Shock Therapy, CH 14 (Patreon)

“And I’m telling you,” Kaleb said, “that the only way to get the corporation to do what we tell them is to take control of it.” The man’s tone was one of someone having gone over all the benefits of his idea multiple time, and that the others were idiots for not understanding his was the only valid one. And ideas were all they had.

Ramon snorts. “Who cares about controlling a corporation? Do you have any idea how much work that is? What we need is the technology so we can do the work ourselves and send them packing.”

“And how do you expect we’d implement all that’s needed to run those machines?” Kaleb said dismissively. “Let along maintain them? You think that once you take control of them, Karliak will just provide you with the maintenance specks? Maybe the techs to do the work?”

“We don’t need them or their machines. We have plenty of engineers who can build them so long as we have the designs. And we know where those are kept, don’t we?”

Taking control of this branch of the corporation and building their own terraforming technology using Karliak’s design. And Krystal—

“All either of these plans will do is antagonize them. Do you think they’ll listen to our demands if we’ve tried to steal tech or control from them?”

It was clear none of them had ever taken on a corporation. They were going off what they thought entities like them behaved like, and possibly how vids portrayed them as. The assault to steal the secrets had been the only plan they’d had, which was why they had acted on it. Kaleb had no more idea how to go about taking control than Ramon had on how to steal highly guarded technology from them. He seemed to think it would be no more difficult than acquiring the secrets they’d failed to get.

Tristan had chosen that his the make believe job because it at least had a chance of being accomplished. Corporations had too many secrets that losing some wouldn’t particularly bother them. Losing tech that gave them the edge over their competitors?

Tristan took years planning an incursion, when he needed to obtain a weapon or ship schematics directly instead of bribing someone within the corporation to send a copy his way.

And this round about argument had gone on and on while stood there, at his employer’s shoulder, with a clear sense this was not the first time it happened.

“What do you think, Tristan?” His employer said in a calm voice, finally bringing the argument to a stop.

He thought he should shoot the three of them and move on to a more productive endeavor. But short of researching an entirely new job that met his criteria and moving the pieces into place for that. The current one was his best option. So long as Karliak would stop looking at that location with the scrutiny it was after the failed assault.

“I think that I’d need more information to properly evaluate which of the plan is the most likely to succeed.” He could use them to force Karliak’s attention elsewhere.

“Like you’d know anything about how to take on someone like Karliak,” Kaleb said.

“It won’t be the first corporation I torn down,” Tristan said, “if it comes to that.” The stunned silence would be amusing if he had time for it. “But that won’t give you control. Although it might give you access to their technologies. If,” he added as Ramon smirked, “they haven’t hidden some of it away from here. The thing with destroying a corporation is that there is nothing left for you to sift through afterward.”

“We don’t want them destroyed,” Krystal said with conviction the other two didn’t share. “All we need is to get them to see reason.”

“By blackmailing them?” Ramon asked with a snort. “You’re smarter than that, Krystal.”

“Actually, if a discussion is what you were determined to have,” Tristans said. “Blackmail is a method that has been known to work.” Under very specific circumstances these people hadn’t established and who probably couldn’t even if they’d known to try to establish them. Those wanting to blackmail a corporation needed to show they also had the strength not to be ignored.

“Unfortunately,” he continued, as Kristal looked at Ramon smugly. “The fact that the attempt to acquire the data failed means that angle is closed. Even if Karliak doesn’t work out what you were after, they will increase the security on the building and assign coercionist to watch over all network connections.”

The three looked at his employer, who showed no sign of blaming them.

Tristan was pleased with the man’s performance. He’d warned him what this was really about, but couldn’t give him specifics he didn’t have at the time. That he played the ideal level of holding their mistake against them to get his seat at the table, but no further marked him as better than Tristan had expected as following instructions and understanding humans.

“They won’t be able to maintain that level of scrutiny for always,” Krystal protested.

“Corporations functions on time scales you can’t understand. You’d need to go under cryo to still be around when they finally decided this threat had passed. If they even remembered to lower security to a baseline after all those years.”

She looked at the other two as if one could offer a counter argument, but even if one of them could see through his exaggerations, they weren’t interested in supporting her plan. Now he simply needed the information each had accumulated to see which of the plan offered the best chances of grabbing Karliak’s attention.

“Ramon, what do you have regarding where Karliak houses the schematics to the terraforming technology they are using?” The man was an engineer, so he’d have the best laid plan of the two.

“It’s somewhere in the Jemariel Repository.” He sent a diagram from his datapad over the table.

Somewhere in there? Maybe Tristan hadn’t read the man properly, and he was simply good at pretending to be an engineer.

“Do you have something more precise? This looks to house thousands of disconnected servers.”

“Not really. Because they aren’t connected to the net, no one’s been able to figure out where they stored the stacks that hold them.”

“Your coercionist couldn’t get the information?” Tristan could think of three ways to get information on what the repository contained without having access to a coercionist. All he’d need was time to work out the right people to use.

“With all due respect to Bernie,” Ramon said, everything else about him saying he had none for the Asharan, “but this isn’t like scratching at a network window or anything like that. Karliak keeps something like that under real security.”

While true, it didn’t mean coercing wasn’t the faster way to get access to everything that was needed to get the information.

“Then, you must have human coercionists who can get access.”

“They couldn’t.” The finality of the statement, along with the way the other two looked at Ramon, was enough to tell Tristan this was more about his prejudice than a drive to accomplish his goal.

“What do you have?” he asked Kaleb.

“A lot more than that,” the businessman said with a smirk. He tapped his datapad, and the station replaced the repository. “When Karliak established their foothold on our planet and control of the station, the representative assigned to oversee this project, a Lady Magory Teritan, set up shop on the station.” More tapping and the image shifted to a smaller section, three floors worth along with the equivalent in the other two directions highlighted. “She’s had alterations made. Turned half that into her home. Most of the other half quarters for personal staff, with just enough space left over for an office. Tells you where her priorities are.”

“How much details of the work that was done do you have access to?” Tristan asked.

“Not everything. But most of it, along with information on her security details, her schedule, and her staff.”

“How did you get all that?” Ramon asked.

“Unlike you, I notice what Bernie can do before what he looks like.”

The volume of information alone made this the better job. And while reaching the station, and gaining access might be problematic, it would force Karliak to shift their security. The one issue was with the actual effectiveness of what Kaleb wanted. He needed to convince Alex this was a viable job, and as it stood, he’d see the flaw before Tristan was done explaining what the plan was, if Kaleb didn’t have all the information needed.

“Capturing one of Karliak’s representative will not grant you control of this operation. As soon as the alarm sounds, Karliak will erase her from their system. She’d have to be the head of the corporation for that not to happen, and that person wouldn’t be supervising a project as minor as this is.”

“Then I know something you don’t,” Kaleb said, not bothering hiding his pride. “They might erase her, but they can’t erase the control algorithms that are embedded in her head. And with those and a good coercionist, we can take control of this little section of Karliak’s world.”

Not for very long, but what happened once he and Alex were gone wasn’t his concern.

“Yes, with that, you can accomplish what you’re after. I’ll need everything you have about the station and its personnel. Not only those working for Karliak. Every person working there can be of—”

“We’re not doing this,” Krystal said, standing, hands on the table. “This is tantamount to declaring war on them. What do you think they’re going to do when news reaches the higher ups?”

“We’re going to hold all the cards,” Kaleb said. “You wanted to blackmail them? What better with than everything they have here?”

Not that Kaleb would relinquish any of it. Now that his goal was within grasp, the man’s tells were slipping through his mask. This was about personal power for him. There might be a desire to help the rest of the planet, but it came far behind what he could gain with this mission.

“If it matters,” his employer said, “I agree with Kaleb.”

“It doesn’t,” she snapped. “You forced yourself here, you don’t get to—”

The door slammed open. “Someone had to stop him! He’d destroying them!” and out of breath woman said.

“Who?” Krystal demanded angrily.

“That merc who came with him.”

“What happened?” Tristan asked, walking in her direction.

“Liam challenged him,” she said, hurrying away, “and after that, others figured they had to try to take him down, but he’s a monster.” 

Tristan cursed, keeping up with her. He’d thought Alex had gotten enough fighting and killing exiting the building to let him function among these people while he worked out how to proceed. This could damage his plan beyond repair.

She took him to a general purpose training room with a variety of equipment as well as spaces set aside to spar. Alex was in one of those, with men and women on the floor, alive by their groaning and dragging themselves out. He saw no serious damage on them, but the woman still standing had just taken a knife out from the sheath at her back, and Alex would—

She attacked, and Alex moved faster than she accounted for, stepping aside, now holding a knife of his own and bloody lines left behind on her arms and chest. Instead of understanding her defeat, she screamed and threw herself at Alex.

Tristan ran.

He wouldn’t make it in time to stop Alex’s initial response, but that would be an incapacitating strike. The killing one would come afterward. His options were multiple, but she was tall for a human, only slightly shorted then Tristan.

This was not the place. He had no idea if they had the needed medical facilities, or, short of that, if they’d think to use cryo. This might make how Tristan’s plan was supposed to help him not work, but it was worth sacrificing if he could use this to snap Alex out of his killing need and they could go home.

He stepped between Alex and the woman as the knife came, and recognition flashed in Alex’s eyes; then, with a scream, his human threw himself aside instead of stabbing him.

“Are you insane?” Alex demanded from where he’d landed on the floor.

“I couldn’t let you kill her,” Tristan replied.

“Medic!” someone yelled behind him. “Someone do something, I think she’d dying.”

Tristan looked down. Alex’s incapacitating strike had been to her shoulder. Mono or vibro edge by the way the cut had moved to her chest as she’d tried to move herself aside. The blood bubbled. So the knife had cut the lung.

She would die if someone who knew what they were doing didn’t see to her.

By the chaos in the room, no one here knew what they were doing.

“Get a cryo system,” Tristan said, kneeling next to her. “It has to be a stasis one. If you don’t have one of those, there’s nothing to be done about saving her. I can only prevent her from dying by minutes.” And only because he’d learned all the ways to kill a human, so knew what to do to slow that death. “Now!”

He looked around. “I need sealant. The type doesn’t matter so long as it isn’t designed to remove the outer layer before adhering. If you have medical skin sealant, I need all of it.”

He pressed both sides of the cut, but it was too long for it to do much good. He grabbed the towel at the side of the sparing circle. It smelled of sweat, but he didn’t have options. He rolled her as gently as he could, but her lack of reaction was due to her being unconscious, more than his gentleness, and spread the towel under her. She was on the back again, and he had both ends of the towel in his hand when someone places an emergency medical kit next to him.

He took every packed of sealant and instructed the terrified man to load the two hypo with heal-all. He emptied the packets over the length of the cut. He didn’t expect it to be enough to do much good, but no one brought anything else. He tied the end of the towels together.

“Coming through!” someone yelled as Tristan injected the second hypo.

A medical bed was pushed next to them. It wouldn’t do her any good, but it had a cryo stasis system. He placed her on it and activated the cryo. 

She stilled.

She’d live.

“What happened here?” Krystal demanded.

“Your people challenge Alex,” Tristan stated. “They lost.”

“That’s not losing a fight,” She said, pointed to the medical bed.

“She pulled the knife, Alex responded in kind. The strike was only to take her out of the fight, but her motion made it slide until most of her side was open. She is under stasis cryo, so she will be fine until your medic can see to her.”

“You think we have someone qualified to treat that kind of injury?”

“Then any properly staffed medical clinic will be able to see to her.”

“I doubt anything short of the hospital in Dadelus can treat something like this,” Kaleb said. “That’s a lot of blood she lost.”

“And we can’t send her there or anywhere,” Krystal said. “Myai is wanted for murder.”

Tristan raised an eyebrow.

“We can’t be picky about who’s willing to help us. Most of the people in this room are criminals. They’re the only ones with the skill sets to support some of the things we’ve had to do, and now most of them look to be incapacitated, and Myai will be in there until everything’s resolved.”

And longer. Considering who they were taking on, and how Tristan was going to use them, she might be the only survivor; if someone found her and took her out of cryo.

“Krystal,” Kaleb said in a too smooth tone. “It’s not that bad. She’s still going to be there once we have  control. And she’ll get the best care available then.” Tristan didn’t care for how casual the man was with someone he was supposedly doing this to help, even if it came second to helping himself. Maybe he was even less in this for them than Tristan had given him credit for.

“Really, Kaleb? That merc just about kills one of us, and you’re okay with that?”

And Krystal’s reaction showed the antagonistic reaction he might expect from everyone else. They wouldn’t care she had brought it on herself. Alex had injured her. They would hold him responsible. Which would make working alongside difficult.

“Alex can create her an identity that will allow her to be treated. I’ll even cover the expenses,” he added to further smooth things over.

“You don’t think we’ve tried having Bernie give everyone here new identities, so it would be easier to get into the places we need? There’s system of biometric scans at all the important locations, which hospitals are. And those are linked directly with the law enforcement’s databases.”

“Maybe Bernie isn’t able to do this,” Tristan said. He’d have to check with Alex if that was true, or yet more prejudice on their part. “But give Alex a good enough system, and he will build her an identity that would let her stroll onto the station if that was what he wanted.”

“Could he give me an identity that made me part of Karliak?” Kaleb asked, cementing Tristan’s opinion of the man and what he needed to do about it.

“You can’t afford that service,” Tristan replied without looking away from Krystal, whose expression was shifting away from anger and toward concern and hope.

“You can guarantee she’ll be treated?”

“If it’s what it takes, we can make sure she’d back here, fully healed, before you are ready to implement whatever plan of action you decide on.”