“Hydrogen-2, Hydrogen-3, Helium-3, Nickel-62, and Iron-56.” Emma finished the list, looking up from the smartglass display in front of her. “All of them are being bought in bulk by VodCom and their prices have at least doubled.”

Kat shared a look with Whippoorwill. Under ordinary circumstances, her brain would have shorted out slightly at how cute the lines appearing on her girlfriend’s face were as she frowned, but at the moment, Kat shared the sentiment.

“Do we now if anyone at VodCom has experience with stallesp tech?” Kat asked. “That list is almost precisely what we need to continue our production lines. We should be able to continue with our research and processing with our current stock of supplies, but I thought we had been careful so far to use holding companies and cutouts while buying resources. No one should’ve figured out what we were using to synthesize the hybrid equipment.”

“As best we can tell, they just got lucky.” Emma didn’t sound convinced. “Theoretically this could be a simple speculative purchase of isotope futures, but the list seems awfully specific and precise for an accident. Right now, we’re still purchasing replacement isotopes despite the increase in prices, but we can only keep it up for so long before people start to realize that something is going on. I do not believe that this is an accident. Someone knows what they’re doing, but there’s no way to know who.”

“What about our operatives?” Kat questioned. “Can we at least figure out which executive ordered the purchase? It might not be definitive, but at a minimum it would give us an idea as to who we should be questioning.”

“That’s where things get really strange,” Emma said unhappily. “It doesn’t look like anyone ordered it. The purchase requests just seemed to appear from nowhere, and given how much money VodCom has made off of them, no one is asking any questions.”

From the corner of the room, there was a slight whir of actuators as Heather shifted, her cybernetic limbs crossed in front of her.

“I don’t like it,” she grumbled. “It stinks to high heaven. Someone is screwing with us.”

“But we don’t know who,” Whip said. “It’s not like we can just pop by VodCom headquarters and ask why they’re buying a bunch of resources that we officially don’t even have an interest in.”

“How long can we keep buying the isotopes before it starts to raise flags?” Kat asked. “The repurposed stallesp tech has made me one of the most powerful shareholders in Grocorp despite my fairly modest number of shares. Without the isotopes, we can’t make more tech, and without tech I’ll be at the mercy of my enemies.”

“One month?” Emma responded, uncertainly. “Maybe two? As soon as the other companies realize what’s happening, there is going to be a feeding frenzy. I’d be surprised if resource prices didn’t rise twentyfold.”

“That’s if someone doesn’t just buy and hold the isotopes,” Kat said darkly. “Profit is important, but it’s not everything. If someone truly wants to go to war with us, losing money to prevent us from fully equipping our security forces with stallesp derived weapons and armor might be more valuable than any increase in dividends.”

“I think they’ll be in for an unpleasant surprise if they try anything,” Heather responded, a dangerous look on her face. “The 3445 is fully equipped, and we’ve managed to train your personal corporate security from scratch. They’re still using a mix of human and hybrid weapons, but we’ve almost completely replaced their human equipment. If they give us a month or two, that will be at least two thousand men and women with stallesp gear.”

Kat drummed her fingers on the table, processing the information. Things had been going smoothly for months. Too smoothly. Having a problem like this crop up out of nowhere was almost a relief.

“We can’t count on them being unaware of our capabilities,” she said at last. “If they know enough to buy up the materials we need, that means they have information that they shouldn’t. We have to assume that they have a plan to deal with our existing forces. It’s time to start contingency planning.”

“Assume someone is gunning for us and assume that they have a perfect counter already planned for our existing forces,” Kat continued. “We need to prepare a final layer of defense, something that our hypothetical opponents don’t know about.”

“What about players?” Whip asked. “Even if they have eyes inside Grocorp, I’m pretty sure I can find some people that don’t have any real connections to the company that would jump at the chance to work for you, especially if you could use your connections inside the Tower to smooth the way for them. We won’t even need to worry about recruiting from the Chiwaukee area. I can cast a net wide enough for us to hire people all over the globe.”

Kat leaned back in her chair, nodding silently as she thought over the pros and cons of the offer.

“What about loyalty?” She pressed. “A worldwide network of players, even if we can’t get hybrid tech to all of them, is a good idea. The only issue is maintaining a hold on all of them. Money can only buy so much loyalty, and even one or two defectors will be enough to alert a potential enemy that the network exists. As soon as it’s discovered, we should assume that it has been planned for and neutralized.”

“If you can give me a little time,” Whippoorwill replied, “I can do a pretty good job on the screening front. Obviously, it won’t be perfect, but there are certain things I can look for. Sick family members that we can save with stallesp tech, friends and family that we can pull out of bad circumstances, and people that have annoyed someone in power and need a hasty exit. Employees tend to be corruptible, but the streets show loyalty if you can earn it.”

“After that, compartmentalization should cover the rest,” Emma supplied. “You should talk with Dorrik and see if you can get an agreement to have two aliens per tower climbing team. That way we’ll be able to contact them using your alien friends as a workaround, but none of the players will actually know other humans. Even if the bad guys know we have a secret network of players, they won’t have any way to determine whether it is one or two isolated individuals or hundreds and hundreds of players.”

“Do we have the credits for hundreds and hundreds of players?” Kat asked. “I know that the weapon and medical tech sales have been netting us an absurd amount of money, but subscription stones are incredibly expensive.”

“Frankly?” Emma said with a shrug. “Yes. The only issue is that moving sums of money that large around will create enough of a paper trail that anyone but a fool would notice. We can expand fairly quickly, but we’ll have to be careful to fly under the radar.”

“What about conventional samurai?” Kat replied. “Are there any existing teams that we can use to supplement our forces?”

“No one trustworthy,” Emma responded. “You know the rules. Unless you have a personal connection with someone, loyalty is a matter of money and there is no promise that we are the highest bidder. Even with a personal connection, that isn’t a definite thing.”

Kat’s mind flashed back to her first run in with Millennium. Xander had partnered with friends that he trusted with his life. Ultimately, they had betrayed him, selling him out when they thought that their own lives were on the line.This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

Anyone established would have a web of connections, competing loyalties that would make it impossible to completely trust them. Even if they owed her a favor, there was no telling who else they owed a favor to as well.

Really, ever since Xander’s death and the breakup of the old gang, there weren’t any people she could trust. Kat hadn’t worked much with the combat arm of the gang, and Whippoorwill was the only active remnant of the infiltration wing. Even if she were to track down one of the samurai from the old days, in all likelihood they would barely remember her.

“Recruit some non-employees from Chiwaukee,” she decided. “Even if we can’t equip them with alien tech or magic, a well-trained and loyal militia could be just the lever we need, especially if we have a task that calls for a deniable asset. Heather can train them in weapons and tactics for now. I have an idea for someone to organize them and help keep them off our antagonists’ radar.”

“Are you talking about training house samurai?” Whip asked in distaste. “Everyone knows that they aren’t really samurai. More like corporate employees without any actual connections or benefits.”

“That’s how most companies treat them,” Kat agreed, “but that doesn’t mean we need to handle them the same way. Think of the 3445. Technically they aren’t corporate, but we have an exclusive contract with them and a bond of respect that runs outside any sort of traditional employment contract. They’re family. We don’t have to use them as disposable catspaws. We just need to train them so that they can be ready when the time comes. I won’t make anyone fight a battle while I sit in the background. If my people are bleeding, I’ll be bleeding too.”

“Please don’t,” Heather replied, exasperation heavy on her face. “I’ve seen you run through combat drills in the gym-”

The security chief winced, pausing a second to correct herself.

“Okay, I’ve seen the times you posted. It’s hard to actually see you move when you go through the shooting and knife drills. The point being, I know that you’re absurdly good at fighting, practically superhuman at this point, but as fast as you are and as sharp as your reflexes are, a bullet will still kill you.”

“The new suits can actually take a bullet or two,” Kat corrected. “I wouldn’t want to stand still in front of a heavy machine gun, but between arcane magic and an infiltration suit, I feel pretty confident about getting shot by standard infantry weaponry. It’s the players and explosives that I have to worry about.”

“Regardless,” she continued, shaking her head, “if everything goes pear shaped and we’re forced into a fight, you can be sure that I’ll be nearby and armed. I’m not going to let people fight and die for me in a slugfest to the death without doing my part. No one would be loyal to a leader like that. I wouldn’t respect them and I don’t expect samurai working under me to respect me if I shirked my responsibility in that sort of way.”

Heather sighed, but she didn’t bother to fight over the issue. Kat felt a little bad for pushing her security chief on such an important issue, but her credibility as a leader was important. If people were only following her for money, it would only take a couple of bribes to undo everything she’d worked for. Kat had fought long and hard to earn the power and position she was in. It seemed foolish to let cowardice erode all of those gains when she was functionally risking everything each night in the Tower.

“Where are we at politically?” Kat asked, turning her attention back to Emma now that it seemed that Heather had begrudgingly accepted her statement. She knew better than to believe that today’s victory was the end of the argument. Over the last six months Heather had warmed up to Kat enough that she would actually challenge her when she thought that Kat was making a mistake. That was a huge step for an employee working for a shareholder, but it did come with its own annoyances.

“I haven’t noticed any major movements in the subcommittee meetings, certainly nothing to indicate that someone we know is coordinating with whoever is buying up the isotopes,” Kat said, racking her memory as she tried to find the source of their troubles. “Honestly? Even the usual suspects aren’t making any movements. Ricket’s coalition aren’t exactly friendly with me, but after the fallout from the discovery that a number of them were working with Millennium, things have really quieted down.”

Emma tapped the smartglass in front of her to reactivate. A couple more pokes and a swipe later, the white glow of some sort of report lit her face. She squinted at the display for a second before shaking her head in frustration.

“If they know anything,” she ground out, “they aren’t acting on it. I don’t even have any internal reports that they know what isotopes we’re using to produce the hybrid technology. I’m sure Ricket’s clique would jump on you if they saw a hint of weakness, but for now it really seems like they’re unaware.”

Kat sighed, reaching up to massage her temples with her index finger and thumb. It had been a long day. Up at five in the morning to spend two hours in the gym followed by another two hours of progress reports and check-ins with the executives under her. Then, after breakfast, it was back to going over the training routine and readiness numbers for her private army before hitting the training courses for practical shooting and martial arts work. A brief break for lunch and some time with Whippoorwill, for sanity preservation purposes, and Kat was back at it again, reviewing senior budget plans and expense authorizations. Now, it was four in the afternoon and she’d just gotten out of her second shorter gym visit of the day only to be hit with the news that some unnamed opponent was gunning for her.

“What about artificial synthesis?” She asked, finally, fingers still working to try and relieve her burgeoning headache. “It’s been a while since I’ve taken chemistry, but isn’t Hydrogen-2 something that occurs naturally in water? That probably means that we can make it on our own if we try hard enough. Also, how hard is it to just soak an element in a bunch of neutrons to make replacements?”

Emma twitched. A second later her frown turned into a chuckle.

“Just so you know,” the woman replied, still smiling, “I recorded that. I’m going to make every senior scientist watch it just to see if I can induce a nervous breakdown.”

“So I take it from your response that enrichment isn’t possible?” Kat questioned dryly. “You know that it’s possible for you to just come out and say that. I don’t think that it's necessary to use your boss as a punchline in order to induce a panic attack in your subordinates.”

“I can,” Emma said cheerfully. “That’s not nearly as fun though.”

Whippoorwill snickered next to Kat. She was pretty sure that Heather was aghast, but that didn’t stop either of the younger women from sharing a giggle at Kat’s expense.

“That doesn’t mean that enrichment is off the table,” Emma continued, sobering up slightly. “I know that the researchers have been looking into it, but so far it hasn’t been a priority. We can change that. I just think the scientists will go wild at you characterizing an incredibly complex and technologically cutting edge neutron bombardment program as ‘soaking some atoms in neutrons.”

Kat rolled her eyes, but it was hard to try to be serious with Whippoorwill outright laughing by her side.

“Well make it a priority then,” Kat replied, choosing to simply not address the back and forth. Even Heather, paragon of serious and official behavior, was having a hard time keeping a straight face. “It sounds like we have a couple of months before anything becomes serious, and I want to use that time productively.”

“What about raw resources, Shareholder?” Heather chimed in. “If we just start buying water, helium, nickel and iron in bulk, someone might figure out what’s going on. Especially if it's in the wake of the sudden spike in market prices on the isotopes. It will be harder for someone to corner the market on more common materials, but at the same time I’m not terribly comfortable with someone knowing what we need to synthesize stallesp tech. The less people know about the process the better.”

Kat nodded thoughtfully, leaning back in her chair. Heather had a point. If someone was trying to cause trouble with her faction in GroCorp, she wanted to leave them in the dark as much as possible. Knowledge was power, and giving away that sort of power over herself for free went against every instinct she had.

“I think I need to get into contact with Belle,” she said finally. “Her intelligence network is the best in the company. If anyone knows who is after us or where to source new materials, it would be her.”

“I don’t trust her,” Whippoorwill cut in, pink hair rustling as she shook her head. “She’s on her side, for now, but I don’t have any idea how long ‘for now’ will last. If you cooperate with her, you’ll need to let her know how we figured out that someone was targeting the hybrid technology production. That means explaining the importance of the market fluctuations to her.”

“We can’t trust her,” Kat replied, “but we can trust her greed. Belle is linked with us, and if we go down, she goes down. By the same token, we’ve been making sure to use holding companies controlled by her for a lot of our subcontracting so the stallesp tech business is making her rich. Showing weakness to her is about as wise as jumping into shark infested with open wounds, but right now we need a shark by our side.”

“You’re playing a dangerous game Kat,” Whippoorwill said, reaching up to brush a strand of pink hair away from her face. “Remember, if Belle feels threatened she’ll sacrifice anyone to keep herself safe. We found that out before we ever left Schaum Tower.”

Kat nodded. Whip was right. She usually was. There wasn’t any way to fully trust Belle Donnst, but at the same time, there was no one better at gathering rumors and innuendo. If there was anyone who could find out what was happening, it was her.