Earth Unaware (The First Formic War 1)

"Come in, Ms. Bootstamp," he said. "I'm most interested to meet you."

So he knew who she was. Imala wasn't yet sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

He pocketed his stylus and faced her, smiling. "But tell me first, is Karen O'Hara a real journalist for Space Finance or did you pull that name from a hat?"

"Real, sir. In case you checked her on the nets."

"As if I have time for such things," he waved her to a cocoon chair, which resembled an empty sphere with the front quarter sliced off. They were great for minimal gravity, and Imala climbed inside. Gardona took the chair opposite her.

"Why did you agree to meet me, sir, if you knew who I was?"

Gardona spread his hands in an innocent gesture. "Why wouldn't I want to meet any of my employees? And such a good one, too, I'm told."

He was either lying or there were people watching her she didn't know about. Pendergrass and Kidney Cap would rather yank out their fingernails than give her a positive review.

"I apologize for the silly deception, sir, but reaching you by traditional means wasn't working."

"I'm a busy man, Imala. My secretary protects my time."

So he knew how she had tried to reach him as well. Or maybe he was simply assuming she'd gone to the secretary.

He laughed. "Disguising yourself as a journalist. That's takes guts, Imala. Guts or stupidity, I'm not sure which."

"Perhaps a bit of both, sir."

"And under the guise of doing a feature interview, too." He shook a finger at her. "Appealing to my narcissism, I see."

"It seemed the most believable story, sir."

"Well I'm flattered you would think me important enough to warrant a feature interview in such a reputable magazine." He crossed his legs. "Well, you have my attention, Imala. I'm all ears."

She got right to it. "I have evidence, sir, that Gregory Seabright, one of our senior auditors, has been ignoring and in many cases concealing false financial records from Juke Limited for the better part of twelve years."

"I know Greg, Imala. I've known him since grad school. That's a very serious accusation."

"There's more, sir. I also have evidence of financial payments to Mr. Seabright from a small subsidiary of Juke Limited in excess of four million credits."

Gardona was silent a moment. He was still smiling, but there was no longer any life behind it. "If such an allegation were true, Imala, which I doubt, I can't imagine Greg would be dumb enough to keep such payments on file or make them easily detectable. He's one of our top auditors. He would cover his tracks."

"Oh, he covered his tracks, sir. He covered them with so many layers it's taken me two months to piece it together. I had to snoop and dig in places not normally accessible to me. It's a very lengthy thread that I had to follow to connect Mr. Seabright with the payments, but if prosecutors are patient enough, I can connect the dots for them."

"Prosecutors?"

"Obviously. Juke Limited ships have been exceeding weight limits for transshipments to Earth year after year without paying the required fees and fines. We're talking about hundreds of millions of credits here. Juke has been paying him off to turn a blind eye and foster illegal tax and tariff practices."

"And you can

prove all this?"

She held up a data cube. "Over three thousands documents."

"I see. And when did you research and compile all this?"

"After hours. I only stumbled on it because I was studying old files, trying to familiarize myself with some of our larger accounts."

"This is troubling, Imala. Who else knows about this?"

"Just my immediate boss, Richard Pendergrass."