To ensure the safety of the people I’m responsible for, I’ll move mountains, asteroids, whole fucking planets.  I don’t care what it takes.  I took responsibility for these men and women and I will not walk away from that just because some hostile board of directors is asking me to.  There’s five thousand people counting on us to do the right thing by them.  I’m going to do what’s right for them right now.  To hell with everything else.

— David Brinson, Jr., owner of Brinson Technical, c. 2057 AD

5 Decem, 5249 PD

              “I don’t care what it takes to do it, pull up stakes and start moving that dry dock to the jump point.”

Tim winced at the shouting.  Whoever was behind the opaque glass wall of the Mission Systems office didn’t sound like they were having a very good day.

Then again, if I was being accused of some kind of ridiculous collusion to destroy a planet, I guess I wouldn’t be having a very good day, either.

“What do you mean you can’t do it?  Do you have any idea what we’re doing right now?  Do you understand what we’re doing right now?  I don’t care if the entire Chinasian armada is in your way, you move that station.  If they blow you out of the sky, consider yourselves the second round of victims in the war that hasn’t been declared yet.”

Tim winced again as he lifted a hand to rap lightly on the frosted glass door.  The man beyond it kept talking.

“No, I don’t think that they’ll risk that at this point, but I do think that the hostile takeover’s not that far away.  Get the installation moved now.  Offer anyone who doesn’t want to come safe passage to New Earth for their families and their belongings and make it clear to them that if they choose that option, they are no longer employed by Mission Systems.  Understand?”  He paused a beat.  “Good.  I need to go, station security is probably here to find out what all the racket’s about.”

A few seconds later, the door slid open and a black-haired man, olive-skinned with dark eyes surrounded by bruise-colored rings peered at Tim.  One brow slowly arched as he studied him, then the man said, “Can I help you with something, Inspector?”

“I certainly hope so,” Tim said.  “May I come in?”

The office’s occupant stepped back and waved him inside.  He was dressed in dark gray slacks and a matching jacket in a stylish cut, but the material itself was sturdy, as if this particular executive was more used to hard work with his hands than the hard work of corporate politics.

That explains a great deal.

His host dropped into the chair behind a metal and glass monstrosity of a desk.  “How can I help you, then?”

Tim slid the door closed behind him and paced to a spot two feet away from the desk’s edge, directly across from his host.  “A name would help.”

The man smiled.  “Mine, I presume?  Cosimo Scarelli, Corporate Controller for Mission Systems LLC in Q-sector.”

“Timrel Winston, Inspector First Grade.”  He eased closer and extended his hand.  Cosimo’s grip was firm as he rose to shake Tim’s hand before settling back into his chair.  “Sounded like a rather heated conversation.”

Cosimo glared at his comm for a moment and shook his head.  “Some of my subordinates are dragging their heels with regards to moving operations to the outer reaches.  They don’t understand the gravity of the situation in New Earth space—but I can’t blame them.  The propaganda machines do their job rather handily, don’t they?”  He lifted his chin to regard Tim with a wary look.  “Are you here to tell us that we’re doing something illegal in moving our operations?”

“Not at all,” Tim said even as he filed that little tidbit of fear away in the back of his brain.

“Good, because if you were, I’d be sitting here telling you that you need to take that up with my father, not with me.”  Cosimo smiled and crossed his arms.  “What can I help you with, Mr. Winston?”

“I need to get out to the Eridani Trelasia system.”

Cosimo’s smile vanished and his eyes narrowed.  “The Commonwealth isn’t seriously buying into that insane theory the propaganda machines are putting out, is it?”

Tim’s brows shot up.  “Beg your pardon?”

“Oh come on.  I know you’ve heard it.  They want us all to believe that the Colony and the Rose Foundation had something to do with the Whispers getting bombed to smithereens.”

“They,” Tim echoed, a hint of question in his voice.  Cosimo threw up his hands.

“Of course.  The folks who really did the deed.  If you listen to some of the old-timers, it’s Mimir and the war all over again.  I know who I believe when it comes to all of that rot.  Who are you beliving?”

Tim squared his shoulders.  “The official position of the Inspector General’s office is that this is an open investigation and we are looking into all possible, credible leads.  I was led to believe that there may be some individuals on E-557 that may be able to assist me in my investigation into the death of the Whispers.  But it’s hard to get in touch with them if I’m not there, isn’t it?”

“There’s always long-range comm.”

“Not secure enough for my purposes,” Tim said.  “This investigation is the type of thing that really can’t be handled at a distance.  I need to be there.  See their faces, hear their voices—and know that I don’t have some kind of conglom hacker listening in on my conversation.”

Cosimo grinned.  “Something tells me that paranoia just might keep you alive, Inspector.”

“Here’s to hoping.  Can you help me out?”

The grin melted into a frown.  Cosimo stood and headed over to a bank of computers recessed into the rear wall of his office and brought one of them to life with a touch and a code.  “I don’t know, Inspector.  I’ve got to check the flight rosters and see who’s heading out and when—and if they’ve got room for a spare passenger.”

“I wouldn’t have to be a passenger.  I know my way around a ship well enough to be of some use.”

Cosimo chuckled.  “I wasn’t aware that the Inspector General’s office was hiring men of many talents.”

“Men and women of myriad talents,” Tim said.  “They have been for about forty years, give or take, when Orwell Kant realized that they needed to be doing a lot more than looking at simple financial irregularities and rooting out political corruption.  The homosphere got pretty dangerous for an Inspector back then.”

“You know your history.”

“It’s a hobby.  Man can’t learn from the mistakes of the past if he doesn’t know what mistakes were made.”  He drifted up behind Cosimo, watching the other man as he tapped his way through a half dozen screens to pull up what must have been ship schedules and routes.  “The sooner I get out there, the better.  Something tells me that this particular mission is somewhat time-critical.”

“I can only imagine so.”  Cosimo’s brows knit.  “I have a cargo hauler debarking from here in two days that I can probably get you a berth on if you don’t mind heavy lifting.”

“I think I’m big and bad enough to handle that,” Tim said.  Besides, that way I’ll get a good idea of what the folks on the front lines for Mission Systems are thinking of corporate’s sudden move to shift operations out to Eridani Trelasia.  “You know, there’s something I’ve been getting a little curious about.  Indulge me?”

Cosimo glanced back over his shoulder.  “You can ask.  I don’t guarantee an answer, Inspector General’s office or not.  You’re not investigating us so I’m not actually under obligation to answer.”

Tim smiled wryly.  “No, it’d just make my life easier.  Couldn’t have been easy to get permission from investors or the Rose Foundation to shift operations to Eridani Trelasia.  Is your whole operation moving there, or just pieces?”

Cosimo glanced back at the computer and took a deep breath.  He exhaled it slowly before answering, his eyes focusing on some distant point that didn’t exist.  “It started out as just the Comanche operation.  My father is the vice president of operations for the company.  None of our investors liked having such a vital installation sandwiched in the middle of what could be a major skirmish zone if Chinasia and Idesalli ever decided to start taking pot-shots at each other again.  We’d been in negotiations with one of ranking Psychean Guard survivors to provide the Foundation with the ships that the Guard had paid for before the war, the ones that hadn’t been delivered.  That’s where it started.”

“It’s a pretty big jump between giving the ranking Guard survivors what they’d already paid for and moving operations out to the far reaches, though,” Tim observed, crossing his arms and leaning against a blank expanse of wall just shy of the monitors.

Cosimo smiled ruefully.  “That’s true.  But the investors made a miscalculation when they detailed my father to be the one to handle the negotiations.  He’s been fascinated by the Rose Foundation and their mission for as long as I can remember—read everything Quizibian ever wrote, read the treatises and the charters and the testimonies and all of it.

“I’m not sure at what point he started to believe, but I know the moment he set foot on E-557 for the first time and when he saw how people there lived, he was sold on the idea, body and soul.  He came back and told the board everything.  A few of them were reluctant, but he just kept talking and they agreed that since the installation at Comanche wasn’t in an idea position, it might be a good move to shift it to Eridani Trelasia.  The asteroid belts out there are full of resources—enough for fleets of ships the likes of which we haven’t seen since before the Second Exodus.”

“So it’s a smart business move.”

“Oh, without a doubt.”  Cosimo shut down the screens and leaned against them, his posture mirroring Tim’s as he crossed his arms.  “Corporate sent my father in to negotiate.  He talked the Foundation into letting us move the installation in-system.  Anyone who’s willing to live by the Foundation’s rules and charter will be allowed to live on the planet proper, the rest can decide to live on the station.  There’s some talk about building an arcology, but no one was actually sure that we’d need it.  I guess there were a lot more people who’d been inspired to think the way my father does than anyone suspected.”

“That still doesn’t explain how this went from one installation to all of your operations moving.  What happened?”

“The Whispers,” Cosimo said.  “The Whispers changed everything.”