by Bob Blanton
“Yeah, then the Azores where you guys found the Cinque Chagas,” Sophia said. “I would really like to get the inside story about that; Dad always acted skeptical whenever there was anything about it on the news.”
“That was when your father was spying on us,” Catie said.
“He was just doing his job.”
“We know, no hard feelings; after all, we did make him our minister of defense,” Catie said.
“That’s true,” Sophia said. “Hey, looks like your uncle and Jackie are getting along pretty well.”
Catie turned to look at Blake and Jackie. She had been checking up on them using her specs, but looking directly always gave a more complete picture. “They sure do.”
“Is he holding her hand?”
“I think so. . . . Oops, Uncle Blake says if we don’t quit staring at them, he’s going to come over here and slap us on the back of our heads.”
“How dare he threaten us; he’s just saying that because we’re girls,” Sophia said with maximum indignation.
“If we were guys, he would have threatened to punch us in the nose.”
“Oh, I guess treating us like girls isn’t so bad,” Sophia said with a giggle.
“By the way, how’s your mom doing?” Catie asked. Both girls made a show of repositioning themselves so that they couldn’t see Blake and Jackie.
“She’s great; she’s up on the space station right now. She loves the job of growing all that food. And she won’t admit it, but she loves wearing a shipsuit.”
“So, are you ready for your exclusive?”
“That’s why I’m here,” Sophia said. “What’s going on? You already gave me the one about the U.S. pulling all their people back from the Alliance.”
“This is a local story. We’ve discovered that some of the managers for MacKenzie Discoveries’ businesses here in Delphi City are stealing from the company.”
“What, why would anyone do that? You guys pay top dollar, why would they risk it?”
“Greed, I guess. They’re getting kickbacks on the meals. They’ve lowered the quality to save money and are splitting it between the vendor and themselves.”
“How many are involved?” Sophia asked.
“We’ve been able to determine that about five of the top HR managers are involved, and then about fifteen of the supervisors. It looks like they’ve even gone so far as to torpedo any suggestions about efficiency, preferring more employees, so there’s more money to steal.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“We’re going to have the top dogs arrested for embezzlement, and probably fire the rest of them.”
“And how did you discover this?”
“We had someone go undercover working in one of the plants. They were just characterizing how the employees felt about working for MacKenzie Discoveries, but then they stumbled across this. The employees were all griping about the poor food quality.”
“So, when can I run the story?”
“Any time after eight o’clock tomorrow morning.”
“Good,” Sophia said. “Now, do you want to share the Jamaican Jerk Chicken?”
“No. I’m having it, but I’m not sharing,” Catie said.
“How can you eat so much?”
“I run five to seven miles per day,” Catie said. “Plus, I do my martial arts workout whenever I can find a partner.”
“Okay, I’ll take my leftovers home, David will eat them for a snack.”
When the girls left the restaurant, Blake and Jackie were just starting their dessert.
◆ ◆ ◆
The next morning the whole community was abuzz with the news of the arrest of ten people who were employed by MacKenzie Discoveries and the firing of eight others; the charge was embezzlement. It was the first time anyone from the company was ever arrested, if you discounted the occasional drunk construction worker who had to spend the night at the clinic while detoxing. The owner of a restaurant was also arrested on charges of grand theft.
Sophia got her exclusive, but a BBC crew, Leslie, and four other reporters from other news outlets were there by midday. Sophia was in the front row of the press conference held by Kal later that day. The press conference didn’t start until after the other reporters had arrived, much to Sophia’s chagrin.
“If everyone will be seated, we’ll begin,” Kal announced. It took a couple of minutes for the reporters to be seated and a few more minutes before the large local crowd settled down.
“I have with me Chief Nawal Salib, the head of the Delphi city police force. I have a brief announcement, after which we’ll take your questions.
“This morning at six a.m., the Delphi City Police arrested eleven people on charges of embezzlement and theft. Ten of them worked for MacKenzie Discoveries; the eleventh was an accomplice who owns a restaurant that was being used to steal from MacKenzie Discoveries. They were involved in a scheme where they received kickbacks for the charges to MacKenzie Discoveries for employee meals. They systematically lowered the cost and the quality of the meals in order to defraud both the company and the employees of the quality meals that were specified in their employment packages, serving substandard fare instead. Eight other supervisors were fired from MacKenzies due to their knowledge of the crime; however, we found no evidence that they directly participated or benefitted from it.
“We’ll now take your questions,” Kal said.
“How did you discover the crime?” Leslie asked.
“MacKenzies placed an undercover investigator in one of its plants. That operator noticed the poor quality of food right away. They reported it, tracked down all the evidence, and submitted a final report yesterday,” Kal said.
“Were they looking for criminal activity?” Leslie asked as a follow-up question.
“No, they weren’t. The purpose of the investigation was to measure the quality of employee satisfaction with their work, as well as to explore ways to improve conditions and to determine what types of opportunities MacKenzies should be providing to its employees,” Kal answered.
“What is the process from here?” the BBC reporter asked.
Kal nodded to Chief Nawal to indicate she should answer.
“We have frozen the accounts and assets of those arrested. They will be detained in our jail until they are arraigned in two days. During the arraignment, they will be represented by legal counsel. After that, they will be released on their own recognizance until the trial.”
“How will you stop them from running away?” the reporter asked.
“Nobody comes or goes from Delphi City without our knowledge and permission,” Chief Nawal answered.
“What kind of penalty is being sought?” Sophia asked after getting Kal’s attention.
“MacKenzies is seeking the return of all the money that was embezzled as well as a sentence of two years,” Kal answered.
“What will MacKenzies do with the money?” Sophia asked; this was the question she and Catie had decided Sophia should be sure to ask.
“The money was supposed to be spent on the employees, providing high-quality meals; therefore, MacKenzies plans to award the money to the employees that were affected based on the number of inferior meals they were forced to consume. MacKenzies will also provide a bonus to all employees equal to one month of their salary as a way to compensate for our lax oversight of their wellbeing as well as their having to endure the substandard meals,” Kal answered.
“If those arrested are convicted, how will they have to spend their time?” another reporter asked.
“If convicted, they will have to live in a bunkhouse during their sentence. They will be given various jobs like cleaning the streets or maintaining the parks. Once they’ve completed their sentence, they’ll be free to decide what they want to do,” Chief Nawal answered.
“What will they do when they’re not working?” the reporter asked.
“They have to adhere to a curfew that requires them to be in the bunkhouse for ten hours ea
ch night,” Chief Nawal said. “But other than that, they can spend their free time however they wish.”
“What about the employees you fired?” another reporter asked.
“They’re free to look for other employment. I doubt that MacKenzies will hire them in any position involving the oversight of people or operations,” Kal said.
◆ ◆ ◆
“Wei, I wanted to let you know I’m moving out. I’m paid up for three months, so you can have the place to yourself until then,” Catie said.
“Why are you moving?”
“I got a new job on the space station. I don’t really like it up there, but the money is too good to turn down.”
“Good for you. I’ll miss you; you’re a nice roommate.”
“Thanks. Hey, you’re robostep should be here soon. They’re going to give it to you for free since you’re the first one who’s ordered one for residential use. You just have to agree to fill out a questionnaire after you’ve had it for two months.”
“That’s really nice of them. I can defiantly fill out a questionnaire.”
“Do you want to go out for dinner, since this is my last day?”
“Sure.”
Chapter 17
Cabinet Meeting – Oct 26th
Marc called the Cabinet meeting a week early; everyone assumed he was being cautious given the impending U.S. election coming up on the following Tuesday.
Catie and Samantha were the first to arrive; they’d had breakfast together in the building’s cafeteria. Samantha was helping Catie with a paper for the international relations class she was taking for college credit. Catie was writing a paper on how knowing there were other civilizations among the stars would affect relationships between nations on Earth.
“Hey, Catie, you’re looking good,” Fred said when he arrived just after them. “You’re almost back to normal. How did you like being a woman of color?”
“I didn’t have any issues,” Catie said, “but I only had a little color, which is pretty common around here.”
“Are you still whitening up?” Fred asked since Catie was still quite a bit darker than her normal coloring.
“I’m going to keep this color,” Catie said. “Dr. Metra says it will protect my skin from the sun.”
“My mamma always said, ‘black don’t crack;’ I guess brown doesn’t either,” Fred said.
“I wonder how people being able to change their coloring will affect race relations,” Samantha mused.
“It will have to be a lot more widely available to have any effect,” Marc said as he came into the room, followed by Nikola. “Right now, nobody knows it can be done except Catie’s closest friends.”
“That’s just you guys on the board,” Catie said. “I stayed out of sight and used my avatar over the Comm.”
“By the way, good job on the undercover report,” Marc said.
“We’ll have to use her as an investigator more often,” Kal said. He’d slipped into the room right behind Marc.
“I don’t think so,” Catie said. Throwing the attention back on Kal, she added, “I loved your press conference.”
“Yes, you did an exceptional job,” Marc said.
“Thank you, and no! I will not be your press agent; you have to do your own press conferences,” Kal said.
“Hey, it would mean a big raise,” Marc said.
“You can’t pay me enough to let those reporters eye me for dinner again.”
“How did you think Sophia did?” Catie asked.
“She did a good job,” Kal said. “Very professional. Of course, I think she had a bit more time to prepare than the others.”
“Hi guys,” Liz said as she entered. “Anyone know where Blake is?”
“He’s been on the Mea Huli,” Admiral Michaels said as he followed Liz in. “He messaged me that he was taking the weekend off. I’d have found something for him to do if I’d known he was taking the Mea Huli for the entire time. I was planning to go fishing.” The Mea Huli was the McCormacks’ thirty-five-meter yacht.
“That’s why I didn’t tell you,” Blake said as he came through the door.
“Hey, you could have told me you were going to be gone,” Liz said.
“I wanted to get some work out of you,” Blake said. “I assume I at least got Saturday.”
“You owe me,” Liz said, but decided not to add any extra comments since Blake was her boss, sort of.
“You’re looking very relaxed,” Samantha said. “Time on the water must have agreed with you.”
Catie tried to suppress a snort, but was unsuccessful, garnering her a hard glare from Blake. She stuck her tongue out at him but decided not to out him for spending the weekend with Jackie.
“Sorry, we’re late,” Dr. Metra said as she and Herr Hausmann came in. “We were finishing up Cer Hausmann’s treatment, but an emergency delayed me a bit.”
“Not a problem,” Marc said. “Blake just arrived, so you didn’t delay anything. But now that everybody’s here, let’s get started. I assume everyone has surmised that I’ve called this meeting early to allow us to prepare for any last-minute maneuvering by the president before the U.S. elections next week.”
“I don’t think there’s going to be a problem,” Admiral Michaels said. “My contacts tell me the president is delighted by his recent surge in the polls after the force recall. He is hoping to ride the wave to re-election.”
“Don’t tell me he’s going to get re-elected,” Catie groaned.
“Very doubtful,” Samantha said. “His surge in the polls is due to his party’s core constituents, who had abandoned him after the debacle on the eve of war, switching back to him after recall notice. Apparently, they decided that he wasn’t as bad as they thought. He’s still projected to lose most states.”
“Good,” Catie said.
“What is our force status?” Marc asked. “That is, if you had time to review it before the meeting.”
Blake laughed at Marc’s dig. “I did review it. We’ve adjusted the flight rotations, so only our most trusted pilots are flying for the next week. The rest of the pilots are doing simulator training or going through Kal’s new combat training.”
Marc looked at Kal, his face indicating he would like an answer to the obvious question.
“Blake and I reviewed all the after-action reports from the war. Then we had a team go through possible scenarios and create discrepancy reports based on what our capabilities were and what we would have needed in that case. We determined that we need the pilots to have training in survival, ship boarding actions, and commando raids. The reasons are that they could be wrecked in a desolate location, wrecked next to an enemy ship in space, or we might need to draw from the pool of pilots to meet the workforce requirements for a critical mission,” Kal explained.
“I like that reasoning,” Marc said. He turned to Catie and gave her a smile.
“What?! I’ve already done all that training,” Catie said.
“We’ve scheduled you and Liz to go through the training with a small group of people, like Jason, Casper, and Natalia. That way, you can still maintain your mystique with the rest of the pilots,” Blake said. “Kal will be running all the crew members through the same training.”
“What about you?” Catie demanded.
“Kal’s going to be running me through a private session,” Blake said. “It wouldn’t do for the troops to see their commander as anything less than a god.”
Catie snorted at that, “Yeah, right.”
“Okay, you guys can work out those details later,” Marc said. “Have you taken care of the selection process for who we’re keeping?”
“Yes, we’ve made offers to the twelve hundred we had identified before. We’ve gotten acceptances from one hundred thirty pilots, eighteen ship officers, and seven hundred crew,” Blake said. “That gives us a good base to build on.”
“Good, what about Earth-side resources,” Marc asked.
“We’ve got one hundred eighty Delphi Mar
ines trained and ready to go,” Kal said. “I’m reluctant to expand too much more; these soldiers want action, and until we have more extensive training facilities, we need to go slow. They didn’t see any action in the war except security patrols after the Paraxean surrender.”
“How much space do you need?” Marc asked.
“It would take an entire section to do it right,” Kal said. “It would be better if we could come up with a big area on land, a few square miles would be perfect.”
“Maybe we can get Morocco to give us the space,” Samantha suggested. “They certainly could spare a few square miles of desert.”
“Or Algeria,” Liz suggested.
Marc eyed Samantha.
“I’ll have Margaret check on it,” Samantha said.
“What else?” Marc asked Kal.
“We purchased four frigates from Naval Group at Lorient, France. The president did us a favor when he canceled the U.S. order. He said he wanted all U.S. warships to be U.S. designed and built,” Kal said.
“Well, he pissed off some people in Wisconsin when he canceled the order. They were supposed to build most of it,” Samantha said.
“Just chalk it up to his tweet first, think later policy,” Blake said.
“We’re refitting them with fusion reactors and plasma cannons,” Kal continued. “We should be able to launch them by the end of the year.”
“What good will a frigate do?” Catie asked.
“It’s about projection of force. With a modification to the rear deck, they’ll each be able to carry a pair of Foxes, Lynxes, or a combo. It gives us a way to have a small base close to one of our offshore clinics or manufacturing plants,” Kal explained.
“What we need is an aircraft carrier or two,” Liz said.
“We can’t find one for sale,” Blake said. “We’re looking into building our own, but that takes a long time.”
“Just buy a container ship,” Catie said. “With VTO, you can get a bunch of Foxes and or Lynxes on one. You could even add a couple of stories to the deck so you could carry more.”
“That’s a great idea,” Blake said.
“Yeah, but it will take time to get one built for us,” Marc said.