“What game are you playing Mikaela?” Volkov confronts me as I enjoy some BBQ and a beer on the steps of the government building we’re meeting at.
“Shouldn’t you be happy Petra? It’s what you voted for. The Protectors were never intended to be a part of the government, so that’s what I voted for. Plain and simple.”
“You’re scheming something.”
“Possibly, but you definitely are. You always are. Half a dozen captured ships are proof of that. You’ll have to wait and see what the families decide to do, just like everyone else.”
“I want those back.” She growls.
“And you are free to buy them back at auction.” I smirk before sipping on my beer. Francesca’s agricultural conglomerate sure has some excellent subsidiaries.
“Senior Marshal, the Head’s of Family would like you to return for administration purposes.” They sent Camille to fetch me, of course they did. My familiarity with the Castillo prodigy is hardly secret.
“Sure, Camille. I stand up, jam the last of my sandwich in my face, and ignore the glare Volkov is searing into my back.
As soon as we get through the entry doors, Camille steals and slams my beer, pulls me into a firm kiss, and then hugs me as tightly as she can. I put an arm on her hip and the other to lightly scratch the hair at the base of her skull.
“Jeez, Cam. Missed you too.”
“Shut up and comfort me. I suddenly don’t have a fiancé, and my sexy best friend is unavailable to cheer me up properly.”
I snort at that. “I will call you a liar if you claim you can’t fill your bed at a moment’s notice.”
She punches me in the side, then pulls up my shirt a little and starts petting my midsection. Gotta draw the line somewhere Mik. I grab her wrists and peel her off me. “I think your Papa is waiting on us?”
She sighs heavily. “Blarg. You and him have abandoned me to trawl for prospects. I hate the both of you.”
“No you don’t. You respect your Papa, and you love me. Now lets go talk to the Families, then find somewhere pretty to have dinner. Who knows, maybe you can get the other junior Family members to show and get them to cement family ties the fun way.”
“Sandoval Junior is an axe wound, but I would accept almost any deal if it came with Pradesh’s skin under my tongue.”
I laugh at my friend as she opens up the doors to the conference room. I summon another beer and follow her.
“Gentlemen, Ladies, how may I be of service?”
“We have decided on a fifteen member voting block with the Five Families having two votes, with a three quarters approval to remove an underperforming family and a two-thirds vote to approve a replacement.” Tseng relays, apparently nominated to explicate as the form of government was her idea.
“I see, so will there be a chairman? A Treasurer, in fact I need one of those, and a responsible party for correspondence or point of contact.” I ask as I plunk around with menus, structuring the Governing body and the regions of space they are responsible for.
“No chairman. The Heads of Family will have access to the treasury, and the largest single earner amongst the Brony Body,” Castillo and Sandoval giggle and high-five. Couple of fucking dorks right there. Empress bless them.
I add permissions to the respective Heads of Family with the rights to delegate to at most two members for treasury dealings, and the right to delegate their full authority to one other person. I still have overarching authority, and will maintain that, but they don’t have to know.
“We will create the remaining tasks and positions once you transfer our authority.” Sandoval assures me.
“No offense, but to finish my involvement, we need to flesh this out to it’s full extent, including the other members of the first official Brony Body.”
The collective group sighs. The bastards just don’t want to do their jobs. Too bad suckers!!
“Fine, fine. Camille, dear, could you display the top thirty earners from the Bronies and Prospects on the screen.” She taps a few spaces on her HUD and the projector in the ceiling activates, displaying a list of corporation names with profile insets.
“Take away the Families and their subsidiaries.” Sandoval asks and eight items are greyed out.
“Can you categorize by business address and display the earning sources for ones not based in our systems?” Carmichael grumbles.
This takes a little longer, but the list re-sorts to foreign companies, and then drop downs show earning areas by percentage. “If we eliminate these with over 75 percent foreign business . . .” she taps a few more spaces, “and we are left with fourteen entities that qualify for inclusion on the board of invested parties.” Camille finishes. “Resorting by revenue from highest to lowest, these are our potential invites.”
“Hmm, I propose we spend half an hour reviewing this list for further discussion. Marshal, will you be available?” Pradesh finally participates.
“I have blocked out until tomorrow afternoon local for this business. Aside from meals, my time is yours.” I say, motioning to the gathered parties.
I find a chair near the refreshment table and sit, putting a few beers in the ice reserved for the sodas that were provided by Jenna and billed to me. To my surprise, all five juniors come to join me.
“May we?” Mr. Tseng asks. I shrug and set up an account with ten credits named ‘Junior Douche Committee’ and invite them to pick their poison.
I get a few snorts, Carmichael and Castillo glare at me, for the name I assume.
The narrative has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.
“So, why are you nominally in charge of all of this?” Junior Tseng asks.
“Senior Marshal, only one in the Empire. Guess the Empress trusts my decisions for some reason.” I take a swig, punctuating my terseness.
“We get that, but why are the bosses asking you instead of telling you?” Carmichael asks.
“For those unfamiliar with the Empress. When she trusts you to own a project and follow it through, she literally gives you the project and all of the projected assets to make it work. Aka, I own three sectors and everything in it until I give it up per the Protectorate Charter.”
Every single one of the shits are gob smacked.
“Do you know how much power that is!?” Junior Pradesh whisper shouts.
I shrug. “Not really. I could have it enumerated, but I have no interest in that. It’s not intended for me, so I don’t consider it mine.”
“No one is that good of a person. How are you profiting?” Junior Sandoval asks.
“I agree. I am not that good of a person, just that dedicated to my job. I believe in the work that I’m doing, and I believe in the Empire. I got a promotion and a lot of assets to run, I came out fine.”
“Do you, need a lieutenant or something?” Junior Pradesh asks. I snort, covering my face to keep the potential of beer spray to a minimum.
“Are you seriously asking for a job? Now?”
“I’ve been taught to chase every potentially lucrative opportunity. You seem like a lucrative opportunity.” She says with what seems to be a practiced naivete. Gods, I bet that works most of the time, that look is devastating.
“If you’re trying to get in on an informant hustle, I may be interested. Otherwise, we’ll see how my other efforts develop.” I ping the lot of them with my office contacts. “Any of you can drop me a line and we can negotiate.”
“Are you seriously trying to get us to rat on our families?” Camille whispers angrily.
“No, actionable info. Like any of you aspiring tycoons wouldn’t do the same.” They each attempt to look offended, but I know better, they’re all opportunists. Why else would they be sitting around me while their elders scheme?
The Juniors chat back and forth about their creative ventures while enjoying beverages at my expense. Some leak some info as they drink, the others smirk and nod in my direction. I knew that the Elders wouldn’t have invited them if they weren’t smart enough to pay attention and understand the game. But also maybe some are too young to drink out here in the Bronies. Not a law I enforce, I’m afraid. Not my jurisdiction etcetera. I chuckle to myself as there are no planetary police to speak of.
“I think we have the list, with a question for you.” Castillo calls from the table.
I stand and walk over to the empty end of the table. “Okay, Papa Castillo, shoot.” He rolls his eyes before answering.
“We have our potential members for this coming year, but one of them appears to be you.”
The screen shifts to a Solis Astoria, picture a copy of what I look like now, including the clothes I am wearing. CEO of Solis Enterprises: Government Liaison and Mercenary Dispatcher. All of the assets and earnings are familiar to me. Kip you side-scheming piece of shit.
Your wife and Kitty were in on this discussion, and Penny ensured me that this arrangement would pay dividends in the near future. This apparently is that future. I am and will always act in your best interest as I see it. The look on your face is priceless by the way.
What an asshole! Penny and Kitty are going to get a damned earful.
“Ah, yes. My AI decided that since my Tier transition made significant appearance changes, I should register an alias to handle my business separate from my Marshal duties. I can change my attire, I assure you.”
He nods, “Separating business from government, especially the Empire, is a good idea. But I don’t think you quite understand, Solis. These numbers indicate that you are the highest worth single person in the systems. For total assets, you’re eleventh behind the families and five other corporations. It also means you are our tie breaker, again, based on our decisions without you. We would like to know how this happened.”
“Well, I told you how the company name change came. The rest of it is tied to how the Astorian government handles assigning projects to trusted actors. They gave me a lot of money, plus my salary and several toys, and told me to make a bunch of shit happen.”
The five leaders do not look happy about that. Several awkward moments later, Pradesh states, “We would appreciate if you could itemize actual income verses tasked duties by the government.”
I snort at that. “Marshals are all considered citizen contractors. According to the official ledger, I was loaned the Kismet, so if that’s on the assets ledger for Solis, then that’s twenty million or so credits off the balance.”
“It was not, but the ships you seized were. Should we include them as well?”
“Of course you should. None of the ships were acquired in Brony space, so they are mine to sell to recover the expense of personnel and equipment that were lost in anti-piracy actions.”
A few elders nod and type in their interfaces. “Well, that settles my worries,” Castillo states, “Anyone else have questions for Mr. Solis Astoria?”
“How ‘Official’ is the Astoria name?” asshole even made air quotes.
“I mean, Princesses Zia and Isabelle were always fond of me.” I shrug and leave it at that. I get a few gasps that make me smile. I’ll catch some shit from Penny, but she started it, so nyeah!
Kip chuckles in my brain and I can’t blame him.
I look over the list as I transfer over permissions to the proposed council, which will allow the Bronies interface to automatically tally and collate data as a group, and see that Moscorp did not have enough domestic income to qualify. It wasn’t entirely because of the Frigate I took, but it does appear that the number of actions I took against her in the last four months didn’t let her even get close to qualifying. Serves her right for laundering money to appear local. I want to know where she got the information that she needed that kind of asset. It’s hard to believe that someone like Isabelle isn’t involved in these ‘coincidences’. Freaking Time Bandits.
->M] Baby, there is some seriously stinky shit going on. Has Baby Bell been around recently? [<-
Seems like I’m going to have to leave that one on read this time too. I wonder what’s got her so indisposed.
“Unless we have more to discuss, we’ve agreed to invite this list to participate and to tentatively meet in four more months to then meet once yearly to discuss law and commerce changes.”
I look around and raise my hand, “Yes, Solis?”
“Did you already discuss system security? Anything I should be aware of or watch out for.”
Sandoval nods. “We were going to spell it out in a message, but we have a framework for hiring the Marshals for investigation and retrieval work.”
“That sounds doable. I await your correspondence.” I say before walking back to my beer.
“I motion we reconvene with the full Body in four months time.” Elder Tseng proposes.
“Agreed.” The other four reply.
As they stand and collect their entourages, I’m impressed at how cordial the procession of that meeting was. No fighting, no outright arguing, and only a few snide remarks. Was that even a proper meeting?!
“Sooo, Solis,” Junior Pradesh sidles up to me, about to ask something. “Castillo mentioned that she had a dinner appointment with someone, is that someone you?”
Oooh, hooked, your welcome Cammy. “Yep, all of the Juniors are welcome to come. Dinner and drinks on me.”
“Are you going to be the sushi platter?” She fucking purrs at me. This girl doesn’t care about gender at all, she just wants to fuck my bank account. Good gravy.
“Mm, certainly not out of the realm of possibility, but lets start out with food at a table and see where the night takes us.” I offer my elbow and she eagerly takes it. Camille rushes over and takes my other arm and I roll my eyes at her possessive anticks.
The night progresses and everyone but Carmichael tries to cozy up to me. I pay to reserve the patio at a cute little Brasserie overlooking a flowering orchard and oddly enjoy the company—until they get drunk. During a bathroom break I arrange a hotel room a few buildings down and progress to invite them all separately to the room and give them a code for the door. I never had any intention of showing up, and hope little Cammy has a good time.