Sorry for the gap, but I do intend to complete this story. Had an attack of writer's block and had problems in deciding how best to set up the rest of the story. Also had to decide how I reflected some of the Atlas characters in the light of Volume 8.
Winter had put off talking to Corkran for two days. Major Magenta had recommended that she think carefully before broaching the subject with the Faunus. While technically he could be said to have tried to dissuade her from pursuing the point, he had made certain that she did follow up the rumours when he had said "Before you ask any questions of someone who serves under you, you must be certain whether you want to be told the truth or to be reassured that there is nothing to worry about and make it clear to them what you are looking for. You must also decide what you will do if you hear an answer that you do not like."
She had decided that she wanted the truth. While it was no doubt in the best interests of Atlas to avoid washing all its dirty linen in public, some occasional private washing was needed so one did not take soiled underwear for granted. The General had been worried that the position in Vacuo was unsatisfactory and she was concerned that things were worse than he had feared. She was convinced that the attack on the ambassador had been arranged by local representatives of the Atlas Multi-kingdoms and that payments were made as a matter of course to officers on the tacit understanding that they would not make trouble.
Mr. Corkran had confirmed to her that he had joined the army because he did not wish to work for the SDC after investigating the rumours about it and that he believed that Brian Thrush was telling the truth when he said that many of the younger generation of Mohawks wished to avoid following in their parents' footsteps. She had then asked him to discuss the rumours and the reasons for the Mohawks not wishing to join the SDC. He had stared at her for a minute and said "The current management team apply Atlesian rules governing their behaviour with a Mistralian twist and apply Vacuoan guidelines applying to their workers with an Atlesian rigidity. Nicholas Schnee was perceived as tough but fair. He took advantage of Vacuoan disinclination to legislate but understood that Vacuoans would vote with their feet and head for the desert if they were badly treated. The current management team have moved towards employing Mistralians and Mantle residents who have families to support back home as miners."
Winter waited until five minutes before the airship carrying Lieutenant Beamish, a small squad of troops and the mine inspection team was scheduled to depart before dropping by the Major's office. Major Magenta had just left for a meeting at the embassy and so was unable to read the written notification that she was about to do an unnotified evaluation of Lieutenant Beamish. His secretary gave her a time stamped receipt for the communication. She was wearing clothing which at a distance did not single her out as an officer. Atlas had learnt during the Faunus wars that having too distinctive clothing for officers when fighting an enemy who had good night vision made life too easy for snipers. She strode out to the airship with Sergeant Hartnell. The sergeant informed Beamish that Captain Schnee had found an additional squad member to accompany the mission and she joined the team in the airship. They set off for the De Lagers mine. They had given the necessary four hours warning to the mine of the inspection. It was interesting in some ways to see which bits of the inspection process were rigged and which were not rigged. The legislators who had introduced the regulations had predicted that too much advance warning would mean that the process would be fundamentally flawed. However, the SDC would certainly have known a week ago that one of their mines would be inspected today. The one thing which was determined this morning was the exact mine which would be visited which was determined by Major Magenta.
She was trying her best to cover the tracks of her informants and assistants. Marrow was accompanying the Major to the embassy for a meeting with the ambassador while Mr. Corkran was on a patrol. By waiting until the Major had left for his meeting he had been given cover if the SDC complained about the rather more focused inspection that they were about to receive. Colonel White was on leave so was not available to order her to cease her inspection.
Lieutenant Beamish would be given cover by saying that he was acting under orders from her to check on certain aspects which had not been checked on for years. She was fortunate that Beamish had felt insulted by being offered money and had been willing to listen to suggestions as to how he should conduct today's inspection. It was also helpful that she had been briefed by Mr. Corkran on what she needed to look for. An inspection was always easier when you knew what you were looking for. The fact that she was present allowed him to tell people that he could not ignore her suggestions while his nice but dim persona was also some protection. After all he had been paid money to do his job properly.
Another aspect which she hoped would assist the inspection in being effective was that today was the end of the working week before a holiday weekend and the inspection would be taking place at lunchtime. There was a good chance that any senior officials would be lunching or on holiday.
Lieutenant Beamish first headed to the company store. Traditionally the checks on this facility were designed to ensure that the food stuffs were stored safely and that there was an adequate supply of essentials. However, strictly the inspection team was entitled to check on pricing which was meant to be on a cost plus 5% basis. Beamish had bought with him a copy of the price list from the PX store and had noted the price of some essential items the night before. He had also spent some time reviewing the formula used by the Atlas military for calculating prices. He asked a soldier who was a notorious complainer about what he thought about the prices. After a frank observation from the soldier, Lieutenant Beamish said "I am concerned that either the PX is wasting taxpayers' money or the prices at this store are too high. The captain also suggested to me that I should check the pricing as this has not been done in ten years."
The lead inspector said, "I believe that reviewing prices is not within our remit as a matter of law and in terms of ability."
Beamish got out his copy of the rule book and said, "I think that I saw something last night when I was checking the rules in advance of the mission." He made a show of skimming through the book and said "Regulation 12 (7) (a) (iii) covers the point. I was always good at maths and I am happy to lend my assistance to your team, inspector. I believe that regulation 15 also allows me to insist that any checks mandated in the rulebook should be made if I deem it appropriate."
The inspector grudgingly accepted that Beamish was within his rights and the shopkeeper sent for the assistant manager of the mine. Winter was pleased to see that this ruse had resulted in the lead inspector being distracted from keeping an eye on what the rest of the squad was up to.
Beamish excused himself for a moment on the grounds that he had to issue orders to the rest of the squad. He left the shop and turned to the sergeant to order him to take charge. At which point Winter said "Lieutenant, this task will clearly take some time. I will allow you to investigate the issue properly and will take over supervising the inspection process."
She was looking forward to the reaction to the next question Beamish had been primed to ask. As she had been forewarned by Corkran, safety equipment was on sale at the shop. Presumably, the only customers for the equipment were the workers. The rules specified that safety equipment must be provided by employers to employees. However, independent contractors must provide their equipment themselves. In the appendix to the rules there was a list of tests for distinguishing between employees and independent contractors.
Admittedly these two points would only be embarrassing and expensive for the SDC, but the main aim was to ensure that the management team at the mine and the senior inspector were distracted before she went into the mine itself. She still hoped that the stories she had been told by Corkran would turn out to be untrue, but so far the stories he had told her had turned out to be true. Indeed, she had good coverage for all she intended to do today on the simple basis that she was deliberately arranging for things to be checked which had been overlooked previously.
As part of the inspection process the inspectors had access to the management buildings. Winter checked the duty rosters. Interestingly a group of employees who had finished an eight-hour shift only two hours ago were currently in the mine. She checked the rules and asked the junior inspector who was with her whether under Regulation 9 (2) (b) (iii) it was legal for a worker to start a shift within four hours of finishing his or her previous shift. As it clearly was not, she ordered that the workers should be returned to their sleeping quarters and checked by the medics.
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Umber was sitting in his office reviewing the latest draft management report being prepared for head office when the deputy director knocked on the door. Umber was annoyed. He had left instructions that he was not to be disturbed. He hoped that he could bawl out his assistant for disturbing him unnecessarily. It would be a pleasure to do so and if there was a good reason for him being interrupted this would mess up the rest of the day. The assistant said "The manager from the De Lagers mine called. They are being inspected today. The military started by questioning the store prices and the independent contractor status of the miners."
Umber swore to himself. "Who is the lieutenant in charge of the military squad? We must be able to get someone to put him back in his box."
"A Lieutenant Beamish. I have tried calling Major Magenta and Colonel White, but neither are available. The Colonel is on holiday and the Major is at the Embassy."
Umber frowned. Beamish was new and independently wealthy. He also worked with Winter Schnee. While it could not be ruled out, Umber did not expect that this was a shakedown attempt. While checks on the store pricing and the independent contractor status were irritating, Jacques Schnee was aware of the vulnerabilities and there would be wriggle room to minimise the damage as well as making sure that all their competitors had to amend their practices. There was a tame judge who would bend over backwards to defend the independent contractor status. They had a fallback position on the company store pricing policy which would limit the damage to profits. There were other areas which were more problematic and the fact that the second shift workers were being checked suggested that the military knew what they were looking for. Still Winter was a Schnee and surely would not want her subordinate dredging up unpleasant facts.
He decided to put in a call to the trade attaché at the embassy. He at least may know where the Major was and when the meeting was meant to finish. However, could he risk putting the ambassador on notice that something was going wrong? The new ambassador was unlikely to intervene to stop a technical investigation and if the worse came to the worse would demand heads rolled in exchange for agreeing to any cover-up. He decided that he also needed to activate the first part of the fallback scapegoat plan. He sent a coded message to Bruce Crimson, the head of security, who had worked with him since he had started at the SDC and had come with him from Mistral.
He wondered how long he could leave it until notifying Jacques Schnee that a routine inspection had gone pear shaped. He decided that Jacques would expect him to try and sort it out without bothering him. If the military discovered the brandings, Jacques would not appreciate Umber taking any action which suggested that Umber let alone Jacques knew about the issue. Perhaps a message to Jacques Schnee asking him to send Arnold back to Vacuo if the military did insist on reviewing the pricing and employment aspects of the operations would suffice.
The trade attaché was not answering his scroll and Umber left a message for him to call back urgently. He checked the time and asked his PA to call some of the better restaurants in Vacuo to see if the diplomat was at one of them. He then got on the scroll with the manager of the mine. Apparently the Lieutenant had come in quoting regulations and the inspector had not felt able to overrule him. Umber had also tried to call the chief inspector in Vacuo, but he was also at lunch. The deputy director reported that the mine manager said that he had considered calling an emergency which would postpone the inspection, but as that would involve pulling all the workers out of the mine, he had decided that this was not a good idea.
The deputy director then patched him into a call from the mine manager. This was a very panicked call which made Umber suspect that the initial investigations into pricing and employment practices may have been a deliberate attempt to distract the mine manager and the lead inspector. It appeared that one of the military team had ordered a junior inspector to pull out the second shift miners. Even more alarmingly, it appeared that the person who gave the order was a tall woman with white hair who sounded disturbingly like Winter Schnee and had insisted on the miners being checked by the medics in her presence. The level of the manager's hysteria had suggested that the workers who had been pulled out of the mine must include some who had undergone enhanced discipline during the strikes ten years ago.
His meetings with her had suggested that she had a strong sense of duty and honour. She had reacted favourably to his lines about the task of the military being to safeguard the interests of Atlas but had strongly resisted his attempts to push the view that what was good the SDC was automatically good for Atlas. If she had discovered some of Bruce's victims he could not be certain that she would react in the way her father would want. Oddly enough sometimes when his semblance failed to work could provide more useful information then when it succeeded. It was why he was working to try to prevent Major Magenta succeeding Colonel White. The man was too honest and had reacted with nausea to Umber's attempts to persuade that accepting gifts from the multi-kingdoms was simply a recognition of his just deserts. However, he could be relied upon not to prejudice the position of Atlas. He would almost certainly want to avoid publicity, but he would require a scapegoat
Luckily, he had not altogether burnt his bridges with the Vacuoan underworld after the fiasco of the attack on the ambassador. The fact that he was a distant cousin with Vermillion Raddock of the Hana Guild meant people preferred to owe him favours. Crimson was about to have a fatal accident and Umber was already rehearsing the excuses he would give to Jacques Schnee and Major Magenta blaming Crimson for excessive zeal. He had carefully avoided knowing exactly what Crimson had done after Umber had been promoted beyond mine manager, but he had pushed Crimson's buttons to ensure that his taste for sadism in suppressing opposition was given free rein. He wondered whether he may have underestimated Crimson's zeal. The manager had sounded rather more worried than he should have been if the brandings had gone further than the cheek branding for trumped up accusations of theft which was the normal method of dealing with troublemakers.
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Adam's plans were rapidly taking shape. He believed that they were in a good position to take the SDC by surprise in Vacuo. He also had a good chance of ruining the careers of the three people who had run the Rising Sun mine when he had been there. There had been the manager, the security chief, and the accountant. They had all prospered since then despite being responsible for the events which had resulted in him bearing the brand of the SDC.
The Rising Sun had been the mine where the SDC had first implemented the price rises at the company store, forced the workers to become independent contractors and had quelled the strike by brutality they called justice. Now that he was older he saw how subtle they had been. They had replaced the guards who had been on duty at the time the changes were introduced by a new set from Mistral. The old guards had understood why the miners were striking and had merely tried to prevent sabotage and damage to the machinery. The new guards had been happy to believe that the animals needed to be put in their place.
The manager was now in charge of the SDC's operations in Vacuo and was according to the rumours which sympathisers had passed to the White Fang was expected to become a main board member next year. Crimson was now head of security in Vacuo for the SDC. The accountant, Arnold Beige, had moved to Argus and was moving up the hierarchy of the SDC's finance team. Beige was starting his annual leave now and was boarding the Mistral express train on its way to Mistral from Argus.
Also on the train were Ilia, Julia, and Blake. A Faunus working for Miss Malachite had provided some useful background information which fitted in with what Adam remembered of Beige. According to the information Beige had retained his taste for young Faunus although he seemed to be more careful nowadays. Argus was too much of a hybrid between Atlas and Mistral for him to safely indulge his more extreme preferences. These he reserved for his holidays in the resort of Los Lagas just outside Mistral City as after all what happens in Lagas stays in Lagas.
He hoped that Ilia, Julia, and Blake would be able to spring the honey trap without having to be mauled by Beige. Beige did apparently tend to drink heavily when off duty and there was a good bar on the train. Each of the girls had a Mickey Finn ready for use if (almost certainly when) they were invited to share Beige's compartment. While Adam would shed no tears for him if Beige had to die, for the moment they just wanted access to his lap scroll for information to help plan the raid in Vacuo. He would kill him later, although Adam suspected that it would be more satisfying to disgrace Beige first by revealing that he was the source of the information which allowed the forthcoming attacks to be carried out and leaving evidence that it was as the result of blackmail as to his private life. In any event, he did not hate Beige with the intensity he reserved for Crimson and Raddock. Crimson had delighted in branding the twelve-year-old Adam for fighting back while Raddock had ordered that Adam be dropped in the desert to die rather than be taken for medical treatment.
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Marrow had done his best to remain properly attentive during the working lunch meeting between Magenta and the ambassador. The two clearly respected each other, but there was a sense that the most important parts of the conversation were being carried out in code. There had been an odd conversation about the disappearances in the criminal underworld in Vacuo and how the multi-kingdoms were welcoming Ambassador Campion. Towards the end of the meeting an aide to the ambassador had entered and whispered in the ambassador's ear.
Marrow had picked up most of the conversation. It helped that the ambassador asked the aide to repeat the words said in the softest voice. The trade attaché was apparently in headless chicken mode and was hovering outside the meeting room. It also appeared that the regional headquarters of the SDC had been scouring the restaurants of Vacuo hunting for the chief inspector of mines. The aide left and the ambassador found a weak sounding excuse to get rid of the other embassy attendee at the lunch.
Ambassador Campion turned to Major Magenta. "Major, were any of your officers carrying out a mine inspection today?"
"Lieutenant Beamish was accompanying an inspection of one of the SDC mines. He is a very keen young officer."
"Apparently he has raised a hornet's nest. It is possible that he might benefit from some senior assistance. I leave it to you the balance between support and restraint. Perhaps you could offer the chief inspector of mines a lift? This had been an excellent lunch and while it looks like we will have to end this early, maybe we could catch up tomorrow and finish our conversation. Lieutenant Amin, it was a pleasure to meet you again. My nephew sends his regards." The ambassador then winked at Marrow. Marrow took this as permission to brief Major Magenta.
As they left the room. the trade attaché pounced on the major after checking that the ambassador was not immediately following him out. He said that the SDC was complaining about an excess of zeal on behalf of the military team accompanying the inspection team at the De Lagers Mine. The Major took advantage of the warning by saying that he would be happy to assist and would fly to the mine imminently. He also said that he would be happy to take the trade attaché and any member of the inspectorate with him if they could meet him at the base.
Marrow knew that the military airships were quicker than the civilian ones but that it would mean that there would likely be a delay in Magenta reaching the mine if he waited for the civilians to reach the base. However, if the Major wanted to gain time for the Lieutenant's investigation and reduce the scope for the SDC from briefing the chief inspector en route, then it made sense.
On the journey back to the base, the Major received confirmation that the chief inspector would be joining them together with the trade attaché, but there would be a fifteen-minute delay. He also received a call from Sergeant Hartnell. The Major then turned to Marrow and said, "I think you are due some leave, lieutenant?"
Marrow replied, "I do have ten days to take before the end of the calendar year, but I felt it was more important to gain experience."
"Did the same myself at your age. Was a mistake. Never underestimate the importance of keeping in contact with your contemporaries while you are posted away from base. Take a long weekend in Atlas starting tonight. Come with me to the Mine and you can escort back Captain Schnee who is also there. Offer to take some messages for her."