Ghost War

26

In war, as in love, we must come into contact before we can triumph.

Contressa, Garnet Coast District

Basalt

Prefecture IV, Republic of the Sphere

9 February 3133

I opted not to let Gypsy’s threat color my plans to enjoy the weekend. I took the time to do a bit more research into Emblyn’s hotel properties and learned he’d been sent to Basalt to run a string of hotels for an off-world concern. According to business journal articles, when he arrived he found things an absolute shambles. The hotels were making no money and this was because money was being skimmed all over the place.

The articles put a positive spin on what happened next, making him into a white knight, but I was looking from a different perspective. The core of the problem he had to deal with was that while The Republic was prospering, people didn’t need a world like Basalt as a resort. There were other, more famous places, like Terra, where they could spend their time. And a lot of their money went to things that improved their own homes and communities, so they had even less inducement to travel to a backwater world to get rained on.

Emblyn realized he couldn’t possibly make the hotels make money without significant concessions from the local government. He went to them and basically represented himself as having been sent to Basalt to close the chain down since it was not profitable. He entered into a conspiracy with the government to give him significant tax breaks on the properties if he could put together a local consortium to buy the places and keep them open. He raised the capital he needed, then made the parent corporation an offer to buy the Basalt properties. The parent company sold them off to him, while keeping them affiliated, at the moment, with the chain. This gave him the benefit of some booking services thinking they were part of the chain, so his potential customer stream didn’t suffer immediately.

Emblyn started upscaling things, and lobbied the local government to allow him to add casinos to his properties. Emblyn said it would bring a lot of money in from off-world, and it has, but has redistributed even more local wealth. A lot of it ended up in his pockets and three thousand of that was burning a hole in mine.

Emblyn was shrewd enough to know that if he could lower costs, he would boost profits, so he started buying into the various firms that serviced his hotels. Food wholesalers, liquor distributorships, breweries and the like sprang up or profited from his investments. With his direction, they expanded and suddenly became profit centers on their own. Most articles tried to put estimates on his total wealth, but I figured they were off considerably, no matter how generous they were.

Part of me wondered at how the man could want me at his party. Everything I’d said to Gypsy was true: I was a wild card and Emblyn had no way to judge me. For all he knew I could be there and when someone asked how I knew him I could say, “Remember the sewers backing up in Manville? I did that so he can take over the planet.”

Clearly he wouldn’t have asked for me to attend if he thought I was that stupid, so Gypsy must have given him a good impression of me. Likewise I imagined that he’d not have invited me if I were the sort who would be impressed with three thousand stones. Perhaps the invitation had been tentative, based on Gypsy’s assessment of my reaction to the bonus.

I decided I would play things by the rules, but go in cautiously. There was only one place where I would press my luck. I doubted he would notice one way or another, but success would give me a bit more freedom to operate if I needed to do something quickly.

I packed my clothes and caught a hovershuttle up to Contressa. Taking a shuttle isn’t very elegant, and the transport company had some really beat-up vehicles. I got put in one of the newer ones, however, while non-Anglos were directed to the older ones, and packed in tightly. While the shuttle didn’t cost much, there was a surcharge applied to those with almond eyes, and that disturbed me a great deal.

Even the newer shuttle wasn’t all that comfortable, but it was half full and let me see more of the planet. Route One followed the eastern shore of the Broad River to the northern delta and Contressa. It skirted the edges of a major rain forest preserve and while I didn’t see much more than some brightly colored birds and perhaps some apelike things, just seeing that much deep blue was very pleasant.

When I wasn’t reading or staring out the window, I did check out the others on the shuttle. Most were kids traveling home for the weekend from school. I suspected there had been a lot of communications traffic to and from Manville after the sewer backups, with worried parents demanding their children head home for a weekend. Some older couples joined them, and far in the back I saw a young woman wearing a billed cap and big dark glasses—indicating she didn’t want to be noticed, but attracting all the more notice for it. She wore very casual clothes, no makeup or jewelry, and was pretty enough that I could imagine her being some model or minor celeb traveling north for the resort opening. I’d probably see her later that night as someone’s eye-candy arm-piece.

Whoever she was going to be adorning, he had to be pretty low-rent if he made her travel on the shuttle. I found it pretty easy to imagine her being a single mother who was working hard to support twin daughters. If that was the case, she’d clearly cashed in some first-class air transport ticket for this, so her kids could have new shoes.

Shoes that had been ruined because they’d been floating in sewage.

We arrived in Contressa in just over two hours. I only had one bag to get since I was just up for the weekend and I noticed she was traveling similarly light. She went for her bag, but a large man bodied her aside so he could grab a plasticene crate with some rat-dog-thing in it. As he waddled away cooing at Snookums—yes, the name was painted on the crate—I grabbed her bag and handed it to her.

The protest at my touching her stuff died quickly and she smiled. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem. In the future don’t get between a man and his snack.”

She laughed and it was a pleasing sound. “More true than you know.” She gave me a nod and turned to disappear into the crowd, taking advantage of the trough the fat man had plowed through it.

I wandered over to ground transportation and hired a hovertaxi to take me to the resort. The ride took a half hour and ran along the northern coast. It really was prime resort property, with beautiful white sandy beaches and patches of blue jungle matching the water in color. It was true that having wave after wave of clouds pass stripes of darkness over the earth was a

The Palace resort matched the sand in hue, making it look almost as if it were a castle raised by magic. The main building did not have towers and crenellations, but did have a soaring majesty that evoked power and beauty. The long drive up to the door had been flanked with statues of beautiful men and women of all races and sizes, including Clan Elementals and pilots. The statues were naked, but more along the line of art than anything salacious. Beyond and around them, azure lawns stretched as far as the eye could see, save where they ran to jungle or were dotted with blue topiary cut to the shape of local fauna and mythical creatures.

I checked in easily, was shown to my room and put my clothes away quickly enough. The room I’d been given was fairly standard for size, but featured some nice amenities. The refreshment center had been fully stocked with Diamond Negro. The beer could have been there because Diamond was an exclusive supplier to the hotel, but I suspected it was because that was the only thing Gypsy had ever seen me drink.