In the Black, стр. 19
“Because we’re partners in the project, Tyson. If—When word gets out, we need to be prepared to present a united front and coherent messaging.”
“And Praxis? Are you visiting Daryl next?”
Sokolov waved a hand dismissively. “That space trucker? Daryl’s a good old boy and a gossip. He’s useful for spilling secrets, not keeping them. We only roped him in because neither you nor NeoSun had enough spare shipping capacity from our other commitments to get the standard infrastructure in place.”
Which was true enough, Tyson had to admit. His merchant fleet was stretched thin moving around the cargo and trade Ageless had already brought to market. Trade that was making them money with each jump. They just didn’t have the tonnage lying around to divert into a new project that might not bear fruit for ten, perhaps twenty years. His thoughts drifted for a moment to the million-ton ore freighter trapped in a parking orbit not five hundred kilometers above his head, even now draining company resources as it waited to end quarantine instead of making him money.
New hulls were under construction, but the first of them was still another ten to fifteen months away from completion and another half a year for space-worthiness certification.
So, they’d gone to Daryl Cooper and Praxis, the “You-Buy-We-Fly” overflow fleet of human space. Daryl’s ships were castoffs bought up at auction once the larger transtellars thought them to be worth little more than scrap.
Which, honestly, they were. But Daryl’s people spent countless man-hours refurbishing the old heaps into something that would pass inspection, if only with a few greased palms. Which weren’t hard to find among the Praxis ranks, considering how many of his employees were grease monkeys in the first place. He then waited patiently, hauling low-grade materials for fees that barely covered his overhead until the giants like NeoSun, Extra, or even Ageless bit off more than they could chew in their quest to conquer the known universe. Then, if you needed something shipped, Praxis was there to do it quickly and more-or-less competently.
For a price. In the case of Grendel, the price wasn’t a fee, but a seven-percent cut of future revenue, negotiated down from ten.
Daryl wasn’t smart, by any stretch. But he was hardworking, looked out for his people, and had a certain cunning about him that kept Praxis alive through the lean times, and fattened it up when opportunity knocked. Even if that opportunity was firmly in the gray area of transtellar regulations. Tyson himself had signed off on fines against Praxis half a dozen times for infractions on Lazarus that any court of law would call smuggling. But somehow, he still liked the man.
“So,” Tyson said after choking down the rest of his soggy wedge of wonton, shredded vat chicken, and corn, “what do we do about it?”
“Nothing we can do, at the moment.” Sokolov sipped up the dregs of her drink. “Do anything, and we give away that we knew before the CCDF made the information public, and that would jeopardize my back channels.”
Tyson nodded. “I understand the need for discretion.”
“But be ready for the press. You’re the majority stakeholder in Grendel, you have the most exposure to the downside risks of bad optics. Especially in light of your misadventure in Teegarden.”
“It’s a damned bacteria. We’re handling it,” he said tersely.
“You’d better. Because I wouldn’t want to be putting out multiple publicity fires simultaneously. Makes stakeholders nervous. Makes the Earth governments take notice. And the last thing any of us wants is for those know-nothings to start sending fucking fact-finding missions out here to play in our sandboxes. That’s never good for the quarterly reports, for any of us.”
“Agreed.”
“Good, that’s settled, then. Speaking of settled…”
“I’ll take care of the bill. My treat. It’s the least I can do for your help.”
Sokolov smiled her broad, wrinkled smile. It was warm, and felt as genuine as a grandmother doting over a precocious grandson. “I like you, Tyson. You have a stout heart and broad shoulders. But I’m helping me, just as much as I’m helping you. Our little side project is a marriage of convenience, after all.”
“A mutually beneficial relationship, I hope.”
“Time will tell. In the short term, make sure your house is tidy, in case we have unexpected guests. Da?”
“Ya ponimayu,” Tyson answered without missing a beat.
“Hmm.” Sokolov’s smile persisted. “Excellent diction, Tyson. Hardly any of that atrocious Lazarus accent at all. But I really must be catching a shuttle back to my yacht.”
“So soon? You’ve only just arrived. Surely you could spare an hour for the sandstone gardens. The native rock coral are in bloom.”
“Thank you, Tyson, but if I want to breathe air clogged with gametes, I’ll … well, let’s just say that such places are readily available on New Vladivostok as well. Although I don’t frequent them as much as I once did.”
“A pity,” Tyson teased. “Safe travels, Ms. Sokolov.”
“Calm seas, Mr. Abington.” Sokolov stood up from the booth and disappeared into the bustling crowd eager to leave and return to their offices and work stations. Tyson remained, chewing on his thoughts if not his lunch.
What the hell did the Xre want with Grendel? And why did they have to pick just then, out of the last seven decades, to start poking around in human-occupied space again right on the heels of the Teegarden fiasco? Of course, there was no way to answer those questions, because there were never any Xre around to ask, not that their answers ever made much sense in the first place.
Sokolov was right about one thing, though. Crisis had a way of increasing exponentially in apparent importance among public perception the more of them you stacked atop one another. Even several relatively small, unrelated setbacks posed a danger of being misinterpreted as a larger, systemic problem by the press and among market watchers.
This unwelcome bit of news put even greater emphasis