The Swarm (12 page)

Lem forced a smiled. “Am I to understand you correctly, Serge, that the European Ironworkers Union is threatening to strike yet again?”

Serge remained in his frozen position. “That's correct, Mr. Jukes.”

“You can put your arm down, Serge.”

The man did so.

Lem sighed. What I would give for elastic arms so I could reach across this room and shake the man. Do me a favor, Serge, Lem wanted to say, grow a spine. You may only be the assistant director of operations and thus a few ladder rungs down from everyone else in this room, but right now I need you to act like the COO. Because the
real
COO, the woman who
did
have a spine and who led us well, has taken a job with my father in the Hegemony, like so many other critical players in this company, leaving me with worms and nebbishes.

But Lem said none of that aloud. Instead he smiled politely, folded his hands, and said, “Let me get this straight. The EIU, the very people to whom we just granted very generous concessions, the people who are responsible for half a dozen ulcers in this room, are making new demands?”

Serge swallowed. “That's correct, Mr. Jukes.”

“Well I find that humorous, don't you, Serge? That's a real barrel of laughs to me. Because these people have squeezed and squeezed and squeezed some more. There's no more water in the stone, Serge. The well is empty. But by all means, please, for the sake of continuing the joke, tell us all what their demands are this time. Nine months of paid vacation perhaps? Free health care for their favorite countries? A servant to wipe their noses when they get the sniffles perhaps?”

A few executives snickered. The butt kissers, Lem thought. The snakes who fawned over Lem and pretended to share his interests just to remain in his good graces. Lem would have sacked them all a long time ago if they were not so good at their jobs. The other executives, the ones who could read Lem well, were smart enough to stay quiet and stare at their laps.

The conference room was centrally located at the company's corporate headquarters, a vast underground tunnel system on Luna, just outside the city of Imbrium. Lem had recently removed the large maple conference table and replaced it and its chairs with an assortment of comfortable leather club chairs. The intent was to give his executive team a more relaxed environment for these kinds of meetings, but Lem was beginning to wonder if the change had had the opposite effect. Instead of being gathered as one at a single table, now every man and woman was an island, set apart from the others and feeling vulnerable.

Serge saw that no one was rushing to his aid and referred back to his notes. “Sir, most of their demands deal with us guaranteeing work to their union members. For example, they request that at least thirty percent of our iron workforce out beyond the orbit of Mars be members of the EIU.”

Lem laughed and shook his head. “Unbelievable. You realize how many of these unions there are, I'm assuming.”

“Yes, sir. Quite a few.”

Lem ticked the names off on his fingers. “There's the Europeans. And the Middle Eastern union. And the North African union, the US union, the Australian union, the Brazilian union, the Argentine union, the German union because even though they're in Europe they need their own union for some reason.” He turned to the man to his immediate left, Norja Ramdakan, the CFO. “Who am I forgetting, Norja?”

“The Canadians.”

“Ah yes. How could we possibly forget those adorable Canadians? Do you see my problem, Serge? If we concede to the Europeans and promise them thirty percent of our workforce, what's every other union going to demand?”

Serge hesitated. “Thirty percent?”

“Wrong,” said Lem. “They're going to demand thirty-
five
percent or thirty-seven. Because you see the Canadians will say that they have a stronger worth ethic and that it's therefore in our best interest financially to hire more Canadians. And the North Africans will remind us of their superior production output or their exceptional safety ratings or whatever, and we'd be fools not to give them forty-three percent. Do you see where this is heading, Serge? Do you see how this could pose a problem? All those numbers add up to more than one hundred percent. And it's not fiscally responsible to hire more employees than we need. That's not smart business. Wouldn't you agree?”

Serge nodded. “Absolutely, sir.”

“So what are you going to tell them?” said Lem.

“Tell them?”

“The EIU, Serge. The insatiable union bosses who are asking for a guaranteed thirty percent. What message are you going to send?”

Serge opened his mouth to speak but Lem spoke first.

“You're going to tell them no, Serge. You're going to tell them that what they're proposing is irrational and offensive to the very idea of a united global defense. Does the IF insist that thirty percent of its marines be Europeans? No. That would be asinine. That would be dimwitted military thinking. You don't hire people because they're from Europe. You hire them because they can do a job. That's what you tell them, Serge. You tell them the only number we worry about in this company is one hundred percent. One hundred percent of our employees are competent and compliant and dedicated to our cause or they are no longer our employees, regardless of what flag they wave or language they speak or team they root for at the Olympics. And if the EIU doesn't like that response, you can kindly inform them that there are plenty of ironworkers in other unions who we can pull from to meet our production needs. It's that simple. And the next time the EIU tries to strong-arm us, you deal with it. You don't bring it to this meeting.”

Serge's cheeks flushed. “Of course, Mr. Jukes. My mistake.” He wiped a hand through the holofield to make his presentation disappear; then he returned to his seat and began taking notes on his tablet instead of meeting anyone's eyes.

I'm turning into my father, Lem thought. I'm becoming the corporate bully. All I need is a cigar and a permanent scowl.

The mood in the room had shifted. There was an air of stiff formality now. No one was cracking jokes or making light. It was cold hard business.

“Who's next?” Lem asked.

The other executives reluctantly stood one by one and reported on the status of the projects within their departments. Lem noticed how some of them edited themselves as they went along, skipping slides and holos, or dropping whole portions of their presentation, fearful perhaps of Lem's harsh examination. I've turned them
all
into spineless worms, he realized. I nailed one of them to the wall, and now they're all cowering. Great. Now even more of them will jump ship.

He had received six resignations in the past eight weeks, all from top executives. Four of them had been employees for decades, having helped Lem's father Ukko build the company from the ground up. They were all loyal, brilliant, reliable people. Father had lured a few of them over to the Hegemony. The others had been pulled away by competitors or other corporations hoping to repeat Juke Limited's recent success.

And the company was successful. Now more than ever. In the three years since Lem had taken over as CEO, Juke Limited had grown its asteroid-mining efforts and expanded its business into advanced weaponry, avionics, nanotechnology, and a dozen other divisions, to say nothing of its shipbuilding efforts for the International Fleet, which generated more revenue than all other divisions of the company combined. Earnings were through the roof. Stockholders were riding on air. But here, among the department heads, Lem could see cracks in the ivory tower.

“Can we stop here?” Lem said suddenly.

The executive giving his presentation froze.

“Have a seat, Koshimi,” Lem said.

The executive did so.

“Why isn't anyone talking about Copernicus?” Lem asked.

The executives exchanged glances.

“We built the thing,” Lem said. “We designed it. We may have given control to the Hegemony, but that satellite is our baby. And now it's space dust. Why aren't we discussing this?”

For a moment no one spoke. The executives looked at one another, and then Naiyoni, who headed the avionics department, sat forward. “What's there to discuss, Lem? The teams in R&D trolled through the data. They didn't find anything. There was no evidence of any object approaching the satellite. It just winked out.”

“And no one is curious as to why?” Lem asked. “A satellite we designed to see everything did not see everything. That doesn't alarm anyone?”

“I think we're all alarmed, Mr. Jukes,” Serge said. “The challenge is knowing what to do about it.”

Lem sat back, surprised to see Serge speak up. Maybe the man had a spine after all. Let's see. “Go on,” Lem said.

Serge continued. “The first question I asked myself when I heard the news, the first question we all likely asked ourselves was: Can we get another satellite in place to fill that vacancy? Can we set up another pair of eyes and get the Formic fleet back in our sights?”

Lem waved a dismissive hand. “Impossible. For lots of reasons. Copernicus was built over a decade ago. Its tech is woefully out of date. If we were to build a replacement, we would need to redesign it. That's a year or two of development at least. Then we would have to build it and take it out there to the edge of space. Another two years. The war will be raging by then. If not over.”

Serge nodded. “My conclusion as well, sir. I then wondered if we could mobilize one of the existing Parallax satellites and perhaps move it toward the fleet.”

“No can do,” said Lem. “They're in fixed orbits and they can't move fast enough to get into any helpful position quick enough.”

“That's what the engineers told me,” said Serge.

So he had asked around, Lem thought. Interesting. At least someone was looking into it.

“There's the option of building a satellite out in the Kuiper Belt,” said Naiyoni. “We have some stations there. They're not equipped for a job like that, and we would still need time for development and construction. I doubt it would be useful by the time it was complete. By then the Formics would be close enough to track and detect with existing scopes.”

“Why didn't we develop a backup plan?” Lem asked. “Why didn't we prepare for this?”

The executives exchanged glances. No one spoke.

“That satellite was our most crucial piece of military hardware,” Lem said. “Of everything we have ever built, that was the one thing we could not afford to lose. And we did nothing to safeguard it. We left it out there totally unprotected.”

After an awkward silence Naiyoni said, “Lem, Copernicus was in IF hands. We built it, yes, but it was their baby now.”

Lem scoffed. “So this is the IF's fault? They carry the blame? No, people. This is our fault. We
are
the damn IF. We may not wear their blue uniforms or salute each other in the hallway, but we are their largest supplier of damn near everything. We are their brains. We are their strength. We are the weapons they wield and the ships they fly. We don't wait until they tell us what they need. We tell them what they need. We show them the weakness in their defense. We stop them from making stupid mistakes. They're not engineers. They're soldiers. And a soldier is only as effective as his equipment. The IF isn't going to win this war, people. We are. Do you think the bozos over at Gungsu Industries are going to do that? Or Symguard? Or Galaxy Defense? Those guys are scrubs. Gungsu has marines flying around in coffins, for crying out loud, breaking hulls with dinky gravity manipulators. That's not going to do squat against a Formic hull, and yet the IF is buying.

“Do you see my point here? We cannot leave the war to the IF. If they run the show, we're dead. Half of their commanders are bureaucrats. The other half are too busy fighting each other. If the human race is going to exist five years from now, it's going to be because of the people in this room. Us. The IF may take all the credit. The world may make them the heroes. But the real genius has to come from us. If we do not absolutely believe that in our core, every single one of us, then we are toast. Not just this company, but our species.”

No one spoke or moved.

Lem sat back, waited. “Does no one have anything else to say?”

No one did.

“Then I guess we're adjourned here,” Lem said.

Everyone but Lem and Ramdakan got up and hurried from the room like it had just been hit with an airborne virus.

“You know how to kill a meeting,” Norja said. “I'll give you that.”

“Everything I said was true, Norja. And you know it.”

“The truthfulness of your impassioned speech is irrelevant,” Norja said. “You've scared everyone out of their mind.”

“Good,” said Lem. “Maybe they'll take it up a notch. If we're complacent, we're sunk.”

“You say that like we're plateauing, Lem, when we have seen nothing but steady growth. Our last quarter showed our highest gains yet.”

“That doesn't matter, Norja. Who cares what our growth is?”

“I'll pretend the CEO of this company didn't just say that,” Norja said.

“We're successful because of demand,” Lem said. “We can make a ham sandwich, call it a gun, and the IF will buy it. Just look at all the trash they're buying from Gungsu, who also happens to be doing very well, I might add. Gungsu is swimming in cash. But financial success isn't going to win us this war. We can't focus solely on the bottom line, Norja.”

“I'm glad to hear you say ‘solely.' For a moment I thought you had erased its importance completely.”

“We have to remain solvent obviously,” Lem said. “We have to generate a profit. But that is a tertiary concern.”

“And what are our first two concerns?”

“Killing Formics and keeping soldiers alive.”

“Not running Gungsu out of business?” Norja asked.