It’s Coming! The next book in the Portal Authority Contract series is now in final edit, and will be up for pre-order on Kindle very soon now.
Chapter 3 Standing Up For Yourself
Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen. Winston Churchill
Chimera Base
541 Days to Flare Season (Contract Entity Estimate)
Davina Neufeld watched as Jamie Cartwell pointed at features on the 3D model of the breathing mask on the screen.
“Davina, it’s not going to work. You need to move the filter around to the back. The protrusions on the front have to go, too. They’ll catch on something and rip the mask right off the guy’s face. We need a better field of view, too, so you can see what you’re doing. What happened to the broadcast of alarms on the dedicated mask radio frequency? And the six frequencies I put in the spec? Those are safety issues, Davina. I need those changes made.”
“Those features cost, Jamie. Time and money.” Davina kept her tone reasonable, too, but with a dismissive edge, pretty well guaranteed to be annoying.
Jamie cut to the chase. “Your people can do better. I’m not signing off.”
She looked mulish, but he just stared right back at her until she relented. “All right. I’ll have the revisions done and get back to you. It’s not a perfect Galaxy, you know.”
“In a perfect Galaxy, we’d have to find honest work somewhere instead of jumping from disaster to disaster.” Jamie turned and strode out the door, phone in hand.
As soon as he was gone, Davina picked up the phone and said, “Hi, Conrad. I just got through talking to Jamie Cartwell about the mask design.”
She listened, smiled, and replied, “He did fine. Ripped apart the design, told me my people could do better, and flat refused to sign off. I’ll get the real design to him tomorrow.”
Four Seasons Hotel, Boston
539 Days to Flare Season (Contract Entity Estimate)
Ashley Hanson stood in one corner of the ballroom, attending the annual charity ball to benefit … right, it was the Museum of Fine Art. Her interest in classical paintings was about equal to her interest in Taoist theology, but her mother had insisted. Since it was a relief from virtual house arrest, she’d agreed. Now she was regretting it.
Her mother showed up with the third candidate of the evening. He was tall, handsome and perfectly turned out in a tux, probably from Savile Row in London.
“Ashley, this is Charles Cabot. Charles, my daughter, Ashley.” She said, brightly.
Ashley made the obligatory small talk while sizing him up, not seeing anything to interest her. Her mother’s picks were same guy, different day. He came from money, of course, an old Beacon Hill family. He was doing post-graduate university courses in something to do with conservation of fine art. He preferred French wine to Californian, Picasso to Cezanne, and was planning on vacationing on the Cote d’Azure in January to get away from the Boston winter. His knowledge of astronomy added up to “Stars are pretty, aren’t they?”
Right there, she sent him to the trash folder. Ashley had her Bachelor’s in Astronomy from MIT, was working on her Master’s, and had been part of the working group dealing with the ground-breaking astronomical data collected in Fimbulwinter.
Ashley let his artfully dropped hints about dinner or joining him on said vacation lay where they had fallen. In truth she wouldn’t have been interested if Sir Galahad had come riding up on his white horse, plus Charles reminded her way too much of Brad, her ex-fiance.
Brad had been one of her mother’s picks. Looks, money, connections, fast track to a high profile law firm, check. Political ambitions had been hinted at, too. Loyalty, not so much. When the social media storm had erupted, he’d dumped her as soon as he thought she was a liability. On Twitter. The comments from his friends’ re-tweets had been artfully calculated to rub salt in the wound.
Ashley went through the motions, nursing her champagne, dancing the minimum required number of dances with her mother’s candidates, and putting up a few half-hearted bids at the charity auction. When she’d had enough she slid out a side door and had the concierge call her a cab. When her ride showed up, it wasn’t a cab.
When the concierge opened the door of the black armoured Steinmetz Ultra she smiled for the first time in the whole evening when she saw who was inside. “Grand-dad!”
“I happened to be in town, and I heard you needed an extract. I could have sent the guys with blasters, but I figured I could handle this one myself.” He smiled warmly.
She slid into the seat beside him. “You aren’t allowed to have your security shoot Mother, Grand-dad. That’s my job.”
“That bad.” He nodded sympathetically.
Ashley looked as if she’d bitten into something spoiled. “Yeah. She means well, I know she does, but I had to get out of there before I started screaming. I just got introduced to three clones of Brad. If any of them had ever done anything useful in their lives they were hiding it really well.”
She made a two-handed pushing away gesture and changed the subject. “What are you doing in town?”
His phone pinged. He glanced at it, then put it away. “I had business over at MIT. Technology licenses and R&D contracts. Changing the world is a never-ending job.”
Business as usual for Grand-dad. She’d never known a time when her Grand-dad wasn’t mad busy, yet somehow he’d always had time for her. Her mother, on the other hand, had delegated the day to day of motherhood to nannies because her charities took up so much of her time. She couldn’t remember her father, aside from the name on Christmas and birthday presents, always expensive and generic. Grand-dad was her father figure.
He looked concerned. “You decompressed from Cornell yet?”
“Pretty much. Thanks, by the way. I was really glad to see those guys. I never did thank them. Remiss of me. Maybe I should date one of them. That would send Mother into the stratosphere.”
If it had been anyone but Grand-dad she would have resented bringing up the memory of running from rioters and being rescued in the nick of time by his private enterprise Special Forces team.
He chuckled. “Hate to tell you, kid, but they’re all married.”
She nodded ruefully. “Yeah, of course. The good ones are all married or gay. Can’t win, can I?”
“There’s a Zen thing, Ashley. You find what you’re looking for when you stop looking for it.”
She gave him a puzzled look. “It doesn’t make any sense, Grand-dad.”
“I wasn’t looking for a relationship when I met your grandmother, Ashley. It was just business – then it wasn’t. I’ve made some good moves in my day, but she was the best part of my life. Don’t settle for anything less, and grab on to it when it comes to you. It will.”
He leaned back in his seat and his face turned serious. “What do you want to do with your life, Ashley?”
Ashley’s mood turned serious as well. Virtual house arrest and actively avoiding social media had the meagre benefit of giving her time to think about such questions. She knew what she didn’t want, the well worn path her mother was on, spending the family money on charities and being a social butterfly.
“I want to do something important, Grand-dad. Something worthwhile. You change the world every day. I’m not you, but I can be useful. I liked being part of the Working Group.”
“Good. You don’t just get it handed to you, Ashley. You have to earn it. Are you willing to work for it?”
She looked down at the expensive dress and thought about the four hours of her time she’d spent getting dressed and made up to impress people she didn’t give a damn for. “I am, Grand-dad. I’m tired of being the little princess in the castle.”
“How do you want to go about it? Another university? Finish your degree?”
She laughed bitterly. “Where? Outer Mongolia? Mars? I’m a riot magnet. No university is going to want me on their campus. I’ll finish my degree on-line.”
“I know a place with no demonstrators, or media. It’s a long way from anywhere. You can’t even find it on Google. Lots of tropical sun. The online world has a short attention span. You could cool off there.”
“And the catch?” She replied.
“Not a catch. A Deal.” He replied. “You do an internship with a company I’m involved with. Administration stuff, not working on a rig or anything. You get what you earn. No favours because you’re family.”
“Just what does this company do?” She asked, warily. Negotiating a Deal, capital D, with the man who negotiated the destiny of Earth with god-like aliens was something to be approached with great caution by everyone, favourite grand-daughter included.
He smiled, and she knew she’d given him the straight line. “They save worlds.”
Chimera Base
536 Days to Flare Season (Contract Entity Estimate)
Jamie was doing the interviews in his office on Chimera. The short list was four, and he’d already interviewed three of them. Jamie didn’t have any fear of nukes or radiation, any more than any of the many other hazards on the job. He wasn’t iron-nerved, just knowledgeable and experienced. It was something he was watching for in the candidates.
“Harlan Adams. They call me Hatchet.” The man who held out his hand to Jamie was medium height, tanned and muscular, blue eyes contrasting with his black hair and heavy black eyebrows.
“Mister Jamie.” Jamie shook his hand firmly and got down to business.
Jamie had read Hatchet’s CV and it looked pretty good, experience all over the world, including a couple of sour gas wells, where poisonous fumes required the use of breathing equipment.
“The drill we use isn’t standard. It’s a nuclear drill, and it runs hot enough to melt its way through the rock. Does it bother you?” Jamie watched closely for, not just the answer, but how he said it.
Hatchet looked serious, but not fearful. “It’s a working tool. It has hazards, just like a lot of other equipment. The crews need to be trained, and they have to follow the rules.”
“You’re not afraid it will blow up?” Jamie asked one of his key questions. Anybody with that phobia couldn’t be a Driller, shouldn’t even be around the drill. Fear was contagious.
Hatchet relaxed a little. “No. The people in Device Design know their business. It’ll blow up if it’s next to a nuke when it’s detonated.”
“On a deployment, you’ll get a radiation history. It’s one of the things we track. I’m over the minimum, I had to sign a waiver. I can’t sue the Company if I get cancer. How do you feel about it?” Jamie watched this reply closely, too.
Hatchet shrugged. “Shit happens. I used to smoke, till I gave it up. Not paying attention will get you killed a lot faster.”
Hatchet’s manner was confident but not arrogant, and the answer was a reasonable one, not the “Live hard, die young.” attitude he’d had from one of the other candidates.
“There are two issues a Driller has to deal with every minute here. One is the clock. It’s running while we sit here, and it’s not negotiable. The other is safety. I’ve had guys killed on my crew, and never again is about right. Where do you come down?”
“They’re both important, and they’re joined at the hip. Saving time means taking risks, but you need people to do the work and you don’t take unnecessary risks. Judgment call.”
Good answer. It was the best answer he’d had so far.
Jamie asked a few other questions, and got good answers to all of them.
“Do you have any questions?” Jamie went on to the next stage of the interview.
“I’d work directly for you, right? No middle guys?” Hatchet said.
“Right. You’d be the Man for your crew. I stand behind my Drillers as long as they get the job done. If you need to fire someone, I’d back you up. I’d expect you to be tough on training, and extra tough on safety training. Once we transit the Portal, what we’ve got is what we’ve got, people and equipment. We don’t have it, we do without it.” Jamie clocked the answer closely.
“Copy.” Hatchet still looked easy and confident.
“What’s a typical day on the job like?” Hatchet asked.
“Crazy busy, and there’s a lot of inventing as you go along. Final Contract negotiations are still going on. I sit the EXCOM meetings, and the Drillers know what I know as soon as I know it. Changes happen, roll with them.”
Hatchet smiled briefly. “Good. I like a challenge.”
The interview ended, and Jamie pulled up his notes as soon as Hatchet left. He had a decision to make, and no time to go into a long soliloquy about “To hire, or not to hire, that is the question.”
Jamie went through the candidates, but Hatchet was the best as far as he could see. Of the others, one was nuke-phobic and didn’t hide it very well, one was reckless of safety, and the third hadn’t come across as decisive enough.
He bit his lip as he re-ran the interview in his mind. He had a nagging feeling there was something off, but he couldn’t put a finger on it. Hatchet’s answers had all been good ones. They’d been polished, as if he’d rehearsed them, but then he would if he really wanted the job.
He’s the best candidate. Perfect doesn’t exist. Jamie closed the file of notes, and walked out through his office door. Hatchet was still there.
“Job’s yours if you want it.” Jamie said.
Hatchet’s face broke out into a big grin. “Deal me in, Boss.”
Jamie shook hands, then got to business. “Get with HR, deal with the paperwork, do your personal training and get with your crew.”
Jamie turned to the next office down the corridor, marked with the sign, #2 Driller. “Princess!”
Princess came out of his office, and Jamie introduced Hatchet. They shook hands, and Princess said, “Welcome to the madhouse. You need help, just ask.”
“I’ll take you up on it.” Hatchet dumped his backpack in his new office, and headed topside to do his paperwork.
Jamie looked after him. There was still a nagging feeling, and he still couldn’t put his finger on it. He shrugged it off, and went on to the next thing on his never-ending to-do list. He had to trust people to do their jobs and come to him if there was a problem.
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