Somnus V - Chapter 22

“Are you sure this is a good time?” Emma asked hesitantly. “I can come back later. Really, it wouldn’t be a problem.”

 “Don’t worry about it,” Kat replied, sucking in deep breaths as she kept running around the small indoor track. Silently, she cranked up the gravity of her domain a little more. It was about at its limit, adding another gravity and a half to Earth’s natural pull.

 She rounded the corner where Emma was standing beside the track, sweat pouring down her face despite the frigid air conditioning that she was piping into the room. Emma frowned slightly, crossing her arms across her chest and shivering slightly.

 “Are you sure?” Emma pressed, watching Kat dubiously. “I feel like you’re a little bit distracted right now. It might be better for us to discuss this in a conference room. Possibly over bagels and coffee. I have no idea how you’re this awake this early in the day.”

 “Routine,” Kat grunted, increasing both her speed and the gravity, maxing out both as she began her final push. “Whip sleeps in most mornings. That means it’s the best time for me to get some hard exercise in and shower before she wakes up.”

 “I get staying in shape but this seems like a lot,” Emma replied. “You’re a shareholder Kat. You have other people to do your fighting for you. There’s no need to keep yourself in peak shape, that’s Heather’s job.”

 Kat’s vision narrowed, her heart slamming into her rib cage as she finished her last lap. Her breath came in quick sharp gasps as she passed the finish line, slowing down to a brisk walk as she began her recovery period.

 “Toss me that water bottle,” Kat wheezed, nodding toward a metal stand with a water bottle, knife, and towel that was sitting next to the doorway.

 Emma grabbed the bottle and threw it to her. Kat caught it and lifted it up in one smooth motion, spraying her face to get rid of some of the sweat before opening her mouth and swallowing a mouthful of the new lukewarm liquid.

 “You bring your knife with you when you go running?” Emma asked, brow slightly furrowed as she eyed up the weapon. “That seems a little paranoid given the number of security checkpoints needed to get through the front door, let alone up here in the shareholder suite.”

 Kat shrugged, keeping her pace up as she continued power walking around the track. It didn’t happen every time, but she’d had some bad cramps and minor injuries after pushing herself this hard before. Even if Cure Wounds II could fix most of it, there wasn’t any need to push herself so hard that she’d need the spell, especially if a five minute walk could fix most of the issues.

 “There’s never a good reason not to carry a knife,” Kat responded with a shrug. Her breathing wasn’t quite completely under control yet, but it was rapidly slowing down to a manageable level. One of the perks of thirteen endurance.

 “We’ve been attacked at high security functions at least two or three times since I’ve become a shareholder,” Kat continued. “A knife wouldn’t solve all of those problems, but I’ve generally found that having a knife and not needing it is a lot better than not having a knife when I need it.”

 “Plus,” she said with a quick smile. “If all else fails, I can use it as an emergency can opener. You never know when it will come in handy.”

 “I suppose you’re right,” Emma responded, running a hand through her hair. “It’s not like I’m here to give you good news. At a certain point, your paranoia is probably healthy, and for all I know, we’re at that point right now.”

 “That doesn’t sound all that promising,” Kat replied, slowing and nodding toward the shelf next to Emma. “Towel please.”

 “The market seems to have caught on to what we’re doing,” Emma said, tossing the towel to Kat. “VodCom has started a serious bidding war for at least half of the isotopes we need for production, and NeoSyne picked up on what they were doing almost immediately. Costs have tripled in under a day.”

 Kat caught the towel, frowning as she wedged her water bottle into an armpit and dried off her face. She transferred the now wet towel and water bottle both into her right hand as she walked over to the shelf.

 “I’m assuming you just found out this morning?” Kat asked, trading the contents of her hand for her knife and slipping it into its sheath.

 “That’s why I said it was urgent,” Emma asked, her lips tightening. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work out time. I thought you were done with your morning run when you told me to meet at the track.”

 “Well, I’m done now,” Kat said, walking toward the door, and leaving her towel and water bottle for the staff to handle later. “Let’s talk over what’s happening over breakfast.”

 Emma nodded urgently.

 “Thank God, Kat. I didn’t want to say anything, but after watching you sprint around like that, I really could use some french toast or something.”

 “French toast it is,” Kat replied, flicking her pupils to the side to put in an order with her personal chef via her omnipresent smartglass. “Now tell me, what’s going on with VodCom and do we have any answers to their actions?”

 Emma bit her lower lip, chewing on it as she slipped deep into thought. After a couple seconds of silence, she shrugged.

 “I don’t know what tipped VodCom off, but it seems pretty clear that they know exactly what they’re doing. This morning they offered simultaneous purchase orders for every isotope we need. All of them ten percent over the already inflated prices. It created quite a storm on the commodity and futures market”

 Kat frowned. “Do we know if VodCom was behind the original price manipulation? Maybe they’re just dropping the mask now.”

 “I don’t know,” Emma replied, crossing her arms in front of herself, “and that’s what really gets me. We still don’t know who actually started all of this mess. All I’m actually sure of is that VodCom is acting differently from the first group. The original round of shell companies tried to mask their purchases a little bit, buying up other elements at above market prices too. They never bought enough to really change those other markets, but the extra purchases helped mask what they were doing. It took us a couple of days to analyze the market trends to confirm that someone was targeting what we needed.”

 “VodCom didn’t bother with any of that,” she continued. “No shell companies. No deniable purchases. Nothing but a massive, above-market contract that only targeted the isotopes we needed.”

 The two of them paused for a second outside the door to the executive cafeteria. A dozen unseen scanners analyzed Kat and Emma closely, generating a mild static charge that caused the hair on Kat’s arms to stand on end. Then, with a pleasant chime, the door opened, revealing a handful of tables.

 Whippoorwill and Heather were already there. Heather nodded at the two of them, a mug of coffee in one of her metal hands. Her professionalism was a sharp contrast to Whippoorwill.

 Whip could barely keep her eyes open. There was a bowl of some sort of awful, sugary breakfast cereal in front of her. There was a spoon in it and Whippoorwill’s hand was on the food, but she wasn’t moving at all.

 “Another late night?” Kat asked, walking into the cafeteria and toward the small conveyor belt that was sending out her and Emma’s french toast. “I didn’t notice when you came to bed so it must have been when I was pretty deep in the Tower.”

 “Three AM,” Whip croaked. “Trying to figure out a new decryption subroutine.”

 Kat waited for a second for her to continue, but Whippoorwill just sat there, wobbling slightly with her food untouched.

 “How did the subroutine go?” Kat pressed. “I know that you’ve been trying to optimize it for a couple weeks now, but did you manage to make any progress?”

 “Fell asleep,” Whippoorwill mumbled. “Need to try again today.”

 Kat winced in sympathy before turning her attention to Heather. “Do you mind getting her a cup of coffee? I don’t think Whip will be much use to anyone, let alone herself until she gets some serious caffeine in her.”

 Heather shot a glance at Whippoorwill and nodded. A second later she was standing and walking over to the coffee machine that Kat had demanded her engineers build into the wall.

 “All right Emma,” Kat said, handing her friend a plate of french toast while she grabbed her own. “Now that you’ve established what we don’t know, tell me what we do know. One or two companies wading into the commodities market is bad, but it isn’t enough for you to flag me down during my morning workout.”

 Emma sighed, setting her plate down at the same table where Whippoorwill was performing her zombie impression.

 “There’s a bidding war Kat. VodCom purchasing at ten percent over market was only the start. Our shell companies tried to pick up some crumbs at inflated prices, but before we could VodCom upped their price to twenty five percent over market. Before we could react properly, NeoSyne swooped in and raised the price again.”

 Kat stabbed a fork into her toast, lifting it up and dipping it into a basin of maple syrup. The real stuff, not the maple syrup that GroCorp synthesized from corn to feed its employees.

 “Did anyone else join in?” Kat asked, “or do we only have to worry about VodCom and NeoSyne coming after us?”

 “As if VodCom and NeoSyne aren’t bad enough,” Emma replied dryly, “but to answer your question, no. A couple smaller companies and independent subsidiaries tried to join in at first, but prices have grown to the point that none of them can keep up. Right now, I’m not sure we could make a profit even with stallesp tech. Frankly, I can’t think of anything with a higher profit margin either. The people gunning for us are losing money to do it. A lot of money.”

 Kat frowned, popping some french toast into her mouth and chewing it. The food was as good as ever, a testament to her chef’s skill even if french toast in and of itself wasn’t terribly hard to make.

 She swallowed, tapping her fork against the top of her plate as she thought the situation over.

 “Say Emma,” Kat began, “what about the shell companies that started this off? They’ve been actively raising commodity prices this entire time, but were they involved in the feeding frenzy?”

 Emma didn’t reply immediately. Instead her eyes lost focus, pupils darting back and forth as she pulled up some sort of report on her smartglass. After about ten seconds of silence, she frowned.

 “No actually. All of them have gone completely silent. I didn’t actually notice it until you pointed it out, but none of them have made any trades in the past week. It looks like they’re just holding onto their reserves.”

 “Sounds like a rug pull then,” Heather chimed in, sliding a cup of coffee over to Whippoorwill. “Somehow they got information about us and they’re using our rivals to drive up prices while they hold onto their reserves. Once values hit a peak, they’ll sell them and make a huge profit. Pretty straight forward tactic even if it’s hard to have enough of a market share in order to pull it off.”

 “I don’t think so,” Kat said, shaking her head. “That could be true, but the level of organization needed to pull it off is absurd. Not only would someone need to know what isotopes we are using, a secret we’ve managed to keep even from the other shareholders, but they’ve also managed to hide the origins of the shell companies that they’re using. I can understand if they withstood a casual review, that’s half the point of having a shell company after all, but without major corporate backing it’s basically impossible to compete with the resources we are using to try and track down who made those companies.”

 “Don’t forget the assassin,” Whip mumbled, lifting her coffee mug with two hands and blowing on the top to cool the drink. Both of her eyes were still shut, as she cradled the cup in front of her face. “That wasn't small time.”

 “Exactly,” Kat agreed. “We can’t confirm that the blue haired woman was affiliated with the organization targeting us financially, but it would be naive to assume otherwise. She managed to sneak into Belle’s wedding without leaving any fingerprints, and her discovering the bar we were meeting Jasper and Nina at? That isn’t a coincidence. The attacker herself wasn’t exactly a slouch either. Ice magic and a fairly high level of magic at that.”

 “Still can’t find her,” Whippoorwill said, taking a long sip of her coffee. Finally, she opened her eyes a crack. “Someone like that has to have a name. Even if someone else power leveled her, you don’t get reactions like that from sleep training alone.”

 “If this was just a rug pull,” Kat responded, stabbing her toast aggressively, “they wouldn’t have bothered with all of that. If we’re lucky, whoever it is tipped VodCom off. The shell companies going silent at the same time is too suspicious to be a coincidence. Worst case scenario is that this has been VodCom all along and we’re about to find ourselves pulled into a full blown corporate war.”

 “Those are messy,” Heather said with a shudder. “I suppose the three of you have never been involved in one. Maybe the fight over the stallesp battleship was one, but your team ended that quickly enough I’m not sure that it counted. They aren’t always announced publicly. I’ve been involved in two and it really can’t compare to a samurai turf battle.”

 “Two thousand GroCorp employees in the first one, Three thousand in the second,” she continued, voice growing a bit grim. “About a quarter of them were players, and every employee was pretty well cybered up. We ‘lost’ the first and ‘won’ the second, but that really doesn’t do it justice. Both wars were against NeoSyne. First one lasted two months before we had to retreat. The way I heard it, the shareholders didn’t even want the companies we gained in the initial hostile takeovers. The entire thing was a ruse to threaten NeoSyne enough into giving us a favorable trade agreement in exchange for our withdrawal. Five hundred people died for that treaty, but I’m sure it resulted in a one percent increase in revenue for someone important so I guess everything worked out.”

 There was a little bitterness there. Kat couldn’t help but smile. Heather was still a little withdrawn and overly formal around her, but the woman wouldn’t have dared to show any dissent against GroCorp orthodoxy even two months ago. Finally, she was starting to crack Heather’s emotional armor and corporate training, leaving tiny fissures that let the human underneath shine through.

 “The second war lasted eight months and ended with us taking over a handful of ranching and mining interests out in the Rockies,” Heather grimaced. “That one even went public for a bit. Hard to avoid when the company airforces start blowing each other up in the open. No one published casualty numbers, but only about eighteen hundred of us made it back. The best and brightest of GroCorp, dying by the dozens as we fought from valley to valley, all for some grazing land.”

 She reached over with her left hand, tapping the metal wrist holding her coffee, a dark expression still on her face.

 “I was mostly biological then,” Heather finished. “Wired up reactions and some subdermal armor plating but nothing too crazy. I ended up catching a cluster bomb to the face. Docs were able to save me, but not all of me.”

 “Avoid corporate wars if we can help it,” Kat replied. “Got it. I get enough fighting every night. I don’t need to go through another bloody list of rival executives during the day.”

 Heather winced.

 “Shareholder Debs, please,” she’d switched back to her formal voice, almost talking to Kat like she was her mother. “You have employees to do those assassinations for you. A lot of them are very excited to be working under THE Erinyes. We’re even getting applications from some pretty high ranked named samurai to work as private contractors for you. There’s no need for you to take on all of that danger on your own.”

 “But what if I want to fight?” Kat asked. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not terribly eager to start a war, but if my employees are fighting, I want to fighting too. I don’t like the idea of sitting on my hands while people that trust me bleed for me.”

 Heather’s eyebrow twitched. Before she could say anything, Emma cut in.

 “You can give Heather a rage stroke later, Kat. For now we need to figure out what to do with our purchase orders. How high are we willing to go? Right now, we aren’t even getting table scraps anymore. NeoSyne and VodCom are buying all of it. The entire market is as dry as the Sahara. Even the futures market, you know, the stuff that hasn’t been enriched yet, is bought out for the next three months.”

 That drew a wince from Kat. She chewed on her lower lip for a second as she asked herself. ‘What would Belle Donnst do?’

 Once she suppressed the urge to steal candy from children and then resell it to them at a massive markup, an idea began to take form.

 “Emma?” She asked, eye still distant as her brain began to rapidfire catalog her various options. “When our shell companies tried to outbid VodCom, how quickly did they raise their purchase price.”

 Emma stopped talking for a second, checking through her data and giving Kat a second to spear another slice of french toast. Next to her Whippoorwill took another big drink from her coffee. She was finally starting to look like a human being. Mentally, Kat made a note to tell Whip to stop pushing herself so hard. A long night here and there was one thing, but it would hurt her in the long run. Plus, she needed to make more time for the Tower. Dungeons would probably do more for Whippoorwill long term than any program she could piece together in the waking world.

 “Huh,” Emma replied. “Matter of microseconds. The system barely managed to process our bid before they beat us.”

 “Thought so,” Kat said, a smile beginning to grow on her face. “They’ve got the entire thing automated. They’re more focused on ‘beating’ us and ‘winning’ than they are on anything else. Apparently, VodCom is just made of credits. It’d be a shame for us to just let an opportunity like this pass us by.”

 “Opportunity?” Emma asked, incredulous. It looked like she was ten seconds from tearing her hair out. “They’re beating the snot out of us! How is this an opportunity?”

 Kat didn’t answer her question, instead responding with a question of her own.

 “How much longer until Belle’s refineries are finished? I know she’s been fast tracking them, but there is a lot of expensive equipment and technical expertise that go into producing exotic materials.”

 “Four months?” Emma guessed. “Maybe six? Our scientists are helping her get everything set up. They know that their future supply of research materials depend on the new refineries, and that has them more motivated than any amount of credits we’ve ever offered them.”

 “Six months then,” Kat said to herself. That could work. She could do that.

 “Do you care to let me in on what’s going on?” Emma pressed, french toast forgotten as she crossed her arms in front of her. “Why did you need to know the production schedule for the refineries? The last couple of months have almost bled our reserves dry. Unless we can get a steady supply of isotopes, we’re going to have to shut down production entirely.”

 “So we shut down production,” Kat replied with a shrug. “Profit margins have been running a bit thin, but we’ve saved up more than enough money to weather a bit of trouble. I know we’re the richest faction in GroCorp, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if we had more credits than any single group worldwide. What’s the use of all that money if we don’t use it?”

 “Okay,” Emma said, defeated. “Heather’s right. You’ve taken a couple too many head blows while training and you’ve finally snapped. There’s no other explanation.”

 Heather coughed, spraying the entire table with coffee.

 “Don’t drag me into this!” She blurted. “I’ve never said that out loud!”

 Kat looked at her security chief, raising a single eyebrow.

 “Hey,” Heather said hastily, “spontaneous thoughts and emotions aren’t intellectual property owned by the corporation. That’s only premeditated ideas. I checked. I’m allowed to think what I think.”

 Kat rolled her eyes, ignoring the two of them before she turned her attention back to Whippoorwill. Her girlfriend was smiling at the entire scene, pink hair framing her face perfectly as she held her cup of coffee in both hands.

 “Honey,” Kat began. Whippoorwill’s eyes snapped back to her. “I was wondering if you could do me a quick favor.”

 “Is this a quick favor in the ‘you want me to run to the store to pick up ice cream bars,’ sense,” Whip replied, “or a quick favor in the ‘you want me to overhaul the entirety of the cyber security for the laboratory’ sense?”

 “Somewhere between the two,” Kat said with a shrug. “I want you to put together a program that will automate our trades. Use our shell companies to buy and resell the isotopes instantly, marking them up by fifteen percent each time. Unless I miss my guess, VodCom has something set up to buy any futures contracts on the market. If we do that four times with a big enough quantity, we’ll make something like a sixty percent profit in under a second.”

 “That-” Emma snapped only to blink and cock her head to the side. “That’s actually a pretty good idea. It still doesn’t solve our supply issues, but we have an opportunity to make some pretty good money. How much are you planning to inv-”

 “All of it,” Kat replied. “Bankrupt them if we can. If they’re going to play with fire, it's only fair that we scorch them a bit.”

 “That’s a lot of money to gamble with,” Emma said with a frown. “Also, if we’re reselling the isotopes back to make a profit, it doesn’t change the fact that our stockpiles will run dry in a week. I get that you don’t care about production and sales, but the other shareholders do.”

 “Good for them,” Kat said with a shrug. “If they want to buy isotopes and sell them to me at a reasonable rate, we’ll be happen to reopen the factories for that particular shareholder. It’s up to them to source their own resources though.”

 Emma threw her hands up in the air, practically growling in frustration. Kat had a hard time not cracking a smile. Watching Emma get angry was like having a particularly aggressive Yorkshire Terrier growl at you.

 “What about the scientists then?” Emma asked. “We’re paying them well, but most of them are working for us because we promised them unlimited access to the spaceship along with the materials they would need to reverse engineer it. Without the resources, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them want to walk. We can keep them from leaving, but that would crater morale in a second.”

 “Who said we weren’t going to get our hands on the isotopes?” Kat replied “I’ve been getting a little stir crazy since my class evolution. I have all these new powers and no real opportunity to test them out in the real world.”

 “No,” Heather whispered, her eyes widening. “No, no, no, absolutely not.”

 “I doubt we’ll be able to get enough raw material to reopen the factories,” Kat continued, ignoring her security chief, “but there should be enough goodies to keep the scientists happy. The key is, we don’t pay for them.”

 “What part of absolutely not don’t you understand?” Heather asked urgently. “I veto this. Whatever you’re planning, if you dare try it I’m going to unionize. I’ll go on strike.”

 “Don’t be like that,” Kat replied, eyes twinkling. “I’ve been watching a lot of Chrome Cowboys before bed and it got me thinking. It sure would be fun to do a real, honest to god maglev train heist.”

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