Fleer pulled up the financial spreadsheets. He had gotten the painting done, for a given definition of done, and had come back in to work out how to cover the rest of the month, since the Galloway job had ended in disaster. Bernard Walker was scheduled to be in later, and theoretically he might pay them, but it was more likely he would simply be bringing in a fresh batch of excuses.
Fleer had determined to get through the financials today, but all they showed was the same depressing water-treading they'd been doing for months: juggling bills, delaying payments to vendors, and keeping just ahead of creditors.
He'd negotiated some favorable settlement terms with their vendors, having neatly mastered the gentle art of borrowing from their suppliers, but their ammo vendor's emails had stopped being polite weeks ago. They'd passed through a "snippy" phase and were now entering "veiled threats" territory.
Whatever. He swept the spreadsheets aside and pulled up the job boards. There was only so much he could do with the finances if they weren't making money. They needed to land another job.
Fleer spun through the filters on the Guild's job boards, limiting the results to jobs the Riotfish were qualified for. Here was the usual list of too-small-to-bother-with contracts, breathtakingly underfunded jobs, and jobs posted by people who clearly didn't understand how the Guild's job boards worked (this one, for example, looking for a minimum of 100 men for an operation, posted on the board for mercenary companies with fewer than 50 soldiers).
Fleer sighed. Lots of oranges, but no juice. Like always.
It had been so, so much easier in the corporate world. The packet would come to his desk with a name and particulars. He'd do the job. He'd file the followup paperwork. Then, he'd spend his time pretending to be busy while waiting for the next packet. His title of "Director of Terminal Negotiations" had been boring but apt, and was a much more boardroom-friendly title than "Corporate Assassin". As the company TermNeg, he'd facilitated dozens of deals and helped break negotiation blockages in between long stretches of solitaire.
Of course, that was before it all went bad.
It was hard to believe now that he'd ever been bored with having nothing to do. Now, he spent every day wading through a sea of things that should have been done weeks ago, paddling upstream against a river of critically needful tasks and bills that never stopped flowing in, never shrank, and never got any easier to pay.
One of these days, though.
One of these days they'd have the Guild membership, the budget, and the staff to take on the big jobs. Someday he'd strut back into the boardrooms, lay out his terms, and have them accepted, just like that. Someday, the corps would come back to him, hats in hand, asking if his company had the bandwidth to service their contract. Someday. Yeah, that'd be the ticket.
A loud crash echoed back from the kitchen, followed by a minor explosion and a lot of swearing. Fleer laid his head on his desk. Little Timmy was testing his compounds in the kitchen again. Which meant that Mrs. Meade would be in soon to complain about it. Again.
After allowing himself a moment of self-pity, Fleer lifted his head to face the jobs board. Time to glean the fields.
Well, hold on.
A new job had popped up. Fleer clicked in, his heart rate picking up a little. He scanned the contract.
This was another one that had been misfiled, but maybe in his favor. It had obviously been intended for the spec ops board, but had landed here in Fleer's skillet.
He spun through the details. Some kind of infiltration, lifting records stored at a residence.
The contract was for a company named Datatura. It was an old name, which meant old money, which meant they weren't squeezing every nickel. Medium-sized company, so they were probably not looking to expand their territory, which meant no dangerous assault work. It wasn't guard work, which the guys would appreciate, and the listing strongly hinted that a success here could be a prelude to an ongoing series of contracts.
Fleer sure liked the sound of that. Every month was scrabbling and squeezing for contracts, and stretching the finances to cover months when there were no contracts to be had. A regular series of contracts would take a huge load off his mind.
This was what he'd been waiting for, hoping for. With a high-profile success and ongoing work, he could really pound the pavement, do some networking, put some feelers out about corporate sponsorship.
The Riotfish were not perfectly qualified for this work, but close enough, surely. If the matchmakers didn't flag him, and if he talked his way into it, this could be their big break!
He scrolled down to the requirements. "Experience in infiltration?" Well, guard work was preventing infiltration, so yeah, they kind of fit for that. "Air support preferred" but anything with "preferred" could be ignored. "Larger team needed." Hmm. That would take some creativity to work around. Including himself, they had six members. Seven, depending on how you were counting. But Oliver, their strategist, was a master at making do. And what did "larger" mean anyway? Probably just covering for teams that depended on their body count instead of their wits to get a job done.
Yes. They could do this. They would do this. They needed work, and here was work.
He quickly pulled together a promotional packet, informational payload and a proposal and fired it off to the Datatura contact. Perfect. Because he'd been watching at the right time, it had been fewer than fifteen minutes from the posting to the proposal. Being the first to respond was a huge advantage.
He waited breathlessly to see if the automated matchmakers would flag him for the Riotfish being too small, but after a few minutes, all the indicators stayed green. Then the message came back that the proposal had been accepted for consideration.
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He was so excited his feet almost made little tippy-taps on the floor. Getting his promo material through the system and in front of an actual client was a huge first step. He had a really good feeling about this one.
With a huge grin, he stretched back.
This contract could keep them solvent for months.
Satisfied with a job well done, he switched to his messages and pulled up a colorful marketing flyer to read through.
"AME CONFERENCE 2443!" the text screamed.
"The Association of Mercenary Executives invites you to this year's conference, with a keynote by Randall Striker, CEO of The Jolly Rogers Inc.! Listen to presenters from across the industry discuss the issues facing today's mercenary executive. Hosted in the luxurious Cableway Hotel deep in Corporate Pines, the biggest corporate subdistrict outside Concordium! Catering by FoodFactory! Early bird rates available. The conference hotel is filling up quickly, so reserve your room today!"
He pictured the classy hotel, the tasteful buffet, the vendor swag, and the industry talks and insights. He pictured himself wheeling deals, networking, and handing out dozens-- possibly hundreds-- of business cards. He imagined the leads, partnerships and deals he could hammer out. He could show that Riotfish, Inc. was a real, for-true mercenary outfit, ready to roll with the big boys.
The AME conference was something Fleer had wanted to attend for a long time. If this Datatura contract panned out, this would be the year he could go.
A quiet knock tapped at his office door, and a reedy, elderly voice floated through.
"Mr. Fleer? I need to talk to you about Little Timmy's behavior in the kitchen today."
Fleer sighed.
"Yes, come in, Mrs. Meade."
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D'khara glared up at Roger. Roger, whose arms hung loosely by his sides, gazed uncomprehendingly back at him. His lizard tongue darted up to lick his own eyeball. D'khara suppressed a shudder. He tried really, really hard to be open-minded about working with a lizardman, he really did, but days like today made him want to scream back to his Dwarvish roots, howling and swinging axes and making his opinions viscerally known.
He sighed forcefully and focused on the issue at hand.
"Tell me, Roger. Did. You eat. My lunch."
Roger rolled his shoulders in a jerky, uncontrolled way that could have been a shrug, or could have been random damaged neurons firing signals down his spine.
"Roger."
"There were... many happies?" Roger's sibilant voice sounded hopeful.
"No. Not many happies. Now I don't have any lunch. How did you even eat my whole lunch? There's nothing to you!"
It was true that Roger was woefully underweight, even though he topped D'khara by two and a half heads.
D'khara's penetrating eyes glared at Roger.
"Oh!" said Roger. "Oh! It was!"
He paused. With Roger, a conversation took time, and some patience.
"It was the wombat! Sweeping grace and hungry fatbellies!"
"Roger, there is no wombat here."
"Yes! And it was! Him. They ate it. They all ate it all. Up!"
D'khara gestured around the ramshackle kitchen.
"Roger, think with me here. We're in the middle of a city 120 miles across, which has not seen anything as natural as a weed in three lifetimes, and you're telling me that a marsupial native to the other side of the planet wandered in and ate my lunch?"
Roger smiled, rolled another shrug-not-shrug, and poked himself heartily in the eye. D'khara winced.
"As clouds in rain!"
"Look," he said, pressing his hands together, "could you please stop--"
"Hi, Roger. Hi, D'khara." Fleer bustled into the kitchen heading for the fridge. "How are things?"
"I have a pony!" crowed Roger.
"Excellent, good good." Fleer poked his head into the fridge. "Are you getting along with D'khara, our new hire?"
"Wheezle and biscuits!"
"Happy to hear it," Fleer replied, picking his way around in the fridge. "Oh, D'khara, I apologize, but I think your lunch was ruined. We had that Australian fellow in this morning, Bernard Walker? He was doing his usual routine of demanding that we change all our processes to suit him." Fleer's voice grew muffled as he dug deeper in the fridge. "You know, wanting favors on the net terms and all that. I said to him, 'Bernard, you still haven't fully paid for the last three jobs, why would I give you better terms?' And he's all like, 'I bring you lots of exposure,' which, let's face it, we need, but all his exposure's on another continent. Ha!"
Fleer popped out of the fridge, triumphantly holding a jar of pickles.
"Anyway," he continued, wringing at the pickle jar lid, "get this: he struts in with this wombat! On a leash! Right into my office! And I said to him, 'I'll thank you not to bring wild animals into my office,' then he said 'Oy, my little sheila here ain't wild' but he tied it up outside my office and it got loose and tore up some stuff, which of course Bernard claimed was already torn up, but really, how much of our equipment could have already had wombat tooth marks on it?" Giving up on the pickle jar, he held it out. "Roger, would you be so kind?"
Roger snatched up the jar and began wrestling with it.
"I'll tack it all onto what Bernard owes. Not that he ever really pays." Fleer sighed. "Anyway, all that to say, his animal got into the kitchen and ruined some of the food, including your lunch. I put some extra on your chit if you want to go out and grab something to eat." With a cartoonish pop, the lid came loose, and Roger held the jar out to Fleer.
"Ah, thank you, Roger," he said as he fished around in the jar, extracting a pickle and handing the jar back to Roger. Crunching contentedly, Fleer wandered off, calling over his shoulder, "Let me know if you fellows need anything!"
D'khara stared after Fleer, mouth open, concussed by events for a solid half a minute.
Well, first things first.
Turning back to Roger, he said, "Roger, I have to apolo-- are you drinking that?"
Roger clutched the jar to his chest, wearing an angelically innocent expression, liberally smeared with the aftereffects of having chugged half a jar of pickle juice.
"It was the puppy?" he offered hopefully.
"It doesn't matter. I'm sorry I accused you of taking my lunch, when it was... actually... a wombat."
"Hahahahaha!" replied Roger. "What's a wombat?"
----------------------------------------
Fleer was calling Vermiforme again. He just knew if he were persistent enough, he'd get them to finally sign off on sponsorship, and the Riotfish ascendancy could finally begin.
Fleer kept his best sales face on as the call connected, showing a heavy man crabbed behind a desk overflowing with papers and junk.
Sonam was thick and swarthy, with thinning hair, full lips and a scowl that looked like it was stamped on him right down to the genes.
Fleer tried to bring the mood up.
"Mr. Sonam! How wonderful to speak with you! I'm so glad that we could finally connect!"
"Yeah? Well that's one of us. What do you want?"
"Ah, well, I'm David Fleer with the Riotfish, Inc., and your company reached out to us several months ago about sponsoring our membership in the Mercenary's Guild. As I'm sure you're aware, sponsorship has many benefits--"
"This sounds like one of Yanni's stupid ideas."
"Well, he mentioned that you'd be the one to talk to about--"
"I don't have time for Yanni's stunts. Go talk to him about it."
"Right, but he said that you--"
But the screen blipped off.
Fleer gave himself a moment, then forcefully unclenched his teeth.
They had to get this Datatura contract.