Chapter 11
???
The man was reclined in his chair, staring at his noteputer when his personal com rang. Lifting the device to his ear, he answered it.
"Hello," he said. For a long moment there was silence.
"No, my source in Customs said the same thing. They're clear. If they jumped over the border, it was out into the old Rim Worlds Republic territory, not into Drac space."
Again, there was silence for a long moment as he listened.
"No, not a lot of details. My source did overhear the conversation. One of the Mechwarriors was happy to brag about the lance of Banshees they found, as if four obsolete relics even Kerensky didn't want to take with him when he left were a major find," he spoke up, then again after a shorter pause.
"Yes, three Streak SRM launchers with three tons of ammunition. Like I said, the kid had a mouth on him.
"No, I don't think any more time would be productive. We've got more important things to do than investigate a single-company Merc outfit.
"I agree, that should be our top priority.
"Alright, I'll see you tomorrow."
XXXXX
The Flying Pig, Hamarr, Sudeten
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
May 3rd, 3010
Reuben tilted his head back and drained his glass. He had a guess as to why the bar was named what it was, and if he was right, the owner had a great sense of humor.
Damn good beer, good food for bar fare, decent to good music, and pretty waitresses. Moreover, visiting didn't break the budget, all conveniently located near the spaceport. No surprise the place, despite being a damn sight bigger than most clubs, was pretty packed. The bar itself was full, the dance floor was at capacity, and empty seats at tables were few and far between.
Speaking of pretty waitresses …
Alina, a brunette, though she was more striking than beautiful with that nose, dropped off his order of sausages with mustard. As Mike and AC across the table dug in, he slipped her a tip.
"Thanks for the quick service," he said with a smile which she returned.
"I included a cup of our beer-cheese as well," she said as she tucked the extra bit of cash away. "Hope you like it."
He'd been luck enough to get Alina as his group's waitress the first time he'd showed up at The Flying Pig, chaperoning a group of thirsty crewmen. She was fast, efficient, and hadn't made a mistake yet, so he'd asked for the section she was working both times he'd been back.
Before his hungry tablemates devoured the whole lot, he reached in and grabbed a couple pieces of sausage and one of the cups of mustard. After a second, he also reached back in after the beer-cheese. It was worth a try. The lager Alina had recommended had turned out really well, after all.
A couple nibbles confirmed that everything was good. Surprisingly enough, the cheese went even better with the sausage than the mustard he usually enjoyed, but all of it tasted excellent after two months on a dropship.
Definitely better than the old place in Uniontown. I was so damn sick of Synth-Metal, his eyes swept across his table and two of the nearby ones where the other eleven crewmen he was supervising were sitting, getting drunk, and trying with mixed success to pick up whoever caught their eye.
Satisfied that no one looked to be about to do something stupid, he checked his watch. He'd been managing his own intake to keep from getting too impaired, but that last lager he'd tried had been damn good: black as pitch and with a taste a lot like good licorice.
He was debating whether or not he should order another yet when a glass plopped down on the table in front of him even as someone slid into the empty seat at his side.
He turned his head, a smart remark on his lips, only to hesitate. On a scale of one to dayum, the blonde who'd taken up the empty seat was somewhere around an eleven.
Since he was thirty and already balding, he seriously doubted she was there for his company, and his mind immediately jumped back to Captain Chapman's instructions.
Gotta give it to her, looks like she called it. Still, hope sprang eternal.
"Good evening, Miss. I must confess it's usually me buying a pretty lady drinks, not the other way around," he said, a quick glance letting her know he appreciated the view, but wasn't so rude as to stare. He had to talk a bit loudly to be heard, but the general noise and the music still would have made hearing anything of the conversation at the next table impossible.
"Well, you don't look like you're from around here," the blonde said, her hand, nails painted red, waved to indicate the section of tables occupied by his crew. "It's part of the reason I come here, I like hearing stories from offworlders. So, where are you from? Seen anything interesting lately?"
She gave every evidence of sincerity, and she really was gorgeous, but the look in her eyes didn't match her expression. Oh well, his luck was like that. At least all he had to do was report on what she looked like and remember what information he was supposed to feed her. He'd even get to keep the cash.
Taking a drink, he discovered that it was, in fact, another stein of the lager he'd just been enjoying.
"Normally, I'd make you work for it, but you've got good taste in beer. Last place we were based was on Icar, though I'm sure you already know that. Anything else," he raised the hand that wasn't wrapped around his drink, thumb inscribing a circle across his first two fingers. "Well, Kroner keeps the 'Sphere turning,"
The false interested expression dropped off the blonde's face like it had never been there in the first place.
"Very well," a few bills appeared in her hand as if by magic, and she passed them over.
Reuben counted them, and made a note of the total for his report. A goodly amount, but not enough to make him think he was liable to get shanked on the way back to the Implacable at the end of the night.
"Alright, you've bought yourself some answers, what do you want to know?" he asked.
"Who are you contracted to?" she asked immediately.
"That you'd have to ask Captain Chapman of the Boss about. They've been tight lipped about it. Didn't even mention anything when I was doing the load calculations, which were a stone cold bitch."
Reuben had kept his eyes on the blonde's face throughout his response, and her expression had gone from vague irritation to interest.
"Oh? You're the Loadmaster, then? What exactly are you carrying?"
That was a little trickier question to answer, and Reuben took another small drink of his beer to help order his thoughts before replying.
"Well, we've got a lance of 'Mechs aboard, of course. That was the easy part: pair of Wasps, a Firestarter, and the Boss's Banshee. Also got a bunch of military equipment. A not-so-small fortune, everything from lasers to cockpit electronics to full-up fusion engines. And for icing, three Lostech missile systems and three tons of ammunition," he said, tacking the Lostech on the end and hoping it would distract her. Seemed his luck was in play, though, and she didn't bite.
"And how many cockpit assemblies are you carrying compared to weapons?" She demanded.
That … wasn't something he'd gotten guidance on answering. Still, he hadn't been told not to answer it, so he was probably fine.
"I was more concerned with making sure everything was balanced than counting you understand, but there were about the same number of all the weapon systems except for the SRM launchers. Maybe half as many of those as there were anything else. As for other major systems," Reuben paused to take another drink while he pretended to think. "I'd say about as many of those as there were SM-6s."
That drew what was probably a curse from the blonde, though even sitting beside her, he couldn't make out what she said reliably.
"Very well," she said, slipping out of the seat, smile nowhere in evidence. "Enjoy the rest of your evening."
"Oh, I will," he replied, holding his own smile until she turned away before frowning himself. She apparently learned more than he wanted from his answer.
"You alright?"
The sudden question made him jump. With the noise, he hadn't noticed Alina walking up beside him.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Aside from good taste in lager, she wasn't my type," he joked.
Alina nodded.
"Seen her in here before, though usually she smiles and flirts more. She's also started some fights."
That was good information. In fact …
"And they let her back in here?" he inquired.
"Not like she throws a punch, just instigates things," Alina replied.
"I see, thanks for the warning," he said, and slipped a couple of the bills the blonde had given him to the waitress. "If you remember anything specific it could help a lot. I'm pretty sure she's involved with corporate espionage at the least," he explained.
Alina's eyebrows rose, but she nodded and started to pass on the details of a few incidents.
XXXXX
Olivetti Weaponry Campus, Hamarr, Sudeten
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
May 5th, 3010
My escort opened the door to the boardroom, and just for a moment, I hesitated. I know there was a hitch in my step and I know my eyebrows shot up. I'd been expecting my little ploy with the reveal to get me pushed up the chain a layer or two.
I hadn't expected to find myself sharing a room with Duke Michael Olivetti, first of his name, and two looming figures wearing body armor and carrying what was probably the Far Future's version of the AK-47.
That's the problem with going all-in without adequate intelligence. Sometimes you succeed too well. I was now in something of an awkward position, especially since I'd been caught flat-footed by this particular development. My options were definitely reduced-
And you're taking too long to say something.
"Duke Olivetti," I stated with a respectful bow of the head, "I admit, I wasn't expecting to be speaking with you today," the four day delay now made rather more sense than it had this morning. A duke presumably didn't just change his appointments at a whim, even with a quarter-billion C-Bill transaction in the offing.
He also wasn't being accompanied by anyone. Well, anyone who wasn't clearly a bodyguard. I'd expected a boardroom scene with lawyers and accountants standing by. Showing up alone was supposed to be a counterpoint to that. Seemed like I'd lucked into proper protocol more or less by accident.
"Captain Weber," the duke gave a slight nod in response to my own. "I find that meeting face to face is the swiftest way to sort the wheat from the chaff. Please, take a seat."
I set my briefcase down on the table. Though clearly of quality manufacture, the conference table was smaller than I'd expected, which left me sitting quite near the man with whom I was about to enter negotiations. There were glasses and a pitcher of ice water within easy reach, so to buy myself a moment to think, I selected a glass for myself and poured. The duke had a similar setup near his own place, so I figured I didn't need to ask if he wanted his glass topped up.
While my hands went through the motions, I considered what I wanted my approach here to be. I'd had a plan and some contingencies, but those had gone out the window when I opened the door. I needed to remain consistent with the face I'd already shown him, and hell, I was already using it as a mask for my interactions with 'Mr. Appleton,' so …
"I suppose it does let you take the measure of a person in a way that second hand messages or long-distance voice communication does not," I allowed. "I'm afraid I'm not the best at those sort of judgement yet; I expected your Mister Keller to push me a few rungs further up the corporate ladder, but I didn't anticipate that he'd bring you in directly."
Duke Olivetti's expression shifted just a fraction, enough to let me know he was reacting to what I'd said, but not how. As I'd expected, his poker face was excellent. Still, I was willing to provisionally cout my opening salvo as a success; I was pretty sure that I wasn't what he'd expected.
"The expense of the material you have up for sale would need my authorization to proceed in any case, so there would be limited utility in opening any negotiation at a lower level," he stated simply before moving on to the meat of the conversation.
"I understand that you have an itemized list of what you intend to offer for sale?" he asked. That had been one of the things his staff had asked to be prepared before the meeting, so he was right. I opened my briefcase and extracted the document. The letterhead wasn't as fancy as the Olivetti Weaponry logo; in contrast to the missiles tracking across the green 'O' they used, 'Catachan Arms Corporation' was spelled out across two lines in plan black ink with the second 'o' replaced by a targeting reticle.
I'd prepared several copies in expectation of needing them for an entire negotiating team, so I passed one across the table and kept another for myself. Then I set in to wait as Duke Olivetti read the report.
Because I'm just that paranoid, I let my eyes play over the document, checking for about the tenth time that there weren't any errors, misspellings, or other embarrassing screw-ups in it anywhere. It didn't take me long, but then again I was familiar with what it said and how it was laid out. Still he didn't seem to like what he was reading. He had a stern expression on his face, and it was taking him a long time to go thro-
A light went on above my head and a slight smile crossed my lips.
Oh, that's clever, I admired the act. By using the paper as a prop he was letting the silence stretch out and waiting for me to fill it. As the seconds passed my slight smile grew into a grin, and when Duke Olivetti looked up, I reach up and acted out tipping an absent hat to him.
"A good strategy, Your Grace. Very subtle with the proposal as a prop."
That surprised a chuckle out of him, after which he seemed to relax his strict control over his expression.
"Even people who are aware of the tactic tend to fall for it when the other party doesn't seem to like what they're reading," he stated plainly.
"I believe it, but my father made sure I knew never to start negotiating against myself," I relayed. The exchange left me feeling like I'd passed a test of sorts. One of my disadvantages coming in to this had been my apparent age. By handling this the way I had, I was pretty sure the duke wouldn't be treating me like a young fool, which meant my words would carry more weight than they otherwise might. That was a layer of credibility I'd need to sell him on some parts of my business plan.
I was prepared to wait again, just in case he wanted to see if I'd let down my guard, but Duke Olivetti continued on directly to the dickering.
"As you no doubt expected, I'm interested in what you're selling. Some parts more than others, but that depends on if the price is right. Customarily, there is a discount for bulk purchases due to it simplifying the shipping and handling processes."
"Of course, Your Grace, and such a discount is already included in our proposal," I said, moving into the one gambit that I was sure I'd be able to play. "As you no doubt suspect, the equipment in question is from a cache. That means all of it is made to Star League standards, not the unfortunate Succession Wars downgraded specs. Weapons systems and reactors will require less maintenance, communication systems are crisper and less vulnerable to interference, sensors are more accurate and faster, life support systems better at filtering out environmental hazards, and targeting systems quicker to identify targets and attain firing locks."
After seeing what Comet's Crossbow could do, I'd made sure to look over the technical specs for what we were hauling and compare them to what was currently available, and I had that documentation to back me up.
Duke Olivetti was correct, though, about wholesale versus retail prices. I knew there was no way I was as good at bargaining as he was, so I was going to get argued down. My hope was a final price ten percent under retail. I figured if I could manage that, I'd be winning out on the deal. Especially since I didn't necessarily want it all paid in C-Bills.
XXXXX
The Flying Pig, Hamarr, Sudeten
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
May 8th, 3010
It was Reuben's first time back to The Flying Pig to play chaperone in most of a week. If nothing else, he'd have disliked the blonde for the sheer amount of paperwork he'd had to do as a result of running into her. Still, Captain Chapman had been pleased by the first-hand account as well as the information he'd gotten from Alina about the blonde's past activities.
The one thing he had gotten a bit of a chewing-out over was not even asking her name, but he'd been both a bit intoxicated at the time and concentrating on not spilling any beans he wasn't supposed to spill.
He had been restricting himself to only a single pint of black lager though, just in case, so he was alert enough to notice the expression on Jorge's face across from him in time to start to react.
That turned out to be a good thing as two fists grabbed fistfuls of his shirt and dragged him out of his chair.
"You son of a bitch!" roared a very large, tattooed man with pale skin and breath that smelled like a keg as he drew one meaty fist back.
So Reuben kneed him in the balls.
Unfortunately he had friends, but they didn't seem to be expecting the way Reuben's crewmates charged into the fray.
Reuben got an arm between another tattooed asshole's fist and his face, bit still got knocked back into the table behind him. A scrambling hand landed on his heavy glass beer stein, which shattered satisfyingly on shithead number two's skull, which was about the time Jorge broke a chair over a third tattooed jackass's head.
He took another hit, this time unblocked, to the side of his own head, after which things became much more confused.
His next truly coherent memory was when the police arrived to break up the fight. Strangely, the first responders seemed to zero in on him, leading with handcuffs and no few threats.
They already had cuffs on him when Alina arrived and caused enough of a fuss that the second set of responding officers found her arguing with the first pair when they arrived, which was about the time the bar mostly stopped spinning.
"What seems to be the matter, Miss?" a guy in a cheap-looking suit asked. Detective, maybe?
Reuben open his mouth before the 'miss' registered. Moving his jaw made his head hurt worse, so he closed it with a grimace as Alina responded.
"I'm trying to tell that Scheißkopf over there that I was watching these tables all night, and they hadn't moved since they got here, which means Reuben couldn't have sexually assaulted anyone on the damn dance floor.
"Furthermore, that idiot," she pointed at … huh, that guy he'd kneed in the balls didn't look so tough laying on the floor in a puddle of vomit, "was the one that started the fight. He hauled Reuben out of his seat and tried to hit him. I saw it all from the kitchen door, and the security cameras will prove it!"
"You're certain of that, miss?" The detective asked. "I'm sure it gets busy in here, so it would-"
Alina cut him off.
"Damn right I'm sure. These three tables," she said, indicating where he and the rest of the crew from the Implacable had been sitting, "have been where that lot have been sitting for more than a week now. They order a lot, they tip well, and they don't try to take liberties. You're damn right I've been paying attention to them."
"So they're regulars?" the detective asked, something about his tone changing.
"Been coming here ever since their dropship landed," Alina replied. "We get a lot of traffic from the spaceport, but most of it is either tourists, or crews that just want to get drunk or flirt with anything that catches their eye. None of that with them. Their Captain makes sure they're supervised, so they police themselves. We haven't had to involve the bouncers at all. It's the sort of thing the staff notice."
"Alright," the detective responded, taking notes. He finally turned to Reuben and inquired, "What dropship are you on?"
"The Implacable, great big Overlord. Can't miss her," he answered, trying not to move his jaw.
That too drew some attention from the detective.
"Did you get hit in the head?" he asked. When Reuben answered in the affirmative, he shook his head. "Hell, they should have called for transport. We can't legally interview you like this, no matter what that woman accused you of."
That made Reuben suspicious even through his headache, but before he could decide what to do about it, Alina pounced.
"Blonde woman? A touch taller than me with big tits?" she inquired, and the detective zeroed in on her.
"You know her?"
"Ugh, that bitch. This is the third time she's gotten a group of drunks wound up and pointed them at someone to start a fight. She's a troublemaker, but she was nowhere near my section tonight. I keep an eye on her anytime she is to try to head off shit like this."
"Alright," the detective said, tucking away his noteputer, "I'll need to talk to your manager to get the security roms." He then turned his attention back to Reuben.
"Well get you transported just to make sure you don't have a broken skull. We'll need a statement, but if this checks out you won't be in any trouble."
"Understood, Detective," he responded, then after the man walked away he turned back to Alina and abruptly felt himself tongue-tied.
"Uh, would you, um, maybe want to get coffee, uh, maybe tomorrow?" He asked, sounding like a damn idiot, and-
"Hmph, I thought you'd never ask," Alina replied and slipped a piece of paper with her number on it into his hand before the paramedics escorted him to an ambulance.
XXXXX
Olivetti Weaponry Manufacturing Center, Outside Hamarr, Sudeten System
Tamar Domains, Tamar Pact, Lyran Commonwealth
May 9th, 3010
I watched the quality control testing that Duke Olivetti had insisted on; as it took place down on the main manufacturing floor, I felt good about the deal we'd arrived at, and not even the probably-deliberate attempt to sideline my loadmaster and slow down the Implacable's move from Hamarr's spaceport to Olivetti's private landing pads was diminishing that feeling.
The duke hadn't been terribly interested in purchasing some of the things we'd brought along. The J. Edgar line that Olivetti had restored alongside the Star League era Thunderbolt line was fed by an ML line that was more than sufficient for their current needs, so he could have made do without the 5cm lasers we'd brought with us. Likewise the line that fed his Thunderbolt and Warhammer lines machine guns was also a reconstructed Star League era design that could have supplied enough of those weapons.
Unfortunately for him, the rarity of fusion engines rather outweighed those concerns, and there did seem to be a legitimate PPC shortage in the area given the way his engineers and techs were poring over every one that entered the factory and the speed at which they were disappearing again. I'd felt like he wasn't pushing for as much of a discount as he would have normally and hadn't known why until now. I suspected I now knew why the 'PPC shortage' existed, though I couldn't be certain. Still, I'd succeeded in my first objective, which was reason enough to feel good about the situation.
Now I needed to make one last play.
It was only a few minutes before I heard the door open behind me. I turned and again greeted the duke with the Lyran-correct bowed head. He had a satisfied smile on his face and he'd left his bodyguards outside, which I took as good signs. Before I could ask if that meant things were going well, he seized the initiative.
"You were right about Star League standards. My rebuilt lines put out a better product than most, but my people say that what they're seeing out of your shipment is everything you promised.
"Since we grabbed random lots to check, I'm satisfied that the quality requirement in the contract is met. How would you like payment?"
This was where the rubber met the road.
"Actually, Your Grace, I have a proposition for you," I said, taking a deep breath to continue only for the duke to cut me off.
"I'm sorry, young man, but all of our 'Mechs are spoken for. Even with the size of the shipment you just sold us, it'll take time to turn the parts into usable machines," he explained. "The earliest we could offer you an option on 'Mechs would be a handful of Warhammers near the end of next year."
For once, Michael Olivetti was reading from the wrong script. It was an entirely understandable error, given the Inner Sphere's mania for giant robots and the fact he was talking to a mercenary who was known to command a company of 'Mechs. I hadn't been sure that my old standby would work out again, and it looked like it had.
"Oh, I know. That's not what I was going to ask about," I told him. "I actually wanted to know what it would cost me to borrow your HR department."
That definitely took Duke Olivetti aback.
"You see, I'd like to see if we could do another deal. Up to this point I've let you assume that the cargo we've been negotiating about over the last few days was the majority of the 'cache' we found. They weren't," I stated plainly. I could now see that I had the duke's total and complete attention.
"I can't quite say that we hit the jackpot; Amaris didn't trust his slave labor not to try to rebel if they had access to completed 'Mechs or vehicles, but we certainly hit a jackpot," I stated before the duke interjected.
"Factories. You have factories."
Michael Olivetti hadn't gotten to where he was in life from his start as a Foreman for Defiance by being a dummy. I nodded to acknowledge his statement before continuing.
"Only Amaris wasn't paranoid enough. His slave labor subverted the local militia and rebelled. When it looked like he was losing, Amaris's governor dusted the planet with a bioweapon. One able to linger long enough that the SLIC ship that came to investigate lost a ground team to it and wrote the planet off.
"The Captain of that ship was Johan Weber, my ancestor, and my crew followed hints he left in one of his journals to track down that planet. It appears that Catachan was where they built the guts for the RWR's Warhammers and Thunderbolts. I've got factories for all the component parts except the chassis just sitting there.
"And because the governor dropped a bioweapon on them, those factories are all but pristine. All I need to start them up again is two years and a workforce capable of reading the manuals, replacing time-worn parts and seals, and firing them up again. In return for your help and for rendering payment for those parts in ways other than C-Bills, I'm willing to sign a contract with you guaranteeing First Right of Refusal for anything you need to produce WHM-6Rs and TDR-5Ss, and I can provide enough parts for you to more than double your production per year, if you can expand your chassis lines and final production lines."
Michael Olivetti's face was still, but his eyes gave his excitement away.
"We're going to need to dicker over the particulars," he acknowledged even as he extended his hand, "But you can take this as agreement in principle."
I grasped his hand and shook it.