Emma’s voice droned on. At the other end of the small conference room, Heather was sitting attentively in her chair, back ramrod straight and her cybernetic arms folded on the table as her eyes flicked back and forth underneath her smartglass eyepiece. Occasionally the smartglass would flash dimly as the system processed her notes.

Kat reached up, pinching her temples between her thumb and forefinger and trying in vain to rub her budding headache away. To her right, Whippoorwill was slumped in a chair, looking like the life had long since left her body.

She pushed herself forward, blinking to keep herself awake. A half full mug of Chibi Chai sat in front of her, and Kat couldn’t help but wish that she had picked something from Java Bounty with a bit more substance. The fight with Hestia had sparked a fire under her. As much as she might be growing in the Tower, that didn’t mean much if her body and reflexes in the real world couldn’t keep up. Kat had cleared the gym used for her personal security and spent most of the night training on the obstacles courses and sparring

Of course, even if she went to bed on time, the chances of her staying alert during the meeting were close to zero. Kat could handle the conversations about security and strategic planning, but the day to day operations of her fiefdom within GroCorp bored her to tears. True, in the grand scheme of things operating budgets, marketing, manufacturing, and distribution were probably as if not more important to corporate life than the composition of their security forces. Also, as much as Kat trusted her senior subordinates and friends, leaving anyone unsupervised income streams that made and spent millions of credits per day was beyond idiocy.

Still-

“And that’s about it for the list of security candidates and the proposed screening to ensure their loyalty,” Emma finished. “Any questions?”

Next to Kat, Whippoorwill stirred, showing her first sign of life in forty five minutes.

“I understand that we are going to be doing a close screening of any applicants as well as their family and friends for financial ties to everyone, but wow will we catch the people that turn traitor after they are accepted?” Heather asked. “On the same token, what about those that have their bribes paid in something other than cash such as medical treatment? Same question for money held in escrow?”

“Good question,” Emma replied, nodding at the security chief. “There usually isn’t as much of a risk from individuals who are performing espionage while waiting on payment, mostly because it’s common knowledge that rather than receiving their credits, they often get ‘tied up’ as loose ends. Still, ‘not much of a risk’ isn’t zero, and we’re in fortress mode right now. The investigation into friends and family will be looking for any major risk factors such as illness, debts, or trouble with local criminal factors. As for money in escrow? That’s impossible to screen for completely, but there will be an internal audit team designed to handle ongoing issues. They will be looking for sudden spikes in spending or aberrant behavior both amongst the general employees and themselves. They will also be the one in charge of administering the enhanced polygraph tests.”

“About that,” Kat chimed in. “I thought that modern cybernetics made most polygraph tests ineffective. I mean, they’re pretty accurate for civilians off the street but anyone with a circulatory and endocrinal regulator will beat them every time.”

“You are awake,” Emma said cheerfully. “I was worried for a second.”

Kat leaned back into her chair, rolling her eyes at her bubbly friend. There was no point in objecting, Emma had seen her head wobbling while Kat had tried to force herself back to consciousness.

“I sent the report on the new polygraphs a week or two ago,” Emma continued, eyes flicking behind her smartglass. Almost simultaneously, Kat’s e-mail pinged, indicating that she had just received a rather sizable file.

“Progress is a lot slower than with most of the other technology coming out of the complex,” Emma continued, “after all, it’s not as simple as translating stallesp weapon specifications to English and then adapting them to our current manufacturing base. Still, some of the advanced medical scanning tech that the scientists are translating is opening up intriguing possibilities. It looks like we will be able to scan brain waves and general neurological activity in real time from across a room. I don’t know how long it will take to map tolerances and turn that into a polygraph, but it’s a matter of months, not years, before the audit team will be impenetrable by current terrestrial technology.”

“So the rest of this is basically a stopgap until our faction has so much of a technical advantage that no one can infiltrate us?” Kat asked thoughtfully. “That seems reasonable. I still think that most of Whip and my personal security should be handled by the 3445 until we can verify absolutely the loyalty of the new employees.”

“I doubt they will be ready by then,” Heather interjected, a hard glint in her eyes. “I’m grateful that you’re giving me a second chance Miss Debs, but I’m not planning on wasting it. Right now the 3445 is better skilled, has better gear, and thanks to your efforts they have a good number of players in their midst. Now that I have the opportunity to craft your security team from the ground up, there will be some changes. Mostly standardized cyberwear, weapons, and enough training with both to put any special operations squad to shame. They might not have combat exoskeletons, powered armor and magnetic accelerators, but by the time I’m done with them, they will be able to eliminate threats that you aren’t even aware of.”

Kat nodded slowly. At some point she would need to switch back to corporate security from the 3445. As familiar as the mercenaries were with the borderline supertech that they had dredged from the stallesp wreck, that didn’t make them ideal for high society functions and personal protection. Where she would need a scalpel, they weren’t just a hammer. They were a wrecking ball complete with enough hover tanks and battle armor to take over a major chunk of any of GroCorp’s competitors.

“Are we done yet?” Whip asked with a yawn. “Kat made me run laps and practice hand to hand fighting with her until 2 a.m. I’m only here under protest right now. I need a nap and a shower more than anything.”

“Like you wouldn’t have stayed up until 2 a.m. watching some discontinued cartoon if I hadn’t forced you to exercise,” Kat said with a roll of her eyes. “Come on Whip, I just need Emma and you to go through the data you pulled from Blake Daniels stores.”

Whippoorwill shuffled in her seat, somehow giving the illusion of being limp and boneless while simultaneously pulling herself up and out of her previous slouch. Emma smiled at the two of them, nodding her head slightly as she deferred to the half conscious hacker.

“Fine,” Whippoorwill groaned. Her eyes flicked once and a wall of text appeared in the air atop the conference table. Kat tried to make sense of it, but Whip was scrolling rapidly through what appeared to be hundreds of routing numbers and invoice identification numbers.

“First, I’m not entirely sure we grabbed everything. My onboard memory banks weren’t big enough to pull everything from Daniel’s computer system and we were in a bit of a hurry. Of course, I did delete my tracks so he won’t know how much or what I managed to pull.”

“So step one is that I lie and bluff through my teeth,” Kat said thoughtfully. “Drop just enough information to give him a taste and then act coy. Let his mind fill in the blanks. Whatever he imagines I have up my sleeve will be worse than anything we actually have on hand.”

Whippoorwill snorted. The glowing text floating in the air blinked, replaced by a series of folders. Some just bore dates, but others had more ominous names such as “Millennium Collaboration” and “Pipeline Bombing.”

“Will his imagination be worse than what we’ve already discovered?” She asked, the folder marked ‘Pipeline Bombing’ popping open. “By my count, there are at least twenty offenses that would have a manager summarily executed, and a half dozen that would be a death sentence for an executive. I don’t know what it takes to force a shareholder into retirement, but if we don’t have it already, we’re fairly close.”

Photographs of a cylinder, about as big as a semi truck and ripped apart from the inside like a can of soda left out during a freeze, flipped past rapidly. Seconds later they were replaced by yet more pictures of a different pipe passing through the Northstar facility that Kat had visited with Whippoorwill. It felt like their run had been ages ago, but the shape of the buildings was unmistakable, even if there were a couple of towers and warehouses missing from the records that Whip was displaying.

“And those numbers don’t even take into account the information we haven’t correlated yet,” Emma interjected brightly. “Whip, if you could pull up one of the-

The folder minimized, returning the hologram to a projection of the main menu for a millisecond before another file opened. Once again, the air was filled with line after line of bank transaction registrars.

“Thank you,” Emma said with a quick nod before waving a hand at the projection. “We haven’t been able to figure out what these five occasions are, but Daniels went through a lot of effort to hide them. May second, four years ago, July tenth, six years ago, January nineteenth, seven years ago, October eighth, nine years ago, and March twenty-first, eleven years ago, building up to each and every one is an impressive financial trail.”This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

“Shell corporations, false names, registrations to a half dozen blockchain wallets. Whatever Blake was up to, he went through significant and expensive effort to keep the records hidden. Whip and I have managed to trace at least three of the payouts to samurai teams, all of which had some sort of connection with Millennium. With any luck, between Belle and Jasper’s help and coordination we can start correlating these events with scandals or private payoffs.”

“I thought corporate work was going to be all breaking into secure data vaults and extracting secrets that would bring the worst people to their knees,” Whippoorwill grumbled. “These days, it feels like I’m more of an accountant than anything. No one watches entertainment channels about heroic accountants.”

Kat leaned over, patting Whip’s knee with a chuckle.

“Don’t worry honey. You’re still saving the world. It’s just that most entertainment programs skip over the parts where the heroes do all of the hard work necessary to set up the action scenes.”

“Why do you sound like the reasonable one?” Whippoorwill asked with a sigh. “Seriously Kat, I’m used to you preparing for a mission by getting a running start before you kicked in a door and started stabbing people. Of anyone in this room, you should be the last one preaching the virtues of patience and careful planning.”

“Hey now,” Kat replied, pressing her left hand to her chest in faux outrage. “I like planning as much as the next person. I just realize that I’m not terribly good at it so I generally outsource it to someone like Xander or Emma that actually knows what they’re doing.”

“I love planning and research,” Emma chirped excitedly. “Pouring through data for hours on end and drawing connections that no one else can see is super exciting. It’s like a puzzle.”

“You’re both broken in the head,” Whip replied, throwing up her hands and sinking back into her seat. Still, despite her words, Kat could see a trace of a smile tugging at the corner of Whippoorwill’s mouth.

“Anyway,” Emma continued. “A short summary of the situation is that Daniels kept rather detailed records in some hidden files of his more objectionable activities, mostly because the sorts of transactions he was making weren’t the kind that gave receipts. It looks like he was partially keeping tabs on the agents he used in the past, but most of the record keeping was about budgeting. None of these expenditures could really go through major banks in one lump sum, so Daniels kept a secret set of books that tracked where his money went for his own records. Given the number of exchanges that involved passing an account’s ownership between a dozen or so dummy accounts, I suspect he would end up with millions of credits going missing if he tried to track them manually.”

“My call with him is coming up in an hour,” Kat responded. “If I’m going to twist his arm, I need to know what sort of leverage we have. I can hint at the rest of it, but I’m going to need at least one or two concrete threats if I want to scare him into submission.”

Emma leaned back, tapping her jaw with her right forefinger while resting her elbow in her left hand. She hummed to herself slightly before responding.

“Concrete? Well there are almost a hundred schemes and operations against other shareholders and their subordinate executives, but I don’t think any of those actually broke corporate bylaws. We only have half the picture for most of the suspicious incidents, but I think there are a couple that stick out enough for you to use.”

“Can’t we just wait for Belle to handle this?” Whippoorwill asked. “We can get into places she can’t, and she has more plots and plans in motion than the beach has sand. Anything we discover, she’ll be able to figure out twice as fast. Any threats you can make, she can make twice as imposing. It feels like there should be a clear division of labor here. We handle direct action, she handles connecting the dots and veiled threats.”

Heather stirred. She didn’t say anything, but her stoic expression took on a pained note. Kat suppressed a sigh.

“Look,” she began, turning her attention from Emma to Whippoorwill. “Do you trust Belle Whip? If you were in an alleyway in the Shell holding a hundred cred chit and no one else was around but Belle and she offered to split the credits fifty fifty with you, would you turn your back on her?”

Whippoorwill shook her head immediately, wincing at the thought.

“Belle is an ally,” Kat continued, “but allies are not necessarily friends, and they are certainly not family. She has been very clear that her loyalties lie with herself, and I have done my best to make sure that working together with me is in her benefit. I firmly believe that if one morning she woke up and concluded that it would be in her best interest to betray us, it would happen in an instant and before we knew what happened.”

Emma nodded, her usually cheerful countenance serious.

“We can and need to work with Belle,” Kat said, trying to gentle her voice as she patted Whippoorwill’s knee. “But at the same time, relying on her just means that we are putting ourselves in her power, and that’s a place we never want to be. It’s the same story with Blake Daniels. The plan is to force him to work with us, but both Belle and Blake are like feral animals. As long as we are in command of the situation and firmly in control of their supply of food, they will act tame. The minute we flinch, they will tear us apart in a second.”

“That makes sense,” Whippoorwill agreed cautiously. “Even if Belle could do the job better, we still need to do it too because we can’t trust her completely.”

“Exactly,” Emma said, nodding fervently. “Collaborating with Belle makes sense, but if she is the one to make initial contact with Daniels it will make us look like a junior party. If we want him to take Kat seriously, we need to be the ones to scare the pants off of him.”

“Now that we’ve settled that,” Kat spoke up, waving a hand at Emma to continue her presentation. “You mentioned two major avenues of attack on Daniels?”

“Of course,” Emma said cheerfully, rocking forward onto the balls of her feet and standing up on her tiptoes before settling herself. “The most solid piece of leverage we have is the Lake Superior pipeline bombing.”

Heather stirred, in her seat, her voice thoughtful as she interrupted the briefing.

“I remember that. It was chalked up as a terrorist attack by a radical ‘employee rights’ group while the pipeline was under construction. Cost GroCorp a lot of credits, but no one was able to figure out how it happened. I mean, we know ‘how.’ There were eight fertilizer bombs that got planted in the ditch where they were installing the pipeline. Somehow no one noticed any of them and they got buried with the pipe itself. When the line was about three quarters done, all of the bombs detonated. Killed a couple of people. Security guards I knew got fired over that incident.”

Kat’s breath caught in her throat. Dying was one thing, but being fired-

“Oh no,” Emma gasped. “Does that mean that their debts were all called due at once? What did they do?”

“More a matter of what was done to them. Involuntary organ donations and medical experimentation isn’t pretty. There is a reason why employees fear termination more than death.”

“Now that I think about it,” Heather continued grimly. “It did turn out that Shareholder Daniels had an alternative pipeline halfway built. I seem to recall public statements that it was originally planned for use at the Northstar plant only, but that its construction was a huge boon for GroCorp, and that the entire company would benefit because of his foresight.”

“Oh God,” Emma whispered, paling slightly and shaking her head.

“It’s the life of an employee,” the security chief replied. “Miss Debs would have been within her rights to demand my firing after the lapse in her personal safety. It’s not terribly common to see it happen, but if a shareholder is angry enough-”

“But she wasn’t even there,” Emma protested. “The mortar hit nothing but flash clones, guards, and an empty hillside. I don’t know how an arbitration body could sustain a determination like that. I know that the world isn’t exactly fair, but there are some rules that you need to follow, and the idea that you could get fired over something completely out of your control is just absurd.”

“At will employment,” Heather said with a resigned shrug. Kat felt herself involuntarily nodding along. Employee rights were murky at best, but at the end of the day, the will of a shareholder tended to erase any murkiness. Right or wrong, legal or not, senior executives and shareholders usually just got their way.”

“Right,” Emma said weakly, closing her eyes and shaking her head quickly. “I knew that. You read about it in classes, but it just doesn’t seem real until you put faces and names to the theory.”

“And that’s why most executives are encouraged not to humanize their employees,” Kat said gently. “I’m not like that and you’re not, but think back to our old classmates? Even the ones that supported workers, how many of them actually knew an employee or bothered to talk to one? Corporate culture intentionally creates that disconnect. In the textbooks it's all about making sure that we can ‘dispassionately make the tough decisions,’ but in practice it's so that we won’t have any nagging pangs of conscience when we sacrifice hundreds of lives to increase the company’s bottom line by half a point.”

Emma took a deep breath, holding it for a second before blowing it out. The air pushed some of her hair aside and out of her face. Finally after a second or two of silence, she resumed her presentation, listlessly and without any of her usual energy and cheer.

“I suppose the other avenue for going after Blake is his connections with Millennium. They were robust before you revealed the connection between the mercenaries and the stallesp, but they continued long after association with Millennium was banned. I don’t think he worked alone, but it looks like Daniels was one of the forces that allowed their agents to survive Belle’s purges.”

“In exchange,” Emma continued, a bit of life returning to her as she began to lay out the other shareholder’s sins. “They provided clandestine support, often without receiving money in return. It looks like they were behind the lithium shortage that slowed down our research three months ago as well as some slowdowns getting in the way of Jasper’s production. Of course, they were also the intermediary that hired the samurai that attacked your suite.”

“What about Belle?” Whip asked, perking up a bit as she interjected herself into the conversation. “It sounds like Daniels was targeting the rest of the new shareholders, and from what I’ve heard of the ass in meetings, he seems like the type to try and target all of you rather than just singling out one or two people.”

“Oh,” Emma responded, her cheerfulness on full display after her brief moment of introspection. “That’s simple. Belle caught everyone that tried to slip into her organization and had them killed immediately. Millennium actually asked Daniels to look into the situation to see if she had slipped a spy into his organization. Nothing came of the investigation, but both sides decided that Belle was too scary to bother.”

Across the table, Heather nodded sagely, her voice grave.

“A wise decision.”