Lord Banshee Lunatic (Nightmare Wars Book 3)
Page 38
Rags and I engaged in an almost ritual dance to understand each other without coming to blows or revealing more than was safe. I learned more than I wanted to know about the dark side of higher finance. He referred casually to ‘foreseeable insurance loss vectors,’ a kind of toxic investment that could be bought and sold on any major exchange. It was a form of short selling; the sucker agreed to pay current prices for a package of stock in profitable, well-managed companies that would be delivered a few months later. The trick was in the timing, to ensure that the investor you were fleecing bought the vector just before losses that should have been covered by insurance were revealed to be uninsurable. This required that you knew in advance precisely what kind of loss was anticipated and when it would be incurred.
He dropped a few company names as examples, which I recognized from my monitoring of corporations that turned to illicit drugs to rebalance their accounts. In one example, the “vector” had been a stock portfolio of freight companies whose ships had vanished without a trace, along with their crews and cargoes, halfway between the Earth and Mars. It had never been clear whether the ships had been unlucky, hitting a larger than normal meteoroid, had suffered from poor maintenance, had an incompetent crew, or had been attacked by pirates. When the freight companies attempted to collect their insurance, the insurance companies refused to pay, citing the absence of evidence to demonstrate that the mishap was not due to incompetence or suicidal actions by the crew. Taking the insurance companies to court compounded the expenses, so the freight companies had been forced to write off the entire loss, including payouts to the grieving families of the crew.
To me, the presence of the stock in a vector proved that the loss was deliberate and precisely timed, implying a pirate attack or sabotage. Such losses were covered by every modern insurance contract. Had the freight companies known about the ‘foreseeable insurance loss vector,’ they would have cited it as evidence in their suits against the insurance companies.
None ever did. The complexity of the transaction helped to hide it from authorities. The destruction of the ship was an unrelated attack; knowing when it would happen was itself a tradable commodity. Knowing that the insurance contract would not cover a complete disappearance was also tradable, requiring insider knowledge from either the insurance company or the freight company.
From the outside, the vector looked like a package of stocks in profitable companies, hardly different from any normal mutual fund except for their subsequent bad luck in a risky business. Rags insisted that selling stock in companies that you believed would soon decrease in value was not a crime, merely the flip side of buying stocks you believed would increase in value. Packaging several such investments into a vector was just good business.
I observed that not informing the customer of the impending loss was itself fraudulent.
He became angry that I was missing the entire point; the ship was five months into a year-long voyage and was doomed – he could not save it. The information was available to anyone who cared to check, including the authorities who I delusionally expected would have intervened. The same was true of all the stocks in the package. The authorities had not been interested and the money he earned had helped finance a new colony in the Belt.
There was also the sheer beauty of assembling such a transaction.
I did not want to waste my time arguing about insurance and investment strategies, nor about the customers he defrauded. To me, there was only one real issue. Packaging the freight company’s stock in the ‘foreseeable insurance loss vector’ proved that each lost ship was a case of four premeditated murders. He may not have saved the crews but could have shut down the conspiracy that was killing them. If the authorities were looking aside, that too was a reportable offence strongly suggesting corruption.
I was even more bothered that the insiders who sold the information had concealed the crime early enough that something might have been done to rescue the crews. If the sabotage had been a bomb hidden in the cargo, the crews might have defused the bomb or jettisoned the whole cargo. Even a freighter could change course to evade a pirate attack if they had enough warning. I ended the conversation because I wanted to learn more and he would stop talking if I followed the normal course of an interrogation.
Talking with Rags gave me practice in maintaining control as the Ghost in the face of revolting, excruciating outrage. Worse was to be expected in my trial, so it was all to the good. The closest I came to personal therapy was that each night I wrote up notes on what he had said, removed references that might incriminate him, and sent the Banshee-encrypted file to the team.
I got a very brief note back from Evgenia promising to forward the information to the Directorate of Commerce and to the Directorate of Law when it was properly organized.
Vishnuram replied that one of the companies I had mentioned as a victim was registered on the Earth. He had passed the names of the company and ship, with a description of the term ‘foreseeable insurance loss vector,’ to his colleagues more directly involved in stock fraud, insurance fraud and murder. He had not heard back and did not expect to, knowing how difficult such cases were to investigate. He added that a variety of hotels were currently available.
That did jog me briefly into the Cripple, delighted to hear from him after such a long time. It took a few moments to remember that we had only met for a few days barely more than a month before. It seemed like a lifetime.
I received another update from Sergei on the Rapunzel.
The jurisdictional dispute was heating up. Wolong demanded that the crew of the Anaconda be sent to the Earth, where the patriots would be rewarded and the traitors executed. Fenghuang insisted they be sent to Outer, where the defectors could begin bio-cleansing and the criminals who had attacked Copernicus City could face trial.
The Rapunzel reported that the defectors had already started bio-cleansing and most were eager to go to the Moon. A few wanted to transfer at L2 onto ships declaring loyalty to their home factions.
Wolong’s allies in L2 suggested as a compromise that his loyal crew members return with the ship to the Earth, bringing the former captain as a prisoner. He was a traitor deserving a severe execution. The ship would be valuable later when they attacked the Moon to punish Fenghuang. Both viceroys denounced this solution.
It was unclear what the former captain wanted. During the one occasion when he had been permitted to speak, he had raved inconsolably about unspeakable betrayals and the end of all life.
Both Viceroys declared that defiance of their duty by LR would be taken as an act of political treachery. LR continued to insist on their neutrality, that the choice of where to disembark was the sole prerogative of each patient or passenger, once they had completed their bio-cleansing. Sergei concluded that they were regretting their attempt to rescue the crew of the stricken Anaconda.
Part of my daily exercise routine was to practice the proper use of my comm unit. Sa’id showed me in detail how to turn on and off the cameras, microphones and motion sensors in the ward. I already knew the basics, but there were hidden interfaces that gave much finer control. I spent a happy hour moving my virtual self around without leaving my bed. I pretended to walk up and down the ward, in and out of every room. Every door recorded being opened and closed, although none of them had moved. It was all unobserved because I turned the cameras off wherever my ghostly presence moved. That too I wrote up in a Banshee-encrypted report that I circulated within the team.
The next day I did the actual walk, one pass along the entire length of the hallway to avoid overstressing my muscles while I was distracted with the comm system. I erased both my presence and Sa’id’s as I went, substituting other people who might plausibly have taken that route. At dinner time I erased the movements of all our fellow inmates, making it seem that Sa’id had delivered food to us in our rooms. That was tricky because I had to splice in audio and video clips of him apparently making the deliveries to match the door and hallway monitors.
2357-04-03 01:00
Look Homeward, Banshee
It was all beginning to seem routine and I hated routine. Outside, the world was churning towards disaster, as I knew from my rest breaks when I scanned the news and economic feeds. I studied the state of the Earth intently, almost obsessively, wondering what we could do to stop the catastrophe.
Wolong was taking his fury out against the helpless people of the Earth and even more viciously against his military. His economic policies were erratic, his social and political policies unbelievably ignorant and selfish. The details were never clear because the news was increasingly censored but it was obvious that the Earth was teetering towards disaster. It would take everyone else with it.
Even on the Moon there was deepening trouble. The resumption of trade had staved off famine and general bankruptcy, but as long as Wolong continued his blockade, trade with the Earth was impossible and the Lunar people suffered.
Wolong tried to organize trade with L1 and L2 through conventional channels, but found it was controlled by organizations like the Spacers Guild with headquarters on the Moon. Some days he declared them to be organized crime, other days he demanded their subservience, or he would try to woo their support.
Freight companies who accepted his assurances of safe conduct quickly learned the value of his pledged word. Freighters were defenceless if they did not have a military escort. Warships from Wolong’s allied factions in L1 or L2 would race to intercept the ship, board it, and imprison the crew before the TDF could respond. The crews were often recovered if a TDF FAS could intercept the attackers before they fled to the Belt. Recovering the ship had a lower priority. Most often, the attackers sent the ship to the Earth with just a Cap and Nav as crew. Almost no one would purchase the stolen goods.
These attacks were outrageous but rare. Spacers were neither stupid nor gullible; the few who tested Wolong’s good faith were desperate, inbound from long trading missions and cut off from resupplies of food and fuel. Most ships detoured to L1 or L2, joining the convoys if they could. By now, Fenghuang controlled more of the Imperial fleet than Wolong. Working with the TDF, there were just enough warships to guard and escort convoys to the Moon.
On the Earth itself, the loss of food shipments from L1 was creating shortages that grew steadily worse, triggering riots in most major cities. They were being suppressed with violence by militias that had formerly defended their people from bandits.
Most militias rebelled against these orders. Wolong was just beginning to understand that he had to transport the regional militias to distant parts of the globe before any of them would be willing to attack starving citizens. The Romans had known that much two and a half millennia before but Wolong was not a history buff.
The metal markets had fallen into the predicted crisis without fresh supplies arriving from space. Construction was becoming too expensive for normal citizens. Projects were halted or cancelled, forcing their suppliers to cease production in response. Unemployment was rising rapidly, and the homeless poor appeared on the streets, a class of people rarely seen in two centuries.
It was obvious that Wolong had never studied law or economics. Normally, he took what he wanted without compensation.
The wealthy elite tried to ride through the maelstrom but fewer each week remained unaffected. Those with Martian experience sometimes tried to marry into the families of the new Martian aristocracy. Most of the aristocrats were overwhelmed and did not appreciate the offers. Those who wanted honourable relations ignored the deceitful offers, waiting until they had enough experience to know which families they wanted as allies. The rest treated the earth-scum with contempt. Some started collecting harems but others used their new spouses as prostitutes, renting them out to their friends. If all they wanted from the relationship was money, they tried to revive the almost-forgotten custom of dowries.
Wolong extorted women and dowries out of anyone who sought his favour. Rumours alleged that he was savagely offended when the women treated him as a barbarian child. He had confiscated a whole tower on a remote Pacific island to hold his growing harem. It was to be a private paradise where he could indulge himself unobserved. It would be a prison from which the captive women could not escape.
He ordered the lush tropical vegetation cleaned off to bare lava. He ordered several teams of gardeners executed when they refused, invoking the Law on the Environment in justification. Nor was he happy when the police refused to kill the criminals. Ultimately, he commanded Imperial troops to expel the entire population of the island and burn the offending vegetation to the ground. The evacuations were taking far longer and costing far more than his advisors thought reasonable. A liner in space could get to Mars faster than an ocean liner could remove a single load of evacuees to Oz.
Hardly a month into the occupation of the Earth, Wolong had dropped back two thousand years culturally. Only the weapons used by his armies were advanced.
Katerina said that his advisors were trying to isolate him from actual administration, with modest success. Unfortunately, he was not alone in enacting erratic and unrealistic policies. Most of his advisors were equally baffled by the Earth.
Regional borders were a typical problem. Martian aristocrats did not control territory since their cities, farms and factories were isolated pockets of humanity separated by vast tracks of desert. They had no need for borders. My limited experience with Belters suggested they had even less interest in borders and regional governments. Asteroid colonies moved continuously around their orbits and had new neighbours every month. The Ministry of Borders and the passions it stirred were incomprehensible mysteries.
Martian aristocrats controlled families rather than land. They struggled to understand that terrestrial corporations were normally owned by unrelated investors and managed by hired experts. They tended to assume that the people living in a tower were members of a single clan, and bitterly resented interference by other aristocrats who claimed ownership of the same tower.
They were baffled by the devotion that their subjects felt for the stinking, vermin-infested wilderness that surrounded every city and farm. The swamps, grasslands and forests were filled with vicious animals, were cesspools of the diseases that plagued the planet, and were the source of noxious weeds that spread through the agricultural areas, reducing the already low productivity of terrestrial agriculture. Surely it would be better to clean out these pests, to return the ground to the clean, bare dirt that was the natural cover of every planet? Surely it would be more productive to build more algae and bacterial farms, to eliminate the vile vegetable crops completely? And who could even contemplate meat?
But the people disagreed, treasuring every flee-covered rat, biting fly, and thorny vine, as though they were close kin. They cherished their traditional diets and parklands as invaluable possessions inherited from their beloved ancestors which they were determined to pass inviolate to their descendants.
One issue was clear; the collapse of the global economy was driven primarily by Wolong’s rivalry with his sister and defiance of his father’s authority. It seemed there was serious dissent amongst his advisors. Many were desperate to restart interplanetary trade, although the secrecy that surrounded his decisions made it impossible to be sure who was responsible for each decision.
Evgenia reported that there was more communication between the Imperial officials on the Earth and the Moon than was apparent from the news feeds. The relative success of integrating the Imperial and Lunar governments was fuelling similar proposals on the Earth that might be implemented behind Wolong’s back. Factions were forming to advocate for and against each proposal, exacerbated by secrecy, conspiracy and oppression.
The Terrestrial Council continued to function, struggling desperately to provide essential services while they
tried to educate Directors who held overlapping authorities. The Lunar example helped but the Moon was a simple society compared to the intentional variety of the Earth. It made even my head spin. I passed the most confusing tidbits to Rags, Mindy and Hotstuff for their comments.
Hotstuff could explain much of the passivity of the hidden armies as residual loyalty to the regions which they had intended to protect, compounded by factional confusion in their leadership. I wondered aloud if they remained passive because the leadership of the TDF had been driven mad by the original emoji attack. The arrival of the Imperium had brought them into the open to defend their regions in partnership with the regional militias, but their command chains ran into MI or parts of the TDF officer corps which were divided and demented. They would sit passively until someone with more ambition gave them orders they were willing to follow.
I greatly worried who the candidates were for the emerging leadership. None of us had any real clue who ran the emoji systems, only that there was more than one of them. Hotstuff agreed with my concerns but could only speak with confidence about herself and her own force.
2357-04-03 08:00
Hundred Families
Rags tried to explain how the hundred families had maintained the cohesion of society for hundreds of years, alongside the representative Council and the meritocratic bureaucracy. He offered the lamented Very Senior Minister Morris as one of the best current examples, from an ancient and highly honoured family, trained and practiced in the arts of government. Rags regretted that he had died so young, just when his contribution would have been most useful in bridging the chasm between the Imperial and Terrestrial Governments.