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Leandro felt another spike of cold but kept his reaction to himself. "Yes, sir."
Seeing a gesture of dismissal, Leandro nodded and left the room immediately without visible haste.
As he rode the elevator down to the basement where his limo waited, he brooded over their main roadblock. Leandro had Jack Danner's past thoroughly excavated from every public database and several private ones as well. The investigators went the extra mile to track down audio recordings of his dinner-side chats with his Shreen friends. Leandro also asked for information on Jack's parents. What he'd read in the resulting files didn't make him feel confident about their success.
It all lined up with Jack's explicitly honest response to him about why he wouldn't support their request. His family had suffered during the Oligarch's Reign, and his parents were victims of it.
It took his mind back to his own childhood, as he was roughly the same age as Jack. Leandro shared Jack's idealistic view for a brief shining moment in his youth until his father beat it out of him.
With a domineering corporate lawyer father and a self-absorbed socialite mother, both of whom thrived in the shadows of the rich and powerful, Leandro found his destiny was already set for him.
He put his clever mind to the challenge of carving his own path. He achieved his goal of becoming top tier corporate legal council, exceeding his father's position by a significant margin. When he attracted the attention of Qiang, he accepted the transfer to the new corporate master. As his first assignment, he annihilated the company his father worked for and got to watch his parents slide into obscurity.
Leandro knew from the first day he stepped into the courtroom and faced his father that this was just a loyalty test from Qiang, who had no other interest in a company they eventually stripped of its resources.
From that day, Leandro hadn't looked back. He'd been certain he'd reached as close to the pinnacle of power as he would get.
While the Oligarch's Reign was over, many of the obscenely wealthy continued to thrive. While they no longer had direct control of Earth's governing body (tied up as it was in the checks and balances designed to avoid a reoccurrence), they hungered for it.
Leandro was the one who brought the Ishilon's power systems to the attention of Qiang. Describing a storage cell small enough to be contained in a Tik's body that held enough energy to atomize several blocks worth of a city's core caught his attention in a big way. The executive was convinced that there would be a significant power shift if he and the other clients could obtain exclusive rights to these power cells on Earth.
Except Danner wouldn't allow that to happen.
Leandro knew Qiang didn't accept no as an answer, and the man scared the piss out of him.
Jack's dismissive phrase about rocking little boats returned to Leandro's mind. He struggled to imagine Qiang as the captain of anything less than the deadliest destroyer on the sea.
But out there in the dark unknown? Maybe there was something larger.
- COMMENTS
prsstarid17 days agoAfter reading this story again and after reading the Walking The Endless Path Trilogy, this line from page 30 of Jack's Moonlighting Part 2 makes me wonder about what the next installment might be about.
"But the question of how Danner defeated their fixers flared their paranoia with an intensity they'd only ever felt once before."
So what is the once before? Could it possibly be Joseph Neumann? The Vis seem to be similar to the Kel-Fahr in their psychic hive mind abilities. Will Joseph Neumann be returning to the story to permanently deal with the Vis like he did with the Kel-Fahr?
Grenville McKree seems to have an extended life so it is possible that Joseph Neumann could too. Based on the symbiot that was forced on Joseph and also resided in the Kel-Fahr, it gave them extended life. Like into the thousands of years it sounded, so Joseph Neumann could still be around somewhere.
Grenville most likely is currently on Fahrchar and we know the Tik have a directive to never bring non-Kel-Fahr to Fahrchar. It's part of their core programing. So that explains their refusal to help Jack.
I have to think that Jack and Grenville are somehow distantly related to Joseph Neumann.
Anonymousabout 2 months agoFor the user who asked about why earth hasn’t been kicked out of the fate network, you’re forgetting that you’re reading the story as an observer, not as the tik. So you wouldn’t know about these ominous forces on earth pulling strings for assassins. It isn’t until this book that the tik has tightened down on restricting gate access (because they had been basically pushed aside due to the yis manipulating everyone).
Also the world that Jack was on was the world that Joseph Neumann was on when he destroyed the evil villain in the 3rd book in his series. I would assume the tik “erased it” from their files because of the crap they tried (and were) pulling in regards to destroying planets and such. They didn’t have the upgrades tik gates (they had black gates) and I’m assuming either the remaining creatures on the world are some sort of AI that was left in charge when the sentient species was wiped out by Nuemanns psychic attack. Hence the “I can’t seem to do that” comments implying it can’t perform certain functions without approval
Anonymousabout 2 months agoByzantine. Power struggles and Intrigue that are historical webs of conflicting empires and the ruling families, conspiracies and dysfunctional machavillian oligarchs. What a miasma of fantasy projected from cruel real world consumption. Yet a strong character that has family values, superior intelligence, compassion, amiable, and devoted friends and polyamory harem. As virile as Ambassador Benjamin Franklin's Di(ck)plomacy?
BarryAllen8882 months agoI need to preface this comment: I haven’t read any of the stories/chapters yet; however, could you retitle your Jack stories as chapters? Admittedly it’s easier to continue reading when there is a “next chapter” to click/tap after the last page.
