Brian Stewart mulled over the plan presented to him. He was a squat man, but clearly an Earthborn. People who were born on denser mining planets had more muscles and a denser bone structure, coupled with short height. People who were taller had problems with both blood flow, and that falling down could be a fatal enterprise even from a small distance. Exoskeletons were needed to keep those people safely moving about on mining planets. Brian just lucked out in having exactly the right build to exist on a mining planet, the squat and square build of people who were born on mining planets.
He pulled out a bottle of scotch that he kept locked in a drawer. He pulled out a glass for himself and poured in a two-finger shot. He knocked it back quickly and thought about the proposal.
Mining planets were, as the name suggested, places where colonialists mined rare minerals. With Earth having long depleted its natural resources, it expanded outwards to try to find minerals that it needed. The lighter planets tended to be mostly gases and ice, not exactly useful. Most of the lucrative mining wasn’t done on the planet, however.
Most planets tended to have a lot of iron on them, which was great for building space stations and a supply of raw resources. But it was the space stations that orbited the gigantic planets that made the real killing. The gravity of the big planets would attract asteroids, and asteroids were made up of plenty of rare metals: gold, iron, nickel, platinum, tungsten, and several others.
Brian ran a few of those space satellites, on planet X149. Competition was fierce to own a mining station above the planets, and the way you got that position was by promising very generous returns to the people who leased that space out, the ruling council of the planet. Brian had no problem admitting he was a greedy man. Seeing the majority of his finds getting handed over to a ruling council that did nothing to deserve them gave him an acid reflux burn every time he thought about it.
Which was why there was a plan presented to him. In addition to giving a large portion of the raw material over to the ruling council, he also had to give yet another portion over back to Earth. A few wayward colonies had tried to shirk this fiscal responsibility, but when an armada showed up to collect, recompense was immediately given to Earth.
He looked over to the woman who presented him the plan. She had olive complexion skin, dark black hair, brown eyes, and clearly Asian features. Her small nose and big lips tended to naturally draw the eyes to her mouth when she was speaking to someone. Her diminutive stature of 4’11 amplified the fact that she also had an incredible set of tits, either C or D size in Brian’s admittedly non-expert opinion. Her formal blouse and jacket were unbuttoned down just a bit too far, and whenever she went to adjust her heels, he shamelessly ogled her body. He also couldn’t help notice the amount of muscle tone in her chest, he thought she must either be a swimmer or a weight lifter. He decided that he liked the idea of her being a swimmer better, as the thought of her in a bikini was more enticing than the thought of her grunting lifting heavy weights.
But getting back to the plans, the setup was simple. With every ship comes rats, and space pirates inhabited some of the outer planets along trade routes. Some of the solar systems had numerous mining planets, and they pooled their resources into loose federations. They negotiated with Earth and had various formal treaties, but it was suspected that some of these federations secretly helped pirates gain access to ships that were headed towards Earth. Earth did have various way stations and patrols setup, but the entire Universe is a gigantic place.
The plan was to find a few men, preferably on the seedier side of things who were looking to escape, and put them as a skeleton crew on the transport ship heading to Earth. The ship would be “captured”, meaning the skeleton crew would fake a distress signal and hand over all their cargo to the Luciana’s “pirates”. The outbound ship log would show a full crew, and the skeleton crew that was “captured” would be given new identities on a new mining planet and paid for their rewards. The pirates would get a thirty percent cut for essentially doing nothing, and another ten percent would go towards bribing his own local politics, but he’d get to keep sixty percent of what would otherwise be a zero percent cut.
The downside was he could only pull this scam off a couple of times before Earth fleets would arrive and start patrolling the area more heavily, but he could deal with that.
“Any questions?” Luciana asked him. Her voice was a bright, chirpy sound, which was at odds with her role as a pirate queen. He put that thought away.
“Yes,” he began. His voice was baritone and gruff, the voice of a man who often had to bark orders at people who didn’t particularly want to carry out his orders. Miners were, generally speaking, young men who wanted to earn enough money doing a dangerous and difficult job in order to retire in their 30s. Fights and regular machismo pissing contests were the norm, so Brian often had to assert his authority, or get one of his foremen to assert it for him.
“Won’t it look suspicious if we’re the only mining company that is losing ships like this? Earth’s council might be clueless about a lot of things, but they’re not total idiots. If they start digging around, they’ll notice that many of the people on this supposed flight manifest never existed in the first place, and they’ll start asking lots of uncomfortable questions.”
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
“We’re professionals”, she said with a smile. “We make this same offer to numerous competitors around the region. If enough people buy on, then we begin the project. If not, we move on. As for all the fictitious people, they will have real enough paperwork and digital footprints. If the investigation gets really seriously, it won’t hold up, but it will hold up to preliminary investigation. If numerous transport ships disappear, the Earth authorities will more likely think that it’s a government leak than a plot by numerous companies that are all competing against each other. Of course”, she said sweetly, “If you don’t buy in and your competitors do, you’ll lose out.”
This gave Brian a moment to pause. The setup seemed too easy, surely Earth would get around to investigating this? Could it be this easy? But then, he decided, why not? Vast government bureaucracies on Earth couldn’t know everything that was going on in the entire Universe, and this seemed too good an opportunity to pass. Knowing that he would have a leg up on some of his competitors after having to fight for his position made him feel good. If he didn’t do this, knowing his competitors would have a major advantage of him meant his business would be ruined quickly.
He could report this, but then what? The other competitors might have him killed if he ruined their good thing. More importantly, he didn’t see any way to flip this to make any money, and he didn’t have any real proof outside from the documents that he had in his hands, but they were circumstantial. Just trade routes for where the intercept would happen. Besides, she had already told him that people within the government were on the take, and he might be made the fall guy for this.
“How do I know that this worked? How are you getting the money to me?” he asked.
“Simple. You’ll be given an account code. When the transfer is complete, the account code will be updated with the amount for the goods that get fenced. Even though minerals are highly fungible goods, black market fencing will mean it sales for less than the ‘fair’ market price.”
He inwardly groaned. That meant they were going to take another chunk of his money. He wasn’t in a position to make any demands, but that stung him a little inwardly.
“Okay, but how long until I have the money?”
“Five years or so.”
“Five years!” he stammered out. He couldn’t believe it would take that long.
“Yes”, she replied calmly. She walked towards his desk. He could see that her legs, hidden behind a very tight skirt, were muscular as well. Maybe she was also a runner.
“If we gave you the money right away, then you’d be tempted to spend it,” she said. He could smell her now that he was closer. A berry scented fragrance, not too strong, but subtly sweet.
“A series of big transactions by multiple people, all at the same time, would look very suspicious. The Interplanetary Investigations Office might be slow, but they aren’t stupid. That would send up red flags. So each person who partakes in this scheme is given a different delivery date, a nice retirement package if you will. The IIO will look at current spendings, but probably care a lot less about retired personnel.”
“Additionally”, she continued, “We will launder the money through various enterprises and make sure it comes out clean. It will probably be a bit more than what you expect, with a compounded interest rate of 5% on average.”
“How will the crew know where to meet you? If there’s an investigation, any audio logs will be under surveillance?”
She took out a digital transcoder and placed it on the desk.
“You will get a single coordinate on the day of the drop. Give it to the crew. We will send out a series of different coordinates, enough to make the crew lap around enough for us to check if they’re carrying any extra ships meant for ambushing us. If you attempt that,” she said, her voice becoming slightly more menacing, “Then you’ll become a dutchman. That clear?”
He nodded. A dutchman was a space term for shooting someone out into space and leaving their frozen body floating around. It was equivalent to cement boots in a much earlier era.
“And how do I know you won’t screw me over? Just take the money and run?”
“Oh we could do that. But you won’t have lost anything. The ship loss will be covered by insurance, and the men you send to pilot the ship will almost certainly be the ones you get the most trouble from. So, at worst, you’ll have rid yourself of a few nuisances, at best, you’ll have a large retirement waiting for you. So, do we have an agreement?” She held out her hand.
He made himself another shot and took it. “Screw it”, he thought to himself. He didn’t want to be running this place for another twenty years, and even if it hurt him, the losses were nothing compared to the incredible gains he stood to make. He shook her hand, and her grip was firm. He realized his palm was a bit sweaty, but hoped she wouldn’t notice.
She picked up the schematics and started walking out of his office. “Then we have a deal,” and she walked out of his office. He’d either made a huge payout or a huge mistake.