Consortium 1-4: The Gathering Storm- Chapter 4
#34 of Consortium
Okay, one thing I feel I should make a point of talking about now that has always been the case but would only cause confusion now. And that is one hour on the station is not the same amount of time as an hour on Earth. It just isn't at all practical. There is no galactic standard time. Instead, every location sets the rate of time on whatever is most convenient for them. And since everything is always be translated and changing between time places is just a matter of adjusting values, no one gives it any thought. In fact most watches and translation orbs automatically download the conversion rate to the new location whenever they enter something new. Foznetal is in geosynchronous orbit around a planet, so what works for them is 1 day = one rotation around the planet and one year is one revolution of that planet around its sun. One day on Foznetal, then, is just over 26 hours on Earth. And since they could pick whatever units they wanted, Foznetal works on 20 hours = 1 day, 100 minutes = 1 hour, 100 seconds = 1 minute. Which would mean for conversions: 1 day = 1.1 Earth days, 1 hour = 1.3 earth hours, 1 minute = 0.8 earth minutes. 1 second = .48 earth seconds
Another really nice thing for this story is that because it is such a long story, that I can actually spend time to give focus to characters that wouldn't really have had much time to be anything more than a background character. That as you get used to the characters you know I can introduce and bring focus to more and more without overwhelming the reader by making them keep track of learning so many at once.
Carol sits at her desk and sips a bit of her coffee. She never really considered herself all that much of a morning person, but it came with the job and it's not like she had to really be up this early. In all fairness she could very easily sleep in for a few more hours, get a good six hours of sleep, but she had always felt it was best if she was aware of what things were going on. Typically, she'd go through the morning routine with all of her primary subordinates, make sure everything is going smoothly and then go and take a nap in her office. If anyone needed anything she'd wake up and take care of it. And then once she's had a bit more sleep check up on things and periodically head out for breaks and see how things are looking on the station. She'll come back and stay until they switch over to the garbage hours of the night around 18 o'clock, go home, eat and then wake up four hours later at two, do her hour in the pod and then is back here by three to do it all again.
"The main story we need to at least address in every segment is the hourglass eclipse," Carol says to the subordinates. "There is no real major story going on thankfully. There is no breaking station-wide news but I would not consider this to be the ultimate story that must be broadcast to everyone. Many people didn't know about it and would like to see a clip of it as they go about their day, but ultimately don't really care beyond that."
"What do you want us to do about the human ships returning?" Derrik, a gryphon asks as he goes about trying to trying to soften up a bit of jerky before trying to eat it. Carol could never understand his fascination with jerky when he can't chew anything but Derrik always said he liked the taste and the extra effort was worth it.
"Well for the human sector make a note of it and welcome the new politicians back onto the station. But elections are things that happen. The other sectors don't really need to have all that much focus put onto it. Especially when there is almost no ceremony given to when any of the other politicians exchange their members. I'd really rather not make it a thing where it becomes common practice for everyone to recall everyone and bring them all back at the same time as a show of force. And that is not what the station needs to deal with on a regular basis, especially since you know the Raeshael will just constantly hold elections after each other to see who can cause the biggest news story."
"So," Angel begins looking down at her data pad, "on the Jereshii sector there is a major opera singer flying in today. She's scheduled to have an interview with the Jhereshii sector head reporter in a few hours and then give a performance later tonight on their ship. HeadRep wants to know whether or not we are planning on having that interview shown outside the Jhereshii sector."
Carol thinks on this a moment, buying some time by taking another sip of her coffee. "Give him the go ahead to make the interview as personal as the Jhereshii people will want. Make it clear to both the singer and HeadRep that they should do a scan of their evo suit and that the entire interview will be sent over to the head delegate for the Jhereshii people. He will have an hour to review and remove any content that he doesn't want the other races to see and then we'll broadcast his approved interview. We will be sure to have all the sectors remark on the presence of the singer on the station and how they may be able to get tickets if they were interested in buying a ticket to see her sing. That should be a satisfying enough answer to all parties involved. Anything else?"
"Actually, yes," Derrik says before pulling out a data pad and handing it over. It's somewhat odd for him to hand over a specific data pad instead of just tell her of the story. As she looks it over it seems to be some sort of contract. She looks up at him curiously. "The showrunners of Star Races want to make our station one of their stops in their upcoming season. They'll obviously need for us to make a few events for them on what we feel encapsulates the station as well as a race course for the final leg of their stop. Naturally they will be paying the standard fare for the trip. And they're going to need Council signatures to sign off on it and guarantees for their protection."
Carol takes it and skims through it a bit. She isn't really too well versed in legal contracts. They'll run it through their legal department and cross-reference it against the laws of the place of origin. "I'll make sure to go run this up to the Council for approval. It should be fine to give them the go ahead. I can't imagine something like this being something the Council would say no to. They're usually pretty decent about things. I'm sure they'll also want to try and skirt as many of the customs procedures as possible, but some of the things are going to be non-negotiable. Like the chip. It should be okay if they're chipped on the trip over but I know having a chip is something they'll just have to accept. Go ahead and begin floating it to our counterparts in the other sectors, see what ideas they'll have about what events to have. The biggest, by far, feature for this station is that it is the only place you can encounter all the major factions in this portion of the galaxy except for the Consortium. If we want to showcase what makes us us, it should have something to do with that."
Carol looks down at her own data pad as it makes a noise saying someone is sending a message to her. She opens it up and glances at it before rolling her eyes. One of the Raeshael asking for permission to run a hit piece on one of the other factions. There is almost never a single day when she doesn't get at least something from one of them every day. She goes over to her files for pre-scripted responses and sends back the standard response to any Raeshael request, that per their instructions, any story run by one must be also approved by the other two. Carol settles things up on finishing any instructions for her subordinates and then dismisses them, beginning to go over all of the stories that the various sides want to be shown and what were the responses to their stories in the previous day. Thankfully, today was looking to be a quiet day for the news and nothing special needed her attention.
Kinou was on his way to a new station. He wasn't able to find anyone on that station that approached him or was involved in the attacks on the station, which is unfortunate. But he was able to get something of use, albeit almost accidentally. While he was on one of his tirades he managed to overhear something very interesting. He had found a couple of somewhat dissatisfied humans that were going out of their way to avoid anywhere the Language of Intent was being in use. But while he was shouting off drunkenly in a bar to everyone that would listen without bothering to let his orb translate things to anyone else he let his orb translate what they were saying into an earpiece. They weren't even talking about him the slightest bit, but rather about moving expenses around. And looking more into their own information he was able to find that there indeed has been a lot of money being moved around lately. Huge sums of money. Only reason he hadn't noticed it before is that it isn't being done in the normal way and wasn't being reported to the station. They weren't transporting actual currency, but rather currency surrogates. Moving several hundred thousand from one station to another would have attracted a lot of attention. But transferring debt is normal, and moving dozens of paintings and other expensive statues and artifacts would not have garnered much attention if he hadn't learned of it through them. This was a station that most of these artifacts and paintings were being sent to and then sold to individuals that wanted them, supposedly. And most of these artifacts and paintings were coming from another station well into the heart of human territory. But it is the best lead he's been able to get from this location and sends a coded message to the others about where he's going next. None of the others have had anything to say. So either they've all been caught or none of them have found anything worth reporting. Something this important will come with the risk that not all of his unit will ever return to the station.
But this is a promising lead and he's going to take this opportunity to see where it leads. He also had sent a message ahead to the next station asking for an interview with the person that seemed to be where all the money was being funneled into. And then Kinou went and entered into the earliest convenient ship heading for this new station and sat down in his seat. The personality he had been using would certainly not work on this new station, that's for sure. There's no way that an ordinary disgruntled human would make a line straight towards where the money is going. He spends a good portion of his trip trying to decide what persona to use. Picking characters is always a challenging proposition. Go too aggressive and it's prone to backfire. Go to meek and they'll think you aren't interested. One has to find out what kind of person they want to meet and give them almost that. Too perfect and they'd grow suspicious.
And of course, he understands that this course of action is drastically increasing the amount of risk. This is a deliberate act of going from one station directly to them and even garnering an interview with some of the people at that station. He has no way of knowing just how much control the group has over the station or to what ends will they act. They may trust him and let him into their organization at the lowest level. They may try and oust him and force him or capture him. They may even go so far as to just destroy his ship en route, though he would consider that option extremely unlikely. But it's a risk he's willing to take. He's confident enough in his skills to get him through this.
He stares at the semblance of a window and considers. It isn't a real window. There'd be nothing to see, but it'll do the job of making people feel more at ease. He needs an identity to be able let him move around without having any real need for having too thorough scrutiny. Being a member of the press is out. Too strange for him to make such a large trip. He figures ex-military might be able to fly. His chosen form isn't too young for military service, though it would look a bit too difficult for him to be in there for long. Perhaps someone who only did one term and dropped out for being dissatisfied with the way things are going. It's tricky and prone to a lot of flaws but it'll be the best chance he's got.