Chapter 5 – The Drennan Brothers

SatSphere.

Jack Drennan sat slumped on a barstool with his elbows propped on the bar and his chin resting on tightly closed fists. He stared hypnotically into his tumbler of 16-year-old Lagavulin scotch, the two sacrilegious cubes of ice floating around the rim like a pas de deux. He left its twin untouched on the bar in front of the empty seat next to him. 

Fucking SatSphere.

A nudge at his elbow wrenched him from the depths of his melancholic reverie.

“Brother. Sorry to keep you waiting. Is our table ready?”

Jack looked up over his shoulder at his older brother, Peter. Drops of rain wound snakelike patterns down his trench coat, coalescing into small puddles on the hardwood floor of the Satis Bistro. 

“You’re dripping.” 

He looked to his feet and grimaced. “So I am.” 

Peter nodded towards a hostess who darted to his side, helping him remove his coat. She gestured to a busboy to towel the floor and asked, “May I escort you to your booth?” 

“No,” Jack growled, more aggressively than he intended. “Give us a few minutes.” He gave the hostess a forced smile and then made a show of wiping nothing off the leather seat of the bar stool next to him with a napkin. “Peter, sit with me. We need to talk.”

“Jack, you know I don’t like public places. I prefer the –”

“Peter. Sit down.”

The hostess slipped away, and Peter slid onto the barstool, scowling at Jack. “You seem wound up.”

Jack pushed the second tumbler of scotch closer to Peter’s hand. “They screwed us, Peter. Totally fucked us over.”

“SatSphere?” Peter turned his neck to face his brother full-on. He closed his fist around his glass and squeezed until his knuckles turned white. 

“Yes. Well … not exactly. Li Qiang and his software company. The technology they promised us. They gave it to SatSphere.”

“But, we had a contract. Written.” Peter was rigid, his eyes boring holes into the side of Jack’s face, whose attention was once again drawn back to the ice cubes he was now swirling around the rim of his scotch with a red swizzle stick.

“They must have found a loophole. Didn’t even bother to phone. Left a text.” Jack pulled his phone from the inside of his suit pocket and scrolled with his thumb. He pushed the screen into Peter’s face. Peter read out loud, “Sorry, Jack, SatSphere made us an offer we couldn’t refuse.”

“They can’t do that.” Peter stood and slammed his palms on the bar. “We had a fucking contract. Our lawyers will be feasting on their bludgeoned corpses by sunrise.”

“You dream. It would take years and, even then, there’s no guarantee. We have weeks, maybe months, before we start bleeding cash.”

Peter swiveled Jack around to face him. In contrast to Jack’s dulled, resigned expression, Peter’s face was razor sharp, his features balancing on a thin tightrope between volcanic anger and business-like determination. His fiery eyes locked on Jack’s as he erupted, “You know we needed that tech patch, Jack. There are three thousand satellites up there that will be molasses compared to SatSphere. We’ll be lucky not to lose half of our clients.”

Jack just shrugged his shoulders. What his brother said was true.

Peter released a slow, guttural moan, lifted his glass to his mouth, and downed the smoky contents of his tumbler in one gulp. He then slammed his glass down hard on the bar. Hard enough to chip a fragment of crystal off the edge of its base. 

“Another.”

The bartender promptly delivered a second glass and wiped the broken pieces of crystal away with a damp cloth. He motioned to take Peter’s broken tumbler but then thought better of it and disappeared. Peter downed the newly arrived drink in a second gulp and slumped forward, an empty glass in each hand.

Jack glanced at his black Breitling tactical watch and said, “Better ease up, Peter. It’s not quite noon.”

“Fuck noon. You know damn well this could sink us.” He paused for a moment before he whispered, “Can you send someone? Off the books. To talk to Li Qiang.”

“If I were a betting man, I’d suspect SatSphere already talked to Li Qiang.”

“You think the loophole is a loaded gun?”

Jack shrugged his shoulders again and finished his drink. Another round arrived quickly.

Jack turned his head and took a long look into Peter’s face. “You look like crap. When’s the last time you left the OneWorld Tower?”

“When was the last time we were here?”

“Christ. Like my birthday, two months ago.”

With a wry smile, Peter tilted his head to the side and lifted his shoulders.

“You need to take better care of yourself,” Jack said. “We have everything riding on OneWorld. Can’t have the CEO turning into a crazed hermit.”

“It’s our company, Jack. We can do whatever we want.”

“We still have stockholders and a board to account to.”

“Mmph. Tell you what. You do you, and I’ll do me.”

They both looked at each other and then broke into wide grins. The scotches were having their desired effects. “Where the fuck did you get that bit of wisdom? Your Ex?”

“Her lawyer.”

“Get all your stuff out?”

“As much as they would let me.”

“Did she get the house?”

“The house, the cottage, the boat, most of the cars …”

“Thought you had the best lawyers in town.”

“She apparently had the best lawyers in the state of New Jersey.”

Jack just shook his head. He wasn’t the least bit surprised. This was Peter’s third divorce, and he saw it coming from around two Exchange Place street corners. “So, you’ll be staying at the Tower, again.”

“Have been for the past two months.”

“Peter, you never learn. You’re staying in my room, I guess.”

“You never use it, so I put your stuff in storage and had it renovated. I’m planning on staying there full time.”

“Where will I stay when I’m in town?”

“I had an extra suite added on. A small bedroom.”

“What are we? Twenty-year-old frat brothers?”

“Frat brothers with eight-figure annual incomes.” They both smiled and clinked their glasses.”

“You’re going to go nuts staying in that place full-time,” Jack warned, shaking his head.

“Maybe, but I am getting a ton of work done.” Peter paused for a moment. “Listen, Jack, this SatSphere thing is a real problem.”

“I know, but maybe not as bad as we think. Or maybe a lot worse, depending how you look at it.”

“How so?”

Now Jack was smiling, a cynical smile. “I’ve heard rumors out of DARPA. Some bad winds are coming.”

“What kind of bad winds?”

Jack paused to formulate his response. Their company, OneWorld, was the leading satellite communications company on the globe. Typically, there wasn’t much that could go wrong with orbiting communication satellites. There were, however, a few natural disasters that, although exceptionally rare, always loomed ominously in the far corners of their minds.

“The kind that turns state-of-the-art, million-dollar satellites into floating toasters, except not quite as useful.” 

Peter’s eyes widened. “Solar flare?”

“The biggest one ever.”