When you take on a serious job, you need serious tools. When Murphy invites himself on the job, you need someone who can get the tool you need.
Some characters are less fictional than other characters. Next time, it’s my tab.
Risk Enterprises Corporate HQ, tsunami Contract Day 31
Jeff Shelp hadn’t come to Risk Enterprises for the money, though it certainly hadn’t hurt. Being the procurement guy for the Canadian Special Forces community had brought him some very big challenges to go along with a pretty cool toy box. As they said it in his new job, ‘That’s Triple A ball. This is the bigs.’ Being an Expediter for Master Blasters was definitely the coolest job in the universe.
He read the email on his screen, and threw up his hands in a gesture of triumph. “It worked!”
He had removed the last roadblock in the shipment of plutonium from Japan. The modified container for the plutonium pits, sub-critical masses of plutonium, had been, grudgingly, signed off by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency.
His very experienced read was that there was a deadlocked power struggle going on inside Genki, as it was known in Japan. The faction that wanted to get rid of the plutonium was at odds with the faction afraid of being criticised for doing anything. The deal he had offered them had just tipped the scales in that power struggle.
Instead of trying to get politicians in the most nuclear sensitive country in the world to sign off on an underground nuclear waste repository, they could Contract with the Risk Enterprises subsidiary Purple Decontamination. They would do the site cleanup at a fraction of the cost, using the Portal technology tailored life form which was a monopoly of Risk Enterprises. At least as important as the cost was the ability to disclaim all responsibility and blame Risk Enterprises if anything went wrong.
He was still going to have to keep an eye for the numerous lesser issues that might crop up. In his old job, he’d had a totally unarmed reconnaissance UAV, cleared at the highest levels by both governments, hung up by an officious border guard. He had basically decided on his own hook that it was a weapon, never mind that it carried nothing but cameras and had no armament hard-points.
He rubbed his hands and a wide smile spread across his face. Best job in the universe.
The smile didn’t diminish when the Contract Priority flag came up on his screen. It was the consist for the resupply mission for Jonas Stone, on the Variance for the Tsunami Contract. Galactic Surveys was a sub-Contractor on the Contract, so the file had landed on his desk.
The top of the list was actually the easiest. They needed a 3.5 megaton demolition device, as a spare for the two they already had. He picked up the phone to Device Design. As expected, they already had the requirement. The reaction wasn’t quite ‘Ask us a hard one.’, but pretty close.
He rubbed his hands together, and got to the fun stuff. The lithium deuterium fuel elements for Jonas Stone were a specialist item, and they were going to need a lot of them. The Captains of Galactic Surveys believed in too much fuel the way they believed in Santa Claus and the Stork. It would cost to jump them to the top of the line above the other players, in and out of the Risk Enterprises family of companies, but it was in the family, so it was a solvable problem.
Now, I get to have some real fun. Tommygun had a requirement in for a system capable of penetrating a kilometre or two of mud, taking samples from the methane belts and returning said samples to the surface. Without, if you please, triggering the catastrophe and putting them in Violation.
He picked up the phone.
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