Tamed By The Alien Barbarian by Celeste King
Candi
“OK, everyone, smooth and steady,” said Chioma, one of her long, slender hands gently applied to her earpiece.
I felt a collective relaxation ripple through all the women seated at their consoles in the control room.
The entire Martian Mission Control Operation was staffed with all women. I was totally an equal opportunity employer. I just had yet to find a man who I thought was worth the pay I offered my employees.
Chioma was one of my best. She’d grown up in Nigeria. Then, six years ago, she’d used her city’s limited internet access to day trade though the Sanax’s Interstellar Bank, making enough money to go to college. She’d graduated there in two-and-a-half-years, then done a simultaneous Masters and PhD program at MIT. I’d hired her before she’d even graduated.
Now, she was running my whole Mars operation. She glided past me and gently whispered in my ear.
“You relax, too,” she said. She smiled and her white teeth gleamed. Her whisper and her smile both had the desired intent. I actually did relax a little.
“I am,” I lied. Her smile faded. “I will,” I hastily amended. “I mean, I’m working on it. I’ll definitely be more relaxed when the mining trucks arrive on our cargo ship.”
“What could stand in our way?” Chioma asked with a knowing wink.
She was one of three people, besides myself and Mandy, who knew about the sabotage I’d ordered on Consolidated Mining.
The Sanax company had gone quiet for nearly thirty-six hours. I guessed that meant our sabotage had been even more effective than we’d planned it to be.
Which made me nervous. If there was one thing I knew in my bones, it was that nothing ever works better than you planned it to be. It hardly ever worked almost as good as you planned it to be. It usually worked not at all.
So the good news felt like bad news to me, if that makes any sense.
Jesus. No wonder Chioma wants me to relax, I thought.
After all, there on the big board overlooking the control room were live feeds of the mining trucks heading toward the Martian spaceport.
“Two minutes to truck arrival at Transport One,” said a measured voice from one of the nearby consoles.
I glanced at my watch and thought that these might be two of the longest minutes of my life. Even longer than the two minutes I once had to strip for this guy who smelled like he’d just come into the club from some trash-infused river. At the end of those two minutes, I’d gotten twenty bucks and a slobbery kiss on my cheek that I definitely didn’t ask for.
At the end of these two minutes, I’d be the richest bitch on Earth.
“One minute,” the tech announced calmly. God bless her for sounding so calm. I’d need to ask Mandy who she was and give her a raise.
Speaking of Mandy, my trustworthy assistant was beside me, watching everything, and now she let out a tiny squeal of excitement. I looked back at her. We tried to keep that sort of stripper-girl behavior out of the workplace. Still, I couldn’t help but smile in the face of my own excitement.
This was happening.
“Wait, something’s happening,” that same calm tech called out, now suddenly not sounding so calm. I made a mental note to not give her that raise.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Chioma was already at the tech’s table. She looked up and shouted for a different camera feed on the main board.
There was a click to a new angle. It took me a moment to orient what I was looking at. I realized it was a feed from the spaceport itself, looking at two ships docked side-by-side. One was the one belonging to my company.
As I watched in growing dread, the line of ore-laden trucks that should have gone to my ship rolled right on past it. They headed for the open, waiting loading bay of the ship next to mine.
“Zoom in,” I said. Because I needed confirmation of what I suddenly knew. “Zoom in!” I said again, unwilling to wait for the delay of signal between here and Mars.
After a half-second that felt like an eon, the camera zoomed in on the side of the ship. Now, I could more plainly see my ore being off-loaded onto this other ship. Above the bay doors where my stolen load was being deposited, there was a logo.
The logo of Consolidated Mining.
“That son-of-a-bitch,” Mandy said, echoing my own sentiments.
I didn’t speak any of my internal thoughts aloud. Instead, I ordered someone to open a channel for me to Gus, the foreman of my mining operation.
“Oh, uh, hey,” Gus said as his round face popped up on my big board.
“Wanna try that again, Gus?” I asked, cocking an eyebrow in anger.
“Not really. I’m kinda busy here, actually.”
“Yeah, I can see that. Loading my ore onto Jaxil’s ship? What gives, Gus?”
He shrugged.
“Don’t make me fucking come up there,” I threatened. Sometimes you had to treat these laborers like kids if you wanted to get anything out of them.
“What can I do, Can-Can?” he asked. I hated that nickname and he knew it. He was baiting me. Trying to get me to blow up so he could get out of this conversation.
Well, fuck him.
“What you can do, Gussy-Gus,” I said calmly, “is correct your mistake. Then write me an apology as part of your resignation letter.”
“Oh, about that, I quit.”
“We have a contract.”
“I think I lost it.”
“Gus, just what the hell is going on?” I demanded.
“There’s nothing I can do,” he said, and for a moment he seemed legitimately conflicted. “Jaxil is paying off my loans. And, I mean, you know how these Martian loansharks can be. It ain’t my fault. The dice are weighted differently on here, I swear to God. Something to do with the lower gravity or –”
“Gus,” I said, impatiently, “if this is about your debts, I’m happy to pay them off. And float you a few bucks for your next gambling excursion besides.”
“Oh, you shouldn’t do that. Gambling’s a bad habit.”
I wanted to strangle him. He was lucky he was 239 million miles away.
“But it ain’t just the loans,” Gus went on. “Jaxil hired me at a two hundred percent markup. That goes to all my guys.”
At that phrase – all my guys – I felt all my girls shiver. Fucking men. Fucking men and their fucking boys’ clubs. We all knew what the invocation of ‘all my guys’ meant. It meant this conversation was over. Jaxil had undercut me in a way I could not stave off. Not at the moment, anyway. I just had to stand there and watch my ore go into his pockets one truckload at a time.
“Oh, there’s one other thing,” Gus said. I considered killing his feed, but I couldn’t help feeling a little curious.
“What is it, Gus?”
I watched him start to talk, then catch himself. He started and stopped once more. He was looking at something in his hand, something off-camera, maybe something he was going to read? Then he looked away from it and stared into the comm camera.
“Now, this isn’t personal or from me or anything, you understand?”
“Gus. Just tell me.”
Gus cleared his throat, then looked at the thing off-screen again.
“Be prepared to be spanked all across Mars,” he read. He looked in the camera again and I could see he was trying not to laugh. “Now, that ain’t from me, you understand. I’m just the mess—”
His feed was suddenly gone from the screen. I looked over at the tech who had announced the problems earlier. She looked at me, her face stone. I realized she’d cut Gus off.
Double raise for you, I thought.
Then I stared back up at the board, watching as the Consolidated Mining ship’s bay doors closed and its engines warmed up.
So, Jaxil’s retaliated. That horned fucker. He thought the hard-on pics were embarrassing? He’ll be begging for just embarrassment when I’m done with him.
Because this means war.
