“I’m sorry,” Betta apologized again, her head swimming.
“Miss Reganta. I’m going to insist that you rest first. I believe it will help you. I also do not believe you are steady enough for a shower,” Teena said.
“Riiiggght,” Betta slurred as she stumbled into her bedroom and fell face-first into her pillows.
When Betta awoke, she felt a brief quickening of her heart. Her dark flesh was covered in a sheen of sweat. The smell was overwhelming. She showered and returned to her bed to find a fresh uniform. Betta dressed while viewing the remaining messages in her queue. She marked the ones she thought were significant and forwarded them to Teena.
There was no weakness in her limbs any longer. The quickness in her heart had slowed to a normal beat. After days of feeling out of sorts, ready to fall unconscious at a breeze, she was finally feeling like her old self. Her stomach rumbled and roiled, otherwise she was ready to get on with her day. She looked forward to the promised broth.
Teena was waiting for her at the empty dining table with a large cup that steamed. Betta accepted it gratefully, sipping at it slowly, afraid that the contents might make their way back.
“If you are ready, I have all of the tier three managers on-call for a meeting on level-15. We also have a tour of The Disc and a meeting with the Federal Commander shortly thereafter.”
“And Jadis Ter?”
Teena did not hide her frown. “I have been monitoring him as you requested. I downgraded any tech he interacts with to the default settings.”
“The limit to his credit?” Betta asked.
“It’s in the system. As you requested, I have not informed him of the limit. He will be informed once he reaches it.”
Betta couldn’t help the laugh that escaped her. “It’s fun, isn’t it?”
“No offense, Miss Reganta, but I don’t understand what you find entertaining about this man.”
“He’s not like other people. If I do a search on the Net or the federal databases, I find no background. He has no family, no known associations, besides Drafer royalty, and in that only sponsorship. There are no other credentials, and yet he is CEO of two power stations. He came from nowhere. Even the contracts that he has with Pilo are generic. He’s obviously got cybernetic implants. He can’t help but hack every system he gets near. He even got past Antogin firewalls.” She didn’t want to sound like she was impressed, yet her voice gave it away.
Betta took a deep breath. She decided she wouldn’t be ashamed of it. Jadis, even if he was a fake character in Pilo’s corporate world, impressed her.
“And this deal?” Teena asked, rising from the table.
Betta considered how much she should tell Teena. Pilo obviously owned her contract, but Betta felt she held some sway after releasing Teena from stasis. Teena was obliged to report and investigate anything that might be an issue for the corporation itself. Having dual contractual obligations of this sort were tricky. Betta wanted Teena’s loyalty, but she also didn’t want to compromise her trust.
In the end, Betta decided to be honest, though cautious. Based on Teena’s records and past action, if there was a choice between loyalty to Pilo and loyalty to Betta, she knew Teena would choose Pilo every time. The worst part was that she liked Teena and she wanted the overly professional executive assistant to like her as well.
“Pilo has invested in Jadis. I’ve never seen anything so obvious. He’s also a business man. His approach leaves something to be desired, but gets your attention and its memorable. It’s probably because he deals out here, in space. I don’t think the deal we made is the real contract. He’s up to something.”
Teena blinked. “Are you saying it’s all an act?”
“No. I’m pretty certain he’s an asshole, but he’s a smart asshole that has a secret. Perhaps your superiors at Pilo will share the information with you?”
Teena shook her head. “If such a deal existed and they did share it with me, I doubt I would be permitted to disclose it.”
Betta shrugged. “I thought that might be the case. Anyway, I can keep him entertained by playing the sweet, innocent girl from a poor mining planet.”
“I doubt he will be easily fooled,” Teena said.
“I’ll take that as a compliment. I’ll find another game to play if that one runs short. Any reports so far?”
Teena swiped the air before her and smiled. “I have a bartender in the Drafer district charging you for drops of honey.”
“Oh. Those are quite expensive in this sector.” Betta took another sip of the broth before gulping it down in just a few swallows.
“He doesn’t know about the bees.” Teena’s smile broadened.
Betta had ordered a few crates of bees before leaving Arys-27. There were some things that miners complained about in this part of space that were well-known. Betta had made certain to identify them and find some way to provide. Honey was one of those rare items. The crates had spent a five-year voyage in a self-contained arboretum in the cargo-hold of a vessel from Ganys-12. They bred quite well. When they arrived all reports were that there was more than enough honey to see her rich by the end of the year.
As such, the drops that Jadis ordered at such outrageous prices increased her profits, even as she was paying herself.
“I hope he has a taste for Drafer delicacies,” Betta whispered to herself as she followed Teena into the corridor. “No. That would be too much.”
Level 15 was built for large presentations. There were two auditoriums and seven conference rooms. Teena led them to the first auditorium, The Forum of Knowledge. They entered to a low murmuring where a crowd of men and women of all types of alien species took up most of the chairs. There were nearly a hundred seats and only two dozen were empty.
Betta’s heartrate quickened as she felt all eyes on her and Teena. They stepped through the crowd.
A spotlight quickly found her as Teena spoke quietly. “Ready when you are, Miss Reganta.”
Betta stepped onto the stage. The confidence she’d had was slowly dwindling as she looked into the expectant faces of those that waited for her to speak. The words she prepared felt incomplete and she stood silently looking back to the stairs. Forcing herself to speak, she stumbled. “I… my father…”
Her mind relived grabbing the peace of broken glass and lunging for the Lyten that was responsible for her father’s death. Betta was frozen, her grief hitting her in a thousand different ways as she recalled her mother, the days she’d spent with her father when the feds had allowed it, and finally her own idiotic attempt to be a field agent.
Teena Maverick, her executive assistant, climbed the stage, putting a hand to her shoulder. “Our proprietor is at a loss for words. I’ll handle this, if that’s acceptable,” Teena said.
Betta nodded, swallowing down the lump in her throat.
“I was in stasis for nearly 200 years. I testified for the feds on a black-market group that massacred a colony in Gessa Prime. That group made a deal, as I later learned, and I was made to disappear. If not for Miss Reganta, I would not be here. I am certain that many of you have similar stories,” Teena said matter-of-factly.
Betta watched nearly the entire crowd of business owners nod. Something within her relaxed and her mind attached names to faces from the lists she gathered.
Teena smiled. It had to be the first true smile she’d seen in the two days since she arrived on the station. “I was the first out of stasis. It gave me time to research Miss Reganta. I worried that I was being sacrificed for Pilo yet again and that this post would be my last. Then, I found ‘the list.’ All of your names were on it, including mine. Next to each name was some injustice done, whether by Pilo, the feds, or organizations within the black-market. We were never meant to be let out of those stasis pods. Every one of you was marked in some way, just like me.”