GalTech and the Shadow Warriors: Growth of a Star Empire

by Magnum Indiana

  Danny let go of one ring and still held the Iron Cross without wavering. After about thirty seconds he slowly grabbed the ring again. He lowered himself until fully extended, winked, and pulled himself upward. He launched himself high enough to accomplish five complete rotations before landing rock-solid perfectly on one foot while holding his other knee tight to his chest and his hand behind his head. He then did one of those eyebrow shrugs that suggested it was no big deal.

  Wayne stared at him while he sauntered back. His mind raced.

  "I would call that showing off," complained Ramos. "Wayne, he can’t help it. The Old Blot is a natural show-off."

  Wayne stood up. "Shadow, right?" He pointed to Danny who gave him an affirmative nod. Then Wayne turned to Ramos. "You, however, are not a Shadow. Judging by the way you hold yourself, you spent a long time in space. Probably Marines, considering the muscle mass. But I don’t see that being able to do a one armed Iron Cross using mechanical enhancements is going to motivate me much. The idea of putting mechanicals in my body is such a negative to me that it would outweigh any benefits."

  Danny grinned from ear to ear. "I would see it that way too, Wayne. That’s why I don’t have any mechanical enhancements in my body. Hey, I have your profile. At this point you are supposed to be too curious to just walk away."

  Wayne sank back to his seat in the front row of a small set of bleacher seating. "I’ll be damned. Shadows are biological. That has to be the best-kept secret in the Empire. Well, you might as well lay it out for me since you probably have to mind-wipe or kill me for what you just revealed. So how do they get you enhanced?"

  Danny chuckled and Ramos sat down next to Wayne. Ramos was keenly interested in the topic at this point since he would soon become enhanced.

  "It is painless. It is like giving someone a virus in ideal laboratory conditions. Only in this case, they inject an entire parasitic viral community. You sleep for about eighteen hours and wake up hungry enough to eat your own cooking. Your metabolism raises to a new level and the sym…symbiont community starts optimizing all of your biological systems. There is a lot of repair work the first month. Your food intake is huge as is your need to exercise intensely every day. Your physical abilities are enormously increased as a survival mechanism for your symbiont community. They help you protect them. Short and long-term memory increases as well as all of your other senses. Some Shadows form a better bond with their Symbiont community. For some, it becomes slightly telepathic on a sub-vocal level. And, no, it is not invasive at all. There is one exception. Your symbiont community reads and analyzes an amazing amount of sensory data when you interact with another human being. It will intercede when you are about to do something it considers absolute suicide or when you try to refer to it as anything other than "enhancement." To let me tell ya’ll that my enhancement was really a symbiont community, mine had to feel absolutely safe with the two of you. Through countless life and death adventures, I have learned to trust my Symbiont’s judgment about people without question. Excuse me a moment."

  Danny gave a quirky grin at the two and hit his wrist holo while saying," Find Kip – no holo – Zeta security."

  "Kip, this Wayne Johnson is definitely our guy. TRAM just let me talk all about enhancements with him and Ramos without even a twinge. We are in the smaller gymnastics wing with the manager guarding the door and still counting the money I gave him for privacy. OK, got it. I’m on topa’ it. I will get the show started. Out."

  He turned around to Wayne and Ramos. "Studley, why don’t you paint Wayne the whole picture while I go over to the door? I am going to have the manager let Kip in and then close this wing of the facility for the rest of the day. Wayne, I hope you don’t mind, but I accessed your calendar and know you have the rest of the day free."

  "And if I do mind?" asked Wayne while chuckling.

  "Well, then, I guess you are up the proverbial defecation tributary in a strong current without means of propulsion. Is there anyone likely to come looking for you today? I mean anyone you really don’t want to see mind-wiped?"

  Wayne grinned, "Well, there is this guy my daughter Dani used to date, but he can’t seem to find himself – let alone me. No, I was just trying mess with you a bit, O’Malley. At the time, it seemed better than telling you go have sex with a treebarb. Studley, you seem to have the floor and, at this point, I am all ears."

  "I think this guy is going to fit right in," said Ramos. "This is the part where I tell you that we need you to be one of a very small group that reports directly to Kip. Kip’s job is to take some people and a couple of trillion dollars and insure the peace and safety of not only the Teaman Empire, but of all three alliances.

  "The only resources we have are the complete support and cooperation of the Emperor, a few trillion dollars as a line of credit, and any anything we can think to ask for in the Empire. Oh, and by the way, your prior clearance as an MFTL (much faster than light) starship commander wasn’t even high enough to allow you to know what your new clearance is—unless, of course, we have to mind-wipe you.

  "You are now one of the highest cleared fifteen people in the empire. We do not need to mind wipe you. We do, however, need to install a mind-wipe implant in case the wrong people get a hold of you. Let me start at the beginning." Ramos retold the story as it was told to him. Both he and Danny filled Wayne in on Kip and on their own relationship with Kip. They had just finished and bought a cold fruit-water from the mobile robot vendor when Kip showed up.

  "Hi Wayne, I am Kip David. From the files on all the candidates, I was betting you would be our guy. I just got done with Tess Bolinski. She would be great for this role but she is just too focused on being the head of her firm. That, and I really did not relish the thought of having to put up with her idea of humor for the next twenty or thirty years. Anyway, if these two characters already like you, I can probably find something to like about you too."

  "I can see why you need a recruiter, Kip. Either that is humor or you went to the Adolf Hitler School of Charm. So I have had the prep talk, I want the virus, and it sounds like an amusing cast of characters. What is the big deal about getting a recruiter? There are a bunch of them in the phone book – any phone book."

  "Yes, but none to whom we feel we can give the mystical and elusive Zeta clearance."

  Kip could not help but having a little fun with this conversation. Wayne was really easy to kid and already seemed like ‘one of the guys.’ "Of course, all we have determined so far is that you are touted by many to be a whiz bang recruiter and that you are the kind of guy we would enjoy having lunch with. Oh, if it means anything to you, my Symbiont has you on the good guy list, too. But enough with the platitudes, I need someone who can assure the recruitment of about 50,000 technical and management people for GalTech over the next nine years."

  Wayne raised his eyebrows but did not comment.

  "To hit my goals and timelines, we have to have less than a six percent turnover rate. At three percent turnover, we hit our goals almost three years sooner. Getting the right people and not losing them is the critical path. I have to know why we have turnover, how to avoid losing the good ones and how to assure that we quickly weed out our hiring mistakes.

  "I want to actively discriminate against snobs, ass-kissers, power-trippers and the incompetent. I want our team to have integrity, honesty, drive and ambition. We will never get there if our managers don’t cherish and nurture talent, no matter what age or physical package that talent is wrapped in. I want them to have a desire to help us grow and to be part of us. I want them to genuinely care about anyone who works for GalTech. I don’t know how to do that. I am pretty sure it will involve creating a culture and a very simple vision that our people are excited to embrace.

  "I have a lot of ideas. Many of them will turn out to be wrong. You and our management team need to fix my thinking from time to time. You and I need to learn together. That is, unless you know of someone who has intentionally pulled off this kind of pre-planned gr
owth before?"

  "No," Wayne conceded. "That much management in labor intense businesses would give you the ability to handle four-hundred thousand to eight-hundred thousand people over the next nine years and twice that many three years later. No one I am aware of has done that in the Empire. I would need to get my hands on everything written that pertains to high-growth successes and failures."

  “Well Wayne, since you will have the budget, you will need to recruit and hire a chief of research and then have them contract with Teaman University to get several PhDs to build your research library. Then have them do all the research and give you the answers. You have time to absorb and use the answers, not to find them.

  "Wayne, I am vision, policy and strategic planning. You need to be both operational and staff. Recruiting is the main job but at least Human Resources, Information Technology, Administration and Training need to work for you as well. Danny and Ramos are going to initially focus on business acquisition, creation, and growth. For at least the first couple of years, hiring has to be mostly centralized. To know I will get the best talent and high integrity we need, you will initially have to trust that to a small close-knit function that communicates with us on a regular basis. Eventually we must teach everyone in the organization our goals and people methodologies. Right now, the four of us have to be very in tune with what we mean by "a good hire." You have the final say in the company over any hire. I can’t override a hiring decision you make but I have the final say in a termination if I want it—or if any of you think I need to be involved."

  "Wayne, we ought to be real slow to terminate someone. Every termination has to be based on our employee handbook and on objective performance appraisals that have input from the one or two internal customers that depend most on that position to get their own job done. Terminations can never be arbitrary or capricious. A second chance must be considered in every instance. Our employees need to know that terminations are done with thoroughness, by the book and without political intervention or subjective bullshit. The four of us need to write that employee handbook together with you playing facilitator."

  "We urgently need a strong and consistent job description system that makes performance evaluations easy and objective instead of subjective. Your Site says that you use something called a Position Matrix when you write job objective descriptions for your searches. It advocates uses of that tool to do objective performance evaluations. If it is the right tool, teach everyone to use it. If not, you need to find the right tool. We will give you a research grant to spend at the University of Teaman for any number of researchers you need. "

  "Wayne, I need you to be in charge of hiring the best, assuring we keep and motivate the best, and fairly and quickly dealing with any hiring mistakes. I will give you a mission and you give me a suggested organization chart and cost ranges. Our biggest costs should always be people. We are and want to be in the high intensity labor business."

  "This may be a real snag for you Wayne, but we need to operate the entire company based upon the Shadows team structure. Since you get to go to Shadow school, you will become intimately familiar with it as will Ramos. Teams are never bigger than ten people and rarely have more than four or six. Our largest unit should never exceed 150 people. If a team is in tune with a culture, they will not tolerate a member that is not. A Shadow fits in the overall organization but may not fit on a particular team. Once a team has its first three members and have digested their team culture, they can probably help your selection efforts a lot."

  "Remember, every mission is also a business that needs to make a profit in the first year—unless I say differently. I Okay your org’ chart and budget and you hire the key people, have our managers help you find the rest, and teach the managers you hire the culture and how to keep and improve people. I figure that if you hire the right people up front, Human Resource problems are fewer and less traumatic. Can you build a team of teams that can get that accomplished and stay on top of it until we are the largest and most successful company in the Galaxy?"

  Wayne wore a serious and far-away look for a moment before looking Kip in the eyes. "I think so, but I really don’t know. I can do any task you just described. But the sheer magnitude…"

  Kip stared back at him and nodded his head slowly. "Do you know anyone else in the Teaman Empire who could definitely do it as well or better than you?"

  Wayne thought a moment. "No, I don’t."

  "Now that you know what it is, do you want this job?"

  "If you give me a Symbiot and let me be part of the clandestine side of operations when it makes sense, I damn sure do."

  "First Wayne, it is Symbiont, not Symbiot. Symbionts do not make you invulnerable. A CNT will still splatter your guts and kill you dead, with or without a Symbiont. If someone shoots you with a laser over 500 feet away, you won’t know it’s coming and you will probably die. The Symbiont can help your immune system and body heal, maximize your physical and mental systems, and help you live a longer and healthier life. It can't shield soft tissue from bullets and beams.

  "Wayne, you will certainly be part of covert operations. We will all probably die violent deaths well before we grow old. I will not hesitate to put you in harm’s way if the Empire and vision dictate that I must."

  Kip grinned and slapped Wayne on the back.

  "Thank you, I think," said Wayne. "Just promise it won't be boring."

  "That, I can definitely promise. Welcome aboard Wayne. You and Ramos will report to the Shadow Medical Center tomorrow. Any work you have hanging will be picked up by another firm. GalTech will pay all of their expenses. Your new temporary administrative assistant is taking care of finding a suitable firm and paying for it out of your new budget. I believe you know her. Dani Johnson applied for Shadow training last month, successfully finished all the testing yesterday and O’Mally had her CO tag her for a two-week diversion if needed. It just became needed. Will she do?"

  When the initial shock wore off, Wayne said, "Why am I not surprised that she decided to join the Shadows right after getting a Bachelor's degree in Business and a Master’s Degree in Psychology? My daughter is very smart. But at times, I have to wonder about her common sense. With all that psychological training, she is still programmed in the family tradition of service to the Empire and she still feels like she has to one-up dad. I cannot imagine her agreeing to work for her father. But I would be happy to have her. By the way, how did her tests come back?"

  Kip looked at Danny who then chimed in, "Well, you are right. She is smart. The degree in psychology must have tuned her down a bit, but the psych tests indicate that she has almost too much self-confidence. She has great reflexes, incredible balance, but a low threshold for pain. Don’t worry, the Symbiont will do wonders for the over confidence and the pain threshold since those traits will be perceived as survival problems."

  "The tests predict that she will graduate from Shadow training in the top 5% and from Officer School in the top 10%. That’s scary since the predictors rarely get that high. And that pain threshold won't be too big an issue for a while. It seems that no one has managed to beat her sparring, including her instructors. Your wife must have been one hell of a martial arts instructor because your other daughter is downright incredibly scary."

  "Kat? She is still in college—isn’t she?"

  "No. She joined the Shadows twenty-nine days ago after getting her Associates Degrees in Management Science and Photography. She applied over two months ago and did her testing on the weekends. Her reaction to her Symbiont was so positive that they are already having a hard time getting anyone to spar with her, even teams of unarmed combat instructors."

  This time Wayne was not in shock or even very surprised. "That little scamp. I’ll bet they plotted this together. They probably figured I would try to talk them out of it, and I would have. After all, I thought the enhancements were all mechanical. Kat always wanted to have parts of her body pierced. I only allowed the ears. It got to be a major fray when she wa
s in her mid-teens. She told me once that she should join the Shadows and get the ultimate in body piercing. I wonder what she thought when she found out that there were no mechanical implants. I can’t believe that her symbiont will think that body piercing is a good thing. I thought Kat was staying on campus and taking a course or two this summer. Since we lost their mother, I realize that I have not been nearly the communicator with them that I need to be. Kat went into a long period of depression. She hid it well. It took me a while to realize she was on the ragged edge."

  "Don’t feel too bad, Wayne," Danny said while patting him on the shoulder. "The psyche tests said that both of them hold their father in high esteem. And as Chief of Staff of this fledgling organization, I insist that we adjourn to the nearest bar and celebrate Wayne joining our little Cadre. Uh, that is right after we stop by our building and let the good doctor inject a little old brain wipe device and do an entangled photon 64 encrypted scan. You will remember the scan from your Navy days. It assures that all your memories to a certain date and time can be reinserted if a brain wipe is necessary.

  "The technology continues to improve. You need to take three minutes every three months and update the EP scan. The prior three months are easily recoverable after a wipe but anything over ninety days old will probably be lost forever without a prior scan. Hey, don’t worry, Wayne. A prior scan is only accessed by your unique brain frequencies after being triggered by your aura and pheromone scan. No one can inadvertently ‘read your mind’ except maybe your Symbiont someday."

  "You guys are just swell," chuckled Wayne sarcastically. "You recruit me, you tell me that both of my kids are now about to be Shadows and going into harm’s way, and you just put off buying me a drink so you can stick something in my brain that will wipe it clean if you or someone else manages to trip my stress meter. I sure am glad we are on the same team. I can’t imagine what you would do to me if you didn’t like me. Let’s get this over with. For the fourth time in my life, I need a drink."