by Jason Letts
Tris leaned toward the window to see the bright green puff sticking out of the azure waters of the ocean. As they prepared to land, Tris cringed at the meager airport, which consisted of just a few shabby looking buildings and an unpaved runway. Instead of dozens of planes and lots of people, Tris saw only two small craft, but no one was around either of them.
“This is what you call a transportation hub?” Tris muttered.
“A few ships leave from a dock, as well, but I catch your drift,” Emry said. “But really, there are only a few places around the world that can match Cumeria, and this isn’t one of them.”
Even with the thick padding and the belt, the rough landing nearly threw Tris onto the floor. Her hair was a mess by the time they slowed to a stop, and the captain came out with an apologetic look on his face.
“Beg your pardon about that. Normally it wouldn’t take more’n an hour to fill up, but here I think a safer bet’d be two,” Tenny said, his arms crossed around his thick middle.
After waiting a while, her restless legs begged for movement, and out the window the island seemed pretty quiet and safe.
“Can you help me get the steps down? I’d like to take a look around,” she said to Emry, whispering because Jeano was still asleep beside him.
“Don’t wander out of sight,” he said once the hatch was open and the warm air started to rush in. Although they’d been flying for most of the cycle, they’d only just caught up with the night, which meant the beautiful colors would become even more vivid when the light strengthened.
“I’ll be fine,” she demurred.
Although she heard the noise of what sounded like boats or dock-workers in the distance, Tris was unable to find another living human no matter where she wandered. The airport buildings had grown rusty, with plants sprouting through cracks in the cement flooring. Paths covered in reddish needles led in different directions through the thick pine groves, which concealed birds making cackles and calls she’d never before heard. It was remarkably exhilarating to be exploring a new land, and Tris wondered why she’d never done it before.
Peeking around from behind a tree, she spied a giant three-foot-tall crab sunning itself on a rock near the shore. Its pincers looked like it could hack off her leg, so she ventured farther down the shore before settling on a spot to touch the water. Living up to its name, the Still Sea hardly moved, even when she put her hand in, but the warm water and secluded atmosphere offered peace and beauty she’d never known at the crowded Cumerian beaches.
Sensing that her time ran short, she retraced her steps and returned to the plane, where she found that the steps were still down and everything appeared to be waiting for her. She ducked into the cabin, thinking about how she would describe what she’d found to her liaisons, and immediately noticed a noxious smell.
Turning to the cabin, she spotted Emry and Jeano slumped in their seats.
“Are you guys ready to go?” she asked. Feeling like it would be acceptable to wake them, she gave Emry a shake. His head rolled to the side, revealing a deep gash in his neck that dribbled blood onto his suit.
Tris screamed at the shock of it, glancing at Jeano and finding he was similarly limp, despite having only a few puncture wounds in his neck. Gasping for breath, she staggered back against the side of the plane’s cabin. The horror of it hadn’t sunk in yet, much less the implications.
“Tenny!” she wailed, fighting back tears and staggering to the cockpit. She only had to peek into the cockpit to see that he’d borne the worst of it. His torso leaned into view, and his head was nearly detached and hanging. Blood covered the plane’s control console.
She shut her eyes and fell back, unable to comprehend how she’d fallen into this nightmare. At some point she’d begun to sweat. She didn’t move for a moment, nothing moved, and then the realization slammed into her.
Tris was alone and defenseless in the vicinity of a killer.
CHAPTER 5
They were waiting for him. Accompanied by his assistant, a young boy named Skuire fresh out of the academy, Lowell armored up for his quarterly earnings report. He’d deliver his address in front of Carlisle and the board, but investors would be on the line as well as employees, journalists, and a few outright enemies waiting for him to slip up.
“Cost-profit analysis,” Lowell requested, adjusting his suit in his office.
“Right here.” Skuire handed over a sheet of paper filled with colorful graphs and charts.
Lowell had loved delivering his earnings reports when they consisted of growing revenue, a clear dominance of the field, and jokes that conveyed complete confidence, but times were different now, and any number of traps could catch him if he veered even a little off course. He cringed at the analysis showing flat revenue and a paltry amount of earnings per share, but those were only a few of his problems.
“Market portfolio,” Lowell said, receiving a thin folder and glancing at its contents.
“Good luck,” Skuire said as Lowell headed for the door.
“If it were about luck, I wouldn’t be where I am today.” He let the boy take whatever meaning from that he would, but deep down he knew he couldn’t be this unlucky.
Within moments he was strolling into the battlefield at the top floor, greeted by tepid smiles and applause from those present. He parked himself at the head of the table, his family’s sword in reach before him.
“Despite rumblings and kettle-banging about alternative energies, I think it’s more than safe to say that gas power remains the driving force in the Cumerian energy market and will continue to perform that role for the foreseeable future,” he explained after recapping the numbers.
Looking around the table at the old bags of bones that comprised his board of directors, none of whom were moved by any soaring rhetoric after learning investors would be walking away with just a few count per share, he didn’t blame them for their interest in money. But what he missed were the days when they all felt they were building an empire together. Once that chase ended, their sense of purpose vanished.
“How do you predict the market will react, Mr. Bracken?” a journalist asked over the speaker positioned on the center of the table.
“I can’t see the future,” Lowell said in a way that had used to elicit chuckles, “but I think investors who have stuck with us for generations understand that the value of our company and the certainty of its success don’t hinge on a single report. It turns on the success of Cumeria, where we’ve helped make sure virtually every citizen has access to reliable, affordable energy produced right here in the ClawLands. That’s not something I could say when I started.”
The men around the table scanned their reports and passed whispers, some nodding at him out of respect, if not approval. Carlisle, his cane leaning against his chair, had yet to let anything pass underneath that fading blond mustache of his, giving Lowell pause. Another board member, a heavy man named Oran Jorgund who had a number of dark spots on his face from sun damage, spoke up.
“What about finally moving to capture the gas escaping through the Boiling Sea? There’s a gold mine sitting right off our shores,” the man said. It was an issue that came up at least once a year.
“Harvesting the gas, either at the ocean floor or the surface, has long been a dream of Bracken Energy, but for now our tests pronounce it prohibitively expensive, wasteful, and even dangerous. Every capture pod we try to sink down to the bottom of the sea comes back mangled and shredded by unknown creatures. More than one man has died. And gas floating to the surface is too unpredictable, requiring pod widths of several square miles for a small portion of the emissions,” Lowell explained.
“It would take years to construct, but we could make that investment.” Oran shrugged. Easy for him to say; all of his wealth wasn’t tied up in the company.
“The chances of seeing a solid return on that investment are extremely slim,” Lowell said, hoping to leave that topic behind.
“Then maybe we need to explore increasing
our productivity here by expanding the well-documented reduction in gas passing through the Claws,” Oran argued, his jowls swaying.
Lowell leaned back and put his hand over his mouth. These were simple questions, and kindly put compared to what they could’ve been, but nobody listening was ready for the bold vision he had planned for Bracken. How could he tell a roomful of men who had made their fortunes off of gas that they were now going to turn their backs on it?
“Until the proper research is done, widening the fissures in the Claws, either using explosives or other means, amounts to an unpredictable gamble with our resources and products,” Lowell said, leaving out how trying to set off explosions beneath Iyne’s crust seemed a good way to blow the planet apart.
After a few more easy questions, Lowell began to think he’d made it through the meeting unscathed. Nobody would be doing cartwheels out of the room, but nobody would be proclaiming the death of Bracken, either. Or they wouldn’t have if Carlisle hadn’t decided to make his contribution at that moment. Shifting in his chair to face Lowell head on, Carlisle casually extended his hand as if he were going to ask about the weather.
“What about some of your unexpected absences lately? Are they because of your health?”
Lowell’s blood ran cold. Setting aside how Carlisle even knew about the attack or his time in the hospital, it was inexplicable why the man would choose to bring it up during a public earnings report. News of an ailing CEO would be enough to send their stock price into a downward spiral.
Freezing quickly enough to mask the rage underneath his skin, he chuckled, knowing anything less than a lighthearted response would set off alarms.
“I’ll admit I did spend a couple of cycles in bed recently, and let’s just say I got some very close examinations from someone with an impressive nurse outfit who can testify that I’m in impeccable health,” he said, finally getting a warm reaction from the room. Chortles even came through the speaker as Carlisle smiled and nodded.
Lowell’s phone on the table started to vibrate, and he took it as his cue to make his escape.
“Unless I’m mistaken, we’re all done here, right?” he asked. “Great. We’ll continue to push for more exports to Lyria and pursue aggressive pricing strategies that should box in our competitors. But most of all we’ll work tirelessly to provide excellent quality and service to consumers. People are our business.”
He got the family creed out of his mouth as fast as he could. Since it’d been used to close every major investor meeting for the past hundred years, omitting it would be a catastrophe unto itself.
Scooping up his materials and shaking a few hands on his way out, he could hardly wait to hunker down in his office and answer the message that had come in. But during the elevator ride down with a few of his colleagues, his thoughts drifted back to Carlisle and what amounted to an open act of insubordination. Carlisle’s boldness was telling Lowell that he knew something, maybe even about the Ma Ha’dere, and he would have to do something to remind the man of his place.
“How’d it go?” Skuire asked from his desk outside the executive suite. Although the chipper boy could be trusted with some measure of confidence, Lowell’s mind hadn’t yet detached from the meeting mindset.
“Flawless,” he said, closing the door behind him.
Passing the chic chocolate-colored leather chaise and the shiny gold baubles imported from Horux, Lowell slid into his favorite chair, a ratty old recliner hidden in the corner that he’d had since he’d first moved out of his parents’ home.
Grasping in his pocket for his phone, he wondered what his next move would be. The messages he’d been exchanging with Jim Bolt had been painfully delicate, and he treated the conversation with the precision of a neurosurgeon. Bolt was reluctant, afraid even, but dissatisfaction with either himself or his company spurred him on.
A deal had begun to take the vaguest shape, mostly through inferences and insinuation. Whether Bracken merged with Bolt & Keize or simply bought out Bolt’s shares and those of other investors in order to take a controlling interest in the company, they could force out Keize and give Bolt whatever grungy engineering job he wanted.
This acquisition would be the mark of a revolution at Bracken that would secure the company for the next hundred years and take the name global in a way that siphoning gas from the sea or blowing bigger cracks under the Claws never could.
“I’m not sure the desert suits me, but it’s always too overcast in the ClawLands for solar.” Lowell chewed a fingernail while he pondered the text from Bolt. Except for the Seasand Desert, the Claws got about as much sun as anywhere, but that wasn’t what Bolt was saying. Looking out the window, Lowell had a good view of the stacks blowing smoke into the air. Bolt was talking about the haze; getting rid of it as Bolt wanted would mean a fundamental restructuring of Lowell’s business. Solar profits would have to eclipse gas completely before he could even whisper about scaling back the current facilities.
“The forecast says we should expect it to clear up,” he replied.
But sooner or later it would have to be done, not least of all because the volume of gas leaking through the Claws would diminish. Either Bracken Energy would already be ramping up a new arm of its business, or Sierra would find her company’s profits in free fall when they no longer had a product to sell.
Bracken started to put the phone away when another message came in. Bolt’s responses grew more frequent, and this was the quickest yet. Maybe he felt a new urgency to find an agreement.
“So you say, but does everyone share your forecast?”
Lowell grimaced, knowing that if he made promises he couldn’t keep, his skittish dance partner might think him disingenuous and float away. Surely he was talking about the board or maybe even the people of the ClawLands, who were fiercely loyal to him and his company. He’d need strong support from both in order to move the funds necessary to make the purchase.
If it came down to it he could lock the board in the battlefield until they voted in favor of the deal. It might take a lot of convincing, and he’d have to wage a secret campaign to garner support beforehand, but he knew he could get it done if he had the right tools.
“Forecasts are nice, but skeptics need something more concrete,” he wrote.
Even studying the leaks in the ground to determine exactly how soon they would sputter out bordered on heresy around the company, but if Bolt could hand over their research and chart the decline of gas output with the rise of solar, they all would have to accept they were on a sinking ship.
“You’ll have it. Then there can no longer be skeptics, only deniers.”
Taking some offense at Bolt’s last message, Lowell got up from the recliner and went to his desk. It had taken him a long time to realize that Bracken needed to change, so he found people who criticized his men when they were struggling with a tough issue insensitive.
Resigning his phone to his pocket, Lowell wondered about Tris, whose progress he’d be hearing about through regular updates from his men. They’d probably landed in the Iron City by now and were making their way to whatever high-tech bunker the Lus called home. No doubt Tris would be put through a number of cultural ceremonies that might last for several cycles until she could finally bring up the transfer batteries, but if she could lock in that deal it would give Bracken stronger incentive to expand its energy portfolio.
Lowell put his premature worries aside and moved to tackle the next item on his list.
“Skuire, can you get Mr. Empry in here?”
All of his agitation over the deal with Bolt would be put to good use in formulating a punishment for Carlisle, who must’ve known he was taking a personal risk by threatening the company during a public report.
While he waited, he tried to think of the perfect punishment. It couldn’t be too visible, such as a forced leave of absence that would draw more media scrutiny, but it had to be enough to reassert his dominance. Otherwise, Carlisle might be even more flagrant in his challenge
s next time.
“You asked for me, sir,” Carlisle said as he pushed open the door and entered.
“Were you surprised I did?” Lowell sized up the man in front of him. Carlisle’s forest green suit, pocket watch, and spectacles made him appear plenty gentrified, but the real act was his air of obliviousness.
“We talk on a daily basis, sir. How could I be surprised?” he asked, leaning forward against his cane as if he were a dog ready to play fetch.
“You know damn well why I called you in here.” Lowell said, raising his voice. “That was a nice little show you put on during the report. My health? The stocks have been slipping ever so slightly, but if they cascade now it’ll be on your head!”
Carlisle scrunched his brow in concern.
“I thought you handled the question rather brilliantly. Let’s be honest. It was going to come up sooner or later, but now that you’ve covered it people will move on and there won’t be any surprises later.”
There was some logic to the response, Lowell regrettably admitted. Investors would care a lot more if they read about it in the news than heard it as a benign question during a conference call. But it still begged the question of how Carlisle had thought to ask it at all.
“And what exactly would come up sooner or later? What do you know?” he asked, thinking of how his family had been sworn to silence about his heart attack. The ClawClinic was virtually a part of Bracken Energy, and no one there would’ve betrayed him.
“I’m well aware of when you’re not here, sir,” Carlisle said. “And you may have others fooled, but I can see the change in you. You’re a half-step slower now, and you look older than you did.”
Lowell scoffed and fixed his eyes on Carlisle to get the full impression of his answer to this most vexing question.