Riotfish, Inc.: In Debt: Chapter 55

Pearce pushed his slim glasses up his slim nose with one slim finger, and looked down at his datapad. He raised his eyes and looked at the flaking sign marking Riotfish, Inc.’s headquarters.

The sign hung crooked, the cheap paint bubbling and peeling from the cheaper steel. Clashing colors of red and gray graced the sign where there was any color left. The reek of hopelessness and apathy mixed with the sharp industrial stench of volatile organic compounds wafting in from the surrounding area.

Pearce sneered.

Revolting. The name, the sign, and the whole sorry lot. It was for the best, really. Once free of this mismanaged mess, these misfits could find some place to actually produce some value for society.

He stood next to a huge cargo van. It squatted on its six heavy gravwells. The chuffing hum of its power was a comforting reminder of civilization. Three heavily muscled assistants filed out and stood nearby, waiting for Pearce to act.

Pearce was just happy to see that Roger was not waiting to snatch at his shoes. He’d worn his discount pair today, just in case. He stepped forward and knocked on the door.

A long silence unfolded.

Pearce knocked again, more firmly this time, his knuckles rebounding loudly off of the cheap stamped steel door.

More silence.

“If they don’t answer after a third time,” Pearce said to his assistants, “I’ll need you to open the door for me. This will represent the default of Riotfish, Inc., and Crediture’s ownership of their remaining assets and holdings. Understand?” The three assistants nodded.

He knocked a third time. He counted off the seconds. Thirty seconds would be plenty. Mentally, he counted down, 25, 24, 23, 22…

“Who is it?” D’khara called through the closed door.

“This is Stewart Pearce of Crediture. I’m here to issue a notice of default to Riotfish, Inc. and use the assets and holdings to mitigate Crediture’s loss on Riotfish debt.”

Silence for a minute more.

“How do we know you are who you say you are?”

Pearce sighed heavily. They’d spent years failing to pay their debts, weeks frittering away their grace period, and now they were going to play silly games to keep him out for just a few minutes more, as though those few minutes would make any difference, as though he were the Grim Reaper, and not, let’s face it, a minor bureaucrat performing an unpleasant but necessary function.

“I must tell you that I am within my legal rights to declare Riotfish in de facto default and force entry. But I would much prefer to go over the paperwork with Mr. Fleer in a civilized way.”

A pause. The door opened a crack.

“Fleer’s not here,” D’khara said.

“Of course not.”

“But he’s on his way back right now.”

“I’m sure he is.”

“With paperwork and everything.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Until then, we’re not supposed to let you in.”

“That is not an option you can exercise.”

The door opened fully, and Oliver wedged himself outside. He stood in front of the door and stretched himself to his full nine foot, three-and-one-half inch height, flexing his muscles. He stared off into the distance, as though Pearce were beneath noticing. The three assistants, suddenly much less certain about their job loyalty, backed up and looked at one another hesitantly.

“I think we can exercise it,” D’khara’s voice floated out of the dimness behind Oliver.

Pearce, for his part, raised an eyebrow.

“Yes, your orc is quite impressive. And yes, I might need to call in some enforcers. And this whole process will be much more prolonged and needlessly expensive.” Pearce sighed again. “Understand, you cannot change the outcome, only how much trouble it is to get there.”

“Just until Fleer gets back,” D’khara said.

“Very well. Since we both know that Mr. Fleer is, in fact, hiding from his responsibilities somewhere in that building, I suppose I’ll perform the declaration out here and call in some help.” Pearce turned to walk back to his van.

A faint, odd sound caught his ear as he neared his vehicle, a kind of whining, shrieking sound. It was getting louder.

The sound spiked as a vehicle hurled itself around the corner. Such a careless assemblage of rejectamenta could only belong to the Riotfish, he realized. The vehicle fit perfectly with the poxy sign, the dilapidated building, and the rattletrap finances.

It screamed toward him, drifting in a beautiful tight arc that left a thousand miles’ worth of tire rubber on fifty feet of asphalt. Tires spinning, spewing smoke, and bellowing, the Battle Wagon slewed around, sliding directly toward Pearce.

Pearce screamed, trying to shield himself with his datapad. The van screeched to a halt, millimeters from pinning Pearce into a jellied mess against his own van. The datapad slipped from his nerveless fingers as the heat rolling off of the Battle Wagon buffeted him.

The passenger window of the Battle Wagon rolled down laboriously.

“Hello, Mr. Pearce! I’m so glad I caught you before you left!” Fleer said.

“Nuh… nuh…” Pearce said, trying to swallow down his adrenaline. He suddenly felt, for the first time, that he was uniquely unsuited to deal with the Riotfish.

“Actually, why don’t you take a moment. Oliver, there you are! Go get Mr. Pearce a little something to settle his nerves, would you?”

“Yes, sir!” Oliver replied, and vanished inside, reappearing a moment later with a bottle of water.

Mrs. Meade backed the Battle Wagon slowly away from Pearce and his cargo van.

Fleer stepped out of the Battle Wagon and picked Pearce’s datapad up from the ground. He brushed it off and handed it to Pearce, noting the cracked screen.

“Say, was that like that before? I’m awfully sorry about that,” he said with real sincerity. “We were running a little behind, and trying to make it up on the road. Are you okay?” He started brushing at Pearce’s jacket to clear off some of the dust of the Battle Wagon’s re-entry.

“It’s fine. Fine,” Pearce said, regaining his composure. He shooed Fleer’s flailing hands off his dusty coat, straightened his suit and frowned at the cracked datapad. “Fine. I suppose you know why I’m here?”

“Yes, and I’m sorry to say that you’ve made this trip for nothing!” Fleer’s grin was obnoxiously wide.

“Mmm. I don’t suppose you happen to have a credit chit with a very large number coded on it?”

“I do not! But I do have this!” He drew a card from his jacket pocket like a sword and presented it to Pearce with both hands.

“What is this?”

“That is proof of Riotfish, Inc.’s membership in the Mercenary’s Guild. Go on and scan it, scan it!”

Pearce’s face soured. He slowly took the card from Fleer, pinching it delicately between two fingers as though it were a dead bug. With open distaste, he slotted it in his datapad and scanned it. He handed it back immediately to Fleer, who was almost dancing with excitement.

“Furthermore,” Fleer continued, “if you’re able to take a payment, I can pay down another 75,000 credits today. That should bring our total below one half of the original debt.”

Pearce stared hard at Fleer. He punched in some data on his cracked datapad. He looked at Fleer again. Back at the datapad.

“Also, if you follow the legal feeds, Riotfish declared war against a superior Class-C company, Tapstrike, Ltd., and won! Not only won, but forced concession through complete elimination! It’s on a small scale, but that kind of victory hasn’t been documented in something like forty years!”

Pearce gave the data on his pad a long, hard look. His face was stony and unmoving.

“That changes the risk profile, right? We have the Guild membership now. We won the war. Is it enough?”

Pearce began to speak quietly while still staring at his datapad.

“Mr. Fleer, I have done this work for nearly thirty years, and I have seen many, many businesses like yours. Granted, none quite with your sloppy recklessness, but you are not unique: low means, large dreams, and no plans. I have compared viability calculations with outcomes across thousands of case studies and test cases, evaluated hundreds of debt profiles, and your profile has fit perfectly within every failure mode of every foreclosure I’ve ever worked.”

He lifted his eyes to Fleer.

“When I say this, Mr. Fleer, I want you to understand that I do so with a deep and ardent familiarity with all the relevant actuarial tables, but… you appear to have beaten the odds.”

Fleer whooped, and jumped in place a couple times. The Riotfish poured out of the HQ, variously yelling, hooting, shrieking, and screaming in dwarvish. Roger was dancing and whipping his head back and forth, allowing his tongue to fly free to spray and splat whom it would.

Pearce looked back down at his datapad. “I don’t understand how,” he said quietly to himself, “but you’ve beaten the odds. It’s… this should be impossible.” The numbers glared back at him from his datapad. The actuarials, the probabilities, the fine, clean rows of figures. His datapad had never lied to him, never led him astray. It was his rock, his guide, his moral compass. But now it was telling him to believe the unconscionable.

“That’s great!” Fleer said. He waited for a moment while Pearce stared at his datapad. “So, is there a form or something I need to fill out, or…?”

Pearce looked up at Fleer’s manically smiling face. He reluctantly handed the cracked datapad over to Fleer.

“As a duly appointed agent of Crediture, I hereby declare that Riotfish, Inc. has demonstrated that it has achieved the minimum calculable viability to continue regular payments on the debts owed. There is… no need to initiate default proceedings.”

Everyone cheered.

“You shouldn’t think this is sustainable, Mr. Fleer,” he cautioned weakly. “This style of management is very irregular. Even though you’ve managed to come through this crisis–”

Fleer, with a grin fit to split the world, grabbed Pearce’s hand and shook it vigorously.

“Fantastic! Hey, do you and your guys want to come in? We’re going to make cookies!”

Pearce smiled thinly, a cold sweat forming as he had a vision of the culinary offering of his previous visit.

“Uh, no thank you. We have other places to be today. You enjoy yourselves.”

Fleer released his hand and whirled into the HQ.

“Mrs. Meade! We need cookies! And I’m ordering pizza! Real pizza! Who wants some?”

A chorus of cheers followed Fleer into the HQ, and the street quieted down.

Pearce scoffed lightly to himself.

“Impossible.” He pinned the ramshackle warehouse with his fierce gaze. “I don’t understand it. I’ll need to spend some time analyzing how this– whatever– has happened.” His face twisted as the sounds of muted celebration drifted out to his ears. “Ridiculous. How can they be satisfied with this? They’ll never be more than a breath away from disaster.”

Pearce suddenly spun on his heel and stalked back to the van. “Let’s go.”

His assistants fell in and climbed into the van behind him, thankful that they hadn’t been called on to try and force their way past an orc.

The cargo van throttled up, thrumming, and slid smoothly away, leaving the street silent.

Fleer sat back at his desk and loosened his belt. The sounds of celebration– genuine, deserved celebration– drifted back to him.

He’d partaken too freely of the pizza and sides and appetizers, and Mrs. Meade had made more cookies than he’d ever seen in one place. He had to try at least one of each kind, of course; it would have been rude to do otherwise.

He was sliding dangerously close to a food coma, but the giant stupid grin simply wouldn’t leave his face.

Riotfish, a real mercenary outfit now. For real and for true. All it took was all of them. And now that they’d shown Fleer what they were capable of, they could show the world.

Shaking himself out of his daze, he sat up, cracked his knuckles, and started pulling open Guild listings.

“Right,” he said. “Let’s get to work.”

THE END