Earth Afire (The First Formic War 2)

Oh you stupid little man, thought Lem. Is that the best you can do? Is that the face you make when you're pretending to be innocent? Has that ever once worked with anyone?

Lem's face of course revealed nothing. Instead, he showed concern. "You haven't heard then? I thought for sure that you, of all people, with such control of the finances, would know." He gave Ramdakan the holopad with Imala's findings already pulled up on the screen. "The LTD recently found billions in unpaid taxes and tariffs," said Lem. "And worse still, there were people both inside the LTD and in Juke Limited who not only knew about the discrepancies, they also took steps to cover it up."

It was absurd to call the illegal accounting of billions of credits mere "discrepancies," but Lem knew that was exactly the term Ramdakan himself had used when the Board was scrambling to keep the news silent. The evidence hadn't implicated Ramdakan directly--he was too smart for that--yet Lem could see the man's dirty fingers all over it. Ramdakan had likely done all the up-front work himself. And if not him then at least his weasely finance teams who had taken his explicit direction.

But regardless of who had gotten the ball rolling, it was obviously a vast undertaking that involved far more people than Imala even knew about, with Ramdakan and Father likely right up at the top.

"Ah yes," said Ramdakan. "I had heard something about this."

Lem wanted to laugh. Ramdakan was acting as if illegal activity with that much money was mere office chitchat or casual gossip. "That's a lot of money, Norja," said Lem. "It takes whole departments of people and no small amount of money to conceal something like this."

Ramdakan shoved the holopad back into Lem's arms suddenly angry. "Is this why you called me into a freezer, Lem? To show me what the idiots at the LTD do with their spare time?"

Not in their spare time, moron, Lem wanted to shout. They're a government agency. This is what they're supposed to do all the time. That is, when they're not taking bribes from you and doing whatever dance we tell them to.

But he said none of this. Instead he kept his expression calm. "I called you here, Norja, because I'm worried. Father would never have agreed to this. And yet, the evidence insinuates that Father was complicit in this. Some may even conclude that Father orchestrated the whole thing."

"Not true."

"Of course not. But if the press were to ever hear about this..."

"They won't," Ramdakan said. "We have people on this right now, Lem. They're making it go away. And if the press ever did catch wind of it, the PR folks would handle it and make sure it didn't go to the nets. That's their job, and they do it very well. This is old news, Lem. We've got it under control."

"Good. I'm glad to hear it. So how much of it have we paid?"

Ramdakan blinked, confused. "What do you mean?"

"The back taxes, the unpaid tariffs. How much of it have we paid thus far? Surely we've begun the process of meeting the required debt."

"It's complicated, Lem. We're talking about massive amounts of money. It's not like buying a pair of shoes."

Or a bigger belt, Lem thought.

"There are lawyers involved," said Ramdakan. "There are thousands of pages of documentation to sift through. These things take time, Lem. Our people will handle it. That's their job. It's not your concern."

"But it is my concern," said Lem. "People in this company are threatening to taint my father's reputation. I won't stand for that. Have we at least made an initial payment, to show our good faith, to keep the LTD from taking this public?"

"I told you. No one's going public with this. Trust me."

Because you've silenced them with threats and bribes and that pig-ugly grimace of yours. "Information has a way of getting out," said Lem. "I'm told these discrepancies were uncovered by a no-name, low-ranking junior auditor at the LTD. If someone that insignificant can dig up this dirt, anyone can. Sooner or later this is going to leak. We need to prepare for it."

"How?"

"We go on record that we as a company are doing all we can to meet this obligation. If we wait until the leaks do that, we'll look like unrepentant snakes trying to cover our own asses."

Ramdakan's teeth were near chattering. "Fine. I'll look into it."

"How much will you give?"

"I said I'll look into it. We haven't allocated funds for this, Lem. It will need some examination. This has been a rough quarter, in case you haven't noticed. We don't have vaults of liquidity that we can dip into whenever we want. This has to be budgeted and approved. I'll have to consult with the Board. They're the ones who will decide." The emphasis was an attempt to remind Lem that Lem had no authority in the matter, that he was a minor-league scrub throwing pitches in the big leagues, but Lem pretended to have taken a different meaning.

"You're right," he said. "We don't have time for delays. The last thing we need is boardroom bureaucracy miring this in indecision." Lem thought for a moment, or rather acted as if he were thinking and then pretended to reach a decision. "You may think me a great fool, Norja, but I don't think we can wait for the Board. I want to make a good-faith payment from my own personal fortune on behalf of the company."

Ramdakan chuckled. "You can't be serious."

"I am serious. I'll have my people do it immediately. A tenth of what we owe should be enough to keep the LTD content for now."

Ramdakan's eyes widened and he nearly choked on the word. "A tenth? But that's ... an enormous amount. You can't possibly--"