This is the last snippet of “The Clorox Contract” before it hits Amazon. Once more the Master Blasters set forth to save a world.
PortalNet Liaison, Vancouver, BC
Angus looked up from his terminal as Alison Swift’s voice came from two cubicles down. “Boss, you need to see this.”
Angus closed his work with an irritated keypunch. It would take him half an hour or so to recapture the train of thought on this particularly tricky PortalNet API command. These days he delegated more than he used to, but the tough ones he still took himself.
“What?” he said.
The item appeared on his screen in split-screen with Alison’s face. “This just hit the Request For Proposal page, boss. Talk about your clocks.”
His ire gone like smoke, Angus read through the RFP. “Jesus H. Christ in a nuke. Fixed price Contract, no Variances. Who’s going to take that?”
“I’ve got a flag on it, and if anyone Proposes, we’ll know.” Alison’s tone said she was going through the motions.
Angus wasn’t about to call her wrong. “Why would they put out something like that?”
“Desperation, probably. They’re not long on the network. We can look, but bet your ass they’re poor newbies, just like us back in the day.” She looked bleak.
Angus felt the way she looked. He remembered the desperate days of the early Contracts. They were past those days now, established players with credit reserves, an order book and a good record. Murphy missed his passes at us. The Ard’uinath aren’t so lucky.
On a strict business case, Angus knew he should just blow this off, put it in the report of oddments people read when they got around to it, if they did. “Alison, I want a preliminary vet and their astronomical data within the hour.”
“Jesus, Angus. An hour?” she burst out.
“If it was easy, I’d put someone else on it. Pull in who you need.” Angus didn’t give a millimetre.
“All right, all right.” She started typing. “You really think this will fly?”
Angus bared his teeth. “I’m not an Entity, and days like this I’m down on my knees giving thanks for that. I’m not blowing this off, either. I like the guy I see in the mirror in the morning, and I’m keeping it that way.”
Angus closed and saved his work on the command, then started going through the RFP translation with a fine tooth comb.
Alison delivered on the hour, and better than he expected. “Good work, Alison. Damned good work. You’re still the top gun.”
“Does that mean I get a raise?” she asked.
“You’re a Senior Team Lead, with bonuses. You acquiring expensive new vices?” Angus kept on typing hard, the conversation taking only a few brain cycles.
“Working for you doesn’t give me time for new vices. I barely have time for my old ones,” she said over the rattle of her keys.
“Well, you’ll have less time for them if this goes through. You’ll be the Team Lead.” The presentation grew rapidly under his fingers.
Angus thought about just sending this out as an email, but he dealt with busy people. He punched up a priority video conference to the Chiefs of Staff of Master Blasters and the Responsible Entity, then added the Chief of Staff for CEO Risk Enterprises as well.
They all showed up on the link ten minutes later, none of them looking happy at this peremptory addition to their busy days.
Angus got right to it, good manners at this level. He shared his hastily built presentation. “We’ve got an RFP. It’s short fuse, so it needs to go to the Entities ASAP.”
Emrah Kovačević, Chief of Staff to the CEO of Risk Enterprises, read the slide, and snorted. “Why are you bothering us with this? The credit is trivial, and it is a small space station, not an entire world. In any case, we are not in that decision chain.”
Angus didn’t know him, but he didn’t like the attitude. “I don’t think the size of India, with thirty million sentients living on it, is all that small. If this goes down, there will be a lot of short fuse requirements. This is a heads-up for you.”
Kovačević shrugged, looking disinterested. Virginia León, Responsible Entity CoS, had spent the time taken by the conversation to read the presentation again. “For my part, this is not going any further. A fixed price Contract with no Variances is an unacceptable risk.”
Gut check, Angus. How hard do I want to push this? “Ms. León, this goes to the Entities. I have that discretion, and I am using it.”
All three of them looked identically pissed, and for the same reason. Their job was to be the filter for their bosses, to avoid wasting their terribly limited time with the inconsequential. Proper briefing of those bosses about the issues that did come to them enabled them to make better decisions.
The Master Blasters CoS had made his bones out on Contracts, and he was definitely the most pissed of the three. “There’s this guy called Murphy, Mr. Archer. He has this tendency to invite himself along on Contracts.”
“So he does. Are you telling me that Jamie Cartwell needs to be told that?” Angus gave him look for look.
The Master Blasters CoS slammed his hand down on his desk, hard enough to rattle things. “Fine, then. Let’s get this done.” He typed, hard and fast. León tapped her AR glasses and gave a voice command. Kovačević leaned back with an expression of determined patience.
Ashley Hanson and Jamie Cartwell showed up a couple of minutes later and Angus admitted them to the telecon. She was dressed for the office, and in hers. Mister Jamie attended from his phone, which he had set on a large machine in some dimly lit echoing space like an aircraft hangar.
The Master Blasters CoS shrugged. “Archer is pushing a hobbyhorse, Boss. Sorry for wasting your time.”
Ashley and Jamie said nothing, but Angus felt morally certain that both of them had read and digested the facts before they spoke.
“What are the odds that anyone else takes this?” Ashley asked.
“Low. Eyes could give you a better read, but I doubt it would be any different,” Angus said. Shit, I should have included him.
Jamie tapped rapidly on a calculator app, but Angus couldn’t make any sense of it without knowing what the numbers represented. “Four to six slicer nukes would do it. Fry the whole area all at once. The locals could clean up any hot spots.”
“Jamie, we can’t save everyone, and we’re not in business for sentiment,” Ashley said.
Angus zipped his lip, tight. He’d done his job, and it was out of his hands.
Jamie’s face took on a look Angus had seen before, iron will working a problem. “We can’t save everyone, but we can save them. There’s a business case here, as well.”
Ashley’s face went still, except for the arch of a perfectly groomed eyebrow. “Make it.”
“Right now, we are both on the short list of the hardest hard-asses in the Arm, Entities who have filed a Violation and had it upheld. The good is that no one is likely to try screwing us over. The bad is that people are likely to shy off from doing business with us if they think we’ll squeeze them dry and/or take their Portal.” He could have been reciting technical specs.
“Anything else?” Her voice could have been computer generated. If there was any consideration that she was talking to her husband, Angus couldn’t hear it.
His voice acquired a harder edge. Talking to his wife wasn’t there, either. “Unanswered questions. What is that organism, where did it come from, how did it get there? If we had crap like this in one of Earth’s oceans, it would be problematic.”
“What makes you think that’s possible?” she asked.
“What makes you think it isn’t? Don’t know means just that,” he said.
After a pregnant pause, then Ashley gave a millimetre nod. “If you wish to take this on, I will sign off. Try not to bankrupt us.” She exited the meeting.
Mister Jamie turned to Angus. “Full court press. Have you vetted these people?”
“No. New on the network, not a lot of credit. I get the sense they aren’t really high-tech,” Angus replied.
“They live on a frigging poor man’s Ringworld two thousand kilometres in diameter, made of God knows what magic materials, and they’re low-tech? Give me a better answer.” He held the phone in his hand, walking fast.
“We’re on it.” Angus started typing texts to his own people.
The Chiefs of Staff looked resigned, pivoting to deal with this left field surprise. Angus was quite sure he’d earned some ill will, and down the road there would be payback. Such is life in the fast lane.
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