2024-11-26: A Seat at the Table
- Log: 2024-11-26: A Seat at the Table
- Cast: Ada Legatum Luckwright
- Where: Neo-America Senate Office
- Date: U.C. 0099 11 26
- Summary: Following the sale made in New name. New formula, the business partners who made Senator Luckwright's new venture possible gather around a vision of the future.
A meeting of the minds in Senator Luckwright's conservatively decorated state office, overlooking the brick and concrete of Neo-America's Art Deco spires. She sits in an authentic leather chair in an antique style imported from the Britannian Union. A tablet laid out on her mahogany desk projects holographic copies of recent documents and invoices besides a live stock ticker. Beside it, on a filigreed bronzed coaster, a large cup of take-out coffee. Across that desk, two important business partners.
"Not just Colonel Ashcroft. All of them couldn't wait to sign. We sold out instantly. They'd have bought our internal cadre of units if we put them for sale." Senator Luckwright. Platinum blonde hair and a wide-shouldered suit. String puller in the Orbital Ring and de facto owner of Foresight Armaments.
"Congratulations, Ada. Foresight's finally graduating from bulk supplier to cutting edge designer." Locke Chesterbrowne. Jowls, a bushy mustache, and too much dignity to wear a wig. Britannian old money.
"We could have gotten here years ago if you'd introduced me to your associate sooner. Be honest with me, Locke. If you wanted to buy in you would have been welcome any time. Why now?"
"I'm not 'his associate.' He's mine." Mirele Millarey. Black hair that hangs like a shroud. Eyes tired of what she has seen. A long, heavy coat with the hood down. Contracted lead robotics engineer. Designer of the Myrmex-2 Engine. "I take the work when it's the right time, and it wasn't the right time. Now it is. When I'm done with ANTLION I'll be moving on."
"Interests are aligning, Ada." Chesterbrowne. "You know that us old boys have to be discreet."
"Of course," the senator says, wrinkling her nose subtly. She's too used to the old boys.
"But these Myrmex-2 units. This is the time for them. You were right: the times call for special operations. Good times are ahead, if we can just... surgically extract some problems. The people I talk to are impressed."
"And when do I get to talk to these people, Locke? These people you've never mentioned to me before."
"Soon. You have to keep in mind, Ada, I don't call the shots here. But I've been telling them. You're one of us. You're our people."
"And I want a seat at the table."
Millarey glances over the office, disinterested in the talk of access. A skim of the senator's belongings is enough to sketch out a picture of her life. It's a picture she's seen many times before in many people she's worked with. Widow, though. And the late husband wasn't much for social climbing.
Luckwright and Chesterbrowne are talking about those special operations in words written between lines. Luckwright's husband's work had been a good foundation to build on, but he clearly couldn't hear the whispers. It was missing so much. Now, the Myrmex-2 Engine is a poor substitute for a proper Lambda Driver, but cheaper to reproduce, and much easier for a pilot to acclimate to.
The state buys the units, dazzled by the superficials. The state buys in such number that plenty can disappear in the supply channels. Throw disposable pilots in them. Strike every weak point until you're the only strong one standing. That's what they mean by "special operations." A unit designed for lightning insertion strikes is a unit designed for terror. The senator must have known what she was doing when she outfitted the machine. She even painted the Myrmex fighter mirrorshade chrome to obscure visibility.
The senator thinks she's going to get a seat at the table, as if even Chesterbrowne has one. Millarey is the one who's going to have a real seat at the table. Myrmex-2 is good, but ANTLION will be better.
It's going to be ANTLION that gets her that seat at Amalgam's table.