Connor returned his address to the floating phantom. “The end of hostilities has rendered some of our planned postings obsolete. We are no longer required in Dubai, that detail is scratched. The corps requires you here until further notice, sharp and frosty. That is all.” He turned on his heel and left.
Shoulders slumped all round and the soldiers slouched back to their bunks, the low murmur of their grumbling punctuated by a fist punching a locker.
“I knew it,” Johnson said, “I knew we’d never get to Dubai. Goddamn, why’d they have to end the damn war just when we was being sent someplace good?”
“At least we got a thank you for winning the war,” Foley offered.
“Tell that to Hughes,” said Steiner.
In the mess hall Foley was chowing down with Steiner and Johnson. Foley was a slow eater and Johnson, for all his bulk, ate as daintily as a vicar’s wife. Steiner, the smallest of the three, ate like someone was going to steal his food. Or at least he used to.
“Where’s your appetite, Steiner?” said Foley.
Steiner shrugged, “I’m just not too hungry, I guess.” He pushed some food around his plate and took a small forkful.
“You need to eat. The corps needs you sharp and frosty, amiright?”
Steiner rolled his eyes.
“I need you sharp and frosty,” Foley continued his mocking impression of Connor.
“Mrs Connor needs you sharp and frosty.”
Johnson laughed. “Goddamn that son of a bitch,” he said. “He thinks he’s a hard-ass with that stupid shaving cut on his face. He should have spent some time with us on the ground, getting shot at.”
“I thank you for winning the war for me,” Foley continued in the too loud voice. “Mrs Connor thanks you for winning the war for me.”
The three of them cracked up at the line.
“At least he had the good grace to thank us,” said Foley. “I wanted to thank him for taking aerial pleasure trips eight klicks back from where the action was and staying the hell out of my way while I won the war for him,” he sputtered between laughs.
Steiner pushed his plate away.
“Seriously, you need to eat, man. Are you okay?” said Johnson.
Steiner held his hands up. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Just not hungry today,” he said.
Johnson and Foley exchanged glances. “You need to eat, buddy. Your body needs it,” Johnson said, but Steiner just shrugged and shook his head.
Foley and Johnson had been concerned about Steiner since he returned to the company following the incident with Hughes. He had spent a week in a field hospital and had then been rotated back home for three weeks of rest and recuperation. When he returned he seemed to be a changed man. He wasn’t the same Steiner who had left. It was little things. He didn’t pick up on any of the running jokes they shared, and he didn’t seem to remember some of the things they had experienced together. When Foley asked him, “Hey, buddy, have you got that fifty bucks you owe me?” Steiner had paid up on the spot, rather than making the customary reply, “No, I gave it to your mum last night. I gave her the fifty bucks, too.” Foley and Johnson had been concerned that the brain injury Steiner had received had been more serious than had first been suspected, or that he was depressed or had PTSD or something similar. He had been passed fit for duty, though by the time he was back in the unit they never saw another shot fired in anger. Still, they worried about him. He was one of their own.
“So the glorious warriors of the last great war find themselves right back where they started, while the politicians and the generals take all the credit,” said Foley. “I guess some things never change.”
“I wouldn’t knock it,” said Steiner. “You’ve got a job, and a pension, and a bucketful of stories to tell the grandkids.”
“And the scars to prove it,” added Foley.
“I was sure lookin’ forward to Dubai, though,” Johnson said wistfully.
“Aw,” said Foley, “I’m sure we’ll have a great time, right here.”
The bright late afternoon sunlight streamed through the large floor to ceiling windows, framing Secretary of Defence Audrey Andrews and holding her in shadow. Her dark hair was pulled back severely and rolled into a tight bun on top of her head. She leaned into her desk, signing papers which she examined through glasses perched at the tip of her nose. There was a knock on the door and Andrews looked up. It was the timid woman.
“Ms Andrews?” the timid woman said.
“Yes?” Andrews snapped. She liked to appear officious and irritable. She thought it stopped people from bothering her unnecessarily and deterred people from asking stupid questions.
“Do you have just a moment?” the woman asked.
Audrey slipped the glasses off and gestured into the room. “Come in,” she said. “What is it?”
The woman walked into the office and stood across from Andrews on the other side of the desk. She held a manila folder across her chest like a child might hold a favoured cuddly toy. It seemed defensive, but despite her timidity at her core she had a steely resolve. She had something she thought the secretary of defence should know about and she was going to make sure she told her.
“My name is Colleen Acevedo. I’m an analyst in intelligence.” Acevedo had always been modest. She was, in fact, a senior intelligence analyst, reporting directly to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
“I know who you are, Ms Acevedo,” said Andrews. She was vaguely aware of Acevedo and her work, but nothing more.
“I thought you might just want to look at the transcripts of the conversations coming out of Venkdt.”
“Leave them on my desk; I’ll have someone take a look.” Andrews went back to her next piece of paper. Acevedo stepped forward.
“I really do think it’s worthy of your time, Ms Andrews. We’ve done some further analysis on the conversations and we’re pretty sure they’re between Charles Venkdt and Michael Summers, the CEO of Venkdt Corp here on Earth. There are some other conversations within Venkdt Mars that suggest that Charles Venkdt is very serious about what he’s discussing. He’s had senior members of Venkdt making feasibility studies, costings, etcetera, and he’s gone out of his way to keep it all under the radar.”
Audrey Andrews sat back in her chair and bit gently on the arm of her glasses. She observed Acevedo, and squinted almost imperceptibly. “Feasibility of what?” she asked.
Acevedo took a second to process the question. To her, the answer was so obvious she thought she might have misunderstood the question. “Martian independence,” she said.
Andrews thought. “Do you have the feasibility studies?” she asked.
“I do,” Acevedo replied, holding up the folder.
“And what do they say?”
Acevedo took a breath. “Essentially, they say that independence is feasible, desirable and even necessary.”
“Necessary?”
“Yes, Ms Andrews. Necessary for Mars to grow, economically. The arguments are essentially the same as in the Kasugai study, of which I’m sure you are aware.”
“Yes, yes, of course,” said Andrews. She had never heard of the Kasugai study. “So this is something they’re discussing seriously at Venkdt?”
“At Venkdt Mars, Ms Andrews, yes. Michael Summers is bitterly opposed. He gets quite angry in the transcripts.” Acevedo once again held up the manila folder.
“Show me,” said Andrews.
Acevedo made her way around the unnecessarily large desk and opened the folder, searching through it and pulling out sheets that were variously stapled or paper clipped together. She laid them out in front of Andrews, explaining as she went.
“These are the feasibility plans, called Feasibility B and Feasibility F - don’t ask what happened to A and C through E, we don’t know - and these are four message conversations between Summers and Venkdt over a period of two weeks. They get interesting here.” Acevedo pointed at one of pages. Andrews read it, turning over to the next page with deepening lines of concentration appearing on her fo
rehead. Acevedo pointed to another sheet. “This is where Summers starts to lose his rag,” she said.
Andrews read aloud:
“Summers: The shareholders own Venkdt, and we both work for them. I’ll be bringing this up at the AGM and we’ll have your ass out of there before you even know it.
Venkdt: I feel my position here is secure.
Summers: You cannot break up Venkdt without a two-thirds majority of the board.
Venkdt: Well, that might be true, strictly, but these are exceptional circumstances. We might have to bend the rules, just this one time.
Summers: We do things legally here at Venkdt.
Venkdt: I respect the law. But sometimes what’s right and what’s legal stray from each other, just a little.
Summers: Don’t do it Charles. I’ve got an army of lawyers here, just waiting to go.
Venkdt: And where is ‘here’ exactly? You’re a long way from where I am, and you can’t see what I can. This has to happen. It’s our destiny.
Summers: It might be your destiny but it’s sure as shit not your goddamned company. You have no right to go through with this. I’ll see you rot in jail for this if you try it, you son of a bitch.”
Andrews looked at Acevedo. “He’s going to break up Venkdt?”
“He proposes Venkdt Mars breaks away from the rest of Venkdt Corp. Given that Mars virtually is Venkdt Mars -”
Andrews cut in, “And Hjälp Teknik.”
“The Hjälp Teknik operation on Mars is less than a tenth of the size of Venkdt’s. Mars belongs to Venkdt, and Charles Venkdt wants out from the rest of the company. He has the means to do it, too.”
“What about the garrison?”
“Less than two hundred of them. And they’re more of a police force than an army.”
Andrews thought. “So what are the security implications for us?”
“Practically none, as you pointed out before. They’re a hundred and forty million miles away and they don’t have a military. But they do supply the bulk of our deuterium, and they’re a reasonably big player economically. The biggest threat to us is political. To lose our first - the world’s first - off-world colony would make us look weak, particularly in light of some of the compromises we had to make to get the peace accords to work. We’re already widely perceived as having caved into our enemies’ demands at the negotiation table. If we then sit by and let our colonists secede from the union against our wishes we will look weak. And that can only be destabilising.”
Andrews stood up and held out a hand to Acevedo. “Thank you for bringing this to my attention. This is good work, exactly the sort of thing we need to be looking at.”
“Thank you, Ms Andrews,” said Acevedo.
“Can you type all this up into a full report and get it to me by the end of the day?”
“Yes, Ms Andrews.”
“Good. That’s all”
“Thank you, Ms Andrews.”
Acevedo made toward the door as Andrews returned to her seat. Just as she got there Andrews called out, “Ms Acevedo?”
Acevedo stopped and turned back toward her. “Yes, Ms Andrews?”
“Your report - let’s just keep it between us at the moment.”
“Yes, Ms Andrews.”
C H A P T E R 5
A New Order
Sat plumb in the middle of its own private hundred and twenty metre dome, Charles Venkdt’s house looked like something from the home planet. Surrounded by lawns and even trees, here was a little bit of Earth on Mars. The house itself was large but functional. Venkdt didn’t have time for ostentation. He was about doing things, achieving goals and finding solutions. It showed in the design of his house and it showed in his work.
Venkdt was of the fifth generation of his family working at the top of the company which bore his name. His great-great-grandfather, Alexander Venkdt, had founded the company in 2094 and marshalled it into one of the great global players. His grandfather’s stewardship of the family business had been awarded to him for his involvement in the company’s biggest and boldest gamble; the commercial exploitation of Mars. In 2143 Venkdt Corp was the first company to send a human expedition to Mars, and within five years of that Venkdt had a permanent base on the planet which had been growing ever since. In the first few years growth was slow and interdependent with the USAN Research Center, which had been established twenty-two years before and had a permanent but rotating staff of around thirty people.
Around twenty years after the base was established expansion really started to take off. Deuterium and other precious minerals were being extracted in ever-larger amounts and sent back to the home planet. The early camps were expanding into something much more comfortable than the original squat cylinders connected by tubes. The new buildings by that time were totally fabricated on Mars, made with Martian bricks and built largely below surface level as protection against the low atmospheric pressure and cold. All buildings had to be sealed against the exterior low pressure of seven or so millibars, not much more than an absolute vacuum for practical purposes. Being mostly underground helped with this and the extreme cold of a Martian nigh-time or winter. Once bricks and Plexiglas could be manufactured locally there was something of a building boom. Within twenty-five years the original Venkdt prefabs were abandoned and given the status of ‘historic sight’. They had gone from being cutting edge, wave of the future habitation to museum pieces in less than a quarter of a century.
By 2180 Venkdt’s Martian operation dwarfed the USAN Research Center and expansion was continuing apace. In the first few decades of operation all Venkdt personnel eventually returned to Earth after serving terms of two, four, six or eight years. Their pay was very good and there was little opportunity to spend it on a frontier planet. Business was booming and Venkdt Mars was one of Venkdt Corp’s most profitable divisions. As the operation expanded in terms of people and buildings some personnel chose to stay beyond even eight years.
The first humans born on Mars had come in the early days, but they had quickly returned to Earth with their parents soon after. Mars, it seemed, was no place to raise a kid. Over time this returning to the home planet became less of an obvious choice. Starting in the 2170s, when the total population was around fifteen thousand, some families opted to stay on Mars. There were building projects for homes that, unlike the previous Venkdt billets, could be bought by their occupants. Soon the ratio of natural born Martians to transients started to shift, ever so slightly at first but accelerating over time. By the end of the century more than half of the population was Martian born, with some of them being second or third generation.
Charles Venkdt himself had shipped out to Mars at the age of eighteen in 2185, and had never been back to Earth since. He had always been fascinated with the planet and his family’s interest in it. And, in truth, he had wanted to get out from the shadow of his father. This didn’t, of course, extend to striking out completely on his own. Given his good fortune to have been born into one of the richest families in the USAN, that would have just been foolish. Charles knew that he could make a name for himself working from within. If he worked hard and demonstrated competency he would soon rise up in the furthest outpost of the family firm. That he did.
Venkdt had been the managing operational director of Venkdt Mars for over thirty-five years. When he had first reached that lofty position the Martian population had been around thirty thousand; now it was close to one hundred thousand. He had overseen expansion from the exportation of raw minerals to the production of high quality finished goods. He had expanded the fledgling R&D Department to something of a fiefdom for its director. He understood that in their hostile environment Martians had to innovate, meeting every challenge with creative solutions.
Within the last thirty years or so he had seen the arrival of Hjälp Teknik, a comparatively upstart company who had arrived on Mars as a direct competitor to Venkdt. Charles viewed them with a mild contempt, but conceded that competition was good as it would drive efficiency a
nd innovation. Despite that he couldn’t help thinking, deep down, that Hjälp Teknik had it easy. The knowhow, the knowledge, the risk had all been borne by the pioneers of Venkdt, who had also supplied, latterly, much of the transport and coms infrastructure. These Johnny-come-latelies were sailing in on Venkdt’s coat tails when all the hard work had been done, and taking the easy pickings.
Things were changing now, and rapidly. It wasn’t just Hjälp Teknik who were the rivals any more. Mars had expanded at such a rate that, even with the exception of Hjälp Teknik, it was no longer a company town. Two Venkdt employees might get together and start a family, buying a house with their wages and becoming true stakeholders in the Martian adventure. What about their kids? Venkdt didn’t necessarily owe them a living, and they didn’t necessarily want to work for Venkdt. With some capital from their parents’ savings, or even a loan, some of these natural born Martians could set up their own businesses. Venkdt’s Martians craved entertainment and other fripperies to spend their hard-earned money on, and small businesses sprang up to provide it to them. In time, other services were provided too, leading to growth in the Martian banking sector. Initially most goods were imported - there was money to be made undercutting the official Venkdt Stores in this area - but in time demand drove local production. The Martian economy was fizzing, and the population was expanding. All of this made Charles Venkdt immensely proud. Though in truth it was his forefathers and their associates who had put in the really hard graft in the early days, Charles felt, with not a total absence of justification, that Mars was an ongoing project that he had built.
From his position on the veranda Charles watched the cab arrive, slowly winding its way up his short drive before coming to a halt in front of the house. His daughter stepped from the vehicle and reached back in, collecting her bag. She closed the door and looked up. “Hi, Dad,” she said.
“Hey, gorgeous,” Venkdt replied, a warm and genuine smile on his face. He walked to the top of the steps and greeted her with a hug and a kiss. They walked inside.
Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) Page 6