Spooker
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Grass Eaters 2 | 29 | Fees
🕑 Added 2024-07-22 16:47:01 +0000 UTCAtlas Naval Command, Luna
POV: Amelia Waters, Terran Republic Navy (Rank: Admiral)
“Fleet Commander Peipplust, thank you for joining us,” Amelia said immediately, hoping they wouldn’t get into a fight this early—
“Why is she here?” Peipplust asked angrily, gesturing at his screen, undoubtedly trying to strangle the image of Moescei on his datapad. “Shouldn’t she be busy stealing funds meant for Second Fleet into Third Fleet and her own pockets?”
“Me? Stealing from you?” Moescei screeched. “Go screw yourself! Stoers Shipyard was strictly assigned to Third Fleet’s jurisdiction! The privilege of extracting—”
“Second Fleet got here first! The understood rule for centuries is that the first numbered fleet that gets to the posting has the first right of refusal on escort fees for local station and ships,” he countered with his impeccable knowledge of corrupt Malgeir Navy traditions.
Seeing Senator Wald’s confused face, Amelia muted her tablet and explained while the two Malgeir bickered, “They’re both assigned around this Stoers Shipyard, and they’re constantly fighting for who gets control over escort fees.”
“Escort fees?”
“They charge protection fees for ships that want to dock at the shipyard.”
“I’m guessing this fee is not optional.”
“No, not at all. If you don’t pay, your cargo ship will just wait in line for a docking port forever. That’s happened a few times. One supply ship captain couldn’t pay up, so they waited two weeks until the company could come up with the money and the shipyard just ran without radiator coolant for the entire time.”
“That’s… not ideal.”
“No. People died. And they covered it up. Anyway, they both want to be the one that gets the money from these fees,” Amelia explained. “And since the shipyard gets quite a bit of shipping activity despite being on the frontline, they’re arguing over who gets to milk the gigantic cash cow in the room.”
“I’m guessing splitting it fifty-fifty is one of the options they have already rejected?”
“Good guess, that was my first suggestion too. Second Fleet, under Peipplust, has a greater number of space combat ships in the system than Third Fleet, by about eighty to sixty-five, so… he wants a greater portion of the fees, about twenty percent more. After all, the customers are supposedly paying escort fees and since he’s got more ships, it’s more security. But that’s a pretty uh… tenuous claim, because neither of them is actually escorting anybody or providing any security. Oh, and they’re both falsely inflating the number of ships they have when they argue with each other even though they both have radars and know exactly how many combat capable ships they each have.”
“That’s the conflict, but what arrangement do they have currently? It’s not just a free-for-all at the shipyard, is it?”
Amelia rolled her eyes. “Last I checked, they’ve agreed to take turns charging fees every other week.” She added darkly, “Thankfully, they haven’t resorted to shooting each other… yet.”
“That seems… like a fair compromise for now.”
“Oh, but I’m not done. There’s one more problem.”
“Oh dear.”
“The fee collection is actually enforced by the station authorities and then paid out to the two fleets. By the way, the station is also taking their own cut of bribes, but that’s not relevant here other than to say they’re not helping. Despite the two fleets’ agreement to take turns, Peipplust started covertly demanding the station divert twenty percent of the fees of the previous week into Second Fleet’s accounts instead. Since his ships are in position around the station, the station can’t really refuse, and they aren’t interested in getting in the middle of these two. Of course, Moescei is no slouch at this game: she figured it out quickly, and she started secretly demanding the station authorities return the credits the next week, plus extra, I believe.”
The Senator looked intrigued. This kind of underhanded political wheeling and dealing was exactly the kind of inter-district conflicts he was used to mediating. “Oh. So how do they know how much more the other is stealing from their proper share before—”
“Exactly. They don’t. It escalated, and they’re demanding increasing cuts of the other fleet’s fees: neither of them actually knows if they’re getting the short end of the stick, but they both think and claim to be,” she said, watching the two creatures on her tablet still yelling at each other.
“Alright, that’s enough!” the Senator shouted.
“Sorry, it’s still muted,” Amelia said ruefully, pressing the unmute button.
“That’s enough!” the Senator shouted again at the tablet.
The two fleet commanders stopped talking at once.
“Look, we’re not here to talk about your escort fee situation. Sort that out amongst yourselves later. We just need you to send a few ships to probe Pomniot and figure out what the Znosian fleet there is doing!”
“He can do it,” Moescei said.
“She can do it,” Peipplust said simultaneously.
“Enough,” the Senator cut in before they could start again. “You can both do it. Whichever one of you submits better quality surveillance data on the enemies at Pomniot to us, I will… personally lobby your Naval— your Admiralty and High Council to grant your fleet exclusive rights to the Stoers Shipyard escort fees for a week— no, two weeks.”
There was a rare moment of serenity on the call as the two Malgeir quietly digested the information they’d just been given.
Peipplust spoke up first, leaning into his camera. “What kind of information did you say you are looking for again?”
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“Yeah, okay, now I get it,” Senator Wald said as they hung up. “We need to get out there as soon as possible. I’ll try to see where else we can trim for concessions to the New Hawks, but we need the Mississippi deployed and looking for threats there.”
Amelia nodded in appreciation. “Are you sure sending them both to do the same job isn’t a— ah who am I kidding, I’ll be ecstatic if they produce one good set of sensor recordings of Pomniot between the two of them every week.”
The Senator shrugged. “Best we can do for now, unless you have another idea?”
“Nope. I’m just going to talk to Naval Command and make sure to set some ground rules for them… I just don’t want them stealing from each other or even ‘accidents’ happening to each other’s ships on the way to Pomniot and back.”
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Ceres Ship Manufacturing Corporation HQ, Ceres
POV: Hailey Kang, Terran (Logistics Engineer)
Kang Hye-Jin had never met an alien before, but somewhere in the Company, a computer algorithm somewhere decided that she — a mere logistics engineer — would make the best first impression on them. One of those pseudo-scientific personality matrix tests they did, probably.
She was extensively briefed about what they knew about the Malgeir people. Their technology. Their diets. Their vices. Their taboos. She wondered how the company got the information from the tightly sealed Republic diplomatic archives. Some of it was probably obtained legally. Some of it.
She didn’t ask.
Smile. Contrary to urban legend, showing teeth is not a form of threat display to the Malgeir species.
She resisted the temptation to shut off her corneal implant and put on her best smile.
That’s too much teeth. Look more natural.
“You do it,” she retorted through gritted teeth, staring at the two alien figures being escorted into the lobby of the building. “They won’t know the difference.”
Relax. Just treat them like any of our other clients.
“I don’t meet other clients,” she whispered.
Yes. That’s why you were picked for the first introduction. We’re going for a naïve, young intern feel. Someone they think they can bully in a negotiation, then we hit them with the big guns—
She shushed the implant and walked up to the pair summoning all her confidence and hours in front of a mirror practicing Malgeir pronunciation without a translator. “Hello… Malgeir friends from Eupprio Tech, I am Kang Hye-Jin. People here call me Hailey. I’m from District 29.”
The alien returned her smile and shook her hand. “Nice to meet you, Hailey. Impressive pronunciation. I’m Eupprio, and this is my… friend, Fleguipu.”
Hailey shook both their paws, and returned to her native Korean, trusting the translator to be accurate. “This is your first time at… well, I’m sure this is your first time here… what uh… is this your first time at a ship manufacturing facility?”
Just relax and remember your lines!
Eupprio tilted her head and replied after a moment, “No, I’ve been to one of ours at Stoers.”
Good. Ask her about that.
“What uh— what do they make at Stoers?”
No, not that direct—
The Malgeir answered smoothly. “That is where we make all of our Delta-class military ships, or what you call the Shepherd-class missile destroyers. Stoers is a well-known shipyard in Malgeir space. They make dozens of those ships a month there. I was given a tour of one of its component production sub-facilities when our company merged with Ciolnoenc Instruments. Ciolnoenc makes astro-avionics for our Navy ships’ long-range radar systems.”
Hailey nodded enthusiastically. “Oh, that is so cool! A Malgeir mass manufacturing shipyard! I’ve always wanted to see the insides of one! The massive engineering marvels required to build such titanic ships that can survive the harshness of space and blink! The integration dock alone! Is it true that the hull printer has its own Alcubierre Drive?”
Eupprio smiled. “Perhaps, one day, you can visit and see for yourself.”
“Yes, perhaps,” Hailey restrained herself. “Sorry, I get overly excited about these things sometimes. Uh… a little about me. In my spare time, I do competitive miniature painting, mostly for space scenes and I love doing Malgeir ones.”
Ice breakers are unnecessary—
“What’s that? Competitive miniature—”
“Oh, miniature painting. I paint small scale physical models of ships, space stations, planets, and such, and then I arrange them together in a scene. And sometimes I take them to conventions and people judge them based on any number of factors… depends on the competition, really. I’m mostly a scratch builder, but not like a purist snob or anything; model printing is perfectly fine for background scenery. Hey, do you want to see my latest work?”
Oh dear. Please get back on script—
“Sure!” Eupprio said chipperly. “That sounds like fun.”
Too tunnel visioned to even see the notification, she brought up a model scan on her tablet and showed it to the amused Eupprio. It was a colorful orange-and-blue themed spaceship, perched on a roughly textured piece of asteroid.
Eupprio was transfixed with the model on the screen. “What does this ship do?”
“It’s an L-24A… the ship’s name is Blitz. It’s a luxury long-range racer out of Vesta. Two A-rated modded drives; its jolt gets it from zero to full acceleration of forty gravities in just an hour. Funny story, they didn’t have any mass budget leftover after they put the afterburners in, so they had to put in an underpowered inertial compensator which maxes out at thirty-five G’s. At full burn, you can really feel the acceleration or even go into G-LOC if you aren’t used to—”
Please stop. You are boring the clients.
“Sorry, am I boring you?”
Do not ask the clients that either!
“Not at all,” Eupprio said, leaning in to take a closer look at the scan of her model. “Wow. This is really detailed. Well built! Have you ever been on this racing ship?”
Hailey blushed. “No, the real one is a limited edition and about two hundred million credits out of my budget range. This is just a model.” She swiped on her screen, and the “lid” on one of the hull pieces moved out of the way to show the decorated interiors. “But it’s even got internals that light up when powered!”
Eupprio and Fleguipu marveled over the blinking lights for the afterburners on her tablet, swishing their paw over it to rotate and examine the model from other angles.
“Wow, that’s— And you built this by paw?”
“By… hand, yes,” she blushed at the compliment. “Except the landing perch… that part’s printed.”
Please. Please. Get back on schedule. We only reserved a small time slot for tours.
Hailey sighed as she reluctantly interrupted the two Malgeir continuing to ooh and ahh over her model racer. “Sorry guys, my people are telling me I have to give you the facility tour now.”
After a couple more seconds, Eupprio took her eyes off the screen and handed it back to her, winking. “I get it. My subordinates sometimes get rowdy too when I’m too singularly focused on one thing.”
“Oh no,” she hurried to correct. “I’m not in management. I just meant—”
“No, I get it,” Eupprio said, pointing her paw at Hailey’s face. “It’s that computer device you have in your eye telling you we have to hurry.”
Hailey’s eyes widened. “You know about our corneal implants?”
Well, that complicates things.
Eupprio nodded. “Sure, I noticed it after a couple days with the people at Raytech. Say, you wouldn’t happen to be more willing to part with them here at Ceres, would you?”
The sale of corneal implants is heavily restricted by arms control law.
“The sale of corneal implants is heavily restricted by arms control law,” Hailey repeated.
“Hm… too bad. That’s what they said on Mars too.”
She added helpfully, “But you can buy a legal one with a sub-Terran intelligence chip on some stations in the Red Zone and certain districts on Terra if you look hard enough—”
Please do not advise our Malgeir clients—
Hailey continued unperturbed, “Though I don’t know if they’d be able to fit them to your… physiology.”
“Hm. Fascinating,” Eupprio said, shooting a quick glance at Fleguipu. “They didn’t mention that on Mars…”
“Of course not. They’re a bunch of sticklers for rules over there in Olympus with their—”
No! Absolutely not!
“— anyway, let’s go on with the tour.”
Eupprio looked at her with a bemused expression, “Lead the way, Hailey.”
Hailey led them through a labyrinth of hallways, until they arrived at a door. She swiped her badge on the panel, and it opened to a much larger module.
“This is the maintenance area,” she pointed at the enclosed catwalk they were standing on. The remainder of the massive hangar was a series of machinery and robotic arms silently cold-welding new parts onto the skeletons of several unfinished ship hulls in the vacuum around them. “This is one of our final assembly rooms for the SC-17 military cargo transporter.”
The Malgeir executives pressed their snouts against the glass to look more closely at the assembly process.
“The SC-17 is the largest spacecraft that can fit in the hangar bays of Terran Navy’s Peacekeeper-class missile destroyers,” she added, reading off her implant. “Rated for atmospheric take-off and landing, it is suited for tactical and strategic air and space lift missions, including medical and emergency evacuation, magazine supply, for a variety of autonomous and non-autonomous missions—”
“Have you ever painted one of these?” Eupprio turned around and asked innocently.
NO! NO NO NO—
“Um…” Hailey said. “Maybe I’ll show you another time… when we’re not busy with the tour.”
“Ok, I’ll save your people some time,” Eupprio said brightly. “We’re not looking one of these.”
But they said they were looking for a transport ship! Tell her we have refurbished models in stock.
“If you’re concerned about the pricing,” Hailey started.
“Not at all,” Eupprio waved a paw casually. “I’ve read the topline specifications for the SC-17 model. It doesn’t fit… our needs exactly.”
Ask her if she’s interested in our SC-5 models.
“What are your requirements? If you tell me that, I can recommend a better fit. The SC-5 is another solid transporter, though it’s big enough you’ll probably need a connector dock if—”
“Not that either. We’re looking for something with… at least some teeth.”
Armed interstellar transport. Distract her while we get the Legal Department on the line— with anything but your toy painting hobby, please.
“Uh… we have a few options for armed transport too,” Hailey stalled. “Though that may be a bit pricier because of the war.”
“Pricier?” Eupprio grinned. “You don’t seem like you work in sales, Hailey.”
“No,” she admitted. “I’m a logistics engineer with a background in defense operations.”
“Even more fascinating… a logistics engineer in defense operations. How did you learn where to do that?”
Hailey shrugged. “I got my degree in Applied Mathematics from Seoul District University, and when I was commissioned in the Officer Reserves, I guess they desperately needed people who could do computer modeling.”
Eupprio nodded slowly. “I think… Ceres is lucky to have you.”
She reddened and muttered a quick thank you, and her implant thankfully came to the rescue.
We cleared it with legal review. A total of six SC-22s are available, with leasing and purchase options.
“Ah. We have SC-22s available. They’ve got two small-sized universal pylons with inflight rearm and—”
“Now that’s what we’re talking about!” Eupprio grinned enthusiastically. “Can we take a look at one of those?”
“This way.” Hailey gestured towards the hallway direction indicated by her implant. “Would you like to lease or purchase?”
“Lease, of course.”
Smart choice for everyone involved. Now, upsell her on the Premium Protection Pilot package. We’ve got a guy who has Navy combat experience on call.
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Meta
Republic Navy Cultural Field Guide – Cheatsheet
Body language: showing teeth
Malgeir: depends on context; could be a smile, amusement, annoyance, suspicion, or tooth pain
Znosian: clear threat display, anger
Schpriss: neutral; could be a sign of boredom
Granti: sign of friendliness and hospitality
