FSR – Ross 154 – Fixer Kim Min Beom

Kim Min Beom wasn’t rich. And he didn’t want to be rich. His idealist idiot boss was rich, Sir Janos Barta, and to be honest, so many years of working for that kind-hearted moron had pretty much soured the entire concept of wealth. So no, Beom wasn’t in it for the money – despite the fact he was living in Ross 154, the system of advanced medicine, pharmaceuticals, and biotech, so no poor people allowed – Beom was in it for the fix. And that’s what he was. A Fixer. It’s what he did. It’s who he is.

Beom had already been at Janos’s apartment for an hour before the rich idiot woke up. Janos wasn’t surprised to see Beom sitting at his kitchen table, scanning the latest news, sipping expensive coffee. The man probably thought that Beom lived there.

“What a day beneath the stars,” Janos said as his good morning.

“They’re only stars at night,” Beom corrected him. “In the day they become suns.”

Janos wasn’t listening. He rarely did. For a man whose job it was to attend endless meetings, top-level briefings, and interstellar-political interventions, he had a truly incredible talent for never hearing any other voice than his own. But his heart was in the right place, even if his ears weren’t.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Janos murmured while he poured himself some tea.

You mean the agenda that I’ve forwarded to your console? That you could simply take out right now and read? Beom cracked his right fist. “You’ve a meeting with Ram Iyengar and the rest of the Sphere suits from Barnard’s Star about that climate park.”

Janos nodded as if that meeting would be easy. As if convincing a group of businessmen – whose only concern was expansion and profit – that spending money to build an eco-park inside Emerson City would be worth their while. It had nearly killed Beom to even set up this meeting, and here was Janos thinking about the lunch he’d have after it.

“And after lunch?” Janos asked next.

Beom clicked his left fist. “Gravcore Quartermaster, Ema Kato. We’re striking a deal with them to reduce the cost of distribution for Sunburst.”

Sunburst – F-Tech Pharmaceutical’s answer to the miners of Alpha Centauri spending most of their lives on the dark side of a planet, either permanently indoors or unforgivably underground. Big health rewards for the people who took it, but little profit for F-Tech in selling it cheap – hence this deal with Gravcore to lower the cost of shipping. Janos was one of the only heads of the industry who was opposed to scrapping production completely. Janos even went so far to propose that F-Tech should just give it away for free. Which made him a good man in Beom’s books. One of the reasons he worked for him. But, then again, one of the reasons Janos didn’t really care too much about profits was because he himself was so idiotically rich.

“And that’s it?” Janos asked hopefully.

“Almost,” Beom informed him. “We have one final meeting, with Vicechair Li Na of Sovereign Finance. We’re pushing them for a higher investment in humanitarian supplies from their bread baskets in Wolf 359.”

Janos nodded. Three meetings in one day was a lot of work for the gentle man. Never had much stamina. Good hearts rarely did. But that was where Beom came in. If Janos was the face of F-Tech Pharmaceuticals and their Philanthropy Division, then Beom was the fist. He cracked both his hands now as he stood up and handed Janos his console. It had his schedule for exactly what the man was supposed to do and when he was supposed to do it. Meanwhile, it was Beom’s job to make sure all those meetings went exactly the way they should. Every power within the Federated Sovereign Republics wanted to appear to be charitable and philanthropic, but not so much that it might cause them trouble. So it was Beom’s day now to make sure they understood that there could always be more trouble.

As soon as Beom was outside Janos’s apartment, he looked at his console and considered who to call first. His contact options consisted of his tech girl, his first target, or yesterday’s business. He called his tech girl, Aliz.

“Yea,” she answered.

“It’s me.”

“Yea,” she repeated. “You think I don’t know?”

Beom shook his head. If the girl wasn’t such a genius when it came to digging through other people’s tech, he’d have dropped her long ago. As it was, however, he wouldn’t be able to do half his job without her doing hers as brilliantly as she did.

“Any dirt yet on Li Na?”

“Naw.” She sighed. She hated losing as much as Beom did. Only difference was that Beom didn’t lose. “She’s fully clean, you know?”

“No one’s fully clean. Keep looking.”

“Yea…”

“And have the Ema Kato footage ready. I’ll be meeting her before lunch.”

“I know when you’re meeting her. You think I don’t know?”

“You’re doing good work for a good man, Aliz.”

They both knew he meant Janos.

“Yea, I know.”

She cut off the communication, and Beom stepped into a private tube. He was travelling out to the Gravcore Embassy, but before he met the Quartermaster, he had to make sure Janos’s morning meeting went as it should. He patched a direct link through to his first target, Ram Iyengar.

“To whom am I speaking?” Ram answered.

“My name is Kim Min Beom.”

 “And should I know you?”

“I work for Sir Janos Barta of F-Tech Pharmaceuticals.”

Ram huffed with impatience. “My people have already been in contact regarding this. As much as Sphere Industries is eager to invest in climate preservation, I am afraid that my schedule has been unavoidably changed. I hope—”

“Shut your mouth and listen,” Beom snapped. “I’m about to send you the reason why you will meet with Sir Janos, and why you will agree to this preservation park, and you’d better read it all within five minutes, because after that it burns.”

Beom hung up and sent on the file.

It would show all the information the proposed environmental preserve would capture from every visitor and transfer directly to Sphere Industries as the primary stakeholder. The personal data and marketing feed would be more than enough to secure Sphere’s interest, but Beom’s agreement also included guarantees to hand over the identities of all environmental sympathizers, to add to Sphere’s files about potential eco-terrorists. It broke a couple hundred privacy laws, sure, but it wasn’t anything that the Wolves weren’t already doing. And besides, this was the only way Barnard’s Star was getting that green park. Janos would think it was his emotive speech and moving presentation which did it, and Beom was happy to let the man believe that could be true. Because the system needed men like Janos to believe that they do good. Every system did.

While he waited for his private tube to take him to the Quartermaster, Beom thought about contacting Aliz again, to see if she was ready. He could guess what her response would be, so instead he called his work from yesterday, to make sure it was going smooth. It took a few minutes before the merchant answered.

“You are through to the console of Ionut Dalca,” Dalca answered. “I am extremely busy at present, but please leave a message and I’ll—”

“Shut your face, Dalca, I know this is live.”

“Oh… well then my dear Beom, how may I be of service?”

“Just checking in that those school units we arranged yesterday for Struve are on their way.”

“But of course, but of course! Why ever would you think that they wouldn’t? We had an agreement, did we … not…?” he asked, trailing off strangely at the end.

“Have, Dalca, we have an agreement, and I mean to make sure you see it through.”

“Yes, yes, forty new units for all those poor little children. Isn’t that right, Fedir? Fedir? Maria, where’s Fedir gone? He knows I find console calls difficult without him.”

“Fifty!” Beom roared.

“Fifty?” Dalca queried. “Are you sure it isn’t forty? I myself can often get those numbers quite irreparably confused.”

“Fifty new units for that school, Dalca. And if I find out even one of those goes missing, you’ll go missing with it.”

“He’s already missing, if you believe the stories,” a young woman’s voice said from the background.

“But this story will be real,” Beom growled back and then hung up. Damn Ionut Dalca could give anyone a headache. He made one more call, just to be sure.

“Fedir,” Beom said. “Make sure that Dalca delivers fifty.”

Fedir raised his eyebrows at Beom and grunted.

“Thank you, Fedir,” Beom said back. “You’re a good man.”

Beom hung up and massaged his head. His tube was still five minutes out. He called Aliz.

“Yea.”

“Any luck on Li Na?”

“You think I wouldn’t tell you?”

Beom swore. “Okay, send on the file for Ema Kato.”

“Yea…” Aliz looked about to hang up but then, “Oh, and you should know that provisions centre in Sirius you guys set up is getting syphoned. They’re draining everything because of some rogue AI.”

Aliz had strong opinions about the redundancy of AI, but right then Beom didn’t care. Janos had that emergency provisions centre set up exactly to help people when the leeches at Refract Media started draining power from families who needed it. And all because some comms antenna business boost was more important.

“Who’s the Chief Operator on Bessel Station?” Beom demanded. But Aliz was already yawning at him and sending him the direct link. Her bored teenage expression disappeared from his console and was replaced by the surprised tired expression of a visibly over-worked man. Beom’s face was sharp and dangerous, and he allowed himself a few minutes to calm himself before he spoke.

“Hello,” Beom said politely. “My name is Kim Min Beom. And I am contacting you to say, that if you ever try to syphon power from the Janos Barta Emergency Provisions Centre on your station again, then I will personally fund the kill contract that will have you shot and thrown out an airlock before the day is done. Do you understand?” 

For a moment the man just mutely moved his mouth, before some professional part of him recovered and he gave Beom a reassuring smile.

“Don’t worry, sir. You have my word that I will make the Janos Bartas Emergency Provisions Centre my top priority.”

“You can bet your life on it,” Beom responded, before cutting out. He only had time to crack one more fist before the tube reached its destination.

Beom entered the Embassy of Gravcore Security.

Aliz was in charge of making sure no footage within the building caught sight of Beom’s face. Beom’s job was to stare down any guards on duty who thought about stopping him for a closer look. His console was rigged to show whatever it was they wanted to see, but there was a flare within Beom’s eyes that told everyone to stay away. He made it to the personal apartments of visiting officers easily enough. Getting Aliz to unlock the Quartermaster’s door was the only truly tricky part. But not too difficult for Aliz, don’t you know.

Most military officials in Gravcore Security would be armed, so Beom was too. But he needn’t have worried. Because not only did Quartermaster Ema Kato not have her firearm near at hand, she had nothing near at hand, unless you counted the two other women currently naked and in bed with her. Beom shook his head. Some people made his job too easy, but he wasn’t here to blackmail the woman for unfaithfulness, even though General Natalia Petrov was her wife and could easily have everyone in this room killed. But no, Ema Kato’a secrets went deeper than mere adultery.

“Wake up,” Beom said calmly, nudging the apartment bed with his boot.

To Quartermaster Kato’s credit, she didn’t panic. She opened her eyes, took in the sight of Beom, and then pulled out a bowie knife from beneath the pillows of her bed.

“I’m not here to hurt you,” Beom told her. “I’m simply here to show you something.” He nodded his head to the two naked women lying next to her. “Do you want them to leave before I show you?”

“I want you to get out of my room before I cut off your—” Ema shouted, but Beom silenced her by pressing play. The footage would stop anyone. And Ema’s next words were pleas to turn it off. “I’m … sorry,” she tried to say, but Beom didn’t care.

“You’re meeting with Sir Janos Barta this afternoon. You’ll agree to whatever it is he recommends.”

He made sure that Ema nodded before he left her to her morning. But he sent on a copy of the file to her anyway, just in case she was still in shock. Didn’t want her to forget.

Beom closed his eyes once he stepped into the private tube back to Janos. These were nearly always terrible people he had to fix into doing something good. All but Janos, and for that he was thankful.

His console chimed. It was Aliz who was calling him.

“Yea?” he answered, doing his best to mock her voice.

“Oh yea?” she mocked back. “You don’t think I know it’s you?” They both laughed. “So? How’d it go?”

“Oh you don’t know?”

“Of course I know. Just thought you’d like to tell me.”

“Naw.” He kept his eyes closed. Beom wanted to move on from Ema Kato. Some people were worse than others.

“Okay, so Li Na?” Aliz prompted. Beom’s eyes flew back open. “She’s clean clean. Even her family’s full clean.” Beom shut his eyes again. “Want me to deep fake?”

“No, but thanks for the offer. I’ll think of something else.” He laughed at a sudden thought. “Who knows. Maybe Janos might convince her on his own…”

“Yea. Maybe. He’s a good man.”

“I know,” Beom agreed.

“And you,” Aliz added. “You’re a good man too. You know?”

Beom just shook his head. That was one thing he didn’t know. But still, the job was to do good, and he was good at doing his job. That had to count for something.