible. One disagreeable miner in the back yelled out, "Fuck those price-fixing Consortium motherfuckers." A roar of approval came up from the crowd as the miner's companions around him cheered and clapped him on the back.

  Meade shook his head. The Coalition was going to have a bigger problem than just a flagging economy on their hands sooner rather than late
r with these moles on Mars. Meade sighed, it wasn't his problem, and he'd best make his escape now before he had to spend the next five hours nodding sympathetically to all the men at the table and murmur appropriate disgust at the parties who might be at fault for the shitty economy.

  Meade had no use for politics. Consortium or Coalition, it was all the same to him. He had no loyalty. He was what Martian citizens considered a Runabout – someone who was born on Mars and hadn't taken citizenship in either of the two major powers still jockeying for control over people.

  Meade removed his hat and began scooping the chips into it.

  “Gentlemen, I hate to take your leave so early…”

  “Bullshit!” Ivan, another miner Meade had taken a fair amount of credits from that night, called out to him.

  “But, I’d rather leave you something to feed your families with tonight.” Meade finished. He moved towards the door as the men and women behind him began jeering. "Good Sol, ladies and gents."

  The ArmBar on his wrist buzzed again. Meade looked at the message and shook his head. It was bad enough it had rung in the middle of his hand. He had almost twitched while the miner was scrutinizing him for any sign of weakness. Fortunately, Meade had been playing cards long enough to be past such rookie mistakes. Almost anyways, Meade admitted to himself. No need to get overconfident. Rule number 15, and one he had the most trouble remembering.

  Moving over to the bar, he spilled the chips onto the bar in front of the gorgeous bartender wearing an outfit that would be better used to catch fish rather than cover a woman's modesty.

  “Another good night for you, yes?” A Ukrainian by birth, Roxanne had been scooped up early by The Consortium as an “entertainer” for miners living off of the Homeworld. After five years of torturous labor in the Consortium mining colonies on the moon, she had scraped enough together to pay off her contract to The Consortium. After being released from their service, she moved to Mars to work as a bartender in the largest casino on Mars. It was a better gig than the last one she had, and Roxanne liked to joke that she spent considerably less time on her back on Mars. Thousands of working men and women passed through the nearby spaceport every day, and it seems like none of them ever passed up a chance for a cold beer, a warm woman, or a friendly game of poker.