System Failure

by Joe Zieja

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  To Aevalyn and Ellawyn, for ensuring my profanity generator will never be broken

  Galactic Takeover Wasn’t in the Job Description

  Lucinda Hiri was pretty sure taking over the galaxy hadn’t been in the job description when she was offered this intern position six months ago. Then again, it wasn’t impossible. The Snaggardir corporation’s paperwork was notoriously long and detailed, vetted by droves of lawyers at every level of approval to make sure that the language had all the right loopholes in all the right places. Lucinda supposed that somewhere on page 356 there could have been a small asterisk that said “in the event a nascent people rise up after two hundred years of secret collusion, you will be required to take detailed notes at their strategy meetings.”

  It had seemed like a dream come true at the time. Sal Snaggardir and his family’s company were arguably the most powerful economic force in the galaxy. The possibilities for her career as a businesswoman were endless. Not like interning at some space technology company on Urp, where she would likely move laterally for the entirety of her disappointing, coffee-supported life. Snaggardir’s was the place to make it big.

  In retrospect, though, Lucinda should have noticed that Mr. Snaggardir was trying to conceal just how big his company had gotten. Subsidiary corporations, literally thousands of banks all across the galaxy holding funds under different names, and that nondisclosure agreement she signed threatening to eradicate her family line if she ever told anyone anything about the company. The legal department said that was boilerplate, and, really, what did she know? She was just a thirty-year-old unpaid intern with three advanced degrees in business arts.

  Mr. Snaggardir was looking at her.

  “Uh, yes, sir?” Lucinda asked.

  “I asked if you got all of that,” Mr. Snaggardir said. He was a fine-featured, wiry man with a receding hairline and the beginnings of liver spots, and his beady eyes were always just a bit too narrow to not be actively judging you.

  Lucinda felt her face go hot as she looked down at her notebook. For some reason the Snaggardir corporation was adamant about its internal dealings being recorded on old-fashioned pencil and paper, then transcribed to the data networks later. Right now, however, she realized that the page she was writing on was blank, and she hadn’t heard a word anyone had said for a solid five minutes.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she said, looking down at the paper to avoid his eyes. She knew it looked stupid, like she was blaming the paper for her negligence, but she couldn’t hold Mr. Snaggardir’s gaze. Waving at the notepad, she fumbled for an excuse, and, unable to come up with one, settled on honesty.

  “I guess I’m just finding it hard to focus, given, um, everything that’s happened.”

  That was easily the understatement of the last two hundred years. The entire Fortuna Stultus galaxy had practically collapsed—though she would never use that term in front of the Snaggardirs—in the wave of the Jupiterian uprising. The figures at the table—practically all members of the Snaggardir family—had been the last leg in two hundred years of planning and plotting. Snaggardir’s used to just be a place that sold great snacks and industrial equipment. Now the catchphrase “until all the chairs are empty” was popping up on leaflets and posters all over the place, referring to the War of Musical Chairs in which the Jupiterians had been denied a place in the galaxy.

  “Are you sure having her around is a good idea, Uncle Sal?” Sara Alshazari said, looking between Lucinda and her boss with open suspicion. Every time the woman talked, Lucinda couldn’t help but hear the voice of all the Snaggardir products in her head. Lucinda had been offered countless free nachos and bowling games by this woman, and now she came to find out that Sara Alshazari was in reality a master of manipulation and propaganda, the leader of all the subtle information campaigns conducted by the Jupiterians in the last twenty years. In her mid-forties, she had touches of gray appearing in her short brown hair, but her face showed no wrinkles.

  “It’s fine,” Mr. Snaggardir said, his lips cresting in a small smile. He was a demanding man to work for, but not unreasonable and certainly not unkind. It made the fact that he was currently murdering thousands of people all over the galaxy in revenge seem not so bad.

  Wait . . . that didn’t feel right.

  “Ms. Hiri is a trusted ally to the cause who has proven herself many times over the last half year. She has no Jupiterian blood, so I am sure she’s a little . . . taken aback by all that’s gone on. Isn’t that right, Ms. Hiri?”

  Lucinda nodded emphatically and realized that she was writing down Mr. Snaggardir’s excuses for her on her notepad, which seemed pointless. Also, she’d spelled “Jupiterian” wrong. Not a word she was used to writing.

  “Yes, sir,” she said. “I am fully behind the Jupiterian cause.”

  The statement was true, of course. There was something about being on the moral high ground that Lucinda enjoyed, particularly because she’d always disapproved of the way the Jupiterians had been forced to scatter when mankind had traveled to the Fortuna Stultus galaxy. Of course, it had supposedly been the scientifically ambitious Jupiterians’ fault for collapsing the Milky Way in the first place, but those were small details.

  “See?” Mr. Snaggardir said, gesturing to the other three people at the table—Sara Alshazari, General Szinder, and Dr. Mattic. “No problems. Now, perhaps for my intern’s edification we could quickly recap the status of our plans. General Szinder, if you would?”

  For everything that Mr. Snaggardir was, General Szinder was not. Pompous, loud, brash, and unrefined, the military genius of the Jupiterian movement was all bark and even more bite. Broad shouldered and dark skinned, he was from a different Jupiterian family line than the Snaggardirs. At least Lucinda thought he was. It was difficult getting up to speed on Jupiterian genealogy when she hadn’t really known they’d existed until a short while ago. General Szinder looked at her, clearly upset with having to repeat himself, and Lucinda made a great show of staring at her notebook.

  “Of course,” he said, his voice having that rough quality that comes with spending one’s youth shouting over people at bars. “We waited two hundred years for this; what’s the harm in wasting another few minutes repeating myself?”

  Lucinda’s face reddened even further. If she could have crawled into the lined yellow paper she was holding, she would have made an elaborate tent and gone into hiding for days. How did she get herself into this?

  Dr. Mattic, the only person in the room to have said nothing during the entire meeting, stared off into space like he always did. Perhaps it was stereotyping to characterize a scientist this way, but the man always reminded Lucinda of an egg, both in sh
ape and in personality.

  General Szinder went on. “Grandelle and New Neptune are well in hand. The propaganda campaign that Sara came up with worked beautifully in New Neptune.”

  The “propaganda campaign” that General Szinder was referring to was really just some fake newspaper articles informing the New Neptunians that they were now under the rightful control of the Jupiterian uprising. New Neptunians were notoriously both gullible and averse to any sort of conflict. Composed of immigrants from former communist countries on Old Earth, they were mostly used to life being terrible and thought doing anything about it was a waste of their time and effort.

  “Grandelle’s planetary governments are well aware of the sway that we hold in their system,” the general said. “At any point, simply freezing the assets we control would cause their entire societal structure to collapse. They are playing nice for now, but I still suggest setting up a network of regional ambassadors to keep them in line.” He grinned. “At the first hint of resistance, we could burn them to—”

  “Stop,” Mr. Snaggardir said, holding up a hand. “Let’s stick to the topic.”

  General Szinder looked displeased, but didn’t argue. “Merida and Thelicosa are where we have the most problems, thanks to the brilliant doctor’s half-baked plan.” He shot a look at Dr. Mattic, who either wasn’t listening or didn’t care. Lucinda had seen the general harangue the doctor so many times now that it would have seemed like an empty meeting without it. She scribbled down the insult.

  “The good doctor’s experiments with artificial intelligence aren’t the only reason things have failed to take shape in those two systems,” Mr. Snaggardir said. Sara was nodding. “There was quite a large network of sleeper cells all throughout Thelicosa that failed to activate. We lost Zergan before he was able to carry out most of his plans, and the rest of the Colliders’ ships are now back in the control of the Thelicosans.”

  “More will activate as the information gets out,” General Szinder said, sitting back in his chair and scowling. “It’s just a matter of getting the right messages—”

  “There is also the issue with the cyber warfare failings . . . ,” Sara said.

  “That was not my fault!” the general shouted.

  Lucinda wasn’t actually sure what either of them were talking about now. There had been some other plan in the works, something that the general had cooked up because he thought he could do technological warfare better than Dr. Mattic. Whatever it was, it hadn’t gone well.

  “Whatever the failings,” Mr. Snaggardir said, letting his voice hang on the word, “we need to focus on what to do next. Dr. Mattic—the construction?”

  The doctor, pale and specter-like despite his sizable girth, finally made eye contact, but only to deliver a few words.

  “Ahead of schedule.”

  Mr. Snaggardir nodded, as if that was all the information he needed to know.

  Construction? Lucinda wrote down. Another mystery for her. They clearly weren’t as trusting of her as Mr. Snaggardir had let on.

  “By next week I want to know about the calibration efforts of the device, and a final completion date. Given that things unfolded in such a . . . disorganized fashion, we may need to activate our contingencies.”

  Sara looked very uncomfortable at the prospect of whatever contingencies Mr. Snaggardir was referring to.

  “What about our blockades?” Sara said, perhaps just to change the subject. “If we allow the rest of them to organize, we could have problems.”

  “The blockades are perfect,” the general said, recovering some of his haughtiness. “We have enough native forces to scatter all throughout the galaxy, plus all the defectors. My blockades are perfect—you have never seen such amazing blockades. If anyone tries to break them . . .” He paused for a moment. “We will burn them to—”

  “Stop,” Mr. Snaggardir said again, this time sharply. He was about to say something else, but someone knocked at the door. The conversation came to an abrupt halt; nobody ever knocked at the door. This was a meeting of the highest echelon of the most powerful economic—and maybe now military—force in the world. You don’t just knock on their door like a salesman.

  No one seemed to be doing anything about it, though. Everyone just sort of sat and stared. At Lucinda. Like she was an intern, or something.

  “Right,” Lucinda said, moving quickly over to the door. “Sorry.”

  She shuffled through the fancy conference room, the white, paneled walls making everything feel sterile and critical. It also probably felt critical because Lucinda was constantly being criticized.

  She opened the door to find a young man actually wringing his hands like some sort of cliché, milquetoast servant. Lucinda could relate, though she was very careful about not wringing her hands. She had very dry skin, and it hurt.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, his voice thin. Lucinda tried to place him—she was certain she’d seen him before—but ultimately he was just another face in the sea of Snaggardir employees. He stood there like he expected some sort of answer to his apology, but the people at the table merely looked at him. General Szinder’s face contorted like he was going to start chewing on the edge of the table if this man didn’t begin talking immediately.

  “I have some news,” the visitor said.

  “We gathered that,” Mr. Snaggardir said, just a touch of edge in his voice.

  “It’s the blockades. Someone is breaking through them.”

  All eyes turned to General Szinder, who, to his credit, hid his disbelief under a thin veil of anger.

  “That’s not possible! The strategy is perfect. We know everyone’s military secrets. What kind of military genius do they have on their side to help them through something like this?”

  The young man, not at all liking his current position as the target of the general’s ravings, looked down at a piece of paper he was holding.

  “It says something here about a Captain Rogers?” he said, his voice going up way too high for a normal question.

  Everyone went quiet. So quiet, in fact, that the messenger looked up as quickly as if someone had started shooting a disruptor rifle. He stared around the room at all the expressions with something approaching wonder, and Lucinda could understand why. Even Dr. Mattic looked disturbed.

  “You’ve heard of him before?” the young man said.

  The question rang out like a shot echoing down a dark alleyway.

  “We’re familiar,” Mr. Snaggardir said flatly.

  • • •

  “So,” Rogers said, idly flicking the end of a fork.

  “So,” the Viking said. She looked around the room aimlessly, as though something interesting was going to magically manifest itself in the middle of the empty dining hall.

  The problem with being on the Meridan Flagship rather than the Thelicosan Limiter was that when you invited someone to have a drink with you, you were really inviting them to an austere dining hall that didn’t serve alcohol. Rogers hadn’t been able to resupply the Flagship with any drinks, and Grand Marshal Keffoule had destroyed the bar on the Limiter with a spinning back kick. His stateroom was, he supposed, an option, but something about it felt very inappropriate for a first date. As a result, Rogers and the Viking’s rendezvous was relegated to the Peek and Shoot, which Rogers had used his admiral-like powers to close for a little bit, ordering that they not be disturbed.

  Unfortunately, he neglected to take into account the utter awkwardness of being in a completely silent, completely empty warehouse-sized dining hall with only one other person. He could have sworn that his heartbeat was echoing throughout the cavernous room, hammering out the drumbeat of all of his romantic failures.

  Neither of them were really dressed for the occasion, either. Rogers had at least put on a clean uniform, but it was still a uniform. The Viking had also put on a clean uniform, which was both nice and a little disappointing.

  “Not really the perfect first date,” Rogers blurted.

  �
�Nope,” the Viking said simply.

  After a moment, Rogers realized that she’d allowed him to call it a date without any violence, which he supposed was a good thing. She could have, for example, stood up, flipped the table, and berated him for being so presumptuous. Maybe pushed him around a little, cursed . . .

  “But hey,” he said, tugging at his collar and suddenly feeling a little hot. “It could be worse, right? We could be swarmed with droids trying to kill us or being threatened by a Jupiterian uprising.” He forced out a laugh, which sounded like a gunshot in the echoing room.

  The Viking looked at him squarely, squinting one eye in a way that made Rogers squirm in his seat.

  “Speaking of which,” she said, “are you sure there’s nothing that you should be doing on the bridge?”

  Rogers waved a hand dismissively, which collided with a fork and sent it ricocheting off tables and benches until it came to rest on the other side of the room.

  “Nah,” he said. “Totally boring space travel. We’ll be back at Merida Prime before you know it.”

  She was going to be so pissed when she found out that there was a huge space battle going on outside right now in the Furth sector of Meridan territory. At the same time, Rogers had put an awful lot of effort into disabling the battle station alarms in the dining halls and making sure nobody would talk to him until the date was concluded. That was romantic, right? Besides, he’d left Deet in charge. His robotic deputy could certainly handle a little space battle.

  “I guess,” the Viking said. “As long as you’re not blowing off something important for this.”

  Yep. She was going to kill him.

  But really, could she blame him? This was the first moment of peace they’d gotten since they’d wrapped things up with the Thelicosans and gotten recalled back to headquarters. He’d tried so many times to approach her about making good on her promise to have a drink with him, but there always seemed to be some triviality blocking his love life. Things like a minor resurgence of droids randomly waking up and wanting to kill everyone, or Deet becoming uncomfortably obsessed with doing research on his own programming, or some of the cooks who had been marines wanting to go back to the marines because people shot at them less. Being the acting admiral of the 331st really was not all it was cracked up to be. Why did he want this job again?