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Eva Stratt was not having a good day.
She had a headache and her coffee ran out again and she was almost out of the vodka she diluted it with. She also had a call with Beijing in 3 minutes to discuss the mass production of one of the elements the Sahara panels required and the diversion of several key arms factories that would entail. She expected a lot of yelling to be taking place in just about 6 minutes.
So yeah, she was not having a good day.
It absolutely did not help that her employees thought her some sort of idiot.
You see, Eva Stratt had seen a lot of ridiculous and, occasionally, outright destructive behavior from her people. Ilyukhina, Dubois, Shapiro and the most recent addition of Grace were the most notorious offenders, though not the only ones.
They’d organized something that resembled a birthday party — she still had the cursed Ilyukhina cutout in her office — and, far worse, they’d made her public enemy number one by posting on TikTok… the list of their offenses could go on and on.
Now, she was faced with something different, though. They were being secretive. Not that that, in and of itself, was in any way surprising. They were secretive all the time, about everything. No, the surprising part was how bad they were at it.
They were usually pretty decent at hiding things. She’d known something was going on the two weeks before her birthday, but she didn’t figure it out until they dragged her to the cafeteria.
Now, she was pretty sure as to the events at hand.
There was a new scientist on the ship. A British woman called Dr. Hill. And Ilyukhina hadn’t had sex since Dr. Kiera Rodriguez got a viral infection and had to be medevaced off the ship. So Ilyukhina was having her poor things of a friend group help her get laid.
The question remained, though, why were they — so poorly — trying to hide it from her?
Ilyukhina’s affair with Rodriguez was the worst kept secret on the Vat, and there were points where Ilyukhina would come into Stratt’s office and pout and ask if her and Rodriguez could have the day off ‘for morale’.
Stratt rarely granted such frivolities, but she was never cruel about it. She just told Ilyukhina they couldn’t afford losing the time. It wasn’t like Stratt herself was having an orgy every night either, so she figured it was only fair she granted those rarely.
And when it didn’t interfere with work, she did nothing to make them think they would need to hide their pathetic attempts at acquiring Hill’s attention for Ilyukhina.
So she was confused and somewhat offended. And, oh, there, her break was over. The Zoom with Beijing was to begin in 3 seconds.
She quickly clicked the link, entered the meeting password — she really needed someone to write something more secure, specifically for the operation, she hated using the commercial American software — and clicking the ‘Enter’ button.
“Ms. Stratt,” the man on the screen said in Mandarin, his Rs far more pronounced than usual, the native Beijing accent, luckily, one she was very familiar with. “I hear you have something to say to me,” he said, and she knew this would be an annoying one.
She nodded, responding in kind, her Mandarin far more formal, clearly non-native, though still Pǔtōnghuà, “Mr. Bai. I do, indeed. I need you to divert NORINCO, CETC and CASC towards the production infrared emitters that would simulate sunlight. I have sent my people’s sketches over to you.”
He stared at her through the screen, disbelieving. She was prepared to listen to him yell at her. “You insane bitch,” he started, and she took it in, because yes, she absolutely was insane for agreeing to this job and she was acting like a bitch. She could have softened the blow. She chose not to. “Do you realize what kind of position that would put my country in?” There was no time for softened blows, very little time for diplomacy. “You are making my country vulnerable to any attacker who pleases to seize our crops, do you understand that?!”
She felt her lips tighten and she let them, making sure they evened out into a controlled — and control-presenting — smile. “Mr. Bai, you misunderstand,” she said, and her voice was several degrees cooler, “I am not making a request. I am presenting you with a new reality. You will have the institutions I need diverted. You will have them producing what I tell you to have them producing.”
His face contorted, “You have no right,” he said.
Her smile was more genuine this time, “I have every right, Mr. Bai. I don’t suppose you forgot voting me into this position? Now, will I have to go over your head or will you make this easy for the both of us?”
He shook his head, his lips tight with disgust and disbelief. Before he could respond, though, there was a rather frantic knock on her door.
She hated losing momentum, hated that she would have to go through this conversation with him again. But Ryland’s face was peeking through the newly formed gap between the door and its frame and he looked terrified.
“I will call you back, Mr. Bai. Take this time to reflect on the words you allowed yourself today and the consequences they could have tomorrow,” she said, and then she clicked ‘End Call’ and stood up, her eyes meeting Grace’s, “What is it?”
He stared at her face, as if unable to find words, until he eventually stammered out, “Olesya tried to participate in Hill’s experiment…”
She was rushing up to and out the door before he even finished speaking, using her radio to call in medics into Lab D as she ran, Grace behind her.
Hill’s area of study was the cross-breeding of Astrophage with Earth-based elements. She was to try and figure out if there were any things that could accelerate the reproduction process. If maybe they could scale down the panels.
That meant a lot of grounds for explosion. Or fire. Or whatever new cosmic reactions existed with Astrophage that they had no real idea of.
When she burst into the room, the first thing she saw was soot. It covered part of a wall, a workstation, and some of the floor.
Grace was pointing towards the workstation, “They’re behind there,” and his voice shook.
Stratt didn’t hesitate. It wasn’t in her nature, not really. Especially not when she was worried. And she could just have two dead bodies, one her lead aerospace engineer and the other one of her lead biochemists, on the floor.
They were making out.
They were on the floor and they were very clearly not dead. Completely covered in soot, Ilyikhina’s hands were cupping Hill’s head, her fingers digging into Hill’s hair.
Eva Stratt had endured a lot from these people.
She would not allow them this.
“Get up,” she said.
Ilyukhina and Hill shot away from each other, eyes wide.
Stratt looked down at them, “I left a call with Beijing for this. I said, get up.”
They scrambled up, their spines straight even though neither had ever been instructed to present that way. “Stratt, I’m..” Ilyukhina started, but Stratt cut her off.
“Ilyukhina,” she said, and Olesya shut up, “Why must you make my job harder?”
Olesya met her eyes, “Wasn’t trying to.”
Eva sighed. She needed to get back to her Zoom calls. Her schedule was packed for the next 43 hours, no breaks, she did not have time for this. She turned to Hill, “and I don’t suppose it was your intention either, Dr. Hill?”
The woman shook her head, not meeting Stratt’s eyes.
Stratt signed yet again. She really did need some sort of HR person to deal with the brightest minds in the world. She looked at both women, “I will have someone get supples. Go down to medical, make sure you’ve sustained no injuries. And then after that I want you two scrubbing this place clean, you understand?”
There was a silence. She didn’t normally hand out punishments like this. Maybe a scolding for a particularly disruptive action, but not scrubbing an explosion site clean. Everyone had limits, it seemed.
“Yes, ma’am,” Ilyukhina gave her a faux salute before taking Hill’s hand and leading her towards medical.
Eva stood there for another few seconds, collecting herself. She would have to threaten Bai all over again. After she spoke to Budapest and Cape Town and Moscow, that was.
“You went hard on them,” Grace said, and she flinched. She had forgotten he was there.
She turned, meeting his eyes, “Ilyukhina’s antics could have caused this ship to sink had the explosion been any larger. And, contrary to popular belief, I don’t have the time to deal with your endless childish behavior. Perhaps this could be a lesson for them. About sticking to their respective fields.”
And then she was turning around and walking back to her office. She had a call with the Hungarian PM in — she looked at her watch — 7 minutes. She could stop by the cafeteria for coffee. And she would need to draw up a memo on non-Lab staff involving themselves in Lab operations.
Coffee first, though. With a splash of vodka.
She would need that when she tells the PM about the need to divert their Electric Vehicle industry towards her needs.