Inside the mansion, a roomful of serious men with serious guns stood listening to another serious man. He stood in front of a whiteboard covered in serious diagrams talking about serious business.

The men were cleanly outfitted in maroon uniforms, each with a silver star on the right breast pocket over the legend "Star Security", professionally squared away, each with a shiny clean submachine gun strapped to their chest, angled up under the logo.

"There are at least three of them," Mr. Serious Business said, gesturing at the map on the whiteboard. "Two on the second floor, and one at large. These guys are extremely dangerous. They don't seem to be after anything specific, but we've got the file room locked down just in case. Torres and Borvin, I want you two to cover what's left of the front entrance, keep any more from slipping in. Lambe, take your squad up to floor three and cover the stairwells, keep them from getting any higher. Wharshafsky, I need you to--"

He cut off as the doorknob rattled.

"Who is that? Did Conway forget his key again? Somebody go let him--"

The door crunched open, the ragged frame tearing apart, the latching mechanism bulging, then pushing through the wood of the door, the lock pinging off into a far corner somewhere. A large rock-brown head poked in.

Everyone stared at each other in surprise.

"Oh! Um, my apologies!" Oliver said. "Wrong room. I'll just be going now."

With a shout and a cry, the mass of men snatched up their arms and opened fire on Oliver, who made a run for it.

----------------------------------------

The venue hallway was broad, with spacious conference rooms on either side. Small knots of people milled aimlessly on the patterned carpet, waiting for the next talk, or chatting, or taking advantage of the snacks on the sideboard.

Fleer stared up at the chandelier, idly admiring the exquisite crystalwork. He was two days into the conference, and was starting to think that perhaps it hadn't been as hot of an idea as it had seemed back at Riotfish HQ.

Sure, the talks were great, the food was unparalleled, and the accommodations sumptuous, but he had a nagging feeling that these really weren't his kind of people. Not any more. He hadn't really been able to connect, hadn't gotten any real networking accomplished.

He was starting to wonder if he had, in fact, made a mistake.

He'd taken an awful risk coming here. A fun one, to be sure, but a risk nonetheless. The finances were sketchy enough, and he'd stretched them way out of shape with this conference, but the Datatura money would fix all that.

He felt distinctly uncomfortable thinking about the rest of the Riotfish managing the Datatura job without him, so he just tried not to think about it.

But. But. If he could score a big hit here, he could turn it all around. Riotfish didn't have to be small forever. Once the Datatura contract was wrapped up, he could hit them up for those recurring contracts, maybe even, dare he hoped, retainer fees. That would give Riotfish, Inc. the financial stability and breathing room to take on the bigger, more lucrative jobs. Jobs that just didn't show up on the Mercenary's Guild's boards. Jobs that you had to know somebody to even get a shot at.

And this conference was where he could make the connections to know somebody again.

As if on cue, a familiar face swam up from the loose crowd. Fleer smiled genuinely, and strode over with purpose.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

"Lewis! Lewis Schultz?" he called, holding out a hand of greeting.

A long, baggy face glanced up from his companions, and singled out Fleer, inbound full steam with outstretched hand.

"Hello?" His sleepy eyes widened as Fleer grasped and pumped his hand in a handshake that was slightly too enthusiastic.

"Lewis! It's a wonderful surprise to see you here! Why, I haven't talked to you since AtaVision. Are you still there? What's been going on your way?"

A bit shocked, Lewis replied.

"AtaVision? No, I'm with Vigliosa, now. You're uh," he paused, and his droopy eyes dropped as he disentangled his hand. "Fleer, right?"

Fleer felt a brief swell of joy at the recognition.

"You remember me. That's right! Hey, it is just great to see you."

"Yeah, yeah. Uh, you too."

Fleer's datapad burbled, indicating that he had an incoming call. Grinning, he swiped it away. It was probably just Oliver calling to let him know that they'd wrapped up the Datatura job, and Fleer was on a roll here.

"So, out of AtaVision, huh? Did you ride out the fallout after I left alright? Hope I didn't leave too many people in the lurch there."

"No no, it's fine."

"That's good to hear. Well look, I wanted to let you know that I'm running an outfit of mercenaries now. We should catch up over lunch sometime. Talk about some new business? You guys need any work where you're at now?"

"Oh, sure, sounds good. We should do that."

"Great! Here's my card. Ping me tomorrow; we'll get together!"

"Sure, sure. I'd better, uh, freshen up before the next talk. See you soon."

"Sure thing! Looking forward to it!"

Lewis Schultz and his two companions wandered off while Fleer exulted.

Right! The personal connection! That's how business got done! That's how sales were made!

Humming, he walked into the conference hall early to grab a good seat.

The hall was vast, with modular chairs set out, row upon row upon row, leading up to a stage with a massive screen. This was going to be one of the popular talks, "Litigation, Mitigation, and Protection Through Policy", all about limiting the legal liability of mercenary work.

On the far side of the hall, about a third of the way back from the stage, was a support pillar. It was easily three feet across. Fleer chose one of the seats in front of it-- he liked having his back to a wall, rather than open to a huge crowd of people.

Old habits died hard.

Sitting, he opened his program, and skimmed through it as the hall began to fill.

It took only a couple minutes for the hall to transform from a dull silence to the rustling buzz of a hundred quiet conversations as people filed in. Fleer's ear was suddenly tugged by a familiar voice.

He smiled. Lewis! Even if his company-- Vertigo, was it?-- didn't have any work, he could put him in touch with people, get him back into the flow of the corporate world and in the path of some juicy contracts.

Lewis and his companions sat near Fleer to his rear. Because of the pillar, they couldn't see him, but he was able to listen in on their conversation.

"Say, Lewis," one of them asked, "who was that guy that buttonholed you earlier?"

Fleer smiled.

"Him? Um, I don't really know."

"Oh. Sounded like he knew you, though. And you remembered his name."

Lewis barked a short laugh.

"I just read his name badge. Sales tip, always use their name. People love hearing their name."

Fleer, his countenance falling, looked down at the name badge hanging from the lanyard around his neck.

"So did you know him?"

"Could be. AtaVision, though, that would have been years ago. I was doing PR work for them, but I got out, went independent. Money's a lot better that way."

"Well you must have made a solid impression."

"No, he's just desperate. Obviously a small-time try-hard. Probably some hard-luck outfit. I mean, trying to reel me into a lunch pitch? These two-bit operators, you can smell the need coming off of them. They're always trying to suck up to you. My advice, just dodge around them as best you can, or they'll constantly be buddy-buddy, trying to scrape some kind of deal together."

"Heh, maybe you could sell him some PR work. Help him not look like such a bumbling goof."

"There's no point. Guy like that'll implode his career no matter how much help he gets."

Fleer listened numbly, stung and crestfallen. What Lewis said was accurate-- to a point-- but it sounded so awful, the way he put it.

Fleer's datapad burbled, startling him out of his eavesdropping. He pulled the datapad out to see that Oliver was calling him again. Probably to tell him that the operation was done. Not that it mattered. Small now, small forever. That was Riotfish, Inc.

Fleer slunk out of his seat to answer the call, sneaking out of the hall on a line where Lewis and his friends couldn't see.