Honor of the Fallen

Chapter 3

Yesterday Afternoon:

"Alright, what do you want to do first? Today we have stacks of fun, personal signatures on volumes of paperwork, or unit strengths and status reports, or intelligence estimates, or profit and loss statements, or subordinate corporation 'issues'?"

"Oh, gee, thanks Thomys... you make it all sound so appetizing."

"I'm all about cherries and whipped cream on top of these bastards, you know that."

Phyllip Chroynos, CEO, Chairman of the Board of Directors for the Chroynos Mega-Corporation and Emperor of the Chroynos Stellar Hegemony grunted at his Senior Vice-President and Chief Operating Officer, "What would your little lady say if she knew you talked like that?"

"Never happens for two reasons. First, I am careful enough to watch my language in front of her and the girls. Second, mine doesn't care if I do. She knows I'm a big boy and unlike Celine, she doesn't have a troglodyte barbarian and foul mouthed old soldier to tame."

"I'm not a troglodyte..."

Before his friend could finish collecting thoughts to finish the retort Thomys cut him off, "Yes you are." Thomys adjusted the stack of hard copy folders on his lap. His leather shoes and silk wool blend slacks, supported by the massive desk. "You are the Chief Executive Officer, Director of the Board, single largest equity holder, and I might add debt holder, in the Chroynos Stellar Hegemony Power and Utilities Holding Corporation. Thanks to the devious maneuverings of your grandfather and his hostile takeover expertise and steadfast consolidation efforts of your father, we control an Empire too. You also just happen to control the entire block of voting stock for the holding company that control our Military Corporations that secures our interests on, what is it now, on fourteen hundred, residential, agricultural, resource and industrial solar systems?"

"Fourteen hundred and seventy three," Phyllip corrected in a grumble. His own feet were up on his desk too. Since he was facing the same direction Thomys was he could watch the traffic, occasional light lift transport and freight tenders, flitter past the enormous window in his office, like they were so many insects.

Thomys grumbled as he tossed a folder over the expanse of the desk, "Some days I don't even know why you keep me around, with a memory like that."

As the folder slid past the pitcher of water, into his lap, Phyllip's hand swatted down on the top of the moving folder. He hadn't looked away from the window, but still caught it before its contents could spill onto his lap and the floor. "I do it to piss you off."

Thomys steadied the stack of folders in his lap. "Thanks. Some friend you are."

"I live to please." Phyllip easily squared the folder on his desk without really looking at it.

"No you don't. You live to t*****e me."

"Oh please..." Phyllip rolled his eyes before he continued, "you would be a... I don't know... lemonade vendor if you didn't work with me."

"Go to hell. I hate this job and you know it. Besides, I would be the best lemonade vendor on the planet; I'd buy you out, and set you to work in a cute little apron and frilly white hat, selling in the deepest darkest hole I could find on this planet."

"Right..." Phyllip replied sarcastically, "you would still need to pay your electric bills to me, and I'd charge you extra. I'd call it a jerk tax."

"See, you are a troglodyte barbarian. No manners at all, inconsiderate to the point or rude, and not even a comm in your pocket. I can't believe you made it this far in life without even a terminal in your office! You are the definition of a troglodyte."

"I don't like them." Phyllip toyed with the folder in his right hand, as he watched traffic passing his window.

"I don't care if you don't like them. You are still a troglodyte barbarian, and you just admitted it in your own words."

Phyllip grunted as his fingers played over the folder snapping the edges of its pages together like a deck of cards. He didn't even have to look; he knew what he had under his hand. "Why in Hades name did you give me this stack of crap to sign?"

"I picked it for several reasons. First, it has been piling up in your box for the last five weeks. You never pick it up. It kept magically sliding off the top of the pile while everything under it was moving. It even 'fell out' when I tried to hide it in stacks of other stuff. It was starting to grow roots. Second, you are the only person who can sign the certificates and since you refuse auto-signature, you're stuck with the job. Third, they graduate Friday next. I need to courier the packet to the Guardsmen Academy and Line Officer graduations as is... so get your pen out 'Phyllip Chroynos'. You don't get to leave no matter what is bothering you today, until those are all signed, and returned to my sweaty little hand."

"How do you know something's on my mind?"

Thomys began with a frustrated sigh. "Phyllip, we have been friends for three decades. I was the best man at your wedding. And you were mine. We fought on twelve different worlds together..."

Phyllip interrupted, "Eleven, you were late on that one and you know it. We have had this discussion a thousand times before."

"Shut the hell up and let me finish." Phyllip stopped talking, without even a grumble and kept staring out the window, while Thomys continued. "And in all those years you have never once been able to bluff me out of a hand of poker."

Phyllip's eyes snapped to narrow slits as his attention was drawn to bore into his friend. His losses at cards were a major raw spot for the Empire's CEO.

Thomys took the opportunity to press his advantage, "I never bothered saving for the girls schooling because I knew I could just take your money at the poker table. If you lose two or three more times at poker, all three of my babies will attend school on the credits I've squeezed out of you. I'll have the hat-trick. I know when something is running through that head of yours. What is it?"

Phyllip took one last look out the window at the crystal domes of the buildings that ran as far as he could see to the horizon. The clouds and air vehicles flowed between the massive structures like water between rocks.

From his vantage point at the top of the highest structure on the planet, he could see over most other buildings to the clouds that would probably mean rain for the evening. They looked like they were hanging at his eye level.

This planet was one of the rare gems that maintained a perfect climate, Earth normal gravity and a stable orbit that allowed the Earth based Terraforming Commission to authorize full 'Earth style' terraforming. That package allowed transplantation of every species of life native to Earth, from simple grass, through bugs, and live stock, to trees, to 'once-upon-a-time' extinct large sea life like the Blue Whales. Now all these species thrived on tens of thousands of pristine blue and green human manufactured worlds.

The near perfect twenty four hour, and a few seconds remainder, planet rotation created a 'day' that was perfect for humanity's biorhythms.

Combine the stable orbit, perfect rotation 'time', excellent terraforming results, and the world was valuable to ever expanding humanity beyond any credit calculation. That was why it had eventually become the capital world of an empire. Chroynos had not settled this world but through shrewd acquisitions over the two hundred years prior, to Phyllip's father's birth, the conglomerate had gained control and never let go.

The world was not entirely covered in 'city'. But this particular city was so large it appeared to run off into the horizon in every direction. Several hundred years before, when it was a relatively new colony, settlement had started on seven cities within a reasonable traveling distance to the planet's space port. Over the decades the cities had grown until they eventually merged into the current mega city.

The outlying land was mostly controlled by tourist corporations and the massive farming groups. Since the arrival and departure of interstellar freight was regulated and still arrived in the same area as the original space port 'urban sprawl' was prevented by competing economic forces. The early industrial magnates wanted the shortest supply lines to their markets and supplies. The developers between the urban and outside land holders, wanted to protect the value of their investments. They did this two ways. First by not over developing and decreasing market rates through quiet gentleman's agreements among the oldest land owning families on the planet. Second by keeping the urban sprawl out of sight of their resorts by owning everything between their resorts, and along the horizon. It was a massive capital investment but deemed 'worth it' to keep the city's residential, commercial and industrial towers and space traffic out of sight.

Since there were no formal property taxes, holding the land indefinitely while its value perpetually increased was a sensible investment.

The end result was that the resorts were fantastically expensive, because 'vacationing' on a capital world was such a rarity. The majority of the population spent most of their lives in a city that was so large it 'seemed' like it covered the whole planet. Because it had been like that for so long most of the population 'just assumed' that the whole world was a city. A citizen could live their whole life and never have to leave the building where their apartment was located; everything they needed was available in the building where they lived.

That same population, combined with the heat from industry, 'breathed out' so much warmth, moisture, and carbon dioxide that the city itself was always shrouded in fog at the lower levels. The sun never penetrated long enough to evaporate all the gathered moisture. Then the addition of that much carbon dioxide to the atmosphere meant that the 'green spaces' grew so fast that the forests were lush and rapidly expanding, as they devoured the carbon dioxide and converted it into biomass material.

Phyllip grumbled and kicked his feet off the desk to the floor, while flipping the top cover of the folder open. The pen he had tried so desperately to forget, found his hand and it started moving down the top page. He read it quickly, he had seen thousands of these files, and stated "Honor Graduates on the top as usual I see."

Thomys nodded once. The confirmation was unneeded. The commissioning documents were always ordered like that. Phyllip ripped his signature into the top document, flipped to the next page, and ripped the next signature. This quarter's commissioning cycle had only five hundred new officers. But each was represented by a beautifully carved Certificate of Commission.

Phyllip read all of the Honor Graduate Commissions, that top ten percent represented the most qualified officers and he liked to be familiar with their names. He didn't remember them all, but it never hurt to try, and he did.

Phyllip signed as Thomys watched and shuffled several thick folders, in his lap.

The last four hundred fifty moved as quickly as the first fifty.

Phyllip tried to slam the folder closed but it just drifted softly into place without a sound. He palmed the documents and slid them back across his desk to Thomys. Neither action satisfied his frustration, so once his feet were comfortably back on top of the desk, he threw his expensive pen across the room at the window. It made a very satisfying clattering whack on the window, ten meters away, before falling silent to the thick carpet.

Phyllip's nose wrinkled as he sneered at the unsatisfying conclusion. Thomys interrupted his foul mood, "Ah, so that's why you're being such an a*s today." He pulled the certificates off the desk and slipped them perpendicular under his stack. He pulled on one of the bottom folders and glanced at the cover before pushing it across the desk to Phyllip. "I guess that explains why you didn't want to sign the things this quarter or last."