Chapter 148: Chapter 142

I honestly kinda hated the church TV interviews. The latest had gone fine until the first break. I had fended off Dearth’s accusations and made them look like incompetent whiners again, and the church representative appeared cowed into submission.

But then the host had brought out the Kraken Corporation representative to answer Dearth’s accusations of planetary theft, whatever that meant. They were escorted on set by a handler in headphones.

I became quiet the moment I saw her, a blonde human woman who appeared to be in her early thirties. She wore a pin-striped business suit, as was the current fashion in BuyMort for those who wished to appear important. Her hair was held up in a bun with a set of metal chopsticks, she wore cat-eye glasses, and appeared to have a long, thin tentacle sticking out of the back of her neck.

The tentacle vanished into a BuyMort portal beam, which had been set to private so no one could see the other side. It was an option, once you got into using portals as a service. Cost extra, of course, but Kraken Corp was able to afford the extravagance, being the ninth ranked affiliate in the BuyMort system.

“Hello,” she said. “This one’s name is Rebecca Montaigne, and she’ll be representing Kraken Corp tonight. It is so good to meet everyone.”

The strange woman went to each seat at the table and offered to shake hands. Everyone but me responded with a hand shake. When she approached me, I simply stared at first her extended hand, and then her face. The tentacle at her neck pulsed and her expression flickered.

It was momentary, but one of her eyes drooped, along with the musculature on that side of her face, before jerking back into position.

“Ah well, can’t win everyone’s hearts, this one supposes,” Rebecca said. “Not that it matters.” She sat in her seat at my side, and I turned to stare at the tentacle, taking several photos for Axle and Lee. Rebecca turned her head to smile at me, and her expression went from one of mock sorrow to one of coy flirtation instantly.

She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear and smiled. “You can just ask, you don’t have to stare,” she said.

“What are you?” I asked to the amusement of the gathered representatives. The Dearth delf in particular enjoyed a hearty chuckle at my expense.

“This one is a Nu-Earth human, recently employed by Kraken Corp to represent us in public matters on the Nu-Earth market,” she said. Her left eye started to droop again but caught itself part way down and she smiled wide and blinked rapidly.

Studio staff got our attention and started counting down as the studio’s feed came back from break. The Nah’Gh host, Shalla, picked up a stack of papers and began leveling them against the glass desk as we came back. She smiled vapidly at me and turned in her seat to the camera, jutting her modest cleavage at our audience. The papers were all blank.

“Welcome back, smart shoppers. Joining us now to answer accusations of planetary theft is the number nine affiliate in all of BuyMort, Kraken Corp! Their representative, Mrs. Rebecca Montaigne, is of Nu-Earth origin and chose employment with Kraken Corp only recently, is that right?”

“Ah, ha-ha, yes, you got us. She’s a new hire, specialist, of course. We needed someone who Nu-Earthers would relate to; really feel comfortable talking to. And it’s Ms,” Ms. Montaigne replied, coyly glancing my way.

Rebecca, Kraken, whatever it was sitting in that chair with a tentacle jutting from the back of her neck, smiled and blushed before continuing.

“Mr. Montaigne unfortunately decided against taking Kraken Corps generous offer of employment, and we had to end their marriage in order to move forward with our own union. On the plus side, we’re all very excited to start dating as a Nu-Earth human,” she said.

I shuddered, visibly, and Ms. Montaigne’s plastic smile faltered momentarily.

“Anyway,” she said. “We refute the claims of planetary ownership from the Dearth Conglomerate, of course. Owning a planet is not so simple as Dearth claims, and the methodology employed by Kraken Corp has a proven track record of market dominance.”

She put out her hand and jerkily inspected a nail. It was horrific to watch. The motion was a natural one, yet the way it was carried out suggested attempted non-compliance on the part of the woman.

“How do you think we rose to rank nine so quickly? We at Kraken Corp would love to help educate Dearth on what owning a planet actually entails, but the first step is a uniform MortBlock, as I’m sure we all know. Did our activities disrupt a uniform MortBlock for Nu-Earth? No, so calling what we did theft is just a little ridiculous, in our humble opinion.”

Shalla fanned at her neckline and sat back in her seat. “Ooh, this studio is heating up,” she joked.

“All from a little continental land-grab? Top tens, am I right?” The Nah’Gh woman asked, sticking out her arms wide, palms up, smiling ridiculously wide at the camera.

I slammed a fist on the table, cracking it. “What the hell are we talking about here? Uniform MortBlocks? Nu-Earth has people on it. How many died in the earthquakes and tsunamis your affiliate unleashed?”

I was angry. It had finally clicked. This thing had somehow caused the massive earthquakes and tsunamis that had recently devastated the planet.

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For a land grab.

“We don’t even know the death toll, the devastation is so wide-spread,” I said, calmer.

“How many people died in your little adventure to take Prescott?” Rebecca asked calmly. She crossed her legs and swiveled to face me. “Or because of your affiliate’s activities in Storage? Is the council here even aware that Silken Sands was built primarily using goblin slave labor? I’ll take my ethics advice from warlords with a grain of salt, as we Nu-Earthers say.”

I was grateful for the helmet. It hid my face and gave me an extra moment to respond.

“It was the former owner who opened that contract, before I assumed management,” I carefully lied.

“Yes, and let’s take a look at that, shall we? The one military failure your hobbs display is to lose their own leader to a simple dream storm? Suspicious at best, I think the audience at home would agree,” the thing wearing Rebecca said.

Dearth’s representative merely smiled, his red eyes shining as he watched me for any hint of reaction.

“Why don’t you break some more of the studio’s equipment? Show us all just how violent you can be, Tyson Dawes.”

Kraken’s scathing rebuttal complete, the tentacle twitched again, and Rebecca suddenly straightened her back.

“Besides, that entire continent was undeveloped. All Dearth had done was plant a few flags, there was no work put in. No liquidity lost.”

My fists clenched, but I didn’t break anything else.

Undeveloped she said. A whole pasta-damned continent. With cities chock full of people. Axle had been scouting the areas for rescue ops, using Earth's satellite network. I knew there were still millions of people on those land masses.

I mean, yeah, sure, some of them probably qualified as dick-head brutes, oppressing those around them for morties. But even they deserved to be recognized as what they were. Thinking, living beings.

I cleared my mind. This was just a trick, an attempt to get me to show my feelings. She, it, whatever this thing wearing a woman in front of me was, it had me dead to rights. Playing my game the same way I played it, ignoring my own faults and twisting the facts about my opponents. And that last little bit, that was just a match meant to light my fuse.

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I knew enough to flick away the ad without moving. Any movement at that moment would have looked like a nervous reaction on my part, and a side-eye glimpse at the Dearth representative showed me that he’d done something to get an ad sent to me at that moment.

It was all a part of the fucking BuyMort rat race.

I collected my thoughts. I had to assume Kraken Corporation didn’t know that I had personally killed Mr. Sada. It was just a barb designed to put me off balance. It had to be. I took a breath and let it out, as Shalla, our host, stared at me for a response.

“You insult BlueCleave at your own risk, Ms. Montaigne. They have quite the following in BuyMort these days. The dreamstorm you so casually reference crushed my friend’s home. Not as simple as you may like to make it sound. Mr. Sada was a complicated man, haunted even. He caused his own death,” I said, sitting back, and tapping his bull’s head ring on the cracked table’s edge.

“Suspect that all you like.”

The segment moved forward without any further outbursts from me, and I slipped away the moment I was able to.

Dearth hosted the church’s little tv show on their station in high orbit over Nu-Earth. It was in synchronous orbit, connected to the other end of my space elevator. I was not allowed anywhere but the church studio, so when my time on the segment was over, I walked off set and through a BuyMort beam home to Silken Sands.

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