"Likewise, you can't be an effective ruler if you don't have any way of backing your claim to leadership by enforcing consequences on those who refuse to follow. And the consequence doesn't have to be death. There are fates far worse than death, take my word for it on that. The consequence could even be as simple as not getting what you want.
"On that topic, let's use Sokolova as an example. You're a Martian; you've heard her rambling about blessed visionaries and all that nonsense on the holovision, no doubt. Long story short, she's an idealist. The difference between her and other idealists is that she has a great big gun, and the means to use it, to help her bring about her strange, fucked-up vision of the solar system.
"But of course, not everybody thinks her vision is strange and fucked up like I and many other, normal people do. A lot of desperate, broken individuals actually like her vision. Some individuals who are even more desperate and broken share her vision. So they follow her and help her shape the solar system in her strange, fucked-up image – not because she'll kill them if they don't, but because they think she can help them out."
"So the point is..." Morgenstern began.
"The point is this: if nobody wants a ruler to rule, and there are no consequences for opposing him, then he simply won't rule," Frost concluded his verbal treatise. "And if by some fantastic twist of fate he does come to rule without consent or consequence, then he won't be ruling for very long."
In her own mind, frankly none of that had ever occurred to Morgenstern, or at least not in such apt wording. A lengthy silence took hold in the hovercar as she and the others took their commander's words into consideration.
"Smart," Wilkins spoke to bring closure to the political discussion.
"Not smart – it's just that forty-eight years is a long time to observe the world around you," Frost brushed him aside as he pulled the hovercar into the spaceport's drop-off point and prepared to disembark. The side doors flipped upward to bid the captain and his subordinates exit.
"If I were smart, laddie," Frost pointed out, "I wouldn't have brought my kids to this shitpile of a world."
Upon exiting the hovercar, control was relinquished to an onboard artificial intelligence. After Morgenstern retrieved the Alice pack containing all of their weapons and ammunition, the AI drove the vehicle to find a place to park.
To refer to the spaceport ahead of the quartet as such would not be entirely correct. The array of huge hangars overlooking the canyon adjacent to the city was a transport hub connecting to a colossal space station looming in low orbit overhead. Ion-powered passenger dropships and heavy cargo gravships would depart from and arrive at the hub on as regular a basis as a few minutes, coming into and being disgorged from any of the several pressurised, numbered hangars lined up at the port. Every day, hundreds of passengers would enter and leave the terminal ahead of them. Every day, self-driving cargo trucks would arrive at the loading bays with hundreds of tonnes of materials harvested from mines and quarries under Occator Conglomerate jurisdiction. Then they would depart the port loaded to the brim with pallets and crates brought to them from the gravships by mechanised power loaders three times the height of men and able to convey a hundred times the weight.
Frost could readily determine the purpose of nearly every arrival leaving the terminal at Ceres. Those wearing the mass-produced synthread clothing, the vast majority of them, were here with their families as immigrants searching for low-skilled work, of which there was no shortage at all out here in the Belt. The Conglomerate was more than happy to throw them into the mines or put them to work in the many foundries and massive manufactories arranged throughout over their territory, paying them a subsistence wage in return for their service. The scattered men and women wearing the suits were business representatives from other megacorporations, here as shareholders for the Conglomerate or to strike a deal with it. Frost could even tell which companies they came from just by the ties around their necks. The dark blue ties were from the Conglomerate. Dark green was the Wayland Company, Occator's most immediate competitor for metals and regolith. Brownish amber was Hachimoto High Energy, which plundered Saturn for its hydrogen and Titan for its methane lakes. Dark purple was Hermod Interplanetary Logistics, which held an effective monopoly on shipping all over the Belt and Frontier Space. There was even a representative from the Sparrow Corporation here, easily picked apart from the rest by his industrial white suit and black tie.
And standing as an island amidst the sea of ties, suits and cheap synthetic clothing, one blue tie stood out among them all. The owner and present wearer of the tie: a woman, with night-black hair tied into a bun at the back, skin pale as milk and two shimmering, grass green eyes embellished with dark eyeliner. She wore a dark grey suit, complete with matching high-heel shoes, and a golden, diamond jewelled ring was set on her right index finger. Not married, Frost determined, otherwise the ring would be on her handily entitled ring finger. A jewellery item ergo intended for personal decoration.
"Miss Bridger..." Frost was able to deduce the woman's identity following his curt inspection.
"We meet at last, captain Frost," Bridger spoke, being sure to stare him dead in the eye. "I have heard a great many things about you."
"As have I about yourself," Frost replied, returning the gaze. "Let me introduce you to my colleagues and the rest of your guard detail. These are officers Elena White, Magdalena Morgenstern, and Philip Wilkins."
Bridger's attention shifted away from Frost and settled on White's expression. Hers was the type of look that rested in between stoical hardness and bitter, seething anger. Internally, White was gritting her teeth together, desperate not to say something that could get her sacked or worse. So too was it hard for her to avoid saying what was on her mind right now about the indescribably vile corporate executive standing before her, to take a stand against what she loathed.
"You look like you have something you want to say, Miss White," Bridger noted.
"Nothing you haven't heard already, madam," White responded with a jovial tone. "I should add you have quite the reputation amongst the laymen of the security department."
Bridger's eyes narrowed and a quasi-smile started to grow on her face. "Out of morbid curiosity, what kind of ... reputation are we talking about?"
"I could tell you, but I wouldn't want to wilt the ears of an upstanding lady like yourself."
White stole the subtle smirk from Bridger's face for herself.
"White, we're here to keep her from getting killed, not to insult her with hollow quips," Frost intervened in the argument waiting to happen.
"You and I both know what you and your soldiers are here for, Captain," Bridger almost protested the captain's interdiction.
"First and foremost, Miss Bridger, is discretion," he groaned aloud. "And since you've now made it abundantly clear you have no damn idea what that means, it means keeping schtum about that particular matter until we reach Hygiea."
"Oh yes, how could I forget about the infamous bluntness of Captain Edward Frost..." Bridger spoke in a resigned tone, the kind of tone one might express when meeting one's mother in law. "Always speaking your mind with the softness of a hammer."
"I speak based on how I see the world," Frost came close to looming over Bridger, who stood a whole head's length shorter and was half as broad. "And if I don't like what I see, you'll be among the first to know about it. In that regard, it really is in your best interest to keep yer gob shut."
Frost could swear that he saw the corporate executive below him try to bug her luminescent eyes out of her head. "I'll keep that in mind, Captain."
After Bridger used her digital boarding pass to get herself and her faux bodyguards through the security gate, the trip to her yacht waiting docked at Proserpina Station would be via one of the passenger dropships. As he and his subordinates followed Bridger close behind her, Frost couldn't help but sprout a scowl at himself.
"And here I was, thinking I'd escaped this shit by coming to Ceres..." he mumbled
under his breath. This was definitely going to be a long and painful few days of mission to put up with.
"Oh cheer up, you miserable old billy-goat!" White noticed and nudged him. "It'll be fun! An adventure into the dark depths of interplanetary space, chasing fame and fortune!"
White's reassurances did not fulfil their intended purpose.
"Unless you plan on stealing from our Wayland hosts or myself, pirate," Bridger fused a glare onto White. "You shall find no fortune but what I'm paying you for your bodyguard work!"
~
CHAPTER THREE
Humanity as a species has come a long way since the days of scarcity. Through nuclear fusion we have now harnessed the raw power of the sun, making clean, reliable energy affordable for all. Robots populate our factories, our roads, our skies and our homes, labouring on our behalf as we pursue our dreams. And with new breakthroughs in quantum entanglement-based communications, we will soon be able to speak in real-time from across the interplanetary void. Just as our forebears once did from continent to continent, back in the days when Earth was the sole planet we lived on. And yet, there are many among us who recognise that we still have a long way to go. We need people we can rely on to bring the materials our growing species needs as we take our first baby steps into the stars.
Welcome to the Occator Conglomerate, a proud leader of the CEMI-100 stock exchange. Formed in 2055 as a joint enterprise between the Webley & Sears Metals Group, Argus HMC and Trautmann Astrofabrik, the Conglomerate is one of three major megacorporations operating on the Asteroid Belt's largest planetoid, Ceres. From our headquarters in Berlin, the heartland of the United States of Europe, we direct an enterprise worth $24 trillion that spans almost two thousand resource-rich asteroids. In addition, we are working with the International Treaty Organisation on the Ark Project to help mankind realise its dream of becoming a starfaring civilisation – just as we can help you realise your dreams.
For our workers, you'll get the chance to see the majesty of outer space with your own two eyes, and experience it by setting foot on worlds afar as part of one of our many projects. Whether it's as a surveyor exploring uncharted parts of the solar system, an engineer making sure our machines are in working order, a security contractor protecting the defenceless against the threat of piracy, or even a miner on the ground floor moving worlds, you'll be helping our company in our mission bring the future to the present. And with our guaranteed health package, insurance and relocation expenses fund, you'll be helping yourself and your family too.
THE OCCATOR CONGLOMERATE – WHERE DREAMS ARE FORGED
Sunday, 24 April.
LOCATION: Somewhere in the Asteroid Belt.
Aboard the Enigma, Danica Bridger's personal yacht.
WAAAK.
WAAAK.
WAAAK.
WAAAAAAK.
"Blow it out of your fucking arse...!" a bearlike voice snarled into a pillow, reaching toward the general direction of the squawking alarm clock. A heavy hand started to slam on the drawer table, eventually striking the clock into silence with a plastic thud.
The bedroom that Frost had been assigned was a modest accommodation measuring four metres in length and two in width, but a preferable indulgence to a crowded unisex barrack nevertheless. At least here, one would never have to worry about awakening in a miasma of sweat, flatus and other, indeterminable bodily fluids to the blaring of a bugle. Or so Frost had thought, before discovering that the alarm clock in this part of the ship had not been reset since their last passenger used it.
The aurescent gold digits embedded into the timepiece read 04:00 standard Earth time, the appendix necessary to disseminate the concept of time in the depths of outer space. When the grizzled old soldier caught sight of those digits, his face almost turned purple.
"What the hell kind of corporate executive wakes up at four o'clock in the morning on a bloody business trip?!" he growled through his shags of hair at the inanimate clock. The last time his beloved sleep was so rudely interrupted at this time in the morning, the awakening was followed by eight dead Martian commandos. One of those commandos went back to the Red Planet with a ball peen hammer sticking out of his augmented skull after it was bashed into a bloody lump of metal and meat.
Frost's furious question would go unanswered as he decided upon simply going back to sleep, bashing his head into the pillow with a muffled growl.
~
Three hours later...
LOCATION: Low orbit
10 Hygiea, Independent Systems League, Asteroid Belt
Day length: 27.623 standard Terran hours
Surface gravity: 0.0093g outside of local artigrav field; 1.02g within local artigrav field
Population: 2,535,382
The last time that Elena White had been aboard a yacht so luxurious as a craft built by none other than the Phaeacia company was almost a decade ago. The walls were bright glimmering white, the architecture sleek and symmetrical – White hadn't seen anything like it since the Ghoul's personal shuttlecraft. Even that still had a unique kind of rusted-out charm to it, much unlike the borderline pornographic opulence of Danica Bridger's private spaceship. Not that White could complain, for her years spent below ship decks in overcrowded bunks and hammocks among hundreds of reeking, burly men could never compare to the masterfully furnished and decorated double bedroom where she had just spent the night. Nor could she protest the luxuriousness of private spacecraft on a more general basis: much like the seafaring yachts of Mars and Earth, owning a multi-million dollar personal spaceship was all but limited to the realms of the super-rich.
For some reason, the potato-shaped asteroid of 10 Hygiea looming beyond the curved quartz glass window reminded White of a chicken nugget she had eaten once during a visit to a Katya's outlet, that Russian version of some 20th-century fast food restaurant whose name she couldn't remember for the life of her. The visible city lights growing from the dark side of the asteroid like luminescent mould only served to reinforce that particular comparison. Perhaps it was the bottle of scotch whiskey on the dinner table, a half empty glass of which currently rested in White's hand as she leaned back on the couch.
The smooth hiss of the door parting open turned her attention to behind her. Stepping into the common room of the ship was Danica Bridger herself, this time dressed in a lighter grey suit and wearing her blue tie. Her raven hair was unfastened, flowing down to her chest, and her make-up was noticeably absent. If White was going to tell the truth, there might have been a time where she would have been happy to take a woman like Bridger in for a one-night stand. Perhaps when she was younger and stupider, when she knew not what kind of a woman Bridger really was.
"Mornin', Madam Bridger," White greeted the lady and mistress of the ship, raising the bottle next to her. "Want some scotch I found?"
"The scotch you 'found' in my drinks cabinet, you mean..." Bridger stated in a disapproving tone, before suddenly shaking her head. "And who, for the record, drinks scotch at seven in the morning?"
"People with many, many demons telling them to kill everyone who bothers them," White said before taking another sip of the whiskey. "The crack cocaine-induced murderous breakdowns come for free."
Before Bridger could mutter a word in horrified reaction, the door opened once again. Frost, his hair still damp after a morning shower to wake him up, entered the common room with a tired scowl on his face.
"And while we're on the topic of murderous breakdowns..." White laughed at the sight. "You catch a good sleep, boss?"
"Fuck off," Frost grumbled in his usual tone as he made his way to the cupboards in search of breakfast.
"Does he always talk like that?" Bridger queried, face twisted in surprise at such casual profanity.
"Only when he speaks," White smirked. "He's a gentle guy, really. He won't bite – much!"
Bridger, wanting nothing of it, saw herself out of the common room with all due haste, without grabbing anything for breakfast. She muttered something under her breath; one
could only guess that her irritated ravings involved former pirates stealing her booze and soldiers with a foul mouth.
Soon, after rifling through the cupboards for a box of cereal, a china-ware bowl and what was apparently some almond milk, Frost acquired his modest breakfast and made his way to the table where his protégé was seated at present.
"Hygiea..." White started. "A place with ... rather mixed memories, if I'm to be perfectly honest. Some of my times here were great. Others not so. You ever been here, boss?"
"Once during the war," Frost answered her. "On a recon mission. Command had gotten word that some Martian Spezialaufklärer units were rigging the station with fusion bombs. They were planning to take out our ships while they refuelled during movements through the Asteroid Belt."
"And?" asked White.
"Turns out their intel was shoddy," Frost spoke. "It wasn't SA. It was a whole company of fucking marines. It's funny, because you never really find yourself dying to punch the idiots on scout duty until you and your squad come face to face with about a hundred pissed off power-armoured, plasmacaster toting cyborgs because they made a stupid mistake..."
"So what happened?" asked White.
"Well, the whole affair ended with a hundred dead cyborgs, one destroyed space station, ten less high-yield fusion bombs for the Martians," Frost explained himself. "Oh, and a much more handsome Lieutenant-Commander Edward Frost having to explain to the most pissed off admiral I've ever seen why exactly the refuelling station over Hygiea had suddenly vanished off the face of reality. This being after having to run like hell back to the corvette we came in on and burn through two thirds of our own fuel evading plasma and railgun fire from a light cruiser and two destroyers that came chasing after us. It's the only serious fuck-up of my career, certainly the most expensive if nothing else, and it wasn't even my fault. Funny, if you think about it, in a cosmic kind of way."
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