Chapter 28

The line buzzed cheerily as Zachary Thorne waited for his new tech contact, Olpha, to answer his call. Thorne didn’t like waiting on someone else, but what other choice did he have? He had a need, and Olpha had a solution, so he would wait, if that’s what it took. Thorne remembered the advice of his father to find the initiative, and smiled. If this were a game of chess, his hacker friend would have already been a piece up and threatening the security of his king. Fortunately, Thorne considered himself well-versed in both chess and dialogical tacticism, which made the lost initiative of this opening a pleasantly surprising challenge.

Unlike chess, politics was a game of money, and Thorne had plenty of it. Whatever advantage Olpha thought she might have over him, Thorne could overcome with his deep pockets. In fact, that’s how Olpha had come to work for Thorne in the first place. He chuckled to himself as he remembered that Olpha was the top IT consultant for many of the chairpeople of the coalition, Anya Petrova included. Thorne had paid top dollar for Olpha’s delivery of intense secrets regarding all of the coalition, with an addendum that Olpha continue to act as the Terra Harvest IT Chief - that way, Petrova would continue revealing secrets into her database that Olpha could simply deliver to Thorne’s inbox.

This is too easy, Thorne gloated to himself, and looked out the window of his transport smugly. He reached for his bag and pulled a stainless steel flask from the side pocket. Why not? No harm in priming the pump before the match, right? He took a sip and the tequila caught in his throat. He managed to push it down, but not without a significant coughing fit that made tears stream down his face. He caught his reflection in the mirror and wiped the moisture from his eyes.

As his gaze passed through his own reflection and down into the greater vista of SkyReach, he marveled at his luck. It’s not luck, Zach, he reminded himself. Thorne had found the cheat code to unlock success at the highest level - ridiculous wealth. He’d risen to power through Global Energy through his father’s influence, but his father had never known global power.

Thorne’s father, Elmerit Thorne, died at the age of 55 from a heart attack, and only as a regional manager, at that. Thorne, who was born an elitist, resented this fact about his father. If you’d only been marginally more successful, then imagine what I could have done, he’d ruminated to himself as a child. What Elmerit had lacked in title, though, he’d well made up for in financial acumen. Elmerit, as it turned out, had placed some incredibly smart investments, and when he died, the deeds of ownership of his financial portfolio passed to Zachary and his mother. Through another set of fortunate circumstances regarding the financial ruin of a number of companies in the Economic Crisis of 2120, the Thorne family became the beneficiary of a multi-billion dollar empire of financial entanglements. Like so many of the ultra-mega-rich of his generation, Thorne was the heir to an empire that served no purpose outside of the exchange of financial holdings.

Ironically, while the existence of the Thorne empire served no tangible benefit to the economy, its sudden erasure would undoubtedly devastate global trade because of the bank accounts that were tied between the Thornes and a variety of very important international brokers. It was this advantage that Thorne had used to reach his “Vice Chair” status before his elevation to the Chairman of Global Energy, and it was precisely this advantage that he planned to use to defeat his latest set of adversaries. The coalition had proven easy - all he’d needed to do was threaten to release sensitive information. He hadn’t even had it yet, but they’d all crumbled, melting easier than the ice in the countless drinks he’d consumed since.

Now, though, Olpha was going to deliver the actual goods, and his threats would solidify. He hadn’t a clue what she might reveal about his colleagues, but his twisted mind couldn’t wait. Maybe Carter, at SkyCorp, for example, had an affinity for underage sex workers. Or Dr. Anika Deasi, harumph harumph, had a gambling addiction. The knowledge that he would soon inherit the secrets they’d all hoped to keep hidden made him giddy.

Finally, Olpha answered.

“‘Alo?” a deep female voice answered. Thorne looked down at his terminal, confused, as he thought Olpha would almost certainly be female.

The deepness of the voice, however, convinced him that a man had answered. He grunted awkwardly and his mouth gaped in stupid uncertainty. He quickly corrected himself, his teeth chattering noisily as he closed his mouth. He pulled the phone further from his face, hoping that Olpha hadn’t heard the noises. Thorne’s face reddened and he looked up to see if his driver had noticed his awkwardness. He thought he noticed a smirk untuck itself from the corner of Lucian’s mouth, but it seemed unlikely. Lucian looked to be off in his own world, piloting Thorne to the SkyReach Jurisdiction headquarters and oblivious to his employer’s blunder.

Confident that he’d regained his composure, at least for the moment, he returned the terminal to his mouth to speak. “I’m sorry,” Thorne said. “I’m trying to reach Olpha?”

“Yeah,” a voice, filled with ire, said. “That’s me. The fuck did you say that name for?”

Somehow, the voice had gotten deeper, angrier, yet more feminine. The call ended and Thorne, again, pulled the terminal from his ear and looked down at it, confused. Women, he thought, scoffing to the empty passenger compartment. What Thorne didn’t know about the female gender, someone much smarter could have filled an encyclopedia’s worth of halo books. Thorne, however, failed to realize this fact and assumed that the woman on the other end of his call was just over-acting her role: the anonymous hacker.

Thorne sat quietly for several minutes, only the hum of the surrounding sky traffic buzzing around his transport interceding on his silence. As he contemplated how things had gone earthward so quickly, his terminal chirped excitedly in his hand. He was definitely receiving a call, but the contact information was withheld. He frowned. The terminal wasn’t displaying the usual incoming call display. Somehow, Thorne’s terminal was being manipulated remotely to only display an image - that of an old world Sloth, an Earth animal, if Thorne remembered his schooling correctly.

He tapped his fingers nervously against the back of the terminal in his lap, thinking about what other sensitive systems Olpha could have gained access to. The breach of his communication security alarmed him greatly, but if Thorne was correct in his assumption of the responsible party, it was a person he wanted working for him. More immediately, it was someone who’s call you would not want to miss.

“This is Zachary Thorne, Chairman of Global Energy. Who is this?”

“You know who this is.”

“Suppose I do, please identify yourself in a way that I can comfortably continue this conversation.”

“You instigated a coup against the coalition powerhouse Anya Petrova, but you fucked up in not planning far enough ahead, and now you want help. Is that comfortable enough for you?” A disgusted scoff emitted from the other line in conclusion.

Thorne felt a blaze of rage and he jolted upright as if stung, but tabled the reaction within the same breath that it flared. There would be a time to establish his place, his dominance; but he needed a dialogue first. Olpha seemed reasonable, but only if you paid homage to the rough facade that she established in her opening salvo. So Thorne played ball.

“Yes. Plenty.” Thorne sat back in his seat now, waiting for Olpha to break the silence by starting their negotiations. An old school tactic, one his father had taught him the value of, and one that never failed to create at least a marginal advantage for the party that spoke last. A full minute passed before Olpha finally spoke, but it wasn’t what Thorne expected to hear.

“If you do not tell me what you need from me in 60 seconds I will end this call and never speak with you again.”

Damn. She was ruthless, and Thorne was incredibly uncomfortable with the upper hand in their conversation that she seemed insistent on maintaining. He cleared his throat and slid his flask back into the side pocket of his bag, not right now, maybe after I’ve won, he thought. Maybe he’d indulged in his flask of preparatory liquid a tad too soon, if his current adversary was going to be this sharp. Thorne felt a change in the transport’s momentum and looked out his window to notice that Lucian was slowing them up to land onto the tower that housed the Jurisdiction Headquarters.

Thorne tapped the partition and made a circular gesture in the air with his finger to Lucian. Lucian nodded into the rearview mirror and pulled the transport back into the sky lanes to circle the building. Thorne thought better when the vehicle he was in was moving, as he’d found over the last several days. Sitting still made him uncomfortable.

“Listen, i know what you’re doing,” Thorne recovered. “The down side, unfortunately for you, is that I know how things work.” Thorne was confident, he was certain that his money would work to maintain his dominance, but Oltha didn’t seem so easily purchased. Thorne waited anxiously for her reply.

“Oh? Maybe you misunderstand my motivations,” the deep voice offered from the other line. “I, and I can’t stress this enough, don’t give a shit,” she emphasized the last word, seeming to mock Thorne, aware of his desire for power and mocking him for it, “how your little power plays go. If you’ve got money, I’ve got info. Are we clear?”

This was totally outside of how Thorne conducted his business, but he was happy for the brevity. After all, the money wasn’t the issue. Oltha could give him exactly what he wanted without a protracted negotiation. The downside, of course, being that Thorne didn’t get to feel a sense of domination over his captive. As far as Thorne reckoned, that was fine. She’d feel her subordination soon enough. What he couldn’t understand, though, was how she felt so confident. He had the upper hand in every way, but he couldn’t help but feel that Oltha could undermine him at whatever turn she wanted.

“How could I misunderstand? Aren’t our motivations, as you say, the same?”

“No.They are not”

WHAT?? he almost said. Instead, he sat further upright in his seat and glared at his terminal. The leather of the seat groaned against his effort as he straightened himself. How dare she?? She was playing a game with him and he was fucking tired of it. He was Zachary Thorne, goddammit. She ought to, at least, acknowledge his superior status in this exchange, yet she’d done everything possible to make him feel small. Zachary Thorne didn’t like to feel small. Fuck.

He took a deep breath and reminded himself of the importance of diplomacy at this moment. There was a time for dressing down, but Oltha would not respond well to it at this point. Maybe in a week or two he could revisit to remind her of her place. For now, though, the key was to convince Oltha to support him. As Thorne understood, it didn’t matter how he did it, but it mattered that he avoided complete otherization of his new contractee. So far, that was proving difficult, but not beyond possibility. He’d have to bend his ego a little more than he liked, but he’d do it if it meant that he got the dirt he needed against the other coalition members.

Rage retracted, he mentally reoriented and faced his new colleague.

“Are you sure? I think I could make it very worth your while to align our interests.”

“Oh?”

Dammit, there it is again! He raged to himself. He’d offered a way for Oltha to pledge her allegiance, but instead of acquiescing she’d pushed the ball back to his half of the court - demanding a returning volley, rather than offering something of substance of her own.

“Yes.”

Fine, he would play her game, but only by her own rules. Maybe if he pushed back just enough, she’d decide to cooperate. Several seconds passed and Thorne began to feel like he’d need another strategy, maybe even another techie. Resolving himself to that probability, he pulled the phone from his ear and looked at it sadly. He really thought this was it; this was the key to how he would outmaneuver the coalition. Instead, Oltha had played a silly game and pushed him back to square one.

He prepared to close the call, and then Oltha suddenly answered.

“Fine,” was all she said, but Thorne knew he’d won - in his own way at least. Oltha would almost certainly feel a sense of victory, too, but that might work better for his purposes.

Oltha ended the call, but this time it felt less malicious. This time, Thorne was certain that he’d receive something worth his effort; he’d won the round and that made him smile. He reached for his bag and withdrew his flask, lips upturned smugly. He raised his eyes to Lucian and saw the driver’s eyes dart away from the rear passenger seating and back to the road. The fucker’s watching me, he thought as he took a drink from his flask. The steely silver caught the afternoon sun and reflected sharply throughout the back passenger area. Thorne thought he even noticed Lucian flinch against the sudden flash, like it’d hurt his eyes because he’d been looking where he shouldn’t have been..

“Good weekend, Lucian?”

Thorne asked suddenly. Lucian looked back at Thorne - nervously? - through the rear-view mirror, confused, before finding a response.

“U-huh, yeah, I guess so, Mr. Thorne,” Lucian said. “The mister and I are planning a -”

“Take me down now, please, Lucian. Ready to land,” Thorne interrupted. His terminal had pinged a few seconds prior; the dirt was in. He’d deal with his nosy driver later.

Now, Thorne’s heart pounded in anticipation of what he might soon learn. Encrypted? Fucking hackers, he thought as he looked at Oltha’s message. She’d secured the data through a coding that only Thorne and Oltha’s terminals, together, could decode, and it would take a few more minutes before Thorne would see his precious blackmail. “Christ alive,” he said to himself. I don’t know how much longer I can wait.

“Pardon, Mr. Thorne?” Lucian asked. His glance returned to the back seat now as he looked through the rear-view mirror, locking eyes with Thorne. Thorne shrugged him away.

“Nothing, Lucian. Land us, please,” he said sharply. He’d had enough of the sky for now. His terminal buzzed excitedly to alert him to the completion of his decoding; Oltha’s data was ready for his review. His heart jumped again. He craved the information about the coalition; needed it. He pulled it up on his terminal and scrolled through the information.

His eyes grew to the size of billiard balls as he read through the decrypted data. There wasn’t as much as he’d hoped for, but what was here was devastating. To his surprise, the knowledge he’d gained wasn’t the big stash of personal secrets he expected, but instead a suite of documents that explained everything. He raised his eyes from his hand terminal and again noticed Lucian’s gaze dart away. Why does he keep watching me? He tried to forget the feeling of paranoia. Lucian wasn’t watching him, he was simply being an attentive driver. Right?

Thorne suddenly felt an intense dread, like he should be anywhere but here today. Something was wrong, and he felt it in a growing tingle in the center of his shoulder blades. He scanned the landing platform nervously; nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just the typical business of a travel pad - people in a hurry to arrive at or leave the tower for their next appointment and a security squadron patrolling the perimeter casually. All manner of vehicles were maneuvering to and from the hundreds of transport bays.

The stakes had risen significantly from 60 seconds ago and knowing what the coalition would try to do to stop him made him think that perhaps his time running in the field was done; he needed to conduct his business from a panic room in an undisclosed location from now on. Of course, that wasn’t a sustainable option right now - he had business that only he could attend to. As much as Thorne did like to outsource his wet work, some things just necessitated doing yourself.

He may have felt uneasy, but he was also deeply impressed. The sheep in the coalition were not so sheep-like after all. The scale of what they’d done almost made him envious. All he’d done was exterminate a group of prisoners that were threatening to release information. They’d crashed a fucking city to the ground, though, and he had the proof now. He grinned to himself, your mess started because they never cleaned up theirs. He marveled at the rotundity of karma a moment longer before pulling his flask from his bag to build his courage with an additional sip. The liquid burned his tongue and throat as it went down and he shook his head quickly to loosen out the pain. He corrected his now tousled hair, pocketed his flask into his blazer, and grabbed the door handle to exit the vehicle.

“Shouldn’t be long, Lucian, keep it warm, will you?”

Lucian, who had been reading something on his hand terminal, looked up passively. “Aye, sir, we’ll be here when you’re ready,” and then returned to whatever compelling literature he’d escaped to. Thorne studied Lucian for a second longer, watching the corners of his eyes for whether or not Lucian was watching him back. Thorne couldn’t tell, and the lack of a definite answer made him feel even worse. Might be time for a new driver, he considered as he pushed the transport open and disembarked the vehicle.

The wind of the high tower immediately blew his hair into disorder on his head and Thorne cupped his hands over his eyes to shield them from the dust that plagued the tower tops of Skyreach. He walked briskly, easing through the crowd and over to the elevator, consulting his terminal for Eliel’s floor number as he approached. He entered the lift and pressed the button, floor 249, just 10 floors down.

The lift, a large space, was jammed with people; easily 25 of them, from what Thorne estimated. He held his breath as long as he could, but the stench of the working class sat heavy in the tin box of the lift. His was the first stop and he graciously exited the lift to breathe the musty air of the bland hallway. The complex branched off in three directions in front of him, and signage indicated that he was on the opposite side of the building from the Jurisdiction headquarters. The off-white color and sloping nature of all three hallways made him feel like he was having one of those fever dreams. The one where, no matter how hard you run, the object of your pursuit never gets any closer. He examined his reflection in the glass of a painting on the wall, straightened his coat and dusted his shoulders for debris from the rooftop. His flask sat comfortably in his coat pocket, ready to jump into action at a moment’s notice. Thorne patted the lump in his pocket contentedly and moved to cross the building and on to conduct his blackmail.

It took about 10 minutes before he reached the door of the Jurisdiction Headquarters. He pulled the glossy steel handle and entered the brightly lit lobby of the headquarters. The dark blue walls and the gray linoleum floors made the medium size room feel much smaller. A row of prisoners in handcuffs stood in orange jumpsuits along a line that had been painted on the floor, apparently in route to some kind of intake. Thorne scoffed and shuddered. He hated being this close to the masses of human mediocrity. Again, though, he remembered the importance of making this call in person.

Uniformed officers and detectives bustled back and forth and Thorne was reminded of how busy the landing platform had felt. There were a ton of people in here. The Jurisdiction was doing some booming business, it appeared. He approached a greeter’s desk and cleared his throat. The attendant, Koria, he name plate read, looked up from her desk terminal and smiled.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Thorne. Captain Eliel will meet with you now, please follow me.”

Koria rose to lead Thorne to Eliel’s office. Thorne smiled a hollow grin as she passed him. She smelled nice, like roses, a welcome contrast to the sweat and grime his nostrils had endured since getting out of his transport, and he let his eyes drift briefly to her shapely ass as she walked in front him. Koria led him through a series of twists and turns through glass paneled offices, most of which had the shades drawn.

His terminal vibrated in his pocket and he pulled the device to check it and sighed. Ervins. Probably asking permission to wipe his ass. He silenced the call. He was about to do his Chief Security officer a major solid - the kid could wait another hour to hear from him. As he slid the terminal back into his pocket, Koria turned and gestured for him to enter another set of offices. He nodded his thanks and entered a room full of desks with 5 or 6 offices set off around the edge. Eliel’s space was clearly labeled and he turned the corner to enter.

Looking into the office, he felt like he should have seen steam billowing out of Eliel’s space. The old man’s face was a bright red and he was shouting into the terminal he was holding to his face. Before Thorne could enter the office, Eliel ended his call and dropped the terminal onto his desk with a noisy thud. Sitting forward in his chair and massaging his temples with both hands, Eliel looked completely and utterly defeated as Thorne took the seat opposite him.

“Thorne, something happened at the Mosely residence. Call your man. Now.”