She paused for a moment, her features softening a bit, and Boomer knew the show was about to begin: “You’d better not be with that blond spiky-haired bitch, Tammy or Teresa or whatever the hell her name is. You’re over at her place, aren’t you, or you two have jetted off to Mexico or Hawaii, haven’t you? You two just fucked and you’re checking mail while she takes a shower, right?” Chloe set the videophone down on her desk, unbuttoned her blouse, and slipped her large, firm breasts out from under her brassiere. “Let me just remind you what you’re missing here, Boomer.” She put a finger sensuously in her mouth, then circled her nipples with it. “Get your ass back here and stop screwing around with those skanky bottle-blond hos.” She smiled seductively, then hung up.
“Crazy bitch,” Boomer muttered as he continued to scroll through the messages, but resolved to look her up as soon as he got back. After previewing more messages he stopped and immediately entered the code to access the satellite Internet server. Another benefit of the new American space initiative, of which Armstrong Space Station was the hub, was the coming availability of almost universal Internet access via a constellation of over a hundred low-Earth-orbit satellites that provided global low-speed Internet access, plus ten geostationary satellites that provided high-speed broadband Internet access to most of the Northern Hemisphere.
“No IP address, no extensions, no open active server identification code — this has got to be a call from outer space,” came the reply from Jon Masters a few moments later after establishing a videophone connection to the designated secure address. Jon Masters was the vice president of a small high-tech research and development company called Sky Masters Inc. that designed and licensed many different emerging aerospace technologies, from microsatellites to space boosters. Masters, a multidegree, multidoctorate scientist and engineer regarded as one of the world’s most innovative aerospace designers and thinkers, had formed his company at the ripe old age of twenty-five, and he still looked and acted the part of the geeky, eccentric, and flippant child prodigy. “Thanks for returning my call, Boomer.”
“No problem, Jon.”
“How are things up there?”
“Fine. Good.”
“I know you can’t talk about it on a satellite server, even if it is encrypted. Just wanted to be sure you’re okay.”
“Thanks. I’m fine.”
There was a slight pause; then: “You sound a little down, my friend.”
“No.”
“Okay.” Another pause. “So. What do you think of my offer?”
“It’s extremely generous, Jon,” Boomer said. “I’m not sure if I deserve it.”
“I wouldn’t offer it if I didn’t think you did.”
“And I get to work on whatever I want?”
“Well, we hope we can entice you to help out on other projects,” Masters said, “but I want you to do what you do best: think outside the box and come up with fresh, innovative, and kick-ass designs. I don’t try to game or anticipate the aerospace market, Boomer — I try to shape it. That’s what I want you to do. You won’t answer to anyone else but me, and you get to pick your team, your protocols, your design approach, and your timelines — within reason, of course. You knock my socks off with your ideas, and I’ll back you all the way.”
“And this estimated budget figure for my lab…?”
“Yes?”
“Is this for real, Jon?”
“That’s just the starting point, Boomer — that’s the minimum,” Masters chuckled. “You want that in writing, just say so, but I’m guaranteeing you that you’ll have a generous budget to build the team to research and evaluate your designs.”
“Even so, it’s not enough for the entire division. I’ll need—”
“You don’t understand, Boomer,” Masters interjected excitedly. “That money is just for you and your team, not split up between everyone in your division, existing projects, or specific company-mandated programs or technology.”
“You’re kidding!”
“I’m serious as a heart attack, brother,” Masters said. “And it’s not for stuff like company-wide expenses, compliance mandates, or security, but for your team- and project-specific costs. I believe in giving our top engineers the tools they need to do their job.”
“I can’t believe it. I’ve never even heard of that kind of money being invested by a small company like this.”
“Believe it, Boomer,” Masters said. “We may be small, but we’ve got investors and a board of directors who think big and expect big things to happen.”
“Investors? A board of directors…?”
“We all answer to someone, Boomer,” Masters said. “I ran my company by myself with a handpicked board of directors, which was okay until the projects got smaller and the money got tight. There were a lot of investors out there who wanted to be part of what we were doing here, but no one wants to dump hundreds of millions of dollars into a one-man show. We’re public, and I’m not president anymore, but everyone knows I’m the guy who makes the magic.”
“I don’t know…”
“You don’t worry about the board, Boomer. You report to me. Be advised, I’m going to make you work for every dime. I’m going to expect big things from you, and I’ll be putting bugs in your ear about what I know or discover about government requests for proposals, but like I said, I don’t want you waiting around for some weenie in the Pentagon to tell us what they might want — I want us to tell them what they want. So, what do you say? Are you in?”
“I’m thinking about it, Jon.”
“Okay. No problem. I know your commitments to the Air Force are up in eight months, correct?” Boomer guessed that Jon Masters knew to the day when his educational commitments to the Air Force for pilot training were up. “I guarantee they’ll offer you a regular commission before that, along with a big fat bonus. They might try to stop-loss you, claiming you’re in a critical specialty, but we’ll deal with that when and if we have to. I have enough contracts with the Air Force, and enough buddies in the Pentagon, to put a little pressure on them to respect your decisions. After all, you’re not getting out to go work for the airlines or be a consultant or lobbyist — you’ll be working for the company that builds them the next generation of hardware.”
“That sounds good.”
“You bet it does, Boomer,” Jon Masters said. “Don’t worry about a thing. One more thing, buddy. I know I’m older than you, probably old enough to be your dad if I started real early, so I get to give you a little heads-up.”
“What’s that, Jon?”
“I know trying to tell you to take it easy, be safe, and maybe don’t fly so many missions is like trying to tell my golden retriever to stay out of the lake, but I wouldn’t want to have the company’s future vice president of R&D become a shooting star, so take it easy, okay?”
“Vice president?”
“Oh, did I say that out loud?” Masters deadpanned. “You weren’t supposed to hear that. Forget I said that. Forget the board was considering it but didn’t want me to reveal that. Gotta go before I tell you about the other thing the board was kicking around…oops, almost did it again. Later, Boomer.”
The room was loudly called to attention as Russian Federation president Leonid Zevitin quickly strode into the conference room, followed by his chief of staff Peter Orlev, the secretary of the security council, Anatoli Vlasov; the minister of foreign affairs, Alexandra Hedrov; and the chief of the Federal Security Bureau, Igor Truznyev. “Take seats,” Zevitin ordered, and the officers already in the room — General Kuzma Furzyenko, the chief of staff; General Nikolai Ostanko, chief of staff of the army; and General Andrei Darzov, the chief of staff of the air force — shuffled to their chairs. “So. I gave the command for our fighter to attack the unmanned American bomber if it fired a missile, and since we’re meeting like this so quickly, I assume it did, and we did. What happened?”