Sean-Michael Argo - Ghost Faction

Taymar secured the three able-bodied gunslingers by binding them together with a length of zip-cable from her utility belt. Jada briefly attended the wounded man, who was slowly bleeding out from a ragged bullet hole in the small of his back. Jada couldn’t recall clearly whether it had been her or Taymar who had shot the man, though such a thing mattered little in the frenzied chaos of combat.

The Dire Swords were not without a sense of propriety, knowing that every gunslinger or staffer captured represented an eventual positive value when the details of this mission were calculated.

It was less out of a sense of caregiving that Jada used her med-kit to swiftly apply a clotting graft to the man’s wound, but more a keen understanding of the Bottom Line.

Jada heard no additional shooting in the decks above or below them and hoped that the surrender would go as smoothly for the rest of the mercs as this one had.

Womack brought down the engineer and the group kept descending stairs, the signs on the wall indicating that the drilling command deck was only two more flights down. They encountered no additional resistance as they moved, and soon, the group passed through the access door leading out of the stairwell and onto the drilling deck.

Jada was impressed by what she saw. The former salvage marine had been involved in a number of ink-rock scrap jobs, though she had never seen a fully functional operation. Beyond what she’d seen from a distance back home, Jada suddenly realized that her impression of the industry of corporate civilization was the wreckage and decay of such operations. As a Reaper, she’d never had occasion to enter active industrial facilities, only the abandoned shells of them and even the refurbished operations of occasional squatters paled in comparison with the grand scale of the drilling platform just below them.

There was a fortune in raw material down in that black abyss of a drilling shaft. Upon seeing that, Jada understood just how powerful the allure must have been for the corporate masters of the fledgling Basepholon.

If she’d lived a different life, been born into a different family, she could imagine how someone might see this level of wealth ready to be prised from the grip of the planet and choose to risk it all on a smash and grab operation.

This ploy would have transformed Basepholon from an upstart company to a player in the great corporate game. Alas, they had picked the wrong opponent to steal from. Lord Aiden Soren was a shrewd man, yet daring in his own way, which made him a profoundly deadly opponent, in the boardroom and on the battlefield. This was a man who had helped the Reapers hold a successful labor strike, the repercussions of which were already rippling through the Grotto civilization and the corporate economy in general. He could not be predicted, save that a challenge to his personal ambition would be met in due time, and that made him a deadly adversary and a demanding employer.

As Jada entered the drilling command bridge, she saw Lord Soren’s opponent of the hour, a man she recalled from the briefing as Ferris Basepholon. This man was a lower member of the elite house that ruled the company of the same name, based off of the single planet that they controlled on the other side of the universe. Her eyes went from the man to the pistol in his hand, then to the drill that he stared at so intently.

Jada’s salvage instincts kicked in, and she noticed that the brake bolts had been engaged. It was a common feature on many rigs, which allowed the captain or topmost manager to take manual control of the drill in the event of mutiny or piracy. Once the brake bolts were engaged, the drill would not move. If the bolts weren’t disengaged with the proper command pattern through the control deck, then they’d have to be cut. The problem with cutting the brake bolts was that they slotted through the drill in such a way that any would-be scrappers or thieves would have to destroy the bit to get through the bolts, making the entire endeavor pointless.

“Ferris Basepholon, you have been ordered to lay down arms!” growled Womack as he shoved the engineer to the ground in front of him and raised his rifle. “Comply or die!”

“Boss, he has the brake bolts engaged,” countered Jada as she flanked the corporate executive and pointed to the drilling platform below. “If he doesn’t release those, we’ll have to cut the bit and Grotto will have to buy a new one.”

“It’s a drill, they can’t be that expensive,” observed Poe flippantly as he moved to flank the executive from the other side.

“The drill is everything,” stated Ferris. The corporate executive squared his shoulders and took a deep breath as he turned his head to address Womack. “Captain, your comrade is correct. I have engaged the brake bolts and should I refuse to retract them, your employer’s profit margin on this operation will be thin indeed.”

“You sure about the bolts, Jada?” asked Poe as he gingerly placed a boot on the edge of the shallow steps leading to the raised command pulpit upon which the executive had positioned himself. “Maybe it’s a bluff to buy time for a counter attack; can you really trust an elite?”

“The bolts are standard pattern for every drill in corporate space worth owning,” Jada verified as she looked back from the drill towards Ferris Basepholon. “He’s trying to negotiate.”

“Jada, is it?” asked Ferris, careful to keep his body still as Womack and Poe continued to close in on him, with Taymar pulling security. “I can hear the Grotto in your accent, but as you are with the Merchants Militant, I must assume you earned your place among them while serving as a Reaper.”

“The drill,” said Womack flatly, having stepped onto the pulpit deck, though carefully making sure that he had a row of control boxes between him and the executive. “If you want to live, you will comply.”

“Mercenary, this facility represents the whole of my house’s assets, and though we are a small organization, the board that rules Basepholon is rather exacting in their expectations,” answered Ferris. His facial expression shifted from the arrogant calm that most commoners and soldiers expected from the elites to something of a disappointed resignation. “My only hopes for life and liberty lie with garnering the goodwill of your employer. I simply wish to demonstrate the power I have, however temporary, with regards to the Bottom Line of this conflict.”

“We have big guns and you have a big drill,” Poe replied with a smile as he looked over to Womack. At a nod from his captain, he slung his rifle and approached Ferris with his palms open. “You’ve made your point. Release the bolts and we can call this fight over.”

“Forgive me, but you are a grunt, even if among the finest in the universe,” scoffed Ferris, the arrogance snapping back into place in an instant. He turned to Womack. “I want your captain’s word that I’ll be handled with the respect befitting my station.”

“Release the drill and Lord Soren will determine your fate,” stated Womack, then, after a moment of tense silence, he added, “Poe, observe the release procedure, and then secure the executive.”

As Jada watched Ferris punch in the keys and then submit begrudgingly to having Poe bind his hands with clips and cable from his utility belt, she took note of how calmly the corporate executive had managed the entire situation. Having four Merchants Militants bearing down on him had not shaken his demeanor, even if it demanded a measured response given all of the firearms trained upon him.

She couldn’t tell whether it was a steely reserve in the man himself or simply a side effect of being born and raised an elite. Even in such a small company as Basepholon, this man, or at least his house, was likely the master of millions of lives. Was this courage under fire or the detached superiority so common in the elite strata of corporate populations?