The Glamourous Life of a Corporate Prince

Posted on Sat Mar 24th, 2018 @ 5:01am by Lieutenant JG Zork

2,528 words; about a 13 minute read

Mission: Mission 0: Everybody Has A Story
Location: Pulsar Terminal, above Gonal IV
Timeline: 2383

Pulsar Terminal above Gonal IV was a classic low-orbit ore-processing facility, with nearly a dozen automated processing lines within its lower decks and double that number of sprawling hangars at the top, all of which were utilized exclusively as staging areas for packing and shipping the refined material. The bays themselves were large enough to swallow a soccer pitch, sometimes twice over, and often featured de facto partitions created by stacks of heavy, carbon fiber crates that could contain anywhere from fifty pounds to upwards of two tons of material each. Among these cramped corridors of crates, there was the need for humanoid labor to pick, sort, and load the appropriate ore into the appropriate hauler for distribution. Ferenginar Material Solutions’ fleet of short range haulers, vessels which were little more than cramped cockpits attached to shoddily manufactured shipping containers and also had a dubious reputation for mechanical failure, occupied two thirds of Shipping Bay Cigna-4, with about thirty of the craft coming or going, or loading or dusting off at any given time. They occupied either side of the same duranium and steel platform that staged the cargo boxes, separated by about thirty five yards of decking. The atmosphere was oppressively noisey due to the grating of the refinery reverberating from below, the whir of the overhead cranes and low-intensity tractor emitters used to move the packaged product. There was also the general dust and filth that was inherent in all stages of a mining operation, a fine silt that clung to anything it came into contact with and had slowly formed piles atop the aging inventory within the storage area.

Zork had been working in Cigna-4 for the past five months, an assignment he’d been given by his father, the owner of Ferenginar Material Solutions, in order that he might “better understand all stages of [the] enterprise above Gonal IV.” Zork was no fool, however: Blott saw him as the cheapest of labor (free), and the man was never one to pass up a deal quite as good as that. Rule 111: “treat people in your debt like family - exploit them.” While that was cutting in the overall sense that it encouraged taking advantage of those beholden to Blott by way of predatory business agreements, it was even more telling in how it was continually used to justify sending Zork into environments such as the one he now stood in. He had been on the clock for nearly ten hours, as had the rest of the people in his shift, piling up crates on the lift platform of the decrepit hauler he was operating that day, securing those crates in the cavernous cargo hold, then delivering and unloading the material into whatever awaiting freighter he was sent to. The lift itself, like most of the others, was temperamental and required a familiar touch to be operated safely. He’d learned that fact of life from some of the more experienced laborers on the shipping floor, particularly the supervisor whose position he had taken, and Zork was thankful for the guidance. He’d had a number of close calls since he started working in Cigna-4 - “the big C” - , all of which he had managed to escape with no injuries to speak of. Had he not been made aware of what to do and what to watch out for, the young man would have likely found himself in a world of hurt very early in his tenure.

There was a loud, sudden bang from his right. Judging by the echo pattern, Zork knew it was close - maybe three haulers away. He straightened up from his task of locking in the ore boxes and walked to end of the cargo container in an attempt to get a view of what happened. The screams began as he reached his vantage point, momentarily and inexplicably delayed. The young man cursed to himself and jumped from the hauler, landing almost mid-sprint. As the “Floor Supervisor,” Zork had access to everything entailed with the operation - he already had an idea of what had gone wrong.

Ypah, one of the Nausicans working for Blott, had had his left shoulder caught in what amounted to the sheering action between the two diamond-plated surfaces of the lift platform he’d been standing on and the deck of the container he’d been preparing to fill. The magnetic suspension of the lift mechanism itself had finally completely reversed polarity at the top, and the strength of the machine itself had overcome the poorly maintained electronic failsafes. The result was not only a staggering mess of gore and bone and a cause for general alarm in the entire bay, but was also incredibly difficult to look at since the accident had only partially taken Ypah’s ball and socket from him. Hardened, life long laborers winced and quickly turned away; grown men and women who told tall-tales from their checkered pasts suddenly became ill; it was only the dusty old human, rumored to be former Maquis, who had had stomach enough to try to render aid. Zork ran back to his hauler, thinking quickly enough to recall that his partner for the day had left his shirt before taking a break. The teen return at a sprint, the shirt outstretched as though a baton in a championship race.

Zork’s wrist was interdicted by a bronze toned hand adorned with a fine gold ring, one that was intricately inlaid with Badlands onyx and Terran emerald. Blott had evidently caught wind of the accident, as was to be expected, and used the emergency transporter protocols to arrive at the very epicenter of the disaster. Zork trembled a bit as the older, stouter Ferengi twisted his arm away from Ypah and Raymond. There was an ominous expression on Blott’s face, and as he snatched the shirt away from Zork, his calm collected baritone, rough as gravel and callously disinterested, asked the obvious question, “What’s all this?”

“Blott!” Raymond cried out, pulling his own shirt off and stuffing it into the Nausican’s upper body, “Call medical! We need an emergency transport right now!”

Blott scowled, “They’re already on their way! But if he wants the transport he’ll have to call it for himself.”

The Terran man’s jaw hung in disbelief, “He could die right here if you don’t! On your floor, Blott! Call for a transporter!” Raymond look at his Floor Supervisor now, “Zork?!”

“Dad, please. Ypa-“

The older Ferengi bared his teeth and hissed sharply at his son. Zork flinched and retreated half a step. “Shut. Up.” It was muttered curtly, with such boiling finality that Zork felt compelled to obey. His son handled, Blott returned his attention to the tragedy at hand, “You all know the deal. I pay you, and you pay whatever expenses you have to, to whoever it is you have to pay them to. One of those legally required expenses is Workplace Injury Insurance, and that’s how you qualify for an emergency transport here on Pulsar. Ypah will be fine, medical is on the way. The rest of you get back to work!”

Zork looked to the crowd of his coworkers that had assembled around the helplessly injured Nausican. A few of them were already looking back at Zork, and more were turning their attention to the the boss’s son and their “Supervisor.” The gazes were expectant, the type of expectancy that belied an imperative being placed upon Zork’s ears as a man they had stood shoulder to shoulder with. None of them said a word. They didn’t plead, they didn’t beg, they simply stared at the younger Ferengi, waiting to see what he would do.

“Zork! Come with me!” his father barked. Blott turned and began walking away.

Zork’s eyes darted to his father’s retreating stride, but quickly returned to the other laborers. The low hum of still running machinery enhanced the tension in the air, the largely automated processes claiming no interest in the pedestrian concerns of the mortals amongst them. The stares were even more numerous now that the boss had spoken. They all knew there was only one person amongst them who could change the impending chain of events. No work was being done, as everyone present was still waiting for Zork to make a move.

He looked to the writhing Nausican. Now he looked up again at his coworkers. He turned to look for his father again, obviously torn in his loyalties and feelings of responsibility, before turning again to the shipping floor.

They knew. Their faces were stone cold because they already knew what was about to happen. Their stares hardened into silent indictments of Zork as an accessory to the travesty, as the son and heir of their heartless overlord, and it made his stomach twist into a knot. Blott bellowed his son’s name again, and Zork saw that his father had stopped in the middle of the shipping floor and was emphatically gesticulating that Zork was to comply immediately with his demand. He hung his head, a helpless sixteen year old in an impossible position. A haggard, heart wrenching moment passed, before he finally turned and quickly walked over to his father. He kept his eyes on the flooor, feeling unworthy of looking at anything else.

Blott turned to walk off again but Zork reaches out to stop him, “Dad, wait!” The man turned to face his son, obviously more than a bit irked at the hassle. Zork spoke quietly, hoping to appeal to his father’s sense of reason without embarrassing his elder in front of his employees with a display of compassion, “Dad, please help Ypah. He’s always done good work for us - it’d be nothing to make sure they can save his arm.”

Blott sneered and looked over Zork’s shoulders combatively, “You know that won’t happen.” The older Ferengi shook his head and locked eyes with Zork again, “He should have bought into the insurance plan we offered him when he had the chance.”

Zork bounced on the balls of his feet uncomfortably, still keeping his voice low, “I know, I know, but we realistically don’t make enough money down here to -“

“Theeeeey,” Blott’s voice thundered resoundingly in Zork’s face, “not ‘we,’ ‘THEY!’ They are your employeeeeees! There is no ‘we’ for you in Cigna-4, Zork!” Blott stabbed a finger at the line of haulers behind his son, “They are responsible for their decisions, and WE,” Blott motioned emphatically to himself and his son, “offer them the ability to make those choices as per the standards and regulations as laid out per each territory we operate within!!”

Zork hung his head again, accepting the verbal smiting his father was giving him. It seemed it wasn’t quite over, either, “They wanna work?! We have the work! We contract them and lay it out, right there for anyone to read right at the beginning of the term, that THEY,” he pointed behind Zork towards the shop floor again, at the group of laborers now making way for a medical team, though he himself continued to stare at his son, “are responsible for keeping their insurances up to date and in compliance with our requirements!!”

Something finally broke in Zork. How many accidents had the teen seen over the last ten years, whether by faulty machinery, what should have been criminal understaffing, merciless extended shifts, and deadlines that made the greedy managers amongst them cut corners where they should have been laying a granite foundation? How many men and women had Zork seen disfigured, maimed, killed even!, all to Blott’s same song and dance about “compliance with regulations” this and “their own fault” that. Zork would not abide it this time, not after Ypah had spent so much of his time those first two months ensuring Zork knew which machines to stay away from, how to avoid getting something dropped on him, and any number of the other common hazards an inexperienced worker might overlook. As far as the young Ferengi was concerned, in this moment and in this cargo bay, he owed far more to Ypah, the former floor supervisor, than to his father, the man who had repeatedly refused to recalibrate the magnetic suspensions despite being warned of impending catastrophic failures.

“You know they don’t have anywhere else to turn for insurance aside from your underwriters,” Zork shouted, drawing the obvious attention of a few of his coworkers that were within earshot, “and you know they can’t afford the policies you offer!”

Blott backhanded his son hard right then and there, without hesitation and without remorse. The force of the impacting knuckles was enough to stun Zork back in line, at least in the near term, and Blott went the extra mile of verbally leaning on the teen while he was still shocked and awed to ensure the lesson stuck, “You accuse me - your own father - of not looking out for the best interests of my subordinates, the very backs upon which my business is built?! With my own son present amongst them, you think me stupid enough to not ensure that safety is the top priority here?!”

Blott straightened his suit and scoffed, “Fine, Zork, if that’s how you want to play it - lets do hardball!”

Zork felt his color drain. His face shot up to his father, and he lifted his hands in submission - wrists together, hands bent and fingers curled - wordlessly shaking his head. His posture even reflected the extent to which Zork was silently begging his father not to do the same thing he had done on countless other colonies, in countless other operations, whether or not Zork had been near the accident or not. This, however, was the first time Zork was going to have his own name attached to the impending course that Blott had laid, and right in front of the very people he had just been starting to build a camaraderie with.

Blott stepped past his son and addressed the still gathered workers, “Zork will be running the appropriate follow-up background checks on everyone in just a few minutes, as is required in the aftermath of such a foolish accident. He wanted me to remind you that you are legally required, as independent contractors, to maintain the proper level of Workplace Injury Insurance commensurate with your positions. Failure to do so,” Blott turned to his son now, “will result in severe civil action against you, per the terms of your contract, as Zork and I run a legitimate business here!”

Zork was near tears, now. Ypah had just asked him to put in a good word with Blott concerning a raise. There was no way the Nausican had the insurance.

“No exceptions,” Blott quietly hissed into his son’s ear. He stepped backwards two steps and domineeringly yet cavalierly motioned that his son was to follow, “There’s nothing left for you here, Zork. Now, come with me!”

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