“Ready to go?” Trian asked.
“Let’s do this, before I change my mind and run away,” Joan said. She wished she had G.O.D. with her. Could he be out there in the Regency BioTech nets? She hoped her friend still strung together his existence somewhere.
* * *
The gala band had played for nearly half an hour. Hundreds of people trickled in, enjoyed cocktails and appetizers. Dario recognized several of the attendees from the accounting department, corporate media, security, and design among them. A giant banner dropped, the lighting displaying a rotating corporate logo that flew forward, growing in its holographic design. Cursive letters for “RetroSilver by Regency,” wrote themselves in the air beneath it.
The crowd cheered and people filed to their seats. Lead bodymod designer Rafael Tysor stepped forward, delivering his opening remarks about the products. Oculars, auditories, tentacles, tails, removable arm parts, and more flashed across the tapestry behind him in a slideshow, while Baker gave a few words about each of them. A new ribbon-hair mod received the most applause from the crowd, something that would be fashion-forward when it released in the spring.
Baker gave his presentation and then the company’s CEO, Amber Torres, gave an address, praising the corporation for its innovation, growth and philanthropy. Dario watched Mr. Anazao at their table, Madison at his side as his guest. Both cheered.
Dario felt hollow throughout it all. Such decadence and expense for this party. How many underlevelers could be fed, clothed, or have their medical issues taken care of for the cost of this function? He didn’t begrudge the company for having parties like this, but if they would put forth a little effort toward the real betterment of lives, would people be rioting below?
Mr. Anazao’s answer to that would be “of course they would, Dario. Those people don’t care about what they actually have, or are actually given.” But that was the problem, that their sustenance was given, not to mention the vehicle by which it was given. The people in the underlevels lacked a purpose as much as anything else. Sitting here, listening to these speeches, Dario understood that most of the corporate leaders lacked purpose as well.
That sobering thought made him frown, eliciting several “are you okay?” and “what’s wrong?” questions from people at his own table—people he didn’t know, separated in seating so that he’d mingle with other members of the company. They cared about true answers about as much as the CEO truly cared about philanthropy.
“I’m fine,” Dario said. “If you’ll excuse me. I think I’ll try out the fresh air balcony.” He gave a polite smile and retreated from the table, weaving past a dozen others just like it before heading to where he said he would.
The balcony had a holoprojected view of the Martian landscape, including the Arsia Mons mountain. The oxygen level must have been pumped in higher in that receptacle, a closed room despite the open-air appearance. None of that surprised Dario. What did was the woman he saw standing there, gazing out over the balcony. With dinner about to be served, he’d expected to have some time alone here.
She turned to look at him, big brown eyes piercing through him, making him shiver. She wore an expensive dress. Dario didn’t know too much about fashion design, sticking to more conservative business attire, but color-changing fabric like she had on couldn’t come cheap. This woman was here to make a show. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb,” Dario said, carefully taking a step back.
The woman smiled at him, pearly teeth exposed from her red lips. “No, you’re not interrupting. I just needed some fresh—” she stopped herself, shaking her head with a laugh. “It almost feels real, until you think about it. You know?”
“I do. So many of the holoscapes on the station are just like this. People visit them all the time anyway. Says something about our psychology,” Dario said. He’d been just as guilty for visiting the various holoscapes as anyone else. Who wanted to live inside a tin can?
“Yeah, I know what you mean. To be honest, it’s a bit stuffy inside. And not because of the air.” The woman wrinkled her nose.
The innocence of the soft contours of her face, her truthfulness, it struck a chord within him. Dario leaned over the balcony beside her and laughed. “Yeah, I agree. I can’t help but think how wasteful a display is like this. I mean, I know it’s part of the marketing budget, but the holographic banner alone. How much did that cost to produce?”
“A hundred and eighty thousand credits,” the woman said, laughing.
“Seriously? That’s more than my annual salary.”
“Seriously. I only found out because they sat me next to the marketing department vice-chair who was responsible for putting it together. She was, how can I put this politely, proud of its cost.”
Dario’s laugh turned cynical as he imagined the marketing executives’ braggadocios behavior. It wasn’t funny at all, truth be told. He ran a hand back through his hair. “I’m sorry. I must be such a downer. It’s been a hard few weeks and I hate things like this.”
“I do, too. I’ve always been the type to get my work done and keep to myself.” The woman frowned. “I… lost a good friend recently, too.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Dario said, sneaking another glance at her and trying not to come off as staring. She was about as beautiful as he could imagine a person. Her party ensemble only amplified her natural gifts, and she didn’t contain many bodymods—at least cosmetic ones that he could tell—at all. For some reason, Dario found that appealing.
The woman held out her hand first, her bright smile hitting him again. “I’m Joan.”
Dario took her hand, her skin as soft as he’d imagined it would be. “Dario. Anazao,” he said, though hesitating with his last name. Usually he introduced himself with just his first name. Why had he done that? She’d learn who he was and that would start a whole different discussion.
If Joan had recognized the name, she didn’t show it. “Nice to meet you, Dario. What do you do in this whole…” she motioned around the balcony and holoscape. “…world?”
“Quality control,” Dario said.
“You’re responsible for everyone being so uniform,” Joan said.
“Hey, there’s a lot of unique—”
“Kidding, kidding.”
Dario’s shoulders knotted up, and he could feel himself hunching forward. He did his best to relax, looking at Joan skeptically, then settling into a sigh. “You’re about the most real person I’ve met here tonight. I appreciate that,” Dario said, lifting his oculars to meet her eyes. He zoomed in on her face. Every moment of this experience would be photographed, saved into his memory unit for later, but he couldn’t help but study her in the moment.
“Likewise,” Joan said, her brown and very natural eyes sparkled back at him.
Dario glanced back over his shoulder. “I should probably return to my table though. Dinner’s been served and I’ll be expected.”
“Must be a tough position,” Joan said. Her concern sounded sincere.
Could she be that empathetic of a person in this environment? Dario lifted his wrist. “Hey, if you want to meet up later. Exchange contacts?” He asked.
“Sure,” Joan said, following suit to match her handtab’s level with his. Something in her eyes died when she looked at it. Why would a device bother her like that? Perhaps she didn’t have bodymods as an aversion to technology. An interesting company to work for, if that were the case.
Their handtabs synced together, contacts exchanged and added to the appropriate subfolders. Through his oculars, Dario filed her information in the personal category. He’d had so few people there in the past year. None since he’d left college, really. That concerned him, but not as much as the sadness remained in Joan’s eyes. That struck him deep down. “Is something wrong?”
“No. This reminded me of my friend, is all.” She forced her smile this time, her first insincere gesture since he’d met her.
Dario hated that he’d drawn that out of her. “I’m sorry,” he sai
d, and he truly was.
“It’s not your fault. Good meeting you, yeah?” Joan gave a small nod to him and spun from her place on the balcony. She departed and took her place back among the crowd inside. It wasn’t long before Dario lost her in a sea of people. She didn’t sit with the upper corporate structure, which meant she had to be someone in middle management.
Dario took a deep breath to clear his senses and stepped back inside himself, heading toward his table, when his father caught his eye and waved him over.
Oh boy, here we go, Dario thought. Given his current precarious position, there was no way he’d ignore his father’s gesture or pretend not to see it. He moved to the elder Anazao’s table as a dutiful son would.
At that table sat his mother, Amber Torres, Emre, and a few others on the far side of the table. They smiled, waved, greeted him fondly.
“Dario,” Mr. Anazao said. “Emre here has the most fascinating stories about his ascension in the fleet division. Expansion there is the future. It’d be good to listen to what he has to say.”
“I’ve already—”
His father waved Dario’s attempted comment off. “Do continue, Emre. It’s truly fascinating.”
The long-winded man with the tuft of blue hair on his chin launched into yet another story.
* * *
Twenty minutes after dinner was served, the gala became ridiculously crowded. People huddled around the tables closer to the stage, vying for time with the upper-level executives, or at the very least the hopes that they’d be seen with them. From what Joan heard of the conversations, the people were some of the most vapid, self-absorbed she’d ever come across.
“Yes, well my apartment furnishings are hand-crafted on the Ceti-Alpha moon. Do you know how much it costs to import wood from there?”
“I have full time investors to handle my portfolio.”
“Have you considered vacationing on Dale’s World? It’s the most exclusive…”
Joan stepped away from one table, bumping into a woman with a beehive hairstyle above her head and a chemical-floral scent to her, a corporate sycophant through and through. “I’m sorry!”
The woman didn’t turn to acknowledge Joan’s apology.
She tried to weave away from the table, but was stopped by a thick crowd of people gathering. Joan looked for Trian, but there were too many people within close proximity to spot him. She found it difficult to breathe, suddenly becoming claustrophobic. That large gala hall felt constraining, as if the walls were closing in on her, with the people packed so tightly at the tables.
She had to get out of here. There was no good information to glean at this point. She’d done her duty, and maybe that Dario guy would be useful in the future.
As a person, Dario Anazao had been the one breath of fresh air in this place. Joan hated the prospect of using him for information that could end up hurting his career. That shouldn’t make her feel guilty. He was, even if an intelligent man, still in the management of one of the worst of the Trade Federation’s corporations. She’d seen firsthand how rotten the conditions of the underlevels were compared to this Central Office. The company held complete disregard. This Dario contributed to that.
Joan caught a glimpse of the table that was holding up most of the crowd gathered in the immediate vicinity. A man with artificial blue facial hair, not dissimilar to Jake Dylan’s chosen hair color, along with an older couple who looked like some of the most polished and wealthy members of the corporation she’d seen. Next to them… sat Dario? What a coincidence that she had been thinking of him. He engaged in conversation with blue facial hair man, with the older couple laughing beside him.
“Are you sure that’s a wise plan?” Dario asked.
“A few more contracts like these and we’ll be able to wipe out the Hyrades Cluster insurgents. They have no real leadership now, if you hadn’t heard,” blue facial hair said with a laugh.
Joan froze there, but ducked behind a taller man in front of her to ensure Dario wouldn’t catch a glimpse of her eavesdropping. Were they talking about Commodore Zhang? She listened carefully.
* * *
Dario tried to keep a smile on his face while Emre talked—at length—for the second time in as many hours. He couldn’t escape the man, and yet everyone seemed to think he should be talking to him. What did his quality control position have to do with fleet services?
“Are you saying that you want to have the corporation potentially provoke a full-scale war?” Dario asked after the man’s last statement.
The people gathered around the table gasped. The question was an audacious one, apparently. His father gave him a condescending look to let him know he’d overstepped.
Emre motioned with his hands for everyone to settle down. “No, no. It’s a valid question. You have a sharp boy here, Mr. Anazao. One can’t be afraid to ask questions of capital costs in a corporate setting. More times than not, they’ve been overlooked. Whether those are credits or human capital, they’re both very important. It’s refreshing when some of our younger management aren’t afraid to speak up,” he said, giving Dario a respectful nod that diffused the table’s tension.
Dario considered correcting Emre, that it wasn’t a matter of capital at all but that the prospect of humans fighting each other when there was a whole Blob Empire out there, striking at colonies, murdering people by the millions. It made Dario’s stomach churn. The Martine Star Empire and especially its Council of Ministers were arrogant by nature, but what leadership wasn’t? There had to be a way to compromise, work together to fight off real threats of the galaxy. Working together like that might even give the underlevelers a purpose, something to work toward. These were matters the corporate leadership hadn’t considered in a long time.
Instead of challenging, Dario nodded, maintaining his look of interest as best as he could.
That satisfied Emre, who grinned. “This is still classified within the fleets division, but we’re among friends here, yes?” Emre asked around the table, holding up a glass of wine in toast to those gathered. “Well, I have it on high authority that we’ve already dealt a crushing blow to the insurgents. It was a beautiful mission of subterfuge conducted by the joint fleets.”
“I believe I’ve heard about this,” Dario’s father said.
“I’m sure you have, Mr. Anazao. The commander in charge should be given a promotion, a bonus incentive package, something at the very least.”
“What happened?” Dario’s mother asked.
“Commander Dominique of the Fifth Joint Corporate Fleet feigned that a hit by a Star Empire Battlecruiser caused an energy leak by jettisoning red gaseous streamers from the ship and ceasing fire. She furthered the illusion of fleet problems by having the rest of her squadron turn for retreat.”
The crowd listened intently, it actually grew quiet around the table for the first time in the evening. And for the first time as well, Dario was interested in Emre’s story.
“The Hyrades Cluster insurgent vessel pressed in pursuit, of course, but ignored what they thought to be a scrapped ship. Commander Dominique, however, had two Cutters launch from the cargo bay with some of our finest corporate special forces. The Cutters grappled onto the Star Empire vessel and boarded, cutting through the outer hull. The assault caught the insurgents by such surprise that our forces only ended with two casualties while making their way to the enemy bridge. And that’s not even the best part of the story.”
“What’s that then? Do tell us,” Dario’s father asked.
Emre leaned over the table, a wide grin on his face. “We captured the top Commodore in the Star Empire fleet. Even better, Commander Dominique is a member of Regency BioTech’s contributions to the Navy. Which means we were awarded the contract of interrogating and holding the Commodore for trial. There should be some very lucrative financial incentives coming down from the Trade Federation’s Intelligence Bureau. It should be hitting the news feeds any time now. Like I said—the publicity will provide us some incredib
le short-term security contracts. I know that’s not our primary business, but the fleet division is very proud.”
Dario listened intently. They had captured the leader of the Star Empire’s fleet? That news of this caliber had been kept a secret even for this long was a testament to how tight fleet security was. He wondered what this meant for the future. Corporate stocks would rise in the short term, but panic on the colonies would certainly be ensuing. If it hadn’t already. It could impact export markets. The corporations still did a good portion of business to the outer-worlds, even those engaged in conflict with the core Trade Federation.
Then something else clicked. The woman Antonio mentioned that was being held in secrecy. Could she have been related to this? Could the Trade Federation be secretly keeping a high level Commodore from the Martine Star Empire on this very station?
They probably had any number of prisoners. That was pure speculation, but if the theory held true…
If it held true, he would have information that he couldn’t share, couldn’t do anything about. Would he want to do anything about it even if he did have the capability? His mother spoke about the Martine Star Empire as if they were barbarians. Either way, something to file away for later. He would have to think more about it.
He searched Mr. Anazao’s eyes. In all of his years growing up and watching him, Dario had never seen much emotion from the man, especially in a business setting. He was impossible to read, and that held true even now.
Mr. Anazao caught Dario’s look and gave Dario a nod in return—one that appeared to be of approval?
The night kept getting stranger. Dario looked toward the other tables, hoping to catch one more glimpse of Joan. He thought he saw, walking swiftly from the table, the curled dark hair and the x-pattern made by sticks that held the look together. She wasn’t someone from upper management, there was no way she’d be so close. It was probably only his imagination.
Chapter 19
Circling Back
Regency BioTech Central Office—Mid-Level Quarters, Mars
Star Realms: Rescue Run Page 14