QUOTE (Corporate Enclaves)
Nemawash: Business terminology for the informal process of laying the foundation for any major change, this term has been coined by headhunters and fixers alike to indicate the legwork involved in preparing a major run, such as an extraction. A runner team has to dig around the roots when extracting a high level corporate employee, which may mean staging a series of consecutive runs during which the executive’s closest aides, secretaries, personal assistants, and often their families must be extracted before the executive is capable of working for his new employer.
All Takase could think about that semester was spring break. Just him and his three best friends. A whole week without parents or classes or counselors breathing down his neck. A whole week without gravity even! He'd been daydreaming about the Shibanokuji orbital when not playing continuous loops of their brochure. His schoolwork was starting to suffer. So much so that his sponsorship mentor has called him to the meatworld office to remind him of his obligations to the contract, and he had even offered Takase meds to help him concentrate, which he reluctantly took. No sense losing sponsorship now, not after spending the last six years jumping through Ares Space hoops to get it.
Ryutaro realized they would never promote him again. He would spend the rest of his life as Associate Coordinator while they rotate idiot after idiot into the Senior position and leave him. Someone has to know what's going on, after all; someone, has to explain how things work to whatever bright eyed fool found himself as Senior Coordinator of Aeronautic Resources. They all seemed to have degrees in Marketing, and even chipped up on the disciplines involved never understood cost to product ratios (
"Wouldn't it be a real coup if we had a squadron of rockets buzz the orbitals, dropping fireworks and shit as they passed. Yeah, a real coup!" Insanity!). Ryutaro understood that and he'd slept through Relativity Economics. A part of him had accepted the position, accepted Associate Coordinator as his adjunct name and title. His wife was doing well, moving up the ladder with a grace and ease that made Ryutaro feel clumsy and socially inept. Another part of him resented it, resented that his wife's success came at the cost of his success. The acceptance and resentment churned inside him, but quietly. Then his son, his brilliant and courageous son Takase took a sponsorship from Ares Space - against his advice and with his mother's blessing. Ryutaro wouldn't allow his son to follow in his footsteps to a life of regret and resentment. It was then that Shibata Corp approached him with a proposition...
Oops, that's three sides. Ryutaro wants Shibata to extract him and his son, Takase's mother and Ares Space have other plans for the boy, and Evo, while Takase is on the Shibanokuji orbital, might make him an offer - or perhaps they just want to use him as a bargaining chip with Ares...