"One less thorn in my side, that's what!" said the Ghoul.
"Yeah, like the Occator Conglomerate can pose any serious threat to your almighty raiding fleet..." White rolled her eyes.
"Flattery? Seriously?" the Ghoul barked with laughter. "I thought I raised you better than that."
"If you'd let me finish, I'd go on to say that INTO's own fleets would be the ones to fuck you up the shitter," White smirked. "So whether Ceres goes up in flames makes literally no difference to your fleet at all. But the profits from attacking trade ships? You bet they'll fly right down the toilet."
"And yet you yourself just said that INTO would decimate my fleet regardless, so overall I'd say it makes no difference whether or not I send ships over there to help you take on the bloody Hound."
"Well then it's a good thing I happen to have Diana Sparrow herself here, and she's just told me not five minutes ago that if you send ships over to Ceres to help us out, she's willing to get rid of the bounty on your head!"
"I'm what-?" Sparrow found herself taken by surprise.
"Oh, really?!" the Ghoul hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. "If she's there with you, put her on!"
"Miss White, you cannot be serious..." Sparrow whispered.
"I am being serious," said White as she stepped off the platform. "Just get on this thing and fudge something. He won't know the difference!"
Leaving White undeterred, Sparrow placed herself onto the holoprojector before the displeased ethereal behemoth towering to twice her height and thrice her breadth before her.
"Hello there, mister White," she introduced herself in her usual high-class tone of voice.
"I've just been told by my bitch of a daughter that you're willing to scrub my name off your shitlist if I send my ships over to Ceres to help duff up the Hound," grumbled the Ghoul. "Is she serious, or is she just lying like she usually does?"
"I must disappoint you and say that she is indeed telling the truth," Sparrow enunciated. "I'm currently launching a secret programme to utilise privateers to disrupt enemy covert operations. In exchange for assisting me in this endeavour and throughout my campaign against the Hound and those who are backing his crusade, I shall see to it that your name is cleared and are given a second chance to integrate into society."
"And what if I don't want to 'integrate into society'?" the Ghoul queried. "Why'd you think I came out here to begin with? Because I wanted to be part of a democratic fake-out?"
"Because what you want is glory and satisfaction," said Sparrow. "What you want to do is be able to sit down on my deathbed and tell yourself, 'I've done everything I've ever wanted to do, I've gotten everything I've ever wanted and everybody will remember me for it'. And what better way to achieve glory than to be remembered amongst the saviours of an entire world?"
"There's just one small problem with your theory, Sparrow," the Ghoul countered.
"That being?" Sparrow questioned.
"Desire is a thirsty little bastard," the Ghoul could be seen smiling even through his mask. "Ply him with booze and you'll never get him to shut the fuck up."
With that, the mouthpiece for his mask opened up, he grabbed a huge stein and drank the contents in a single gulp. The Ghoul wiped his mouth with his jacket sleeve before the mouthpiece closed once again.
"I want two hundred million," he announced.
"In dollars?" Sparrow enquired.
"Yep," nodded the Ghoul. "No less than that. After all, I'm soon to be a hero, and as a result I'm now introducing a three thousand percent hero's surcharge to my services."
"You will receive your reward in a rather different form," Sparrow smiled. "The Iron Knights have a rather profligate habit of decorating the insides of their ships with vast amounts of gold and artwork. I believe the Hound is sending at least one battleship, plus escorts. If you were to fully salvage each and every one of his vessels, I believe the total value of such a haul would amount to at least six billion dollars."
The Ghoul blinked; when his eyes reopened, they were bright as spotlights and wide as dinner plates.
"Put my daughter back on!" he thundered, leaning forward with a near frantic expression behind the mask as he demanded his daughter's presence.
"Very well," Sparrow acknowledged, before turning to White: "Alright, the stage is yours once again."
The moment White stepped back onto the transmitter, the Ghoul began to chuckle. Then his mirth grew into tonitruous cackling, a laughter that rumbled as if coming from the bowels of a volcano.
"Y'know, Len..." said the Ghoul. "I always pegged you for a wimp who couldn't deal with the minutiae of outsiders' life!"
"What, you think I wept and cried like a little girl-pants when I split Bloodbeard's gut open like a watermelon?!" White snapped with a wide smirk. "You're fucking kidding! I ditched you because shooting unarmed civilians isn't a sport! But wankers who do just that? Shooting them is a different matter – but I couldn't kill you because for some baffling reason, it's apparently bad form to paste the bloke who blew his load up your mum nine months before you were born!"
"You've still got that silver tongue I always loved the most about you," the Ghoul stated. "And the saddest thing is I honestly didn't think you could trick me into helping you out! But there you go, dropping the most powerful fucking woman in the Solar System right into the boiling cauldron just to get me to help you out! And now I'm about to make the grandest haul that has ever been hauled! I'll be the talk of Wild Space forever!"
"Did you really think I'd bother calling if I didn't believe you'd fall for it hook line and sinker?!" White laughed. "C'mon Dad, I learned it from the best!"
"Alright then," said the Ghoul. "Your puny little world will get the ships you need. And guns. And warriors... And all that sweet, sweet loot..."
"You better calm your raging boner and get your pirates ready to roll," White remarked. "You've got work to do!"
Needing no further hint, the Ghoul's figure faded from the holoprojector. Several thundering footsteps ran into some distance before the speaker cut out.
"That was easier than I expected..." remarked Sparrow.
"That's because you don't know how to pander to him," said White. "The best way to deal with a pirate is with another pirate, and no son of a bitch in the Solar System can blag their way through a shitty situation like a pirate can."
"Ex-pirate, you mean," Sparrow corrected her, only for White to burst into sudden laughter.
"Once a pirate – always a pirate!" she reminded the spymistress. "Why do you think Frost keeps me around, to cop a feel?"
"Wait a minute..." Morgenstern's face stretched with curiosity. "If every machine is vibrating at the same time, does that mean everybody who owns a machine like that just heard that entire conversation?"
"That is correct," Sparrow informed her. "That way, information can be transmitted rapidly and efficiently across a large-scale communications network."
"So if somebody were to spit onto the speaker, would the speaker then transmit the spittle to every other machine as well?" Morgenstern asked with her usual stony expression.
"No," Sparrow answered with a wrinkled eyebrow. "Although quantum matter transportation is presently on Sparrow Corp's agenda."
"Gott in Himmel, what kind of fucked-up tech do you guys cook up in those labs of yours?" Morgenstern queried with a look of wonder across her face.
"You haven't seen anything yet, miss Morgenstern," Sparrow's face became straight as ever once again. "However, suffice it to say there's a very good reason why the company's motto is The Future Today."
"What's your real motivation here, Sparrow?" White enquired with the suddenness of a sniper bullet.
"I would have thought I made it evident during that altercation with Frost," Sparrow feigned confusion.
"I heard all that flowery bollocks," White brushed her off. "I also saw that Bridger thing you sent to chaperone us, whatever sort of creature it bloody well was. I'll be willing to say you and Mendoza cooked that thi
ng up in your labs and then planted it in the upper echelons of the security contractors, just so you could get to us. So you obviously want something out of us all. The obvious question is – what? Out of all the people in this solar system, why are you so interested in us four?"
"My precise mission will be elucidated in time, miss White," Sparrow deflected the question.
"You want to start a war with the Martians," White surmised the instant that Sparrow finished her response. "And in order to do that, you want to throw the four of us into a meat grinder."
"If I wanted to tackle the Martians in open conflict now, miss White, I would not need you to do that," Sparrow laughed.
"Then what do you want us for?" asked White.
The door ramp for the dropship started to close, leaving Winchester at the top of the ramp.
"As I've said, everything will become clear in time," Sparrow parted with a reassertion, making her way to the terminal with her bodyguards. The engines on the craft fired up with a roar, propelling the dropship toward the hangar exit and out of sight.
"Fucking damn it, that's not helpful at all!" White snapped, face screwed up. "Frost's gone through all this trouble and been told he has to go chase after and maybe even kill his own son, and Sparrow won't even tell us why!"
"You heard him in the meeting and on the yacht," said Morgenstern. "He'll do everything in his power to keep him alive. He wants to talk to him."
"Something tells me Ryan doesn't quite feel the same way," White stated in a grim tone.
"Come on," Morgenstern nudged her. "After we get the night off, let's go get drunk."
White sighed. "Even now, just as we're facing the biggest battle this city's ever faced, even now you want to spend the evenings getting wasted?"
"I already told you there's only two convenient ways to deal with an insanely shitty situation," Morgenstern grumbled. "And since murder is illegal here, that kinda narrows it down! Now, are you coming with me to the Oceanic or what?"
White sighed again. "Sure, why not? To be honest, it's not like I've got anything better to do this evening anyway."
"That's more like the Elena White I know," Morgenstern grinned. "Might not even spend all that long there. I picked up a nice bottle of General Grant while we were in New Seattle, was planning on drinking it before we got waylaid by arseholes. I'm now thinking of settling down for the evening after pres at Oceanic. Care to join me?"
"Throw in a couple boy-whores and I might think about taking you up on that offer," White stated with a smirk of her own.
"Oh no, I'm not paying for you to have two!" Morgenstern announced before her face stretched. "Wait a minute. You were planning on hiring one for me!"
"And here I was thinking your latest fuck-buddy Rourke had succeeded in turning around the Titanic before it hit the iceberg!" White spoke before bursting into laughter.
"Hey, I wasn't even planning on sleeping with him!" Morgenstern protested. "At least not while I was sober!"
"Any sort of inebriation disqualifies anyone!" White enunciated. "Except if the drunkards are paying for it! Now are we gonna get plastered or what?!"
~
Sparrow's next destination was Port Royal's city hall. The Occator Conglomerate's chief administration centre was still undergoing repairs from the attack in April, attested by the scaffolding and construction workers surrounding the breach in its southern side. The central tower pierced upwards into the air, a large circular windowed deck at its peak. Within this deck was the Conglomerate's conference room in the city, the present location of Alexander Kane and much of the company's chief staff. The nine elite, sumptuously dressed figures gathered around the polished white steel table in their egg chairs appeared on the verge of losing their collective temper, save for an uncharacteristically nervous Kane. The egg chair with the label D. BRIDGER was prominently empty, the holographic name tag remaining even though every man and woman gathered here was aware of her untimely destruction by the Hound's hand.
The bell for the elevator sounded, and out stepped Sparrow with the same sarcastic expression that characterised the woman's daily doings and attitude. She was followed by one of the agents that had come with her, the squadron of gene-soldiers watching over her having been ordered to remain at the bottom of the tower to watch over the elevator. The first executive to fall under her emerald gaze was none other than Henry Trautmann, the bald, obese chief executive officer of one of the constituent corporations that formed the Occator Conglomerate. The corporate bosses never turned their baleful glares away from Sparrow for but a moment, even as she set herself down into the egg chair opposite Trautmann.
"You've got a lot of nerve to send your stooge here and demand further expenses from us when you've already almost bled our coffers dry, Sparrow!" Trautmann thundered, slamming his fist onto the table with a clang. "After what we heard from Kane five minutes ago, you're lucky we haven't fired him and ordered his men to throw the both of you out onto your backsides!"
"Mister Trautmann," Sparrow stated. "If I was demanding anything of you, I wouldn't be here to have a conversation with you. If you don't know that by now, you haven't been paying much attention."
"Is that a threat, Sparrow?" Trautmann growled. "Because if it is, you can't expect me to not change my mind about my earlier statement!"
"It is no threat, Mister Trautmann, merely a statement of the obvious," Sparrow continued with a tilt of her head, almost revelling in the executive's ignorant fury.
"We are down twelve million tonnes of regolith, seven million tonnes of aluminium, nine hundred thousand tonnes of titanium and eight hundred thousand tonnes of carbon, all amounting to a total value of eight billion, two hundred and thirty one thousand, nine hundred and thirty three dollars!" complained Marcus Sears, the blond-haired mining mogul sitting to Trautmann's left. "The deficit in our gross annual production is mounting, our shares are down three percent, and now madam, you have the gall to give the go-ahead to allow a fleet of pirates into Ceres' sphere of influence, and then come back to us with your begging basket!"
"The interests of Earth are thirsty behemoths, that is an undeniable truth," said Sparrow. "But when have I ever fallen back on my promises in the past ten years?"
"Your promise was to ensure we would profit from your ventures across the solar system," the elderly Meredith Argus enunciated, adjusting her green cybernetic monocle. "And yet you have nothing to show for your efforts but more promises and a trail of dead bodies."
"Not many people would be privy to this sort of information, and I myself am no speculator," Sparrow assured, her eyes scanning the walls and ceiling for cameras, speakers or anything else that may transceive her words before proceeding: "But very soon, I do believe the Sparrow Corporation will be asking for a contract to expand its arms development and corporate security divisions and construct additional pharmaceutical centres. I believe the contract will be worth somewhere in the ballpark of two and a half trillion dollars."
The spymistress had to suppress a laugh as the eyes of each executive in the room almost bugged out of their heads. Even Kane who knew more about her machinations than most was visibly surprised by such an assertion from Sparrow.
"You talk nonsense," Sears declared. "Octavius Sparrow would never allow such a move to happen!"
"The interests of Octavius Sparrow will soon be irrelevant to the conduct of the Sparrow Corporation," Sparrow assured the room. "His health has been ailing somewhat lately – a matter which should come as a surprise to no-one, considering the man is a hundred and sixty eight years old. I do believe I have already mentioned the benefits of paying attention. Even I at one hundred and twenty four have been experiencing some rather unusual pains lately, even with the benefits of revitalite at my disposal. One can only imagine what my dear father might be going through at this moment. I suspect he will soon be looking for a successor to take over the family business."
"I don't know what it is you're cooking up, Sparrow," Trautmann continued to grumble, altho
ugh his eyes sold out his evident interest in her proposal. "But if you are certain that the Occator Conglomerate can profit from it as much as you claim..."
"A seventy five percent cut for the Conglomerate is what I promise, Mister Trautmann," Sparrow stated. "Along with a point three percent advance once operations begin, as a gesture of goodwill to help cover your company's losses over the course of this year."
The executive exhaled a grumbling sigh. "Very well Sparrow, we will stand behind your latest venture. But screw us over, and you will be the first to learn of our wrath!"
"A fair bargain," said Sparrow.
A flanged chirrup sounded from Sparrow's arm, a cyan screen lighting up beneath the sleeve of her suit. She rolled it back to reveal a wristband computer attached to her, a communicator linking back up to her yacht docked at Proserpina Station.
"Director-General," an electronic voice came back to her. "Thermal telescopes have detected a large engine burst from Jupiter. The reactor signatures suggest that the ships that produced them originated from the Martian Navy."
"How many of them are there?" asked Sparrow.
"At least three capital ships, plus as many as thirty escort vessels. There's no question that it's the Hound, Director-General."
Sparrow's eyes flickered to the executives around the table, all visibly unnerved at the mention of the Hound of Sokolova save for Kane.
"How long do we have before they reach Ceres?" asked Sparrow.
"They have accelerated to forty-three thousand metres per second," the response came back through. "Data estimates that they will arrive in approximately seventeen days."
"Thank you," Sparrow ended the transmission, and the screen went black as she rolled her sleeve back down. She turned to face the executives: "I do believe Kane has elaborated on our plans for the defence of Ceres from the Iron Knights' onslaught. I understand that pirates were mentioned, judging from the looks of unbridled anger you all gave me when I walked in here."
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