DeSouza.
The officer with the thick neck's name was DeSouza, and he had barged into Cameron's private office, raving about his investigation being hampered by the ship's crew. Cameron had listened to him complain for the better part of five minutes, which was about four minutes longer than he normally would, but he wanted to see how deep the man was going to dig the hole he was in.
Very deep, it turned out.
"I demand that you recall your man for further questioning, Marshall, and that he be restricted to this ship until I'm satisfied with his answers. If it were only up to me, I'd just impound your ship, and -" the sharp, gunshots crack of Cameron's hand suddenly slamming down onto the top of his desk cut DeSouza's voice off mid rant, and he sat, motionless, simply staring at the man before speaking.
"It's not up to you, though, is it? In fact, I've actually given you broader access than I'm required to, haven't I? All I'm legally expected to do is ensure that witnessed depositions have been provided, and you've got those. Now, I'm telling you that you're off my ship before the next watch, and if you even so much as think of interrogating a member of my crew without my express permission, you'll find yourself facing harassment charges. Now, get out."
Cameron's tone made it clear that he was uninterested in debating the matter, and very pointedly ignored the USPF officer by picking up one of the data tablets on his desk, and beginning to review the reports thereon. He was becoming impatient with the officer still sitting in the chair across from his desk, and addressed him without looking up.
"If don't leave my office on your own, I will have you dragged out. By your balls." He told DeSouza, genially.
He could hear DeSouza grinding his teeth as he got up and turned to leave.
Obnoxious prick, he thought to himself, probably couldn't get a job in real law enforcement.
Corporate investigators would never dream of acting like that on a privately owned ship. Especially if they didn't have a security team waiting around, and Minotaur's planetary law enforcement arm, the Space Enforcement Agency, had armed cutters at its disposal for investigations, which gave them some teeth if they needed to press a point home. The USPF had ships for its various enforcement agencies, but these two were clearly not part of UniSys' elite, since they had arrived on an orbital tug.
The USPF was predominantly made up of two kinds of people: Those who were new, and still brimming with idealistic beliefs about what the United Systems represented; and those who had fucked up so badly in another law enforcement branch, be it local, planetary, or Corporate, that they had no choice but to join the USPF in order to avoid a drastic change of work environment. He had met both in his career in space, and he would be more than willing to bet that DeSouza was one of the latter. He'd probably gotten on the wrong side of someone higher up the food chain than himself, and been too stubborn to call it quits when it became obvious that he was heading for a fall.
Cameron had almost pitied DeSouza. Having to interview Dirk - about anything - was bound to be a pain in the ass, but he had been incredibly rude and needlessly boorish, so Cameron had settled for just keeping an eye on things to make sure that nothing got out of hand. Rollie had called to explain what he'd done before the cargo transfer shuttle had left, and Cameron had been forced to admit that he had probably saved lives, so he'd told them to grab their bags and go planetside with the cargo. They'd been planning on going anyway, so this was just killing two birds with one stone.
Having worked the better part of a decade for a good sized multisolar corporation, he knew that, where the Alliance was the 300 kilo gorilla, UniSys was a 500 kilogram grizzly bear. Most privateer ship captains wouldn't bend over backwards for UniSys police officers, but tended to regard the United Systems Defense Force with far greater trepidation. The fact that the USDF tended to regard privateers as little more than spacegoing mercenaries at best, and undisciplined outlaws with a taste for piracy in general, tended to cause people like Cameron to tread lightly.
The USDF was the military branch of UniSys, and regardless of the name, its ranks were almost exclusively Terran. The officer corps was even less diverse, and tended to be made up of Europeans, Asians, and North Americans. Less than one percent of the people serving in the USDF came from outside the Sol system. Cameron was of the opinion that the reason for the lack of representation from other worlds was simply because Earth had a far larger pool of desperate and unemployed, for whom the risks of military service off-planet were more desirable than poverty or starvation. It was a widely known fact that most colony worlds had near zero unemployment, and crime rates that fell well below the average compared to those of even the European Hegemony.
He was just glad that the UniSys office hadn't sent investigators with any real talent, because, although rare, every once in a while UniSys managed to snap up an agent with real skills, and they were trouble. He was aware that his crew were no angels, and most of them probably had reasons for wanting to avoid an agency with powers of detention that crossed interstellar borders.
All of which was irrelevant, next to how much of a world of shit you were going to be in if you crossed a Multisolar the wrong way. Haro-Ryushi MS was one of the smaller multisolar corporations, and their last quarterly report to shareholders had proudly announced that the company had an annual gross corporate product of 3.85 trillion Alliance Standard Credits. Their profits for just one quarter were over 36 billion ASC which obviously meant that the shareholders stayed happy. His modest holding of Haro-Ryushi stock paid a decent dividend, and helped him keep his ship and crew going during lean times. Which made it imperative for him to make certain that his actions didn't cause them any trouble. The company was more diversified than most people would have believed, and although they were technically a company that specialized in planetary engineering, they maintained lucrative sidelines in land settlement, mining, agriculture, light manufacturing, and space exploration, just to name a few. Even though H-R was relatively small, they still maintained a security force of around 3700, all of whom were hired from national militaries, and law enforcement agencies. Which sounded like a lot, until you found out that Haro-Ryushi employed over ten million people in over half a dozen systems, including Earth's.
The Cartel was more than twelve times that size.
If corporations were like autonomous organisms, as many economists have said, then the Cartel was an apex predator.
Founded sometime in the latter half of the 21st century, the people who had set it all in motion had planned to get rich. What they hadn't counted on, was that their creation would become one of the very institutions it had been intended to control, and then turn on them. Like the ancient Hebrew story of the golem, the Cartel had been brought to life for a purpose, but it had developed a will all its own. It was not just astronomically large, it was omnipresent, amorphous, and amoral to the point of sociopathy, and it reached out into just about every corner of the Known Sphere. It controlled a pool of resources rivaled by only the Imperial family of Darkael, who claimed an entire solar system as their personal demesne, with a subject population of over 75 million. The Cartel's enormous wealth was nearly impossible to comprehend in human terms, and viewed from a distance, appeared to control the people around it, rather than it being controlled by them. That disconnect happened at Haro-Ryushi, if on a much smaller scale, and the realization had been the spur to Cameron's decision to make an exit on the best terms possible.
Now, he was poised to make his own fortune; the like of which most privateers could only dream of. He just hoped that his planning hadn't been in vain, and the assumptions around which he had engineered those plans didn't turn out to be so much wishful thinking. Regardless of the eventual outcome, he could sleep well, knowing that he had seized the opportunity when it had come around.
Fortune favors the bold. he thought, as he picked up another report.
The officer with the thick neck's name was DeSouza, and he had barged into Cameron's private office, raving about his investigation being hampered by the ship's crew. Cameron had listened to him complain for the better part of five minutes, which was about four minutes longer than he normally would, but he wanted to see how deep the man was going to dig the hole he was in.
Very deep, it turned out.
"I demand that you recall your man for further questioning, Marshall, and that he be restricted to this ship until I'm satisfied with his answers. If it were only up to me, I'd just impound your ship, and -" the sharp, gunshots crack of Cameron's hand suddenly slamming down onto the top of his desk cut DeSouza's voice off mid rant, and he sat, motionless, simply staring at the man before speaking.
"It's not up to you, though, is it? In fact, I've actually given you broader access than I'm required to, haven't I? All I'm legally expected to do is ensure that witnessed depositions have been provided, and you've got those. Now, I'm telling you that you're off my ship before the next watch, and if you even so much as think of interrogating a member of my crew without my express permission, you'll find yourself facing harassment charges. Now, get out."
Cameron's tone made it clear that he was uninterested in debating the matter, and very pointedly ignored the USPF officer by picking up one of the data tablets on his desk, and beginning to review the reports thereon. He was becoming impatient with the officer still sitting in the chair across from his desk, and addressed him without looking up.
"If don't leave my office on your own, I will have you dragged out. By your balls." He told DeSouza, genially.
He could hear DeSouza grinding his teeth as he got up and turned to leave.
Obnoxious prick, he thought to himself, probably couldn't get a job in real law enforcement.
Corporate investigators would never dream of acting like that on a privately owned ship. Especially if they didn't have a security team waiting around, and Minotaur's planetary law enforcement arm, the Space Enforcement Agency, had armed cutters at its disposal for investigations, which gave them some teeth if they needed to press a point home. The USPF had ships for its various enforcement agencies, but these two were clearly not part of UniSys' elite, since they had arrived on an orbital tug.
The USPF was predominantly made up of two kinds of people: Those who were new, and still brimming with idealistic beliefs about what the United Systems represented; and those who had fucked up so badly in another law enforcement branch, be it local, planetary, or Corporate, that they had no choice but to join the USPF in order to avoid a drastic change of work environment. He had met both in his career in space, and he would be more than willing to bet that DeSouza was one of the latter. He'd probably gotten on the wrong side of someone higher up the food chain than himself, and been too stubborn to call it quits when it became obvious that he was heading for a fall.
Cameron had almost pitied DeSouza. Having to interview Dirk - about anything - was bound to be a pain in the ass, but he had been incredibly rude and needlessly boorish, so Cameron had settled for just keeping an eye on things to make sure that nothing got out of hand. Rollie had called to explain what he'd done before the cargo transfer shuttle had left, and Cameron had been forced to admit that he had probably saved lives, so he'd told them to grab their bags and go planetside with the cargo. They'd been planning on going anyway, so this was just killing two birds with one stone.
Having worked the better part of a decade for a good sized multisolar corporation, he knew that, where the Alliance was the 300 kilo gorilla, UniSys was a 500 kilogram grizzly bear. Most privateer ship captains wouldn't bend over backwards for UniSys police officers, but tended to regard the United Systems Defense Force with far greater trepidation. The fact that the USDF tended to regard privateers as little more than spacegoing mercenaries at best, and undisciplined outlaws with a taste for piracy in general, tended to cause people like Cameron to tread lightly.
The USDF was the military branch of UniSys, and regardless of the name, its ranks were almost exclusively Terran. The officer corps was even less diverse, and tended to be made up of Europeans, Asians, and North Americans. Less than one percent of the people serving in the USDF came from outside the Sol system. Cameron was of the opinion that the reason for the lack of representation from other worlds was simply because Earth had a far larger pool of desperate and unemployed, for whom the risks of military service off-planet were more desirable than poverty or starvation. It was a widely known fact that most colony worlds had near zero unemployment, and crime rates that fell well below the average compared to those of even the European Hegemony.
He was just glad that the UniSys office hadn't sent investigators with any real talent, because, although rare, every once in a while UniSys managed to snap up an agent with real skills, and they were trouble. He was aware that his crew were no angels, and most of them probably had reasons for wanting to avoid an agency with powers of detention that crossed interstellar borders.
All of which was irrelevant, next to how much of a world of shit you were going to be in if you crossed a Multisolar the wrong way. Haro-Ryushi MS was one of the smaller multisolar corporations, and their last quarterly report to shareholders had proudly announced that the company had an annual gross corporate product of 3.85 trillion Alliance Standard Credits. Their profits for just one quarter were over 36 billion ASC which obviously meant that the shareholders stayed happy. His modest holding of Haro-Ryushi stock paid a decent dividend, and helped him keep his ship and crew going during lean times. Which made it imperative for him to make certain that his actions didn't cause them any trouble. The company was more diversified than most people would have believed, and although they were technically a company that specialized in planetary engineering, they maintained lucrative sidelines in land settlement, mining, agriculture, light manufacturing, and space exploration, just to name a few. Even though H-R was relatively small, they still maintained a security force of around 3700, all of whom were hired from national militaries, and law enforcement agencies. Which sounded like a lot, until you found out that Haro-Ryushi employed over ten million people in over half a dozen systems, including Earth's.
The Cartel was more than twelve times that size.
If corporations were like autonomous organisms, as many economists have said, then the Cartel was an apex predator.
Founded sometime in the latter half of the 21st century, the people who had set it all in motion had planned to get rich. What they hadn't counted on, was that their creation would become one of the very institutions it had been intended to control, and then turn on them. Like the ancient Hebrew story of the golem, the Cartel had been brought to life for a purpose, but it had developed a will all its own. It was not just astronomically large, it was omnipresent, amorphous, and amoral to the point of sociopathy, and it reached out into just about every corner of the Known Sphere. It controlled a pool of resources rivaled by only the Imperial family of Darkael, who claimed an entire solar system as their personal demesne, with a subject population of over 75 million. The Cartel's enormous wealth was nearly impossible to comprehend in human terms, and viewed from a distance, appeared to control the people around it, rather than it being controlled by them. That disconnect happened at Haro-Ryushi, if on a much smaller scale, and the realization had been the spur to Cameron's decision to make an exit on the best terms possible.
Now, he was poised to make his own fortune; the like of which most privateers could only dream of. He just hoped that his planning hadn't been in vain, and the assumptions around which he had engineered those plans didn't turn out to be so much wishful thinking. Regardless of the eventual outcome, he could sleep well, knowing that he had seized the opportunity when it had come around.
Fortune favors the bold. he thought, as he picked up another report.
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