Repo Jocks

Bold new venture

The guards snapped to attention as Chuck Hesumer, one of the head CEO's of the Coporate Hegemony headed into the meeting room.  He wore the modern power suit, which hadn't changed much in the last two millennia, his skin was well tanned, his dark hair slicked back, and his beard well trimmed, framing his face and dark eyes. 
 
The Corporate Hegeomny was one of the primary powers in the Frontier, a collection of mega-corporations that had built thier own nation with no government oversight.  In the Hegemony, you were a citizen of whatever corporation you worked for, and there were many, of all sizes, but the Mega-Corporations ran the show.  They had even built their own senate; where major business leaders or shareholders could meet and discuss matters, even going so far as to having their own militaries.  They had an official government, but it actually had very little power, and was there to provide a structure of laws for people to live under.

In the Hegemony, corporate espionage, war, or competition took on whole new meanings, and in this fierce environment, CEO Hesumer had risen to the top levels.  He smiled as he headed in to the room to meet with several other CEO's of other mega-corporations.  Now it was time to rise to a few new levels, and he had plan to jumpstart that process.

We will need to be careful, and smart about it.  The point is profit and prosperity, not fire and blood.  That's for empire building idiots or politicians who need victims and excuses.  Hesumer knew that in the Frontier, where laws were limited, or weak, or nonexistent; there was a temptation to practice the kind of ruthless, greedy capitalism found mostly in bad movies whining about the injustices of the rich and trying to promote the idiocy of socialism, but he himself never subscribed to that if he could help it.  That kind of business behavior led to short term success at most, and generally destroyed you and all your employees and profits with you.

He headed into the surprisingly small, if luxurious, meeting room, and prepared himself for a hard fight.  A fight of proposals and ideas, and vastly differing opinions.  One he intended to win.  Upon entering he looked around and saw several men and women in the room, each the lead CEO of a mega-corporation, each successful, rich, powerful, and ruthless, in more ways than one.  He knew most of them by name, but even if he didn't know them, it didn't matter, they were all here to attend the annual CEO 'council' meeting to discuss business, make proposal's on various ventures, and to eat and drink good food.  He would have his turn to speak, and until then he intended to relax, and maybe make some side deals along the way.

His corporation, IDC Inc., (Intergalactic Dust Collectors Incorporated), was primarily a intersystem mining corporation, but it had major military and technological upgrade research divisions.  With what he had planned, he could now grow it into other systems, ones already developed, which would be more profitable than having to develop a star system from scratch, and then ensuring he got something out of it.  Better to simply buy into an already developed system, out compete the local competition, and then let the profits roll in.  So Hesumer sat down at a small table, nodding to several other CEO's, and signaled the serving staff to bring him some food, a light meal to relax to while he waited for his turn to propose.

So he waited for a few hours, as several interesting or risky proposals were made, either by the CEO's or their proxies, and enjoyed a light meal as he contemplated his own risky scheme.  It was guaranteed results, but the risk came from the people he would have to employ in it, and he wanted more than needed the backing of most of the CEO's to pull it off.  Besides, getting them involved would enlarge the endeavor, enrich them all, and ensure they couldn't pull out and blame him if it all went wrong.

At last, at several hours, it was his turn, and he headed up to the round holographic table at the front of the room to make his proposal.  He didn't care for proxies, especially not for this.