Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Three Minutes and 56 Seconds

Oliver Hunt CEO of hunt metals and current political candidate for the people's world party sit at the head of a large, dark holographic conference table. All around him, ringing the fringes of the room, hundreds of monitors and open computer stations house the men and women that comprise his own personal intelligence network.

They sit in their chares bathed in dim blue light frantically converting digital information to usable intelligence. Some of them decode satellite imagery, the vast majority of them intercept signals in the radio currents of the universe, dangling their bait in the water and waiting for something to catch. Soon their shift will be over and they will retreat back into sunlight blinking like the nocturnal, subterranean creatures that he has made them.

He does not sit alone at his table.

They are not his friends, but these UN congressmen and women were bought and paid for by his cooperate mining operations in the asteroid belt, and they cannot afford to loose his alliances, least of all his funding. Among their number sits news anchors and media personnel and journalists, none of which he trusts, but some of which he knows are a necessary evil.

A holo-projection over his head shows the face of a beautiful, but severe, blond woman. Her hair is cut short and pulled back from her eyes. Her face shines in the poor wan lighting over her head, and her image flickers on occasion. She is wearing an orange jumpsuit.

The room is silent as the two factions stare at each other.

The other faction sitting just at the end of the table, Mr. Hunt doesn't want them here, but he knows they are a necessary Evil.

The Tesraki sits with his feet up on the table, unlike most of his kind, he is wearing a pair of lace-up boots, utilitarian cargo pants, a striped shirt, jacket and a scarf which he has dangling around his neck. He is the most human alien Mr Hunt has ever met, with the mannerisms of a back-alley mobster who has run into a little too much power for him to handle. Beside him sits his loyal dogs, The big beetle calls itself Geea and the human that sits beside her is Beatrice.

The woman is bat shit insane, and isn't afraid of showing it. She too sits with her feet up on the table, strongly blonde hair hanging down to her shoulder, half of her head is shaved and the other half dangles with loose braids weaved with feathers.

She wears too much leather to be taken seriously.

They are the most shocking addition to their number, by all rights their paths should not have aligned. Hunt eyes the woman, Beatrice, she's exactly the kind of crazy he would expect of an extrial, and the seductive way in which she licks the flat of her knife makes him cringe. Images cross his mind, unbidding, of the pair....together, and he has to shake it off as bile rises into his mouth.

They are a necessary evil, he repeats to himself.

Besides them, sits two others, A Rundi wearing a monocle under his HAZMAT gear, and a Silent Kree hunched back in the shadows.

He is a strange looking creature, an outsider to their intergalactic politics. With his beakish head and feathered body, he reminds Hunt of a vulture.

And lastly, another holo projection, depicting a large, sunlit room encircled by massive glass windows. Sun rolls in from somewhere, making it difficult to see, but silhouetted by the light he can see multiple spidery figures floating just off the floor, haloed by light. They don't speak much, and he's glad that they don't since every time they do he wants to find them and pop all of their helium sacks one by one just to watch them squirm.

But he wouldn't, not even if they were here.

He needs them.

After today he will never have to see any of them again.