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It was a necessary decision.
She had no doubt about that.
“But Stratt, it’s unfair!” Ilyukhina all but wept, “You know it is! Are you doing it to punish us? Because I would much rather scrub off an explosion site again?”
She rubbed her temples, another headache coming on, “No, Olesya,” she said, her voice exhausted, “It’s not a punishment. I just have far more important issues to deal with. But evidently,” her hands made a gesture meant to encompass the present moment, “you need management. So I made sure to hire the best of the best.”
Ilyukhina groaned, “You can’t do that to us! What if they make us attend propriety meetings? Can you imagine that? Or harassment seminars? I’m killing myself for you, Stratt, I get that you’ve made peace with my imminent death, but do you genuinely want me dead?”
Stratt looked up at her, “I want your love life to stop affecting my work. Which is why I hired someone else to manage it. That’s all there is to it. Now, if you don’t mind, I have a meeting in 87 seconds. Refer any further complaints to HR. I hired him for that, after all.”
Ilyukhina did comply and leave the room. But she was not done.
That was how Stratt’s Vat’s second Joint Taskforce was born. Named Make Stratt Regret HR, it was abbreviated MS RHR, which meant it was commonly referred to as simply RHR, because on a boat, ‘Motor Ship’ was implied.
Of course, the main four culprits were Ilyukhina, Dubois, Shapiro and Grace.
Half the ship joined them, because as vital as the operation was to the world’s survival, it was exhaustingly boring most of the time, and anything that wasn’t work was an opportunity to be seized.
First of all, Ilyukhina decided that they needed to make HR an issue for Stratt herself.
Which was very easy after the all-hands-on-deck the HR person, Matthew Connor, initiated on the first day of his second week on the Vat.
“And if you find anyone to be non-compliant with the rules, you should report them to me to ensure a harassment free, open environment. I am always in my office on Deck Three. Do not be afraid to come forward, every complaint will be reviewed impartially! There is a lot of grounds for exploitation and harassment in such high-stakes environments, and I am here to ensure everyone’s safety and comfort!”
Oh, the sweet summer child.
Ilyukhina got a copy of Code of Conduct he handed out at the end, and the four of them sat around a table in the cafeteria.
“Oh, look,” Shapiro said, her reading glasses on, “No offensive language! How many times has she called us things in every language imaginable?”
Dubois nodded, “Does she still call us rabbits in Russian?” He asked Ryland, who was apparently the singular authority on all things Eva Stratt.
Ryland rolled his eyes, but reluctantly nodded, “Yeah. I think she knew the office on Deck Three was your favorite hookup stop and gave it to the HR guy on purpose.”
Ilyukhina perked up, “Exactly! That’s practically stealing, right? Hill and I loved it, too!”
“I mean, it’s technically her ship,” Dubois shrugged.
“Which she stole from the Chinese,” Ryland corrected.
“So there, definitely stealing! Double stealing!” Ilyukhina exclaimed.
Shapiro dutifully wrote it down on the napkin they had appropriated for the list of Stratt’s wrongdoings.
“Umm, what else,” Ilyukhina mused, her hand supporting her chin.
Shapiro read further into the Code, smiling as she found something, “No sanctions not directly listed under employment contract! That one time she made you and Hill clean up that explosion you caused definitely falls under this!”
Ilyukhina’s face lit up, “And we don’t have employment contracts!”
“Yeah!” Dubois perked up, “Are we even getting paid? I don’t think I am?”
Ryland chuckled, “What would you even need money for? You live on her dime, and after it’s over you’ll be in space. Not much to spend on.”
Dubois kicked him under the table, “Hey, maybe I want to buy Annie a fancy set of.. HR inappropriate clothing!”
It was Shapiro’s time to roll her eyes, “Ew, Martin, no action for you tonight!”
“Okay,” Ryland said, the Code of Conduct now in front of him, “How about… ‘No breach of local(International) Law’! I mean, I’m pretty sure kidnapping constitutes breach of law! In US where she did it, at least!”
Ilyukhina tilted her head, “Who’d she kidnap?”
“Me,” Ryland said like it was the most normal thing ever, “I mean, they came to my school and she followed me around and when I didn’t agree to go, like four huge guys surrounded me and made me get into the car.”
Everyone stared, until eventually Shapiro nodded, “Kidnapping, then.”
The second thing they did was actually write the complaints. They asked everyone they knew — and they knew everyone — to write them too. Three days later, they had one hundred and eighty nine complaints.
They sorted them into four categories.
Number one was Insults, which was self-explanatory, but they would need to write down a dictionary of all the Stratt-sults, some of them were particularly creative.
Number two was Working Conditions, which mostly consisted of people having to work on a moving ship with no cell service and therefore no connection to their families, or having to work with people they didn’t like, or the sense of undue responsibility that came with working on the Taskforce meant to save the Earth.
Number three was Favoritism, which they didn’t particularly enjoy reading, because it turned out that the Thursday spreadsheets were a thing only made for them and a few other people and everyone else’s requests were rather ignored, and everyone else had somewhat worse cabins, and there wasn’t always vegetarian food available, which somehow made it into the Favoritism pile even though it was really Working Conditions.
Number four was Crimes. Those included the multitudes of kidnappings, thefts and other things she apparently did to secure people’s cooperation with the project. They weren’t particularly surprised to read about her threatening someone’s family in order to secure their compliance.
Don’t get them wrong, they liked Stratt. She gave them lots of leeway and she was genuinely not a bad person, on the contrary, she was doing all of this for humanity. But they did not like the HR thing, and they were more than ready to use Stratt’s own transgressions to convince her to get rid of him.
So, they figured out a system.
Every day they would submit 11 Insult complaints, 7 Working conditions complaints, 6 Favoritism complaints and 3 Crime complaints. A total of 27 complaints a day, 7 days’ worth of complaints.
This hinged on the HR guy going to her about it before the seven days ended. They could only hope.
They didn’t have to wait long.
Two days later, an email chain was started. The subject line read “Director Stratt HR Violations Meeting.” The body was, more or less, an ‘I have reviewed your complaint and scheduled a meeting with Director Stratt about her conduct. You can be present at Meeting if you so wish.”
No one, of course, turned up. Instead, the four of them gathered near the former Hook Up Office to listen in.
Thing was, they knew just how tight Stratt’s schedule ran. So she was either losing hours of sleep over this, or the minutes she usually allowed herself to go grab a few coffees from the cafeteria between meetings. So the hope was she would get sick of these meetings and fire the man.
“So, Ms. Stratt,” they heard the man say inside the office and cringed, no one called her Ms. Stratt, it was Director or just Stratt, she hated the American honorifics, “I have received a total of..,” there was a pause, “Fifty-four complaints in the past 48 hours. Some of them are.. concerning.”
They heard a very characteristic Stratt Sigh, followed by “What did they do now?”
“Excuse me?” The HR man said, sounding confused.
“Well I’m assuming the complaints were regarding Ilyukhina’s group’s behavior. Dubois, Shapiro, Grace,” she said.
The pause was longer this time, and every single one of them felt the excitement, oh, this was going to be good.
“Ms. Stratt,” the man said, “The complaints were regarding your behavior.”
Another pause, and they could imagine her staring at him mutely. “Of course,” she said, and they heard the chair being pushed back, “Ignore those.”
And then footsteps, and they almost resigned themselves to a loss, but then.., “No, Ms. Stratt, this is serious. At the very least three of these are criminal offenses in most jurisdictions.”
They held their breaths. And then quieter steps, and the chair again, and the quiet thud of sitting down. “Alright,” she said, “which of my crimes are they concerned about?”
There was a rustle of paper, and then he was reading aloud, “Kidnapping of Dr. Margaret Simmons, Unlawful Imprisonment of Dr. Daniel Cravitz’s family, and, uhm, the theft of this ship? From China? They mention it when talking about the promotion of unethical behaviors.”
There was a silence, then, “I will speak with Simmons and Cravitz, is this all?”
She was clearly about to stand again.
“Oh, no, Ms. Stratt, I would actually discourage that. To avoid retaliation, I prefer to have these conversations all together. You know, kind of like mediation, surely you’ve sat in on mediation before?”
There was a silence. There was far too much silence in this meeting, but they couldn’t see into the office so that was all that was available to them. “Retaliation? You think I’m going to do something to them?”
More silence, then, “I mean no offense, Ms. Stratt, but they did accuse you of kidnapping and unlawful imprisonment. I have seen bosses retaliate for sexual harassment accusations that would go nowhere with the law.”
Jesus, how much more silence could there be.
“I am not going to harm the people I made the effort to kidnap, Mr. Connor,” she said, and this time, her voice was irritated, “For your information, I am not doing any of this for my own benefit. I am perfectly aware that at the end of this the only thing I have to look forward to is a prison cell. But until I’m on trial, I would prefer you deal with the issues I hired you to deal with, which are Ilyukhina and her people. I hired you to delegate that part of my duties, not to get myself into more unnecessary meetings.”
They knew they had her. They would double the numbers tomorrow and he would have no choice but to call her in again and she would snap.
They did so. And waited near the Hook Up Office the next day just the same as before. She saw them. She saw them, and she knew. Her lips tightened. She nodded at them, keeping up the pretense. And she went in.
“Ms. Stratt,” the HR guy said, and they were rolling their eyes again, “please take a seat.”
“I have 6 minutes for this,” she said, “and I want you to know that this will no longer be an issue. I have realized who is doing this and I will be taking care of that as soon as I have the spare minutes.”
“Ms. Stratt, we’ve talked about retaliation before, I don’t think it is advisable to resort to..,” Stratt didn’t let him finish.
“Frankly, Mr. Connor, I hired you to deal with a certain group of people. Instead of dealing with their antics, you are forcing me into senseless meetings and spending them trying to teach me sort of morality while I am actively attempting to keep this planet from dying. So forgive me if I am not quite permissive of my time being wasted. Now, I have a meeting with Warsaw in four minutes and I would like to grab a coffee before it starts, so if you will forgive me,” she said, and then there were chairs scraping and the four of them didn’t even attempt to hide their presence.
She saw them again as she walked out of the office, her eyes running them up and down, until she spoke, “My office, 11pm.”
And then she was gone, up to the cafeteria to grab her coffee. And they knew they had it.
They showed up at her office at 11 on the dot. She looked them up and down, then sighed, “Why must you do this?”
Ilyukhina shrugged, committing to the bit, “We have to comply with HR regulations. You said so. Report anything we’re unhappy with to HR. We did.”
“Idiots,” she said in Russian, and then saw Ilyukhina writing it down, “Jesus, you are documenting this meeting? Are you fucking insane?” The ‘fucking insane’ was definitely going into the notebook too. “Oh stop this, Ilyukhina, I will revoke your shared bedroom privileges!”
“Oh, a threat,” Ilyukhina muttered, playing it maybe just a little too far.
They watched Stratt’s shoulders drop, watched her let out a sigh, “Will you calm down if I fire him? Is that what you want? Because I really don’t have time for this, Olesya,” the last sentence was said in Russian with a previously undiscovered level of exasperation.
“Yes,” Olesya said immediately in Russian, “Fire him and I swear we will stop this. You will have at least a week of not hearing our names outside of reports.”
Stratt took a deep breath, “Fine,” she said, in English this time, “I will fire him. But remember, a week of no antics. Otherwise I will fire a dozen HR officers just like him and I will make sure every complaint against me gets shredded.”
Ilyukhina grinned, “Yes, Ma’am,” she saluted Stratt and turned towards the exit.
“Grace, stay behind. I want you to look at some schematics we’re sending over to Beijing,” Stratt said, and Grace stayed, because Grace always stayed when Stratt asked.
The next day they had the pleasure of listening in on the HR guy’s firing, which was a rather terse ‘You are no longer needed, please vacate the office by 1400, there will be a fighter jet expecting you at 1410 on the flight deck.’
Exactly a week and one hour after the conversation, Stratt walked into the cafeteria for some coffee, only to see the place covered in balloons — where did they get balloons? — and a poster saying “ceasefire is over” is all caps.
Oh, she couldn’t wait for Ilyukhina to die for the rest of humanity.