Let's get things moving

[Alexi Hesith]

For some people it began with dramatically bad news...

GTS Announces Layoffs
Todin, Picon- Gorlex Transportation Systems General Chairman Seamus Broder announced a series of layoffs in the shipbuilding and maintenance divisions. Speaking to major shareholders and the trade media, Mr Broder said, "In the current climate, the building and maintaining large ships is just not profitable enough. We will be reducing our work in these areas and refocusing on small and medium size vessels. GTS will continue to innovate while maintaining the very highest standards in design and function for consumers while generating significant profits for investors."

It is understood that redundancies will total 10,000 posts, the majority to be implemented within weeks. The market is expected to respond favourably to this retrenchment.

---

Apparent Suicide Shakes Community
Palamra, Picon- Prominent business leader and community figure Xavier Marsh, 61, was found dead this morning in an apparent suicide. Mr Marsh, head of GTS Shipbuilding, is understood to have been suffering from nervous exhaustion following a major round of layoffs announced five weeks ago. An inquest is expected to be convened soon.

---

Marsh Suicide: GTS Potentially Culpable
Palamra, Picon- The district coroner delivered his finding in the Marsh inquest this evening. Dr Justus Kale found that Mr Marsh took his own life, as reported here eight weeks ago, as a result of extreme anxiety and depression brought on by the deteriorating situation in his professional life.

Speaking in evidence, Mrs Lucille Marsh, the wife of the deceased, said, "Xavier always tried to stand up for his guys, always. From his earliest days he was always going in to defend others. When he was promoted from the shopfloor, he kept on like that. No-one who worked for him would doubt that he took it hard when he couldn't even get them a decent redundancy package or notice periods. I honestly think it broke his heart."

The inquest heard evidence that Mr Marsh, who had worked for Gorlex Transportation Systems since he was sixteen years old, had clashed repeatedly with senior colleagues, including parent company boss Seamus Broder, in the run-up to the announcement three months ago that 10,000 jobs would be axed. Mr Marsh is understood to have first resisted the cuts and then accepted them on the proviso that certain compensation and support arrangements were put in place. These conditions were not met.

One witness, granted anonymity by the court, reported that staff were called from the dockside and told they would be leaving. In some cases, their colleagues did not see these dismissed staff members again that working day.

The coroner's key finding was given as follows.

"Mr Xavier Marsh was a man who took an unusual, even extreme, level of pride in his work. We have heard that he regarded one of his major roles to be that of protector of those working under him. His failure to protect those employees who were dismissed in the weeks prior to his death from financial hardship appears to have weighed very heavily upon him, to the point of disturbing the balance of his mind. I have no doubt that this disturbance of mind was greatly exacerbated by the conduct of the downsizing exercise carried out by Gorlex Transportation Systems and the way in which some involved in this process treated both him and his employees."

In a statement, GTS said, "Any suggestion that GTS was negligent in its responsibilities to either Xavier Marsh or his subordinates is in error. We will be disputing the coroner's findings."

Market analysts expect the share value of GTS to slide significantly in trading tomorrow.

[Alexi Hesith]

For others it began with an avoidable accident...


Costa Djan rubbed at his drooping eyelids. It had been a long time since he'd worked a three watch system but he was sure it hadn't been such hardgoing back then. Of course he'd been younger and more enthusiastic about these sublight runs.


A sip of caff might help.


Nope.


It didn't help that they were three bodies down. That was on permanent establishment not through the usual sickness and injuries to be expected on a long trip. Apparently management had decided to trim the crews. Again.


Beep...beep...beep...


Management had also trimmed the equipment and maintenance budgets. The sensors were overdue for an upgrade, only by a few weeks and well within the law, but it was annoying. The damn proximity warning kept going bonkers. Something was wrong with the parameters. They kept re-setting to twenty thousand and high sensitivity so small and distant objects were treated a huge and looming threats. There wasn't actually anything big enough or near enough to warrant this alert. There never was.


Beepbeep...Beepbeep...Beepbeep...


Costa began, rather slowly, to go through the routine of setting the correct parameters.


He was on step six before he discovered that a diligent tech had used some of his rack time to fix the problem. Costa, his bodyclock all out of synch from the changes in his sleep patterns over three weeks, had not noticed the entry in the station log. Perhaps because his colleague had not made the notation correctly. He had, of course, been rather tired himself.


This explained why the large, long-adrift shipping container (a remnant of some forgotten previous accident) was barely five thousand metres from the ship when the watch officer heard about it. The resulting damage from a failed evasive action executed in a bulk tanker was non-lethal but costly.

[Alexi Hesith]

For others it first became apparent at the bank...

Superficially, Freya Durrel gave every impression of being the same cool and collected being she always was. Inwardly, she was terrified.

When she had first gone into construction she had imagined that the locus of her fears would be the physical. The perils of raising hundred story tower blocks above raging seas or sinking hab-blocks into the shelter of pitted craters were expected and, therefore, mastered with ease. The chest crunching fear that attended financial accounting had taken her by surprise.

It didn't help that her firm had financed her current project through loans from the State Capital Fund. Originally setup as a way of putting excess tax receipts and currency reserves to productive use, SCF now held numerous private deposits and was the preferred lender for the sector's construction industry. Only a handful of major projects in the last decade had not received some SCF backing.

Unfortunately SCF might have acted as a bank but it had definitely not shaken its origins as a government agency. Borrowers were still expected to answer to a committee (in addition to the more typical stockholders and boards) with the power to investigate and correct issues. Quarterly meetings with her oversight committee were now Freya Durrel's recurring and realised nightmare.

"So Ms Durrel, it seems you are behind schedule and overbudget," somehow the committee chair's voice conjured the dryness and dust of old ledgers despite the total absence of paper anywhere in the vicinity, "Why?"

Because permacrete needs four components that are imported and two have jumped in price.

Because transit costs are up but wages aren't and fifteen percent of the site's workforce, including me, do a weekly commute.

Because the replacement parts for the five bulk loadlifters were sniped by another firm despite a contract with the supplier who now blames the shippers who blame the subcontracted hauler.

Because no construction project ever runs both to time and budget.

Because...

"Let me take you through the chronology..."

[Alexi Hesith]

A ripple ran through Dall Tereez'yka's fur. Her room mate, human though she was, recognised the subtle mixture of dejection and disappointment thus signified. After seven years of friendship and three years living together, Sabine Doli knew how to read and respond to the cue. She slipped out to the kitchen.

When she returned a few minutes later it was with an insulated mug the contents of which were so thoroughly chilled as to cause cool steam to cascade over its lips.

"Trouble hun?" she asked her Bothan friend, setting the mug down on Dall's desk. Fur undulated in gratitude as keen eyes caught sight of it.

"I can't afford the trip this year," she sighed reaching for the mug.

"Oh."

In all the time they had known each other Dall had always returned to Kothlis at least once a year. It was part of a deal with her parents who had not been entirely happy when their daughter had decided to move to Lantillies to study engineering and, again, when she opted to stay on to work for a local firm.

"Show me."

Dall called up the various travel data sites she had visited, flicking rapidly through the quotes. Sabine, like her friend, had a mathematically inclined brain so it took her very little time to reach a conclusion.

"That's an average increase of thirty two per cent!"

"I know."

"Thirty. Two. Per. Cent."

"Closer to thirty three actually."

"Just on last year."

"Yes."

A long pause followed as Sabine checked her mental arithmetic.

"You're right."

"I know."

Another pause followed. Then Sabine said, "You really ought to write to someone about this. It isn't on."

[Alexi Hesith]

Despite their ubiquity in the Galaxy droids were not all that a common a sight in the corridors of the Senate Office Buildings. Indeed, they were not all that common a sight anywhere in the Alliance Capitol Zone. This was not because there were no droids around, there certainly were, but because they were mostly confined to offices out of regard for security.

Everything about a droid that made them so useful - their grasp of many languages, their effectively limitless and nominally flawless recall of information, their analytical skills, their sensitive hearing and well-attuned photoreceptors - was also a potential risk. A droid tampered with and sent into a government office building was a potential fount of sensitive data for which high prices might be paid by beings all along the spectrum of nefarious intentions from the selfish business being looking for an inside tip to the rabid enemy of the Alliance bent upon its destruction.

And so droids that were in the regular employ of Senate delegations were mostly kept safely within the confines of their respective offices. As an extra precaution almost all were subjected to regular memory wipes and, as a result, restricted to those duties requiring at most medium term memory.

There were, however, always exceptions and one such was L-U15, known by the organic staffers of the Lantillian delegation as Louis (pronounced Lewey).

Louis was an exception not in being a frequent leaver of his workspace for, in fact, he never left the workplace as a result of the true nature of his exceptionality but because his memory was never wiped. This was with good reason.

Louis was the linchpin of the delegation's correspondence operations.

Everyday Louis read, categorised, indexed and cross-referenced thousands of items of correspondence. He also did the same with transcripts of calls and media casts because he enjoyed doing so and he liked to be helpful. Everything Louis dealt with was uploaded to the office's central database for anyone in need of the fruits of his labours to use.

But the real added value of Louis was that he, himself, was a walking index of the office's priorities and research needs, a chart of the ebb and flow of issues, and the whims of the people back home.

And so it was to Louis that Dall Tereez'yka's letter first came.

[Alexi Hesith]

Lorcan Bale's position as the delegation's correspondence secretary earned him his own desk, setting him apart from about 80% of his colleagues who shared desk space around the clock. It was small - barely accommodating a data terminal, comm-unit, and file storage stack - and situated in a cubicle to the side of the communications staff bull-pen but it was at least his. Like him it was kept immaculate.

As was already his established habit, Lorcan had returned to the office after dinner, to review materials from the day. The late finish was off-set by a late start allowing his staff to triage work for his attention before his arrival. Now, several hours after the mornings huddle, the a keen editor's eye ran down and through various letters.

The first set to receive attention were randomly selected samples, reviewed on screen with the intention of keeping an eye on the quality of his subordinates' output. A few notes were made.

The second set (also on screen) were drafts of more responses to more complex queries. These came with background annotations - references to sources for figures and citations of authorities - to justify what was written. Again, a few notes were made. Most could go without further review. A couple were marked, "Let's discuss" followed by a time.

The third set were drafts but not on screen. Most were flimsy-plast sheets but some were on paper. These were not prepared by staff on behalf of the Senator, they were prepared for the Senator (or someone very close to them). Each came with a short background note, again citing references as necessary, so that the Senator would be aware of the issues when making his review. This pile, far smaller than the virtual ones already dealt with, took far more time. Eventually, satisfied, Lorcan moved the stack into a small case that he walked across to the Senator's outer office and deposited with the duty secretary.

Returning to his desk via the caff-point, Lorcan set down the cup and saucer (he never used a mug) and took up the fifth and final sheaf of letters and began to work through them.

It was thus occupied that Louis found his superior when he came by for his daily review.