Chapter 10

Dinner that night was as much fun as it had been the last time. Even if it was bittersweet, with Pan being in the Delta Sector, Kat still enjoyed just sitting and spending time with Pan's brother and sister-in-law. The more she heard about his childhood, and about his family, the more she couldn't help but wish that her family were still around.

Over after-dinner drinks, John finally broached the subject of her finances.

"Okay, Kat. Time to get down to business! With what I was able to retrieve from your other accounts, you are sitting on a very nice chunk of credit. Credit for credit's sake is fine, if all you want to do is have it issued in small denominations and roll around it in. But taxes to the government and fees charged by banks will, slowly but surely eat into the principle if you let it just sit in an account. I want to put it to work for you." The ledger that John placed in front of Kat had her reaching for her drink again. She had just over eight million credits!

"I wanted to meet with you in person because you really need to outline your investment objectives, decide what rate of return you want, what kind of income you expect, just to start with! You have to decide if you are reinvesting the dividends or if you want to use those to further diversify your portfolio and..."

Kat could feel her eyes starting to glaze over and held up a hand, motioning for John to stop.

"John, I really do appreciate what you are trying to do for me. This is 'found money' to me, credits that came to me unexpectedly and I have never had much to my name before now. I have no idea what the difference is between a good and a bad investment, and while I recognize the words you are using, you might as well be speaking in code." John nodded at her, and would have begun again, but Kat still had her hand up and made a shushing movement.

"What I would like, no, love, is for you to help me out with this. You would not have become the CFO of Moore Shipping if you didn't know what you are doing, and I would like to make a deal with you. Initially, you invest the money in whatever you think is wise and you take a fair fee as the money manager or, if you prefer, have someone from your firm act as the manager. For my part, I will do my best to educate myself on the finance world and, when I feel better able to make investment choices, I will consult with you."

John frowned, shaking his head. "I don't have an issue investing the money for you, but I wouldn't dream of taking a fee for the work. You are family now!"

Kat shook her head, her expression as firm as she could make it. "John, your investment firm did not become successful by taking on clients for free. I learned a long time ago to find the best person for a task, pay them to do what I ask of them and not kvetch about the price. If I wanted a rifle capable of putting a shot in a one-inch target at three kilometers, I didn't scrounge some conduit and a bit of lumber from a discarded desk, I found a competent professional and paid."

John looked a little shocked. "Rifle? I am not sure I..."

Kat waved him off. "It doesn't matter. The point is that I am willing to pay for expert advice, and if you won't let me pay, then I can find someone who will."

Anna, who had sat and watched this exchange with a slight frown on her face, burst into laughter. "John, dear. She has your number! When your father offered to build that toy yacht of yours for cost, you put your foot down and said that if the company would not let you pay, you would have it built by your competitors. I recall some self-righteous speech about the company not being a charity and it setting a bad precedence or some such."

John, looking chagrined, turned and kissed his wife on the cheek. He turned back to Kat and offered his hand. "My wife is absolutely right. I would be a hypocrite if I were to refuse you the same. Pax?"

Kat batted his hand aside and leaned over the table, kissing him on the end of the nose. "Pax!"

Her dinner with Bob's family turned out to be the highlight of her vacation. Bob's wife was a stunning, amazon of a woman who was every bit as tall as her brother, the Marine Gunnery Sergeant Kat had met on the USN Liberator. She was almost twice as tall as Kat, and towered over the rest of her family as well. Seeing Bob standing next to her was enough to send Kat into giggles, though she did her best not to show it.

They had been married for more than thirty years and they still looked at each other as though they had fallen in love just the week before. It made Kat hopeful and, if she were honest with herself, a bit melancholy, all at the same time. She was going to miss Pan terribly on this new assignment.

The rest of her week was spent in the vast library of the Citadel, learning all she could about the Beta Sector. The Beta Sector contained some of the oldest human-settled systems in space. Early colonization efforts had headed outward to this arm of the galaxy first to take advantage of the relatively short distances between the nearest habitable systems to the home world.

This was, of course, before discovering that many of the systems, so enticing on paper, were simply not compatible with long-term human habitation. The scientists had come up with a dozen theories but the bottom line was that the atmosphere on those worlds that might support humans contained gasses not present in the home world's system. There were two exceptions found, the Oolad and the Calad systems.

Exploration and colonization instead moved inward, toward the heart of the galaxy where the concentration of stars made it more likely to find planets humans could use.

The Oolad system with its single inhabitable planet Ovid, where Kat had been born, was classified as declining tech and had been slowly devolving over that last several hundred years. Mismanagement, over-exploitation of its resources and its placement on the far side of human space meant that it was now a provincial backwater with little to offer the rest of settled space.