Conquest Inc
31-08-2005, 08:21
The bullet scarred troop crawler ground to a halt in the darkened side-street, engine snarling and coughing as it idled, waiting. The only illumination came from its military-grade headlamps, which threw a harsh light on the silent street before it, as well as the shattered buildings that flanked it. After a time, the exit ramp at the rear of the boxy vehicle slammed down, and two eight-foot metal forms hustled out.
The armored infantrymen glanced about, and activated their own, shoulder-mounted lights, and turned towards the front of the transport. The third figure was about as different from the first two as could be imagined – every inch the high-powered executive, clothed in the latest from Armani, and practically exuding an air of wealth and refinement, he would have been entirely out of place, if for the tough-looking Kevlar vest that was strapped haphazardly over the fine Italian suit.
Seiji Akimoto sighed in misery and disgust as his prodigiously expensive shoes sank into two inches of gray dust, and trudged to join his wary protectors. So much had been lost in this protracted, bitter war, even before his shoes. No longer did his beloved city shine at night. What lights there were were not the glittering brilliance of a metropolis in the best of health, awash in contentment and progress, but the ugly cyan flares of weapons-fire as corporations waged a bloody war in the streets. Coming to a stop in front of the troop carrier and between its headlamps, the magnate steadied himself. Yes, a tiresome war. But the final steps towards ending it would be taken tonight, and by him, at that.
He smiled grimly, and checked his watch. One of the troopers turned to him. “He’s late, sir.” Akimoto grunted noncommittally, and crossed his arms. In the clock-bound society into which he had been born, a delay of five minutes, intentional or not, was an insult. The informant was pushing it.
A figure moved in the space lit by troopers’ headlamps and the transport’s own powerful high-beams – a gangly techie-looking man advanced cautiously, eyes squinted and hand shading his face against the glare. “Mr. Akimoto?”
The businessman was keenly aware that he was out of his element – far from his gleaming ivory tower, and actually on sea level, he was in no mood to prolong the meeting any more than was absolutely necessary. “Toss me the deactivation protocols for the shield protecting the EOC building.”
The other man, half-blinded by the lights, could not distinguish the silhouette of the individual he was talking to. With an awkward heave, he sent a plastic memory cell flying through the air to bounce at what happened to be the feet of the executive. A fine leather attaché case sailed back at him. He stumbled forward to catch it, and immediately released the catches, drinking in the sight of twelve million in cash. The fact that the information which he had just parted with could easily cause the deaths of as many people failed to cross his mind.
Akimoto was already halfway back to the relative safety of the troop transport when the mousey-looking Reginald called after him. “You corpies sure don’t skimp on protection these days, eh?” Akimoto glanced at the heavy machine gun mounted on the top of his transportation and the rail rifles in the hands of the Rhinemetall regulars that were serving as his guards. “At this late hour in the current conflict, we have a great deal to lose.” Contemptuous of the commoner he’d done business with and eager to return to Triumph Tower, he climbed back aboard.
-----------------------
Had the employees of the Four Companies not long ago forgotten such backward ideas as lords and royalty, Richard Zheng would undoubtedly have been a king among men. A student of History, he was amused that, though he was soon to rise to ascendancy over two billion of his fellow beings, the grandest term of address he could ever aspire to would be “mister,” for executives were not kings, but simple men. That those same executives wielded the powers of life and death as much as had the nobles of old was the true substance of the thing, and titles truly mattered not one bit.
He surveyed the strategic plot before him. The ten by ten by six holograph displayed a three dimensional map of all of the terrain owned by the Four Companies on earth. All six-hundred-and-twelve square miles of it. The small lands were densely populated, and it was an odd edifice in the area that did not rise a half-mile from the ground. Triumph Tower, headquarters of Triumph Media, was itself just over a standard mile in height, a bright city of financial accomplishment in its own right. The only other buildings to rival the Tower on whose command deck he was standing were the headquarters of the other three megacorporations, each distinctly different from the rest, and the prodigious steel and concrete citadel of the Economic Oversight Committee. This last was an enormous spike in the middle of the city, the centerpiece of the sprawling corporate fiefdom. Triumph Tower and the other great fortresses were connected to the EOC building by numerous skyways, some hundreds of feet wide.
These last were essentially useless, as each of these monolithic constructions was easily capable of producing shields and force fields capable of withstanding the heaviest artillery bombardments the others could effect, for each was supplied with power by its own fusion reactors.
Thus, the war had been fought in the streets, needlessly damaging the property of even AA-class citizens, profitlessly wasting the lives of thousands of corporate security personnel and ultimately achieving nothing. But tonight, it would all come crashing down on the EOC.
A communications ensign looked up from his console and called for Zheng’s attention. “Sir? Messrs. Hammond, Rheinhardt, and Liu are ready for the link-up. I’ll bring them up in the main tank if that’s alright.”
Zheng grinned broadly at the com officer. “Sure, Luis. Put ‘em right up.” Tonight, at least, he was all smiles.
The three corporate heads snapped into life in the air before him. Looking from one to the other, he silently recited their companies’ marketing blurbs to himself.
A nod. “James, nice to see you.” The tall, thin ideal of a Southern gentleman, complete with charming drawl and white suit, gave a small wave to acknowledge the greeting. James Hammond, Chief Executive Officer of Hammond Aerospace. ‘The sky is the limit! Pioneering developers of both civilian and military air- and spacecraft, Hammond Aerospace is poised to take advantage of the coming upsurge in CI’s interstellar investment. Innovation and power go hand in hand, and nowhere is that wise notion more completely accepted than at Hammond Aerospace, visionaries of flight for nearly three hundred years.’
“Oh, and Leon. I trust you remain as well as ever.” Of average height but stocky build, the shoulders and chest of the black-haired German’s suit were tight from the strain imposed by religiously honed muscle mass. The exec nodded sharply in reply. Leon Rheinhardt, of Rheinmetall Enterprises. ‘Developers and producers of top tier military material for well over two centuries, Rhinemetall favors rugged, durable and efficient designs over insubstantial flash and glitter. These level-headed priorities have proven to be exactly the right ones for many a satisfied costumer in a universe where history is, after all, written by the victors.’
“Yi, always a pleasure.” Liu Yi, majority shareholder of TerraTech Industrial. Short, plump, and utterly devious, Liu clasped his hands to his stomach and gave an energetic little bow. ‘A one-stop shop for any consumer, be it the nation-state in search of raw steel or the discerning individual on the prowl for the very finest consumer products, TerraTech is proud and pleased to be the foremost business for industrial and consumer goods.’
Liu spoke first. “TerraTech’s divisions are fully prepared to fight, sir. I confidently predict that we shall be the first to cross the skyways.”
A snort and a smirk were the immediate responses of the his colleagues. Hammond leaned over his pickup. “Nah, we all know exactly who’s the fastest, and you all might as well stop bickering about it. The last sight the EOC’s ever going to see is the Third Hammond Jump Infantry settling their hash, real business-like.”
Rheinhardt finally spoke up, nonchalantly glancing at his pocket watch. “It will be Rheinmetall’s heavy armor analogs that will be the last sight of the EOC. We are prepared to advance as quickly and efficiently as possible, Mr. Zheng.”
“Gentlemen, please.” The playfully competing executives all turned from each others’ holographic likenesses to listen to their commander in chief, banter completed. “I am fully aware of your eagerness to bring the war to a successful conclusion. I am no less prepared to see our streets flowing with healthy, happy consumers than you. We await only the return of dear Seiji, and we shall put an end to the hacks and the throwbacks of the EOC that have for so long blighted our efforts to unleash Hyper-Capitalism’s true potential. We can all, agree, surely – ”
The Triumph light infantrymen flanking the armored door to the command deck snapped to attention as Akimoto walked unhurriedly through. Zheng turned to watch him approach. The slender Japanese media mogul, sans Kevlar, slowly paced the entire length of the mammoth command deck, and all was silence. Seiji Akimoto, Triumph Media. ‘Knowledge is power, and so Triumph Media, with its widely acknowledged experience in both digital and print media, wields a prodigious amount of influence in practically every field of business endeavor. Crafting the ideal message comes easily to these public relations experts, and all the news that’s fit to print is printed by Triumph Media.’
Distantly aware that his expression radiated desperate, hopeful hunger, the richest, and therefore most powerful, man in a room of exceedingly well-to-do men, took a half-step forward, raised his hand to reach for the expected prize. “Do you have it?” Zheng’s question was a half-whisper.
For a long handful of seconds, Akimoto considered the men before him. Though each physically different, they were identical in that they pursued one goal and one goal only with ruthless fanaticism: Profit. Money, either as an end in and of itself or as a means to power, was the only concern that any of them would ever have – not least of all with Zheng. The dark suit, the finely gelled black hair, the olive skin and the brown eyes left an impression of infinite density, of almost a black hole. This was a man against which the enemies of Hyper-Capitalism would break. Slowly, reverently, he placed the tiny gray cube that would damn every being in the EOC building to certain death.
Zheng sighed, at peace. “Ah, then. Let us proceed.”
-----------------------
Every employee of Rheinmetall, Hammond Aerospace, TerraTech and Triumph looked up from whatever it was they were doing as thousands and thousands of public address speakers throughout the city snapped into life. Men and women stood still, straining to hear this evidently critical message. From the acrid, stinking bowels of the greatest towers, deep below the surface, to the terraced gardens of the executive levels, millions would hear this historic statement. Hundreds of millions more listened live to the same words, for once not edited for different markets – AA-citizens heard what B’s did, B’s heard the same things as C’s.
The unclassed, the great indigent masses in their millions, living beneath the lowest streets, heard about it last and after the fact, as usual, and gave it little thought, also as usual.
Zheng was a great public speaker, and relished the historical opportunity: “Citizens! Today is a great day in the annals of history! We endeavor today towards a most singular goal! Through near-mythical toil and untold billions invested in financial and material resources, the stifling Oversight worms will be extinguished. True Profit shall be realized as we surmount the greatest challenge of our shared corporate history. The Market is vast, far more expansive than we have appreciated. Space. The universe. These are our new Markets, these our new paths to power, fame and glory. We shall exterminate these vermin, and we shall rise to the heavens, with fire and innovation, and we shall blast the backward, the Leftist elements that would hold humanity from its great and final purpose!”
The speakers again fell silent. A building roar of cannon fire, missile detonations, and gunfire rose to replace the booming oratory.
-----------------------
At first, the EOC rats knew no fear for the mighty wrath railing against their bastion’s defenses. A dozen three-story tall fusion reactors can do wonders for the staying power of a shield system, after all. But from that complete security, they tumbled to a well of deepest despair in a matter of seconds.
The tower-complexes of the Four Companies were first and foremost places of business. Each with a distinctive style, but all resplendent and clean. Hammond Aerospace had a penchant for glass and steel, Rheinmetall Enterprises for marble. Some boasted terraced gardens, and elegant colonnades – but all were designed with their secondary purpose firmly in mind: fortresses. Those colonnades concealed particle projection cannons, the gardens hid recessed railguns. This was the weaponry with which the EOC was pounded to dust. The torrent of fire swept the outer works of major fixed defenses, and the infantry, the great footslogging killers of the corporate security forces, were free to advance.
For corporations, cost-effectiveness is key. And for an urban setting, few units could fight in the streets and from floor-to-floor of huge complexes with equal effectiveness. The infantryman was one of these, and each of the Four Companies had refined the basic principle down to a finished form that best paralleled their corporate culture.
Field Marshal Gratzen headed the Rheinmetall offensive personally. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th Heavy Infantry Divisions began the march across the skyways, plodding along for all the world like the panzers their forgotten ancestors had wielded in war long before. A Rheinmetall Heavy Infantry Analog was a walking tank, because as far as the bean-counters were concerned, an actual tank would not do. Eight feet tall, half again as wide as a broad-shouldered man, the HIAs were big and bulky enough to absorb tremendous punishment, slugging aside small arms fire with contemptuous ease, while small enough to secrete in cover. Armed with rail rifles, five foot long cannons ideal for crushing armor, one of the olive green monsters was a frightening sight. A platoon of them a catastrophe. Three divisions, simply a nightmare.
General Allens commanded Hammond’s Jump Infantry with an artistic flare, but from behind the lines. Allens needed all the advantages that powerful command and control systems could give to coordinate the seemingly chaotic pattern of leaping medium infantrymen. Jump Infantry are enclosed in light full body carapaces capable of deflecting light small arms fire, but bound forward twenty feet at a time and are armed to the teeth with hand flamers, grenades, and submachine guns. Closing with the shaken EOC divisions that began to pour forth onto the skyways, they did not slow. A Jump Infantryman would leap in a shallow arc towards his target so as not to draw too much fire, fire at nearby targets on landing, and leap again to avoid retaliation. The tradeoff for the manic speed was mediocre armoring, and hundreds of Hammond troopers were riddled with air in mid-flight during the opening minutes of the last great battle of the war, and fell to never leap again.
TerraTech was by far the largest of the Four, and deployed forces commensurate with that status: fully six divisions of TerraTech light infantry poured forth to fight. TerraTech splits platoons in half, assigning one, armed with submachine guns and the occasional belt-fed light machinegun, the task of clearing a path for the second, chock full of three-man mortars, .50 cal machine guns and shoulder-launched missile launchers, to deploy and fire. This was the classic infantry, little changed for hundreds of years. Not much in the way of effective body armor, and not as well trained as the individually more expensive troopers of the other megacorps. This force, too, was led from behind the lines by Lt. General Bei Yan, and advanced steadily, accepting the murderous casualties they habitually sustained in order to achieve success.
Triumph retained its comparatively paltry military for the protection of Zheng, whose position in the corporate structure was admittedly ambiguous, but of the highest order.
It was a long slow butchery, but one that was never in doubt. The material advantage of the Four was insurmountable, and Zheng listened to the frantic chatter of his fighting men with near glee.
Turning to the com tech again, Zheng collected himself and forced his face back into a mien suggestive of immense dignity and presence. “If you would patch the feed to my suite, Luis, I would be most obliged. Come with me, Seiji, and we shall dwell upon our victory.”
Akimoto turned from the holo, arms crossed behind his back, expression puzzled. “But sir… the battle will last for hours, yet.”
A chuckle. “No, Seiji. It’s already won.”
-----------------------
Zheng and Akimoto sat, moments later, watching the flares of death across the skyways. Moonlight Sonata: Adagio, by Beethoven hung in the air, the melancholy strains entirely appropriate for the night’s events. Zheng, his subordinate noted, was seemingly impervious to these sobering effects, and was raising his teacup to his face in order to mask an earnest smile.
Akimoto had paled with the first casualty reports, but had recovered. Now, as the battle intensified, he began to lose his color once more. Too often did the com reports end abruptly in static, or total silence – worse yet was when the words simply became a keening, piteous wail before someone had the sense to cut the feed.
Placing his cup back on its saucer, having marshaled the strength to assume a more somber disposition, Zheng turned to business. “Seiji, I need you to act as my main proponent in the post-victory discussions. If the Four are to coexist peaceably afterwards, I must act decisively and immediately. We must fuse the Four into one. We must… Seiji? Seiji, are you listening?”
Zheng reached out to adjust the volume. The Sonata rose, and the screams fell.
-----------------------
They ended up just rolling the enemy wounded off the skyways. It cleared them faster, and no one living beneath the skyways was very much worth mentioning. The last EOC holdouts wouldn’t be pried from the heating ducts in which they were hiding for another three weeks, but the major fighting concluded shortly after the lead TerraTech battalion reached the citadel itself.
The twelve haggard men and three women who made up the EOC were accused of ‘stifling the search for Profit’, ‘confining the available array of Markets due to stagnant thinking’ and ‘criminally inept leadership.’ They were executed in the board room where they were found. Zheng ordered that the bullet holes in the wall not be repaired ‘for posterity.’
“Gentlemen! Come right in!” Seven hours after the executive levels had been cleared, Zheng summoned the four respective heads of the victorious corporate bodies to his new offices in what had been the EOC building. He had them seated quickly, and himself watched shuttles begin to ferry wounded back to their respective headquarters through the bay window, arms behind his back, hands clasping opposite elbows. Without turning to face them, he spoke.
“New beginnings, gentlemen.” He sighed. “We’ll make the announcement sometime next week, but I have the papers ready for you to sign.” He waived distractedly towards the desk, at some manila folders and hardcopy. “The answer is space. Earth is old - the Markets are stagnant, and the way amongst the stars is open…” He rounded on the others, fire in his eyes. “The stars burn! Now, like the British East India Company of old, I will direct the expansion of our available Markets in order to maximize Profit – by force if necessary. If expedient, even. But only when we can afford to – military conquest is not the goal. Profit is the one and only goal, gentlemen!” Producing a remote from his suit jacket’s pocket, he jab it at his desk, above which complex military designs scrolled; ships, installations, weapons. “With fire and steel and a slide rule, we will wax fat from the potential of the universe.” He deflated somewhat.
“Now, we need but place our signatures on some slips of paper, and your enterprises shall become semi-autonomous fiefdoms under my wise but firm rule.” A mirthful chuckle. “Truly, since the ‘Battle of the Skyways’ ended, there has been one real challenge – what to name it all.”
Slowly, Liu Yi leaned forward in his chair and pulled the papers closer to him. “Neat.
Conquest Incorporated.”
The armored infantrymen glanced about, and activated their own, shoulder-mounted lights, and turned towards the front of the transport. The third figure was about as different from the first two as could be imagined – every inch the high-powered executive, clothed in the latest from Armani, and practically exuding an air of wealth and refinement, he would have been entirely out of place, if for the tough-looking Kevlar vest that was strapped haphazardly over the fine Italian suit.
Seiji Akimoto sighed in misery and disgust as his prodigiously expensive shoes sank into two inches of gray dust, and trudged to join his wary protectors. So much had been lost in this protracted, bitter war, even before his shoes. No longer did his beloved city shine at night. What lights there were were not the glittering brilliance of a metropolis in the best of health, awash in contentment and progress, but the ugly cyan flares of weapons-fire as corporations waged a bloody war in the streets. Coming to a stop in front of the troop carrier and between its headlamps, the magnate steadied himself. Yes, a tiresome war. But the final steps towards ending it would be taken tonight, and by him, at that.
He smiled grimly, and checked his watch. One of the troopers turned to him. “He’s late, sir.” Akimoto grunted noncommittally, and crossed his arms. In the clock-bound society into which he had been born, a delay of five minutes, intentional or not, was an insult. The informant was pushing it.
A figure moved in the space lit by troopers’ headlamps and the transport’s own powerful high-beams – a gangly techie-looking man advanced cautiously, eyes squinted and hand shading his face against the glare. “Mr. Akimoto?”
The businessman was keenly aware that he was out of his element – far from his gleaming ivory tower, and actually on sea level, he was in no mood to prolong the meeting any more than was absolutely necessary. “Toss me the deactivation protocols for the shield protecting the EOC building.”
The other man, half-blinded by the lights, could not distinguish the silhouette of the individual he was talking to. With an awkward heave, he sent a plastic memory cell flying through the air to bounce at what happened to be the feet of the executive. A fine leather attaché case sailed back at him. He stumbled forward to catch it, and immediately released the catches, drinking in the sight of twelve million in cash. The fact that the information which he had just parted with could easily cause the deaths of as many people failed to cross his mind.
Akimoto was already halfway back to the relative safety of the troop transport when the mousey-looking Reginald called after him. “You corpies sure don’t skimp on protection these days, eh?” Akimoto glanced at the heavy machine gun mounted on the top of his transportation and the rail rifles in the hands of the Rhinemetall regulars that were serving as his guards. “At this late hour in the current conflict, we have a great deal to lose.” Contemptuous of the commoner he’d done business with and eager to return to Triumph Tower, he climbed back aboard.
-----------------------
Had the employees of the Four Companies not long ago forgotten such backward ideas as lords and royalty, Richard Zheng would undoubtedly have been a king among men. A student of History, he was amused that, though he was soon to rise to ascendancy over two billion of his fellow beings, the grandest term of address he could ever aspire to would be “mister,” for executives were not kings, but simple men. That those same executives wielded the powers of life and death as much as had the nobles of old was the true substance of the thing, and titles truly mattered not one bit.
He surveyed the strategic plot before him. The ten by ten by six holograph displayed a three dimensional map of all of the terrain owned by the Four Companies on earth. All six-hundred-and-twelve square miles of it. The small lands were densely populated, and it was an odd edifice in the area that did not rise a half-mile from the ground. Triumph Tower, headquarters of Triumph Media, was itself just over a standard mile in height, a bright city of financial accomplishment in its own right. The only other buildings to rival the Tower on whose command deck he was standing were the headquarters of the other three megacorporations, each distinctly different from the rest, and the prodigious steel and concrete citadel of the Economic Oversight Committee. This last was an enormous spike in the middle of the city, the centerpiece of the sprawling corporate fiefdom. Triumph Tower and the other great fortresses were connected to the EOC building by numerous skyways, some hundreds of feet wide.
These last were essentially useless, as each of these monolithic constructions was easily capable of producing shields and force fields capable of withstanding the heaviest artillery bombardments the others could effect, for each was supplied with power by its own fusion reactors.
Thus, the war had been fought in the streets, needlessly damaging the property of even AA-class citizens, profitlessly wasting the lives of thousands of corporate security personnel and ultimately achieving nothing. But tonight, it would all come crashing down on the EOC.
A communications ensign looked up from his console and called for Zheng’s attention. “Sir? Messrs. Hammond, Rheinhardt, and Liu are ready for the link-up. I’ll bring them up in the main tank if that’s alright.”
Zheng grinned broadly at the com officer. “Sure, Luis. Put ‘em right up.” Tonight, at least, he was all smiles.
The three corporate heads snapped into life in the air before him. Looking from one to the other, he silently recited their companies’ marketing blurbs to himself.
A nod. “James, nice to see you.” The tall, thin ideal of a Southern gentleman, complete with charming drawl and white suit, gave a small wave to acknowledge the greeting. James Hammond, Chief Executive Officer of Hammond Aerospace. ‘The sky is the limit! Pioneering developers of both civilian and military air- and spacecraft, Hammond Aerospace is poised to take advantage of the coming upsurge in CI’s interstellar investment. Innovation and power go hand in hand, and nowhere is that wise notion more completely accepted than at Hammond Aerospace, visionaries of flight for nearly three hundred years.’
“Oh, and Leon. I trust you remain as well as ever.” Of average height but stocky build, the shoulders and chest of the black-haired German’s suit were tight from the strain imposed by religiously honed muscle mass. The exec nodded sharply in reply. Leon Rheinhardt, of Rheinmetall Enterprises. ‘Developers and producers of top tier military material for well over two centuries, Rhinemetall favors rugged, durable and efficient designs over insubstantial flash and glitter. These level-headed priorities have proven to be exactly the right ones for many a satisfied costumer in a universe where history is, after all, written by the victors.’
“Yi, always a pleasure.” Liu Yi, majority shareholder of TerraTech Industrial. Short, plump, and utterly devious, Liu clasped his hands to his stomach and gave an energetic little bow. ‘A one-stop shop for any consumer, be it the nation-state in search of raw steel or the discerning individual on the prowl for the very finest consumer products, TerraTech is proud and pleased to be the foremost business for industrial and consumer goods.’
Liu spoke first. “TerraTech’s divisions are fully prepared to fight, sir. I confidently predict that we shall be the first to cross the skyways.”
A snort and a smirk were the immediate responses of the his colleagues. Hammond leaned over his pickup. “Nah, we all know exactly who’s the fastest, and you all might as well stop bickering about it. The last sight the EOC’s ever going to see is the Third Hammond Jump Infantry settling their hash, real business-like.”
Rheinhardt finally spoke up, nonchalantly glancing at his pocket watch. “It will be Rheinmetall’s heavy armor analogs that will be the last sight of the EOC. We are prepared to advance as quickly and efficiently as possible, Mr. Zheng.”
“Gentlemen, please.” The playfully competing executives all turned from each others’ holographic likenesses to listen to their commander in chief, banter completed. “I am fully aware of your eagerness to bring the war to a successful conclusion. I am no less prepared to see our streets flowing with healthy, happy consumers than you. We await only the return of dear Seiji, and we shall put an end to the hacks and the throwbacks of the EOC that have for so long blighted our efforts to unleash Hyper-Capitalism’s true potential. We can all, agree, surely – ”
The Triumph light infantrymen flanking the armored door to the command deck snapped to attention as Akimoto walked unhurriedly through. Zheng turned to watch him approach. The slender Japanese media mogul, sans Kevlar, slowly paced the entire length of the mammoth command deck, and all was silence. Seiji Akimoto, Triumph Media. ‘Knowledge is power, and so Triumph Media, with its widely acknowledged experience in both digital and print media, wields a prodigious amount of influence in practically every field of business endeavor. Crafting the ideal message comes easily to these public relations experts, and all the news that’s fit to print is printed by Triumph Media.’
Distantly aware that his expression radiated desperate, hopeful hunger, the richest, and therefore most powerful, man in a room of exceedingly well-to-do men, took a half-step forward, raised his hand to reach for the expected prize. “Do you have it?” Zheng’s question was a half-whisper.
For a long handful of seconds, Akimoto considered the men before him. Though each physically different, they were identical in that they pursued one goal and one goal only with ruthless fanaticism: Profit. Money, either as an end in and of itself or as a means to power, was the only concern that any of them would ever have – not least of all with Zheng. The dark suit, the finely gelled black hair, the olive skin and the brown eyes left an impression of infinite density, of almost a black hole. This was a man against which the enemies of Hyper-Capitalism would break. Slowly, reverently, he placed the tiny gray cube that would damn every being in the EOC building to certain death.
Zheng sighed, at peace. “Ah, then. Let us proceed.”
-----------------------
Every employee of Rheinmetall, Hammond Aerospace, TerraTech and Triumph looked up from whatever it was they were doing as thousands and thousands of public address speakers throughout the city snapped into life. Men and women stood still, straining to hear this evidently critical message. From the acrid, stinking bowels of the greatest towers, deep below the surface, to the terraced gardens of the executive levels, millions would hear this historic statement. Hundreds of millions more listened live to the same words, for once not edited for different markets – AA-citizens heard what B’s did, B’s heard the same things as C’s.
The unclassed, the great indigent masses in their millions, living beneath the lowest streets, heard about it last and after the fact, as usual, and gave it little thought, also as usual.
Zheng was a great public speaker, and relished the historical opportunity: “Citizens! Today is a great day in the annals of history! We endeavor today towards a most singular goal! Through near-mythical toil and untold billions invested in financial and material resources, the stifling Oversight worms will be extinguished. True Profit shall be realized as we surmount the greatest challenge of our shared corporate history. The Market is vast, far more expansive than we have appreciated. Space. The universe. These are our new Markets, these our new paths to power, fame and glory. We shall exterminate these vermin, and we shall rise to the heavens, with fire and innovation, and we shall blast the backward, the Leftist elements that would hold humanity from its great and final purpose!”
The speakers again fell silent. A building roar of cannon fire, missile detonations, and gunfire rose to replace the booming oratory.
-----------------------
At first, the EOC rats knew no fear for the mighty wrath railing against their bastion’s defenses. A dozen three-story tall fusion reactors can do wonders for the staying power of a shield system, after all. But from that complete security, they tumbled to a well of deepest despair in a matter of seconds.
The tower-complexes of the Four Companies were first and foremost places of business. Each with a distinctive style, but all resplendent and clean. Hammond Aerospace had a penchant for glass and steel, Rheinmetall Enterprises for marble. Some boasted terraced gardens, and elegant colonnades – but all were designed with their secondary purpose firmly in mind: fortresses. Those colonnades concealed particle projection cannons, the gardens hid recessed railguns. This was the weaponry with which the EOC was pounded to dust. The torrent of fire swept the outer works of major fixed defenses, and the infantry, the great footslogging killers of the corporate security forces, were free to advance.
For corporations, cost-effectiveness is key. And for an urban setting, few units could fight in the streets and from floor-to-floor of huge complexes with equal effectiveness. The infantryman was one of these, and each of the Four Companies had refined the basic principle down to a finished form that best paralleled their corporate culture.
Field Marshal Gratzen headed the Rheinmetall offensive personally. The 2nd, 3rd and 4th Heavy Infantry Divisions began the march across the skyways, plodding along for all the world like the panzers their forgotten ancestors had wielded in war long before. A Rheinmetall Heavy Infantry Analog was a walking tank, because as far as the bean-counters were concerned, an actual tank would not do. Eight feet tall, half again as wide as a broad-shouldered man, the HIAs were big and bulky enough to absorb tremendous punishment, slugging aside small arms fire with contemptuous ease, while small enough to secrete in cover. Armed with rail rifles, five foot long cannons ideal for crushing armor, one of the olive green monsters was a frightening sight. A platoon of them a catastrophe. Three divisions, simply a nightmare.
General Allens commanded Hammond’s Jump Infantry with an artistic flare, but from behind the lines. Allens needed all the advantages that powerful command and control systems could give to coordinate the seemingly chaotic pattern of leaping medium infantrymen. Jump Infantry are enclosed in light full body carapaces capable of deflecting light small arms fire, but bound forward twenty feet at a time and are armed to the teeth with hand flamers, grenades, and submachine guns. Closing with the shaken EOC divisions that began to pour forth onto the skyways, they did not slow. A Jump Infantryman would leap in a shallow arc towards his target so as not to draw too much fire, fire at nearby targets on landing, and leap again to avoid retaliation. The tradeoff for the manic speed was mediocre armoring, and hundreds of Hammond troopers were riddled with air in mid-flight during the opening minutes of the last great battle of the war, and fell to never leap again.
TerraTech was by far the largest of the Four, and deployed forces commensurate with that status: fully six divisions of TerraTech light infantry poured forth to fight. TerraTech splits platoons in half, assigning one, armed with submachine guns and the occasional belt-fed light machinegun, the task of clearing a path for the second, chock full of three-man mortars, .50 cal machine guns and shoulder-launched missile launchers, to deploy and fire. This was the classic infantry, little changed for hundreds of years. Not much in the way of effective body armor, and not as well trained as the individually more expensive troopers of the other megacorps. This force, too, was led from behind the lines by Lt. General Bei Yan, and advanced steadily, accepting the murderous casualties they habitually sustained in order to achieve success.
Triumph retained its comparatively paltry military for the protection of Zheng, whose position in the corporate structure was admittedly ambiguous, but of the highest order.
It was a long slow butchery, but one that was never in doubt. The material advantage of the Four was insurmountable, and Zheng listened to the frantic chatter of his fighting men with near glee.
Turning to the com tech again, Zheng collected himself and forced his face back into a mien suggestive of immense dignity and presence. “If you would patch the feed to my suite, Luis, I would be most obliged. Come with me, Seiji, and we shall dwell upon our victory.”
Akimoto turned from the holo, arms crossed behind his back, expression puzzled. “But sir… the battle will last for hours, yet.”
A chuckle. “No, Seiji. It’s already won.”
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Zheng and Akimoto sat, moments later, watching the flares of death across the skyways. Moonlight Sonata: Adagio, by Beethoven hung in the air, the melancholy strains entirely appropriate for the night’s events. Zheng, his subordinate noted, was seemingly impervious to these sobering effects, and was raising his teacup to his face in order to mask an earnest smile.
Akimoto had paled with the first casualty reports, but had recovered. Now, as the battle intensified, he began to lose his color once more. Too often did the com reports end abruptly in static, or total silence – worse yet was when the words simply became a keening, piteous wail before someone had the sense to cut the feed.
Placing his cup back on its saucer, having marshaled the strength to assume a more somber disposition, Zheng turned to business. “Seiji, I need you to act as my main proponent in the post-victory discussions. If the Four are to coexist peaceably afterwards, I must act decisively and immediately. We must fuse the Four into one. We must… Seiji? Seiji, are you listening?”
Zheng reached out to adjust the volume. The Sonata rose, and the screams fell.
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They ended up just rolling the enemy wounded off the skyways. It cleared them faster, and no one living beneath the skyways was very much worth mentioning. The last EOC holdouts wouldn’t be pried from the heating ducts in which they were hiding for another three weeks, but the major fighting concluded shortly after the lead TerraTech battalion reached the citadel itself.
The twelve haggard men and three women who made up the EOC were accused of ‘stifling the search for Profit’, ‘confining the available array of Markets due to stagnant thinking’ and ‘criminally inept leadership.’ They were executed in the board room where they were found. Zheng ordered that the bullet holes in the wall not be repaired ‘for posterity.’
“Gentlemen! Come right in!” Seven hours after the executive levels had been cleared, Zheng summoned the four respective heads of the victorious corporate bodies to his new offices in what had been the EOC building. He had them seated quickly, and himself watched shuttles begin to ferry wounded back to their respective headquarters through the bay window, arms behind his back, hands clasping opposite elbows. Without turning to face them, he spoke.
“New beginnings, gentlemen.” He sighed. “We’ll make the announcement sometime next week, but I have the papers ready for you to sign.” He waived distractedly towards the desk, at some manila folders and hardcopy. “The answer is space. Earth is old - the Markets are stagnant, and the way amongst the stars is open…” He rounded on the others, fire in his eyes. “The stars burn! Now, like the British East India Company of old, I will direct the expansion of our available Markets in order to maximize Profit – by force if necessary. If expedient, even. But only when we can afford to – military conquest is not the goal. Profit is the one and only goal, gentlemen!” Producing a remote from his suit jacket’s pocket, he jab it at his desk, above which complex military designs scrolled; ships, installations, weapons. “With fire and steel and a slide rule, we will wax fat from the potential of the universe.” He deflated somewhat.
“Now, we need but place our signatures on some slips of paper, and your enterprises shall become semi-autonomous fiefdoms under my wise but firm rule.” A mirthful chuckle. “Truly, since the ‘Battle of the Skyways’ ended, there has been one real challenge – what to name it all.”
Slowly, Liu Yi leaned forward in his chair and pulled the papers closer to him. “Neat.
Conquest Incorporated.”