It was funny. Less than an hour ago, he’d wanted her gone, or at least in another room for the first time in seven years. Now, with the sound of his own blood pounding in his ears, he’d do anything to bring her back.
In contrast to the decorations in the rest of the tower, the spherical chamber was utterly stark. Featureless and flat white, the only accoutrement was a plain, contoured white chair at the center of the room. Not seeing any interface or control panels and unsure of what else to do, Tyson walked around it once, then sat down.
The room flipped in an instant from flat white to an infinite black. Tyson’s eyes tried to adjust, but there was nothing to focus on. His head shook against the disorientation and he closed his eyes. The view was still just as black, but somehow more manageable.
“Hello, Tyson,” a familiar accent said. He pried his eyes open and stared into the face of Valeria Sokolov. It was a hologram, of course, but in the absolute black of the rest of the room, it was absolutely convincing. She stood against the velvet dark, dressed in a regal evening gown that suggested she was about to attend a party of some prominence.
“Hello,” he said out of social habit.
“I’m sure my representatives have already conveyed my apologies for being unable to leave New Vladivostok for this conversation, but I wanted you to hear this from me personally, if indirectly. The location I’ve picked for you to receive this message should further reinforce just how … confidential … I expect it to be. We’re of a kind, and I want to show you the respect and trust your position deserves.”
“Yes, yes,” Tyson said to the digital ghost of nine-days-ago Sokolov. “Stop fluffing me and get on with it.”
“So, it is with a heavy heart and great regret that I must tell you that the NeoSun board will be exercising the Emergency Termination Clause of our partnership in Grendel.”
“What?!” Tyson blurted out, genuinely caught off guard.
“I realize you’re presenting your shareholder address this evening, and I hate to dump this on you ahead of it, but there’s just not time. The board hasn’t voted to make it official yet, but I’m pushing for this decision myself, so whatever angles you’re starting to formulate, don’t waste your time. You can challenge me through the arbitration process, of course, but I’ve already sent word to our associates in the system to pull up stakes. Even if you win the arbitration, our end of the operation will have been cold for months.”
Tyson forgot he was looking at a hologram and almost started to argue, but caught himself. This was asinine. They’d cracked the Teegarden plague, and after tonight’s presentation, investors would swoop in to buy up Ageless shares for cheap at the start of their recovery.
Or, they would have.
“Or,” Sokolov went on, “we can behave like adults and handle this breakup quietly and avoid a lot of the bad press. If you’re honest with yourself, Ageless is far more exposed on that front than NeoSun is. Consider it a peace offering. Now, the really scary shit.”
“That wasn’t the scary shit?” Tyson asked the empty room.
“The reason I’m pulling out of Grendel is that something’s gone terribly wrong out there. We’re closer than you are, and I sent this message on my fastest skip drone, so you won’t be getting any official notification of this news until the standard com drones catch up in twelve hours or so. So don’t do or say anything that would give away that you know, but Grendel is going under official quarantine. I don’t know the full details, but there was a confrontation between the CCDF cruiser and the Xre raider that’s been poking around the edge of the system for months. There were explosions out near the treaty line they could see clear back in the planet’s orbit. The Admiralty House is mobilizing a task group to send in to recon the area. No civilian traffic in or out until they’ve finished, and a coms blackout will go into effect as soon as their skip drone arrives. I can only assume this means our cruiser on station was lost.”
Tyson’s throat went dry. Grendel had just turned into a flashpoint of a war no one had seen coming. This was definitely scarier shit.
“I’m afraid by the time you’re watching this, there will be no way for you to get an evacuation order to your people ahead of the blackout. The pieces are already in motion and I can’t stop them. However, in my communiqué, which will beat the blackout by a few hours, I took the liberty of suggesting to Governor Honshu that you wouldn’t be too terribly upset, given the circumstances, if she decided to exercise a little initiative and call her own evacuation order. I know that’s stepping on your toes a bit, but there was no way to include you in the decision loop considering the time lag. I hope you’ll forgive my presumptiveness.”
Tyson fell back in the chair, only then realizing how far forward in the seat he’d been leaning. There was nothing to forgive Sokolov for. She’d probably just saved hundreds of lives, provided that stubborn imbecile Honshu took her advice. She was a cousin to Tyson’s COO Nakamura, and he’d never been particularly fond of her. When the chance to dump her off on Ageless’s furthest-flung frontier holding presented itself, Tyson had been only too happy to sign off on the assignment.
Now he hoped he hadn’t inadvertently stuck an incompetent at the focal point of an unfolding interstellar war. Nepotism had the most inventive ways of coming back to bite you.
“That’s all I know for now. This is a real clusterfuck, Tyson. I don’t know where it goes from here, but I’m concerned it’s going to make
