The Game of Luck – Chapter One

Release Date: September 25, 2018 from Orbit Books

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When you tell people you’ve put together a proposal to save the world, you’d be hard-pressed to get a polite nod or a puzzled expression, because really, who says that? No one expects you’re going to save them a seat for lunch, never mind the world. Genuine curiosity and support are rare and elusive, like snowflakes falling on the equator. Well, today I had a veritable blizzard descending on my equator, because I had a plan to save Venus from itself and I was halfway through my One Gov presentation.

Of course, now that I was actually addressing the One Gov’s higher-ups and laying out my seven-point plan during the biweekly progress meeting, I wasn’t so sure. I thought I knew how to handle an audience and make my positive business case for Venus. Unfortunately, my audience had too many frowning faces and dark looks. They weren’t coming from everyone, mostly from the Venus contingent, which I’d expected. But still…it made me doubt my ability to objectively reconceptualize cross-unit opportunities—total bullshit business jargon Alexei told me to use if I got stuck during my presentation. I’d mocked him when he trotted it out, but I’d used it twice along with “appropriately streamline distinctive markets” and “quickly foster next-generation technologies” when what I really wanted to say was, “Venus is a mess. Here’s what we need to do to fix it.” Too bad One Gov liked fancy presentations and fancier jargon more than it liked results.

I didn’t mind the progress meetings, even if they fell at the end of the workweek and tended to run long. When they included participants from both Earth and Venus, times were selected that worked best for everyone. On Earth, it was the middle of the day in Brazil. On Venus, midevening in Freyja on Ishtar Terra. The meetings were a great way for all parties involved in the running of the massive bureaucracy that was One Gov to talk face-to-face—metaphorically speaking. In reality, we were in our own offices, logged in to a centralized virtual conference room on the Cerebral Neural Net, a massive network that linked every mind in the tri-system of Earth, Mars, and Venus in an electronic collective of information sharing.

The fact I could participate was even more amazing. T-mods were implanted at puberty and grew along with the body. They turned the human brain and nervous system into conduit of information transference and a living link to the CN-net. I’d grown up in a family of free-spirited, unmodified technophobes. My Modified Human Factor was zero. Yet with only two slightly illegal subcutaneous biochip implants I’d begged Alexei for three months ago—one at the base of my skull, the other above my tailbone, and each encased in a nanoglass tube half the size of a grain of rice—I had a taste of what I’d been missing.

A quick time check told me to wrap things up. I referred everyone to my graphs and charts again, summed up the benefits Venus could expect to see in revenue and growth over the next fifty years, then resumed my seat between my grandfather Felipe Vieira on my left and Brody Williams on my right. Felipe patted my arm, pride obvious on his face. Since my t-mods weren’t powerful enough to register a touch so gentle, I barely felt it. Still, it was a nice gesture. Though not everyone seemed pleased with my proposed new direction for Venus, at least I had the support of One Gov’s Under-Secretary behind me. And when Brody flashed me a quick grin to let me know I’d nailed it, I felt even better. Nice to know all that practicing in front of the mirror at home hadn’t been for nothing.

“Those are very interesting and provoking ideas, Ms. Sevigny,” One Gov Secretary Rhys Arkell said, looking at me as if he’d just realized I knew how to speak. “It’s good to see a renewed interest in Venus’s future. And you’re certain those population growth and resource projections are achievable?”

I smiled. Even if I’d pestered Brody to rerun my numbers half a dozen times, Arkell didn’t need to know that. “Of course. If we keep to the plan and there are no unforeseen deviations, Venus will be a self-sustaining powerhouse by the end of the century.”

Arkell nodded and looked impressed from where he sat at the head of the virtual conference table. I’d come to associate him with the Tarot card the Knight of Pentacles: not particularly innovative and a little too conservative for my tastes, but committed to his job. He believed in what One Gov stood for, even if some of its original ideals had gone sideways. He was attractive, but then, who wasn’t? Genetic modifications took care of things so everyone met the same baseline criteria. In his case, dark blue eyes, chestnut brown hair, lean and fit. But Secretary Arkell brought it to another level with an affable expression and a knack for meeting your eyes and nodding with great seriousness whenever you spoke with him. It was like he’d been born with an MH Factor that made him the perfect politician, an everyman who could appeal to everybody. And since Secretary Arkell was the most powerful person in One Gov, his being impressed with my presentation was a good thing.

“I’d like to open up the floor to any discussion or questions people may have,” Felipe said. My eyes flew to him. What? We hadn’t talked about this this. Felipe had said my presentation was meant to introduce the idea of Venus reform, not debate it. Besides, a debate could stretch on forever, and on a purely selfish level, I had plans after work I didn’t want to cancel—not when I’d asked Alexei to rearrange his schedule to mesh with mine.

Members of the Venus delegation were murmuring among themselves. I could see their spokesperson, Adjunct Kian Zingshei, frowning as one of his aides whispered in his ear. Based on my Tarot readings, I’d known they wouldn’t be on board with my proposal, if only out of sheer spite. When I told Felipe my concerns, he assured me he had a plan to handle it. Good to know, but it was also hard to ignore the whispers coming from a third of the people in the room.

Venus seemed to get shit on by everybody in equal measures, and I knew the on-site One Gov management team had a tough assignment. Terraforming hadn’t gone as well there as it had on Mars. While Venus was habitable, it was still hot despite the planetary sunshade. Terraforming had made the major landmasses earthquake-prone, and resources were heavily monitored and rationed due to chronic pipeline disruptions. I’d tried to be tactful and nonconfrontational in my presentation, but also knew fixing Venus meant shoving the solution down their throats.

“Did you have something you wanted to say, Kian?” a voice asked the Venus Adjunct—Tanith. Yes, my grandmother, Tanith Vallaincourt-Vieira. So staggeringly beautiful with her long dark hair and eyes like infinity pools to forever, she could take your breath away. She worked with Secretary Arkell and lived on Earth in Brazil, so we’d never met in real life. Still, we’d interacted on the CN-net enough times for me to know she was a formidable woman who could handle unruly politicians in her sleep.

She was the Queen of Swords in my secret One Gov Tarot deck: organized, intelligent, and if you crossed her, a total bitch who would make your life hell. Felipe, of course, was my King of Cups: calm in a crisis, using diplomacy rather than force to defuse a situation, showing me nothing but love and generosity since the moment I’d met him.

Adjunct Kian Zingshei cleared his throat. He may be the most powerful person on Venus but putting him in charge of anything more complicated than a fruit stand was a bad idea. “I wanted to point out that we can deal with any issues on Venus without external help. The incident a few months ago on Aphrodite Terra was a perfect example of extreme interference. We didn’t need armed troops forcibly removing people from these so-called quake zones. You merely created discontent in the citizens.”

“Those weren’t so-called quake zones,” Tanith answered. “The quakes happened, as predicted. If we’d left things to you, people wouldn’t have been merely discontent. They’d be dead.”

“You’ve requested help before and complained you were ignored. Now we have the resources to give you the aid you need, and you call it interference. I’m not sure what we can do to overcome this,” Felipe said, his tone more placating than his wife’s, which had essentially cut the man in half and left him bleeding out on the ground. It amazed me how his soft Portuguese accent could make even insults sound pretty.

“The relocation isn’t the only incident. Contracts have been pulled from long-term One Gov partners and re-awarded to those we’d rather not do business with,” Kian continued, clearly not realizing he’d bled to death.

“You mean the Tsarist Consortium?” Felipe asked, both his voice and expression neutral. “Is this causing issues for you? Are problems arising because of the change in contract holders?”

Kian looked uncomfortable. Another aide whispered in his ear and he rallied. “We don’t pull contracts mid-term. We don’t disrupt long-standing agreements with those loyal to One Gov. These are partners who embrace One Gov’s ideals and are interested in keeping balance and unity in the tri-system. They aren’t upstart outsiders who undercut market pricing in order to gain business.”

“So you’re saying you’ve lost your kickbacks and bribes, is that it?” Tanith asked.

For a moment, the conference room was silent and Kian’s avatar looked uncomfortable. “What I’m saying is this isn’t how One Gov does business. I’ve yet to understand what benefit Venus can experience in the long run.”

“If you were listening, you would have heard Felicia list them for you,” Felipe interrupted.

Kian ignored him, appealing to Arkell. “The people are upset. That’s what matters. Change for the sake of change is ridiculous, and we on Venus can’t support that. All these decisions have been authorized by your new Attaché—who’s only been on the job a few months. She doesn’t understand how the system operates.”

“And I think she does. I trust Felicia’s decisions,” Felipe said. “She hasn’t made a misstep yet.”

“With ‘yet’ being the operative word,” Kian continued, warming to his topic. “We all know about her connection to the Tsarist Consortium. However, I hadn’t realized that once the true nature of the relationship was revealed, all of One Gov would be getting into bed with the Consortium as well.”

That little shit! I wanted to bolt out of my seat and launch myself at him, protocol be damned. I tried to think of something both cutting and witty to say, but Felipe beat me to it.

“This isn’t the Dark Times,” he said. “The Tsarist Consortium isn’t One Gov’s enemy. They are as invested in maintaining the status quo as the rest of us. I fail to see how this discussion is applicable to the current dialogue.”

“I think it’s very applicable. If Ms. Sevigny is going to make sweeping decisions that overturn years of common practice, I want to know her credentials. She reads Tarot cards, for pity’s sake. Are you telling me we’re putting the future of Venus, or the whole tri-system, in the hands of a…a gypsy fortune-teller?”

I stiffened at the racial slur. That, and the mocking tone that implied my predictions were little more than bullshit and drivel. He could barely hide the fact he saw me as virtual dirt on his virtual shoe.

“If you look at the business cases I filed, you’ll see everything was documented and accounted for,” I said, fighting not to grit my teeth or start swearing at him. “I was open and upfront as to whom I approached. If I awarded contracts to the Consortium, it was because it was the right business decision to make. I stand by everything in those reports.”

“If you’d followed proper procedure, you’d know One Gov doesn’t do business with criminals.” Kian all but snarled the words.

“I followed procedure to the letter, and let me remind you that this gypsy fortune-teller saved hundreds of lives on Aphrodite Terra. Furthermore, there’s nothing on record showing the Tsarist Consortium is involved in criminal activity. They’re not even on the list of banned contractors. With their backing, I increased Venus’s trade flow with Earth and diverted Jupiter’s energy surplus to Venus—energy you needed for the Aphrodite Terra stabilization project. A project One Gov has been trying to get off the ground for the past twenty years, by the way. I had the proper buy-in from all the necessary departments. You had plenty of time to voice disapproval if you didn’t like what was happening.”

“And say no to a directive from the Under-Secretary’s office? I don’t think so,” Kian scoffed.

“She also brought in the Consortium at a lower bid than the previous contract holder. We saved over five hundred billion gold notes, and One Gov’s finally showing a net profit on the Venus expansion since it opened for colonization,” Brody added, because gods knew the fire needed more fuel.

“Felicia’s decisions are sound,” Felipe added. “What she does is for the good of the tri-system. I trust her to be fair and impartial.”

“As do I,” Tanith said, her tone steely as she exchanged a look with Felipe I could only begin to guess at. They’d been married for over fifty Earth years so they were bound to share a few secrets. “I stand behind her Venus proposal and support her wholeheartedly.”

“These changes are making things better for the citizens of the tri-system, so what does it matter who Felicia approaches? The Tsarist Consortium is a legitimate business and political organization. I hardly think they’re going to rise up and crush everything we’ve built in the five hundred years since the Dark Times.” This from Caleb Dekker, part of the Mars team. It was nice to hear something positive from someone not family. New to the group, he’d been on Mars only a few weeks. I hadn’t figured out what Tarot card best represented him.

“And thanks to Felicia, we have an inside track right to the top of the Consortium leadership, so how can that be a bad thing? Nothing like exploiting the competition if it’s for One Gov’s benefit, right?” That bit of stupidity came courtesy of Adjunct Rax Garwood, another member of the Mars contingent. I fought not to blurt something scathing.

Rich, entitled, and with a genetic pedigree that would have horrified my technophobic family, he was involved in pharmaceutical management. He was my Page of Pentacles: utterly in love with himself and showing off, and thrilled to kiss Secretary Arkell’s ass any chance he got. He’d also been one of the many idiots who’d tried to date me after news broke I was Felipe Vieira’s granddaughter. Suitors had crawled out from beneath every overturned rock, as if I were some fairy-tale princess in need of claiming—with Rax being the most persistent of the pack. If Garwood thought he’d get the last word in coming to my rescue, I didn’t want to be saved.

“I’m doing what’s best for the tri-system, and I’ll continue to do that. If you don’t like it, too bad. Get over it,” I said, looking around the table and meeting the gaze of anyone willing to hold mine.

Turned out not many were, and I took satisfaction in seeing Kian flinch. When you’d gone toe-to-toe with a mad-scientist mother who was illegally cloning you or a five-hundred-year-old crime kingpin who just wanted you to die and get the hell out of his way, it tended to put things in perspective.

“I think this is getting out of hand,” Arkell protested, looking first at Adjunct Zingshei, then me, Felipe, Rax, Caleb, and finally to Tanith, as if she were his last resort for restoring order. “Now isn’t the time to debate the merits of Ms. Sevigny’s proposal. Let’s read through the details first, then reconvene once we’ve had time to digest it.”

“You think it’s that simple? Do none of you see the truth?” Kian cried, exasperated. He jabbed a finger in my direction and pounded the virtual tabletop. I didn’t feel the boom to the furniture, but I heard it well enough. “She’s a fortune-teller from a back alley in Nairobi! She barely completed Career Design. She’s practically a nonperson by One Gov standards, and according to the records she was on blacklisted status for most of her adult life. There’s even something in her record about spending time in prison for a fertility clinic attack back on Earth. And this is who One Gov pins its hopes on? Am I the only one not taken in by this con artist?”

Con artist? If he wanted a con artist, I had a whole family full of spooks and grifters he could poke at. Only Felipe’s arm stretched out in front of me like some kind of restraint belt kept me from jumping out of my seat.

“Your behavior is inappropriate, Adjunct Zingshei,” he said, voice cold. “This isn’t the forum for this sort of outburst and I won’t have you say another word against a member of my staff.” He exchanged another look with Tanith, who nodded. Then, “Clean your desk out now and be prepared to be escorted off One Gov premises within the hour. One Gov no longer needs your services. Your permissions and access rights have been revoked. I’m sorry to see you go, but your attitude is not aligned with One Gov’s policies.”

And just like that, Kian Zingshei’s avatar winked out of the meeting, leaving an empty space at the table. I stared, shocked. Even Secretary Arkell looked surprised.

“Felipe, was that necessary?”

Felipe met the Secretary’s gaze. “Kian is a dinosaur, resistant to change. This is our future and I plan to embrace it.”

Everyone fell silent. Arkell’s eyes widened. “But is this the beginning of the Consortium swallowing One Gov? Does our downfall start here?”

“You know I’ve always worked for the good of One Gov, Rhys,” Felipe said. “I won’t see it undermined or destroyed, and if involving the Consortium ensures its survival, then I accept that.”

Arkell’s gaze shifted from Felipe to me. “Is there anything you’d like to add, Ms. Sevigny?” he asked. “You’re closest to Alexei Petriv. Surely you know what the Consortium is planning.”

Holy shit. For a moment, words failed me before my brain could cobble something together. “I can assure you, Secretary Arkell, Alexei is content with the status quo” was the best I could manage.

“And what about you then?” he pressed. “Where do your feelings lie with regards to salvaging Venus? Do you feel the same loyalty to One Gov the rest of your family shares? Perhaps you’d be a better choice for Adjunct than Kian, given your passion for Venus.”

Felipe’s hand rested on my arm, urging me to keep quiet. Fine by me. Only an idiot would open her mouth now and fall into whatever verbal trap Arkell might be setting.

“This isn’t the time or place to air our dirty laundry, Rhys. I suggest we table Venus for a later date.”

For several moments, Arkell and my grandfather regarded each other across the conference room table. No one said a word. Then Tanith leaned in, murmured something in Arkell’s ear, and he laughed. “It looks like you win this round, Felipe,” he said. “As you say, we’ll discuss it later. Perhaps Felicia is the Adjunct we need. And don’t think I’ve missed the irony here—maybe we need a woman’s hand guiding Venus after all. I look forward to the next progress meeting. For now, let’s call it a day, shall we?” Secretary Arkell winked out of sight and logged out of the conference room.

And now I was at my second mental “holy shit” of the meeting. Me, Adjunct of Venus? Arkell couldn’t be serious, could he? I didn’t want to be Adjunct of anything. I certainly hadn’t seen this in the Tarot cards. If I had, I would have raised my hand to protest.

I turned to Felipe, about to demand answers. He arched an eyebrow and winked at me.

“Looks like we’ve removed the opposition and cleared the way for progress. Venus is ours for the taking. Good work. We’ll catch up in two sols on Jovisol and discuss our next steps.”

Then, like Secretary Arkell, he vanished from sight.

I sat there, opened-mouthed. I had to wait until Monday, or rather, Jovisol to clear this up? What the hell? While I couldn’t be sure of it—not yet anyway—it looked like Felipe and Tanith had just set up Alexei and me as the boogeymen to screw over their enemies.