Compelling Science Fiction Issue 10 by Joe Stech & Pip Coen & E E King & Mike Adamson & J. D. Popham & Larry Hodges

Author:Joe Stech & Pip Coen & E E King & Mike Adamson & J. D. Popham & Larry Hodges
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Compelling Science Fiction Ltd.
Published: 2017-12-01T02:57:19+00:00

Grainger never saw his office. When the long, black, quad-fan Rolls-Royce limousine came down from the bleak, rainy night after its swift run in from Heathrow, DCI Timmons was waiting in the reception area of the pad complex on the 100th floor, and warrants were produced. They were examined, outrage was expressed, apologies made, but an arrest was an arrest, and several senior detectives, backed up by uniformed personnel, asserted their authority to override corporate security and divert the brass to a holding area.

Olivia Desmond was in her office, ankles crossed on the corner of her desk, sipping coffee as she watched the security cam feed on her virtual monitor, and could not help letting the ghost of a smile find its way to her lips. The office surveillance might see and hear all that transpired, but it could not hear her thoughts, or feel the profound satisfaction in her heart.

It had taken all her working life to reach this point, first to climb the ladder from a junior-management entry on the strength of raw native talent and college averages, then one rung at a time, from this committee to that, field assignments, business nous, smart trading and ruthlessness where warranted. She had made it to the fifth tier from the throne, and Operations Executive gave her all the tools she needed to complete the mission she had set herself on that day in university when the message had come. The words were seared into her memory beyond all forgetting.

Regret to inform you of a fatal accident at Ceres Station. Desmond, William, J. and Desmond, Cynthia, M., both deceased in common event entailing explosive decompression. Bodies were unrecoverable. Company will meet all associated costs. Deepest sympathies, on behalf of board and management. Signed, Operations Executive, Grainger, W.

Those bare, form-letter sentiments had changed the course and shape of her life, and she had spared no effort to discover what had really happened. Beyond the platitudes, the minimal company funeral, the glossed-over coroner’s report and suspicions of cost-cutting and lax maintenance regulations, she had finally confirmed it all only when she had obtained her own corporate high-level clearance, which had taken ten years of resolute work.

Warwick Grainger and Yvette Klimt had been lovers in those days, and had been steadily climbing the ladder since their own induction as brilliant youths, and part of their strategy for promotion was to regularly meet and exceed costing targets. Desmond knew they did so by compromising safety, and while they got away with it 98% of the time, the other two cases in a hundred paid a high price. It was simply bad luck her parents had constituted one such rebalancing of the laws of probability.

Hafiz had profited indirectly by being laterally invested in the industries receiving the raw materials Celestial provided, while Clarke had been with the Public Relations team, putting a smiling face on everything the company did. That included minimising the seriousness of events and diverting blame. Accidents happened, space was an unforgiving place, and every pain was taken to prevent foreseeable difficulty….

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