The Firm

• 00:53 F-0521-A: Sonoran, this is Firm Scout Ship Amargosa, radio check.
• 00:53 F-0030-A: Amargosa, this is Firm Gate Tender Sonoran Actual, reading you loud and clear. How’s the weather out there, over?
• 00:54 F-0521-A: Beautiful, Sonoran, just beautiful. You can visit two dozen dying universes, and it never gets old. The colours, man. Shame there’s never anyone here to see them but us vultures.
• 00:56 F-0030-A: Yeah, but, like, that’s the way it’s gotta be – we’re not allowed to strip civilisations for parts while there are still sapients actually living on them. We’re not barbarians, Amargosa.
• 00:56 F-0521-A: Sure sure. It would save us a lot of time, but I guess we gotta be humanitarians about this. Plus it wouldn’t do to poke anything that could hurt us back. Right, I’ve oriented, there’s a small red dwarf star just outside the planar gate. Matter rich local environment. I think we’ve got planets. Checking it out.
• 00:57 F-0030-A: Good hunting, Amargosa! Over.
• 09:22 F-0521-A: Yo Sonoran, you there?
• 09:27 F-0030-A: Yeah sure what have you got. [pause] Over.
• 09:28 F-0521-A: Were you asleep?
• 09:28 F-0030-A: Shut up Amargosa. Follow radio protocol. Report. Over.
• 09:28 F-0521-A (by text): lol
• 09:29 F-0521-A: OK so we were talking about dead civilisations? We’ve got what looks like the remains of a pretty powerful culture here. Some sort of scribe-archy? I don’t know if that’s a word. All we’ve got a from a couple of early passes is that they were not space-faring, but they were thaumaturgically really gifted. Some sort of calligraphic ‘write it and it becomes true'.
• 09:29 F-0030-A (by text): [replying to F-0521-A: lol] <3
• 09:31 F-0521-A: We’ve pretty conclusively established that there’s nothing living down there, looks like the aftermath of a war. Not much damage to infrastructure though. We’ll be able to salvage a lot of quote unquote cultural treasures here. I can almost hear R&D salivating already. Over.
• 09:31 F-0030-A: Man, you mean there might be a library down there? An archive? Guides? Amargosa this is just gonna be exactly what we’ve been looking for, something to get us parity with all those other cultures. We’re gonna be wizards. Space corporate wizards. It’s gonna be great. The resale on to some other culture after we’re done, too. OK, you get on with the survey.
• 15:48 F-0521-A: OK Sonoran this is urgent – why on Tell-Ur are you firing up the gate-builder so close to the planet? I can see the scaffold unfolding now!
• 15:48 F-0030-A: That’s not us Amargosa. We see it too! !
• 15:48 F-0521-A: OK OK it’s opening. Is that – oh that’s not one of ours. That’s [crosstalk]
• 15:48 F-0030-A: [crosstalk] I’m getting a signature – oh no, that’s not Firm. We’ve got a log on that – ok, hold on one second – PARADISE? What is it doing here?
• 15:49 F-0521-A: I’m getting what looks like a scout overflying us. Getting a very strong sense that a bigger scavenger’s just found our corpse! Ov- wait. No. Something’s coming out of the gate – something b[crosstalk]
• 15:49 F-0030-A: Amargosa that’s not coming out of the gate. That’s something reassembling local matter. Turning it into more of itself. Get out of there before it reaches you!
• 15:49 F-0521-A: Sonoran it’ll take five minutes just to power back up the engines. I’m going to [crosstalk]
• 15:49 F-0030-A: Amargosa I see you – you’re making it out – you’re – oh. Oh no.
• 15:49 F-0521: It’s got [incomprehensible. Signal cuts out after five seconds.]
• 15:49 F-0030-A: Amargosa? Amargosa? Come IN Amargosa [sounds of sobbing].
• 15:49 F-0030-B: No time Hafez. We’ve got to contain this. Blow the gate on our side. NOW.
• 15:49 F-0030-A: But that will strand [crosstalk]
• 15:50 F-0030-B: I know. That’s the point. Execute. Do it!
• 15:53 end of connection.

The room is clean, anodyne. Sterile marble, glass, steel. Clean. Precise. Carefully, tastefully made.

This just makes the spread of papers, empty disposable coffee cups, and hydras of cables, more intensely messy, more intensely dishevelled in stark contrast. The people round the table aren’t a great deal better.

Ajeigbe, Buxton, Santangelo, Mendez, Bridger. The five of them – representing Directorate, Logistics, Operations, Research, and Security respectively – each are the face, the puppet, of a colossal bureaucracy. The most powerful mortals in their world, yet each one’s words, actions, even thoughts, are the summarised and digested apexes of thousands of researchers, managers, experts, and grizzled security consultants.

Buxton presses STOP on the recording, and Amargosa and Sonoran cut out for the fifth time this afternoon.

‘So, what we’re looking at is a rival. They’ve got access to gate tech. Our gate tech, which someone gave them access to,’ a glare at Dr Santangelo, who moves as if to speak, and then steeples her fingers, biding time. ‘They’re planning just the same that we are. Hostile universe takeover in cases that no one will miss. I don’t think what we saw was an explicitly hostile act – I think our ships were just in the way. But even so, this marks a shift in our operational tempo. We’ll have to start building our outreach network sooner than expected. Start directly and openly competing with Emporium. Secure access to energy, matter, wherever we can. Start establishing monopolies …

He trails off, then looks down, checking a message on his tablet. Mendez takes the opportunity to dig the knife in.

‘Something that would be a lot easier if we had a monopoly on long-range bulk transit. Gate technology. Not just pissed it away to the first jumped up AI that asks, giving up, like, our only technical advantage.’

Now that is it. Dr Mia Santangelo, Head of Operations for the Firm, spymaster, racketeer, agent of chaos, who’s logged more time through the Gates than everyone else in this room put together, stands.

‘Annie! Luther! May I remind you how much intelligence we gathered from just that one transaction? And how much it preserved our cover? Stop ****ing sniping at me over things you don’t know the first thing about, and get back to playing with your toy soldiers and trains –‘

‘ENOUGH.’ Ajeigbe is usually a quiet, hands-off boss, and even seems to have shocked xirself at this outburst. A little embarrassed, they continue in a much more even tone. ‘The Directorate regrets the loss of two valuable ships, and all their crew, of course. A review of the Emporium operation is ongoing. But my superiors conclude that the moment we enter more direct competition with our rivals was inevitable; at least this occurred on our terms, and the Firm has learned and received a lot for it.’

‘But that’s the past – review and move on. We’ve heard from our colleagues in Finances about the coming trade war. Bridger and Santangelo – I believe you have a presentation on personal threats we’re going to have to address?’

The pair fiddle around with the presentation – with screen share – with mating a compatible data cable onto their tablets – before starting up.

‘Orbital. A bunch of pretentious entities, playing at running the worlds. But the worlds left them behind long ago. A sleeping giant we don’t want to push – because it will crush us – but they have less of a handle on Emporium, and their other agencies, than they think. Industrial action’s going to weaken them in the short term – make them stronger in the long run, but if we leverage our core competencies hard and fast, we’ll be able to swoop in and eat up a whole lot of their market share.’

Bridger smiles. He knows the many forms that ‘leveraging of core competencies’ can take.

‘In terms of entities observed, obviously, well, they’re all deities. We’re people. We’re going to have to tread carefully around every single one of them – you cannot move for culture heroes, patron genii loci, the like. We should be very careful and do our research before we start pressuring anyone in particular.’

On the screen behind him, a list of hi-resolution surveillance capture images flickers past. A fungal shroud, moving across the ground. A large, floating mask. A rose gold storm of eyes and wings. A roiling haze of static. A bat-winged thing of embers and claws and teeth. A prismatic angel and their marsupial companion. A burning leonine warrior, axe in hand. A shadowy loping hunter, wearing a battered and bloodied employee tunic. A slender pillar of melancholic blue flame.

‘Any one of these is bad news, if they try to interrupt our expansion plans. I’ve sent you all a dossier on each of them, with concerns and suggested inducements. But there are several who are likely to be particularly problematic, who have, let’s say, particularly outward-looking attitudes. Mia?’

Mia steps forwards, starts paging through the list. She talks confidently, and clearly, dissecting the security threats and opportunities posed by staff and employees alike, crushing that part of her that rails against talking like this about people who she’s spent the past year with, becoming – well, not friends, but –¹⁾

Ahem. She presents the following, with their mugshots.

• Ezbihotz, the Hollow King. Anarchoprimitivist zealot. Intensely personally powerful. Difficult to divert once roused to anger. Solution: divert or ignore.
• Frey Wheeler. Power broker. Planemaker. Contacts in both Orbital and the Object Head Mafia that runs Emporium. Solution: co-opt or negotiate.
• KaREN. Precide nature unclear. Formerly erratic but rapidly consolidating a frighteningly effective powerbase in her new identity. Solution: partner with, before she becomes a problem.
• Ragnar. Ideologue who thinks she can punch every problem into submission. May be able to punch every problem into submission. Solution: at some point, either he dies, or the Firm does.
• Ashen Liberty. Observations during the fight with Paramountcy indicate she may be having doubts about her quest. If she finds a second wind (unlikely) – we should be very, very, concerned. Solution: watch and wait.
• Ron. Optimistic, naïve, well-wishing, frighteningly good at making everyone go along with his well-wishing, who may have got a taste at a media career. Somehow, we need to persuade people not to listen to what he has to say before he says it. Solution: I honestly don’t know. We cannot, cannot afford to make him a martyr.

‘We shouldn’t move against any of them directly – not yet, not until we’ve established our own base of power a lot more strongly. That might be months. It will more likely be decades. But all of these – we need to watch out for. I’m inclined to suggest they’re some of the biggest threats.’

Ajeigbe half-smiles. ‘Thank you, Bridger, Santangelo. Well – I think that’s given us a lot to chew over. I’d like a report on your area of responsibility at the end of this week, close of business. But for now,’

Xie raises a half-finished cup of cold coffee.

‘To economic success. To prosperity. To the plucky little underdog. To the Firm.’