Chapter One: Unto the Breach
It was no surprise that the General was brought in to oversee the restructuring of Antaam Industries. A military man by nature and occupation, he was deemed the most appropriate to handle the affairs of the nation's leading provider of armor and weapons research. He knew his way around the field of battle well enough, and it took less than a day to prove he could maneuver a board room just as well.
A grey suit with a crimson tie pinstriped in white, he continued to wear a sort of uniform even when not in military dress. Spiced tea was brewed every morning by his assistant, a slight, red-headed intern who frequently felt obligated to match his color scheme, trading slacks for skirts. She had a cup steaming upon his desk always in time for him to walk through the door. Rigid—that's how most described him. Rigid and methodical and unswerving. The company managers both relaxed and writhed at his presence among them. They feared an iron fist as much as they breathed relief at a return to production and order.
The true shock came with the arrival of the corporate trainer some weeks later. Vanessa Milano was known throughout the city for helping tiny companies grow into fighting giants of the stock exchange. In some ways, she was just as intimidating as the General. In others...for one, her stop through IT had the men paying more attention to her legs than anything she had to say. Tall with dark hair and darker eyes, she had that dusky look about her better suited to runways and magazine foldouts than a desk and a cubicle. But if she actually used her looks to her advantage, it didn't show. Her meetings with every unit and department were brief and to-the-point. Her voice carried an edge that even her lilting accent failed to soften, and "small talk" was not a term in her vocabulary.
The General's assistant brought her tea as well one morning, the two of them meeting in one of the smaller conference rooms to discuss the processes requiring immediate implementation. The scent of cinnamon carried on the steam was the first thing to illicit a smile since Vanessa first set foot in Antaam.
"I recommend a sit-down with human resources," she said over the rim of her cup, delaying that first sip as long as possible in order to savor it all the more. "Accounting feels a little top-heavy, and your firearms research could use the extra manpower. Wasn't it accounting that triggered the downfall in the first place?"
The General did not look up from the paper in his hand, his brows coming together over his broad, straight nose. It was a moment before he responded. His pale eyes continued to scan the words before him like they held something a little more critical than deducing where the canker really was.
"It was, but good employees follow orders from their superiors. Middle management has me uneasy."
Vanessa scoffed. "'Orders'? Sir, this is a research facility not an army base. People will still act on their own volition in any case. The paper trail leads straight to accounting."
"The manager of which reports directly to my predecessor." The eyes came up, fixing themselves on Vanessa with an intensity that made her gulp what tea was in her mouth. "And she is not alone. Funds also vanished from research and development as well as the marketing budget. General Counsel denies all knowledge. The President is gone, but it leaves those loyal to him." He finally set the paper aside. "That is the rot we must carve out, Miss Milano. Antaam Industries can't be what it was until then."
The woman delicately cleared her throat and set her teacup down before she dropped it. "Are you always this dramatic, sir, or are you merely being forceful to make a point?"
"I do not consider myself 'forceful', Miss Milano, but I do always try to make a point. I don't know what your agency told you before they sent you here, but it is not me that you need to be coaching and grooming to lead this company to greatness. I am a voice. Nothing more. What we need from you is to clean the mud from the works, as it were. Your focus on accounting is justifiable, but I need you to keep both eyes open. Always anticipate the unexpected stroke."
"Of course, sir."
Vanessa finished her tea in silence, the two of them both pretending to be more interested in the paperwork that sat between them, logs and records of company activity from the past five years. Files and folders and boxes upon boxes sat all around them, crowding the already small room. But she couldn't actually complain. The closeness made the sterile chill that radiated from across the table all the more easy to bear. Throwing her mind into the auditing process helped with the rest. She was most comfortable in a structured routine, a product of her family's own military background, but she had to admit that it was of a much different sort than whatever she was being exposed to, now.
The General was of this city. She, originally, was not. She was an import like so many other military brats of her generation, settling with some permanency in the last place her father had been stationed before she attended university. There was also always the underlying current of realization that this city was one of the largest in a country that had long been an enemy. The cease-fire was recent and fragile, but it had lasted long enough for life to return to some semblance of normal. The cosmopolitan atmosphere made the younger generation forget that the pale natives and dark newcomers had been the most relentless of enemies for almost as long as they had known each other. In a world where battles were fought without either force needing to meet on a common field of battle, war became as intangible an experience as an Internet romance for those not in the way of unmanned drones or missile fire.
She hadn't ever expected to call Seheron home, but it was as good a place as any other.
For hours, they worked in silence. The General would grunt every now and again if he caught sight of something unsavory. At least, Vanessa assumed it was such as he would set it aside into a pile she had begun with the corrupt corporate accounts. He would scribble and slap sticky notes on a few things, highlight a sentence or entire passage now and again, circle items in photos and floorplans with relative frequency. The woman couldn't quite catch the pattern.
"Are you planning a restructure or a renovation?" she hazarded, not moving from her position of being hunched over a file bursting with handwritten yellow legal pads. The assistant had returned to refresh their tea and tell them that the catered lunch had arrived. Her presence alone, no matter how mousey, supplied a bolstering to the morale.
"I consider it more a redesign. No one can work in a building that crumbles just as no building can be considered suitable enough for those who rebel against its confines. If we are to fix one problem, Miss Milano, we must certainly fix the other."
Vanessa hid her confusion behind another gulp of tea and quickly fell back into her audit. She had much preferred sitting with the other employees, the whole lot of them more personable—corrupt or otherwise. She couldn't even pretend to understand this man, but she had no choice. The agency had given her an assignment, and she was determined to carry it out despite the fact that no one could even tell her the name of her brusque and enigmatic employer.
She would learn soon enough that not knowing the General's name was the very least of her issues. Document after document surfaced that contained information that nearly chilled her. Implications only, but she recognized several other names that made her breath catch. Tiberius Sempo. Danarius Coriati. Talerio Alamarri. Still others littered the contact list of the President, correspondence dating back before the cease-fire. Friendly correspondence and not of the sort discussing golf and the weather. Vanessa slid the sheaf of documents into one of her own file folders and set it aside. Returning to it later would be a necessity, especially if she could find more evidence.
For now, she had seen enough. The CEO of Imperium Innovations named in the same document discussing a corporate merger was enough. And not only him. The subsidiaries and satellite corporations. They all had been circling about Antaam Industries like vultures waiting for a wounded gazelle to die. And the President had been doing his best to kill it.
It was just as the agency had told her.
And her job was to make sure the General never learned of it.