Stepping Stones (Founding of the Federation Short Stories Book 1)

by Chris Hechtl

  Both methods had been found to have issues, but they'd stubbornly stuck to it. Last year they'd turned out their first shell; it was two kilometers long and a perfect sphere. Some of the opposition media had dubbed it Jack's death star. Jack had ignored the jibes.

  The Bernall sphere had been a costly project however, and to subsidize it he'd sold shares on the open market. ESI had bought many of the shares up, so much that he'd been alarmed and stopped the planned sale of additional shares.

  “We're still getting protests groundside about the orbital smelters boss,” Jacky said shaking her head as she entered his office.

  “Come in why don't you,” he said with a wry twist of his lips. Jacky was a minx, all of one hundred sixty centimeters in her pantyhose feet. She tried to show off her legs, but she really didn't have that going for her. She was a lovely young woman, and they had enjoyed her name being so close to his for a time before growing tired of it and settling into a friendly playful attitude.

  She paused, then snorted. “I will since I'm already here and you just invited me,” she said.

  “Vampire,” he teased as she went straight to the coffee pot. Obviously she'd been up burning the midnight oil again. She did her best work at night he thought patiently. It didn't set well with Rayne however.

  She held the pot up, looked at it, then him. “I was going to say something about pots and colors since you lack so much sun lately, but …,” she shrugged and then poured herself a cup.

  “Touché,” he replied with a smirk as he picked up his own mug. It was cold so he set it down after a sip.

  “Refill?”

  “It's cold,” Jack replied with a shake of his head.

  “See what leaving it alone too long does for you? You know coffee is still expensive, Jack,” she scolded, tisk tisking as she dumped his mug out into the small sink, rinsed the mug out and then refilled it with coffee.

  “The price is coming down. It'll stabilize in another year or two,” Jack said with a shrug. Which was true; the company had its own orbital farms now, he thought as he took the cup from her. She sat on the edge of his desk. “To what do I owe the dubious pleasure, oh mistress of mischief?” he asked, then took a sip.

  “Cute,” she replied, shaking her head. Ursilla Lagroose had tried to set them up but she wasn't into guys. It had taken some patient explaining to clue his normally observant mother into that fact.

  “The protests for one,” she said. “But I found something interesting. We're the target of the protests, no other company.”

  “Interesting,” he murmured.

  “I'll say. But it gets better. A lot of it is union crap. We normally ignore that. We picked up some chatter about a group trying to get onto one of our platforms to stage a protest. We've got tight security so we're watching for it at the docks. But one of my techs dug into where the chat rooms. They are set up on a server cluster. Two of them groundside, one in Europe, one in North America. And you'll never guess who owns them,” she said with a slight grin over her cup. She held it by the rim daintily as she took a sip, eying him the whole time.

  “I'm thinking Pavilion but that would be too obvious. So ...”

  “Close. One was set up as Earth First as a front. But we traced the IP; it was pretty sloppy of them to leave all the coding right there on their server. Once we got in, the hackers did some digging and found that the servers are old hardware bought by, get this, ESI.”

  “I see,” Jack murmured thoughtfully. “Them again.”

  “Indeed.” She nodded at his thoughtful look. “Oh, did legal warn you about the subpoenas?”

  “No …,” he drawled, shaking his head. “What about?”

  “More nuisance suits,” she replied with a grimace as she set her coffee cup down. Legal is in the process of getting them squashed or dealt with. But I had my people get the names of the law firms. I've been wondering about the suits; we're getting all sorts of paper cuts from them recently. So, I had my people compile a database.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing yet beyond a couple of suspicious connections. Three of the suits are being run by the same firm.”

  “Sloppy of someone somewhere,” Jack said thoughtfully. He picked up his cup and took another sip. “Someone wants my attention. I'm not sure why,” he said.

  “Why not? You're the big guy, so someone's setting up a David and Goliath situation. Everyone roots for the underdog. So, if you slap them down, you get bad press. Ignore them, again, bad press since you come out like you don't care about the little guy and his concerns.”

  He grimaced. She was on target there. Probably why she was such a fiendishly good public affairs person. She was the company's version of a secretary of state.

  “We've also had a run on the shares again. Luigi Irons called yesterday. You were busy so the switchboard routed it to me.”

  Jack frowned. Why hadn't they left him a voicemail he wondered? He cleared his throat to ask, but she held a hand up. Knowing eyes glimmered at him. At times it was eerie how she could read his mind like that. “I asked to talk to him if he ever called,” she said. He opened his mouth and closed it. She did like to make contacts everywhere he noted. “Anyway, he said someone's been trying to buy the Irons family stake out.”

  “Stake …,” he frowned, thinking of their home.

  “Not on Mars, I'm talking about their shares. Their company shares,” Jacky replied.

  He made an O face then scrubbed at his jaw as he recovered. “I see.”

  “So …”

  “So, I think someone's making a move. The suits are publicized right?” She nodded. “As is the sabotage, right?” Again, she nodded, this time with a grimace. “But we haven't had any major setbacks. But the media has made it out as something big each time. They've kept it in the paper, right?” Again she nodded. “And each time the public shares have taken a hit.”

  She nodded, this time thoughtfully. “And someone's going around trying to buy up as many as they can. And we happen to know who tried to do so earlier. Which makes me wonder if they are behind this again or someone else? Or is this a team play?”

  “Boss?” Jacky asked, eyes troubled. “I don't like where your thoughts are trending. But it sounds …”

  “Like it is fishing. Full of holes,” Jack murmured, turning to the view screen. His office didn't have a window; the station was spinning slowly to simulate artificial gravity. He hadn't like the view; it'd gotten him sea sick so he'd gone with a view screen and fixed camera. He watched the night sky, thinking fast.

  “I can look into it. See if it's ESI,” she said slowly.

  “Don't. You'll tip your hand. Stick with the current inquiries. I'll call Luigi and ask him if he has a callback number,” Jack replied. “Once I get it, your black ops elves can do a bit of digging.”

  She nodded, getting off the desk. “Understood.”

  “Good. I think we're going to have to do something about this though. Something I don't like.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “And that is?” she prompted when he didn't come out with it right away.

  He grimaced. “Take a risk.”

  She crossed her arms. Since when did you not take a risk, was written all over her face. She tapped a toe. His grimace deepened. “I know, I know. But this is something else entirely. We have to do something I'm not going to like in order to bait the trap.”

  “Hmm,” she said slowly. “Do tell me more,” she said with a slow growing grin.

  He shook his head. Her smile congealed slightly. “Not until I'm sure. But I've got some calls to make. You do too.”

  “Aye. You're really not going to tell me?”

  “You'll have to wait and see,” Jack retorted as she headed for the door. She sniffed and showed herself out.

  >---O---<

  “It was a lawyer, Jack. I don't know who; they kept it short. I've been getting emails for months now.”

  “Ah, I see,” Jack said, nodding to Luigi's holographic image. The great thing a
bout being in Mars orbit was that they had very little time delay issues to deal with.

  “It looks like someone's getting cute. Opening moves,” Jack mused.

  “If they are going after me and Mario, then it's more advanced than opening moves. They should know we'd talk to you.”

  “Not the way we've played up your pulling out to start up your other ventures.”

  “True,” Luigi replied with a nod. “I wanted to tell you myself, I'm stepping out of the limelight.”

  Jack's eyebrows flew up in surprise. “Are you serious?”

  “As a heart attack. I had another last week.” Jack's face made an O of surprise. “I'm fine, but my doctor is insisting I reduce my workload. Betsy is also insisting it is time to retire.”

  “I'd do it in stages if I were you, Luigi. You are too active to just up and quit. The planet might stop rotating or something,” Jack quipped.

  Luigi snorted. “I think so too. Betsy would tell us both we're being stupid, and the universe will get along just fine without me.” Jack felt all sorts of painful emotions that brought up. “I'll ease up a little at a time. Let the next generation step up and shine. It's past time I suppose. What about you? Get anywhere with Aurelia?”

  Jack snorted. “From this far apart? Hardly,” he replied with a grimace. “Sometimes I wonder why we ever got married. Well, other than to keep the slavering hordes of female admires at bay—not that it did. Or keep my mother happy, which it did for all of a day or so.”

  “Still on you about your contribution to the next generation?” Luigi asked with a grin.

  “Yes,” Jack replied dryly. “A bit. I know she's put a lot of her weight on Aurelia, so she shouldn't complain that we're both so busy.” he shook his head. “But she does anyway. We'll figure it out. Eventually.”

  “I'd start by trying to get you two in the same room,” Luigi replied with a shrug. His fingers flew as he typed up an email. He then hit enter with a flourish. “There, I've forwarded to you the emails I got, plus the caller's stats and IP. I hope you can do something with it.”

  “Thanks Luigi. Give Betsy and the brat pack a hug.”

  “I will. Later. I've got a date with a lady. We're going to watch the sunset. She wants to go camping somewhere on the planet next month,” Luigi said shaking his head as he reached for the disconnect.

  “Good luck with that,” Jack said with a chuckle as the connection terminated.

  “He do that or you?” Jack asked, looking up. When he didn't get an immediate reply, he cleared his throat. “Athena, did you disconnect the call?”

  “Negative. Call terminated by Doctor Irons’ office,” the A.I. responded distantly.

  “Understood,” Jack replied with a nod as he rose to his feet. “Get his emails to the forensics team Jacky assembled. Look into it yourself if you have the spare processors and time.”

  “Command understood,” Athena replied.

  “And remind me to work on your personality a bit. We need to warm you up some more. Make you more ... human I guess you could say,” he said after a pause.

  “Understood. The idea has been entered into your to do list, sir.”

  “Good. Lunch time,” Jack replied with a wave as he exited his office.

  >---O---<

  Jacky grinned as she caught up with him in the cafeteria. “We hit pay dirt,” she crowed, practically bouncing.

  “Oh?” Jack asked, wiping his mouth with the linen napkin. He set it down. He preferred a light lunch over the pizza the rest of the masses seemed to always enjoy. A panini was filling enough for him.

  “They didn't even try to hide it. We thought they'd go through a dummy corporation, but apparently someone didn't know to do that, or just didn't care. It's Isella, Grant, and Ward. A legal firm that represents a few interesting groups including a couple of think tanks, Earth First, and ESI.”

  “I see,” Jack replied.

  “It still could be a bait and switch from Pavilion. Fish in troubled waters? Get you to go after an innocent party while they sit back and gloat?”

  “I don't know. Something tells me this isn't their style. Too blatant,” Jack replied, rising to his feet.

  “I'll get that, sir,” a tech said, taking his tray.

  “Okay,” Jack said, ignoring the suck-up. It wasn't really, or at least he hoped it wasn't. The guy nodded as he went to the recycler.

  “IGW, do a full scope. Passive,” Jack ordered.

  “Passive?”

  “I don't want to trip any alarms. This might be a trap,” Jack replied.

  Jacky nodded. “Ah, gotcha,” she said, pointing a finger at him. “I'll tell the elves to stick to the black part of their name.”

  “Cute,” Jack replied with a shake of his head. She left humming a tune. He did his best to ignore it, the last time she'd done that it'd gotten stuck in his head, and he'd had to track her ass down to find out what it was. Athena had been stumped. Of course he probably hadn't gotten it right, he shook the thought off.

  The black ops elves had been named by Jacky due to her diminutive size and her love of a certain web comic called Sluggy Freelance. The comic was ancient, but she'd dredged it up from the archives for some odd reason and still posted images from it from time to time. He had to admit, some of the humor had gotten him in stitches a time or two.

  >---O---<

  Jacky reported in an email that she had received a report from Talia; the black ops elves had cleared the board of directors. Jack, however, was not so sure. Back room deals were normal, golden parachutes … The enemy knew a bit more than he liked.

  Besides, he hated that a third of his board members were representatives of investors, not people who did anything with the running of the company. Not department heads like Roman, Trevor, Jacky, and the other department heads who had something emotionally invested in the company, which was why he paid them in shares as well as credits. They also knew they had full access to the company's medical aquim, including the latest generation of anti-aging. Many of them weren't going anywhere.

  The investor members of the board were another story. They changed hands periodically as various concerns sold off their investments to other parties. It was annoying to have to deal with new faces, to have to know what their agenda was and what buttons to push and those to avoid.

  >---O---<

  The more the black ops elves and others dug, the more it looked like ESI was a giant, a conglomerate of various corporations too big to fail or take on. They had trillions of credits in their war chest, an army of lawyers and accountants. Their board was represented by a who's who of powerful people, all representing terrestrial industrial, energy, and medical corporations or concerns.

  “Do they want to put the genie back in the bottle? Because that ain't happening,” Talia said when she finished her report. “Boss, this is big, very big,” she warned.

  “I know. Some of them are our best customers,” Jack said, picking up the tablet. Talia was the leader of Jacky's black ops elves. She was a talented investigator and hacker. She was also slim and unlike Jacky, tall. He studied her for a moment then laid eyes on the report.

  “This is big and dangerous. Some of it is tied to Ethiopia and the North African countries that got burned in the Beanstalk incident. It's about revenge too,” Roman warned.

  “And it's not helping that we've had a slew of accidents,” Jacky said with a grimace. Roman nodded, but his face was tight.

  “I know,” Jack said. Roman had given him a private report on the incidents. Some had to be genuine accidents, space was a dangerous place. But not all. He knew some thought Roman was paranoid. He was a security chief; that went with the job description. But there was that nagging old saying, once is accident, twice is happenstance, and three times is enemy action. They were well past three in his eyes.

  “We're overextended,” Jacky warned. “We need to sell off some of the ventures. I know you've wanted to move out of Earth space for a while now, but that is where our primary market is. I
think we should divest interests elsewhere. Scale back …”

  Jack waved a hand. “We'll talk about that with the board. Good work both of you,” Jack said. “Be ready to present this to the board when we meet tomorrow.”

  Roman grunted. He hated the board meetings, which was why he usually gave Jack his proxy and went about the real business of keeping the company alive or so he said. Jack believed that he just hated squirming in the chair like a little kid in the principal's office.

  “Talia, keep your people digging.”

  'Of course.”

  “Jacky, work on the spin but don't spin it so much that people start getting suspicious. Keep it light. We've had a bad week, that sort of thing.”

  Jacky nodded. “Gotcha.”

  He nodded sagely back. Some of her people had dropped the ball when pressed with questions lately, but he could trust her to get them inline.

  “Roman, step up security. I'll get our computer people to do the same,” Jack said. He wished the elves were all packaged in one A.I. like sci-fi buffs still insisted could happen. He knew it wasn't possible though.

  “Go on, get back to work,” Jack said, waving them out.

  Talia took off like a shot; she always hated being in the boss's office. Something about being on the carpet and the bearer of bad news or more likely the principal's office, Jack thought, lips twitching in a suppressed smile as he echoed his previous thought.

  Jacky smiled and left, but Roman lingered. Jack waited until Jacky was past Sylvia his receptionist before he cleared his throat.

  “Yes, boss?” Roman asked as the door shut, practically in his face.

  “Stay. I've got a project for you,” Jack said, pointing. “One you aren't going to like.”

  “Oh. One of those,” Roman said with fatalistic eyes.

  “Yeah. And we're going to keep it under wraps,” Jack said, turning his security system back on.

  >---O---<

  “You want me to do what?” Race demanded, eying the guy. “You're not serious,” he demanded.

  “Sure we are. Now is the perfect time to sell off your shares! You'll make a handsome profit, enough to retire anywhere in the world you'd like!”