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  He jabbed out a fist again, breaking the skin of his knuckle on the edge of the window frame. Neither Salazar nor Emlia commented.

  Much as he wanted to lay the blame at her feet, Lester knew arranging the Lyran invasion of the Marik-StewartCommonwealth and Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey was beyond the scope of Jessica’s ability. Though not beneath her character. Her hiring of Clans to do her dirty work on Marik illustrated well enough her willingness to use treachery against the worlds and the people she claimed to care about so deeply. It was her jackal-like pounce on the wounded nations—rending them even as they reeled under the attack of what should have been the common enemy of all nations of the Free Worlds League—that twisted his stomach into a knot of rage.

  He had had no one in position to intervene on Angel II or Oceana or Marik. And his assets on Oriente had been severely compromised, through no effort of Jessica’s watchdog thugs. He was an impotent witness to her rape of all for which the Free Worlds League stood.

  He—and through him the people of the Free Worlds League—did have resources. But none that were in place to stop what was happening now.

  Lester stopped pacing and stood looking at the yellow stone of the security wall, clenched fists at his waist.

  Stop wallowing in what you can’t do and focus on what you can do.

  “What were you able to discover about the Rim Commonality?” he asked without turning his head.

  “Nothing beyond the fact that Elis Halas evidently negotiated a major concession from the rebel government,” Salazar reported flatly. “The behavior of the prime minister indicates he is laying the groundwork, both in parliament and with the people, for a closer relationship with the Oriente Protectorate.”

  Emlia had once speculated that the director of intelligence would say “I love you” and “My shirt’s on fire” with the same deadpan delivery. Lester smiled now at the thought.

  “Do we have anything in place that can interfere with this potential alliance?”

  “Not directly, sir. But I have accelerated the timetable on Operation Picket Fence.”

  Lester nodded. It wasn’t much, but if Picket Fence did what the strategy wonks said it could, it would hamstring diplomatic efforts of the Rim Commonality’s illegitimate government for years. Not actually a direct blow against Jessica, but it would at least complicate her life—if only a little.

  Speaking of diplomatic efforts…

  “Any word on Pembroke?”

  “No update, sir,” Salazar admitted. “The trade delegation to Tharkad was entering the Coventry system when hostilities developed between the LyranCommonwealth and the Duchy of Tamarind-Abbey and the Marik-StewartCommonwealth. There has been no communication with Marquis Pembroke nor any official acknowledgment of our inquiries from the Lyran government since.”

  Lester nodded at the expected news. The irony of his miscalculation—sending a trade delegation to steal the march on any effort by Fontaine or Anson to form economic ties with the Lyrans on the eve of their invasion—was not lost on him. But the step had been one among many. Not all had been so wrong. And all of them had been—or rather, the purpose behind all of them—was still valid.

  He was the last bastion of civilization, battling the poisonous hydra of darkness that threatened to reduce human civilization into a pointless quagmire of bitter, pointless territorial skirmishes.

  Lester, that’s melodramatic, even for you.

  Lester shook his head at the imaginary chiding of his wife even as dear Emlia sat not a half dozen meters behind him.

  He turned, startling her with a smile. The answering warmth in her eyes filled his limbs with energy.

  “We need our assets within the Halas household active as soon as possible,” he said to Salazar. “What’s the status on Operation Vole?”

  11

  Amur, Oriente

  Oriente Protectorate

  27 October 3137

  Damn him!

  Frederick’s relationship with Jessica Marik and her daughters had changed—for the worse. He thought he could salvage some of what he had already built. He wasn’t sure how much. But he knew he could legitimately blame his brother Thaddeus for this.

  Things had been going well: routine dinners with the captain-general and her daughters, a public position among her advisers, even sitting respectfully behind her during the occasional public appearance in the hinterlands. A few of the popular tabloids described him as “cousin and friend of the ducal family.”

  Then Thaddeus had shown up, calling himself “Warden,” of all things. The Republic was dead, but he’d managed to make himself the big frog in some small pond, and now came visiting like a head of state.

  His own position in the throne room among the gallery of counselors represented the very real power of influence. But having a front-row seat whenever Thaddy-boy was invited to negotiate with Jessica on the dais had lost its charm the first day.

  And he plans on staying weeks!

  Frederick resisted the urge to throw the cut-crystal decanter. Paid for this one. Hand steady, no trace of his rage on his face, he poured a judicious two fingers of the local single malt into the heavy tumbler cut to complement the decanter. Replacing the glass stopper, he strolled onto the patio.

  The grounds of his new estate were more modest than those attached to the house Jessica had provided, and it was twenty minutes farther from the palace, but the high wall provided privacy and the garden itself was every bit as delightful. And devoid of ugly fountains.

  He had followed the advice of Claireborne, and others more obviously loyal to Jessica, in selecting both his residence and his staff. No doubt everything he did was reported to someone, but he was used to functioning alone in a fishbowl.

  Lacking his brother’s firstborn title and status, Frederick had never been able to cultivate the network of loyal sycophants necessary to ensure privacy. And thanks to their parents’ much-touted honesty, he didn’t have the coin to pay for top-notch security either. So he made do, swimming alone among the sharks, managing to keep his head above water and looking for a solid place to stand.

  Damn him, damn him, damn him!

  Smiling as though at an amusing thought, Frederick leaned casually on the railing of the patio and sipped his scotch.

  He’d almost made it out of the shark pool and onto dry land before his brother showed up. All he’d had to offer the Halas upstarts was the Marik name. Thaddeus not only had the name; he came with the family title and a gaggle of awestruck peasants calling him warden—and thoroughly trumped the best his little brother could do.

  He wondered which of her daughters Jessica would sell for the right to legitimately call her family Marik. Elis as eldest made sense, but she had a cold cunning streak that overmatched even her mother’s. Frederick wouldn’t have minded being her drone—let her have all the headaches of running a government—but Thaddeus was much more the alpha male. He’d probably opt for Nikol: feisty, straightforward, more at home in her BattleMech than the back rooms of power. Much more Thaddeus’ tumble.

  Of course, if he marries Nikol, Elis will still be free.

  As quickly as it formed, he dismissed the thought. Once the Marik name was secured, Elis was too valuable an asset to be traded away redundantly. She’d be used to secure borders with one of the other rural provinces—Andurien, perhaps, or Regulus. Maybe even Liao, though Frederick couldn’t imagine anyone willingly entering into an alliance with that mad House.

  Pulling his mind away from idle speculation, Frederick focused on his own predicament.

  Marriage into the ruling family was no longer an option, and there was no place beyond Oriente that was both stable and welcoming to Mariks. So. He was stuck here and it was entirely up to him to make his stay as secure and profitable as possible.

  Of course he would capitalize on his “friend of the family” role. While Thaddeus bedded Nikol, he’d be by Jessica’s side—visibly advising her, publicly being the strong arm she leaned on. If he played his hand well,
he’d finish out his years as the beloved uncle of Oriente’s next generation of rulers. Not, perhaps, the apogee he’d imagined for himself, but pleasant enough all things considered.

  Unless her husband came to his senses and stopped wandering around like a lost soul.

  Frederick couldn’t understand why the man didn’t pull himself together. True, he’d lost a son and a daughter, but so had his wife, and she still had her wits about her. Of course, her power depended on her running her little nation-state efficiently; when one had money on the Hughes’ scale, one could afford to indulge oneself.

  By the same token, as long as there was a chance Hughes would get his priorities in order and reemerge as Jessica’s consort and counsel, it wouldn’t do to depend entirely on the captain-general needing Frederick around.

  Frederick sipped his scotch, taking the time to appreciate its fire.

  So.

  Swimming among sharks again. Smaller sharks, swimming in a smaller ocean, but sharks nonetheless.

  He needed to learn more about local politics. And local power, since the two were not synonymous.

  Time to renew his acquaintance with members of Parliament Claireborne and Oshaka, for one thing. Where he went from there depended on what he learned.

  Swimming with sharks was not so difficult. Frederick smiled. All one had to do was be a shark.

  12

  Atlanta, Savannah

  Former Prefecture VII

  28 October 3137

  “You’re a difficult man to see.”

  Green looked up from his noteputer, feigning surprise. He’d been holding station in the lobby of the hotel the Covenant Worlds’ trade commission had adopted as its base of operations. One of a dozen low-level functionaries catching up on work away from the conference. Positioned to observe others while escaping notice, he didn’t have a plausible escape strategy available when he’d seen Linette Ferguson approaching him with evident purpose.

  Governor Ferguson of Bordon was a tall, long-boned woman, the sort some described as “horsey,” with close-cropped orange-red hair. Today her nose and cheekbones, highlighted by pale curves that clearly marked the outline of goggles, were sunburned a painful-looking red. In the morning sunlight pouring through the lobby’s broad windows, her forest green business suit gave the pale expanse of her unburned complexion an unfortunately bilious hue.

  Bordon had been a problem child of The Republic for a generation. The attempt to diversify the population and the industrial economy of the underresourced world had already been pronounced a failure when Ferguson—an inexperienced midlevel manager with neither the wit nor the connections to avoid the assignment—had been saddled with the job of trying to salvage the situation.

  Unaware she was captain of a sinking ship, Ferguson had stabilized the economy in less than a decade. Months before Fortress, Bordon had posted its first positive trade balance since the Jihad.

  Though the marginal world had never been on his list of potential converts, Green paid enough attention to local politics to know the woman towering over him was credited with holding Bordon together when many more-affluent worlds were sinking into chaos.

  “I’m sorry,” he said aloud. “Did you wish to make an appointment with Dr. Petersen?”

  “No, I understood his economic prospectus the first time he sent it around.” Ferguson dropped unceremoniously into an adjacent chair. “Even if he didn’t send a copy to me. I want to talk military.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Reading between the lines,” the governor said as she surveyed the lobby. “This is a good vantage point. You can see halfway down the corridor.”

  Green said nothing.

  “Reading between the lines,” Ferguson repeated. “The Covenant Worlds have more guns than they need. Buried in among all those trade incentives is an assurance of military protection. That’s not an assurance people make—or take—lightly. The fact that it’s even hinted at says two things.

  “This is the part where you ask, ‘What two things?’”

  Green regarded the governor without speaking. Now that she was shaded from direct sunlight by a pillar, her suit no longer cast a sickly glow over her features. It occurred to him that her face was sunburned because she’d been somewhere other than attending the rounds of talks at the hotel over the last few days. He’d not been consciously tracking her and was now hard-pressed to think of when he’d seen her last.

  “Balancing your checkbook?”

  “What?”

  “Old negotiating trick. To avoid reacting to a question or offer, focus on something else,” Ferguson said. “Like thinking about chess during sex to slow things down. The tell is your eyes get a bit glazed no matter how hard you try to look like you’re paying attention. In and out of bed.”

  Green blinked. “I was wondering where you’ve been.”

  “If you mean all your life—Tall Trees, Terra, Bordon. If you mean the last two days—fisheries along the Gulf coast. We’ve been breeding Bordon carp to survive Savannah’s alkaline oceans, and it looks like we got one right. If it doesn’t eat everything else in the ecosystem, we might have a new agricultural export.”

  She paused, waiting.

  “What two things?” Green asked obediently.

  “First, that the Covenant Worlds has an active and mobile military able to encompass a few more systems. In the case of your offer, Savannah and Remulac. Second, that this offer of duty-free trade is a precursor to expanding your borders.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You are offering to boost the economy and provide security,” Ferguson said. “Two things that will endear you—and the administration that makes this security and affluence available—to the people. Do it right, give it a few years and you can get a grassroots “join the Covenant Worlds” movement going with no trouble.

  “Based on what I see, I figure five years at the outside.” The governor shrugged. “Since it’s a cinch I’m only seeing the tip of the iceberg, call it one or two.”

  How the hell did I overlook this?

  Green rejected the idea of continuing to sound like an uniformed lackey. Linette Ferguson had obviously parsed a great deal from limited data; events had progressed well past any chance of diverting her with protests of innocence.

  “What do you propose?”

  “See? It’s much nicer when you stop thinking about chess.”

  Ferguson leaned slightly forward.

  “Bordon is secure only because no one wants it,” she said. “And no one wants it mostly because no one knows what it has to offer.”

  Green raised an eyebrow. It occurred to him that he and the governor were clearly visible to anyone who looked their way: his position was unobtrusive, not concealed. However, he could think of no reasonable way to move to a more private location without alerting anyone who had already observed them that something was up.

  “Focus,” Ferguson reprimanded him. “Way too many of Bordon’s people were imported from high-tech worlds. They couldn’t bring all their technology with them, of course, but they weren’t refugees with only the clothes on their backs. Among other things, they brought their education database—which includes simulator programs far more advanced than anything I saw on Tall Trees or Terra. We’ve got a generation of techs trained on equipment no one has seen in seventy years.

  “Of course, for anyone else it’s like learning Greek or Latin, but we are positioned to be an asset to any technologically advanced world.”

  “You were angling for the Savannah market,” Green surmised.

  “Bordonians make up about twelve percent of their skilled-labor force,” Ferguson agreed. “And we’re a lot closer to Connaught.

  “In addition, we’ve been doing a lot of low-tech, easily sustainable bioengineering. More like your basic cross-breeding. We’re moving beyond exporting food to exporting plants and animals tailored to survive on marginal worlds, like that new breed of carp. More important, we’ve got the people who have been doing this tai
loring willing and able to go to other worlds to work on-site.”

  “In other words, you’re a source of specialized skilled labor.”

  “Short term,” Ferguson agreed. “Long term, we’re prepared to offer incentives for corporations to build plants on Bordon. Nothing major, of course. Secondary or tertiary assembly points that require little initial capital outlay.”

  Green considered. “What are you offering?”

  “I like that,” Ferguson said. “No dancing around, no pretending you’re not the agent for the decision makers. Ugly girls appreciate being treated with respect.”

  Green couldn’t help answering her smile.

  “Bordon joining the Covenant Worlds would go a long way toward convincing Savannah—and to a lesser extent Remulac—that signing on is a good idea,” Ferguson continued. “Of course, I will have to convince my parliament that becoming a Covenant World is the best way to go, but given the current political and economic landscape, I don’t expect that to be a hard sell.

  “You might have a harder sell convincing your bosses that Bordon is a good ally. Give me a day or two and I can put together a topflight sales kit.”

  “Governor Ferguson,” Green countered. “I think the sales presentation would be much more effective if you came to Miaplacidus and made the pitch yourself.”

  Not what I came looking for, but treasures often turn up when you’re not looking.

  13

  Amur, Oriente

  Oriente Protectorate

  29 October 3137

  There were others in the room. Rikkard’s battle reflexes counted a dozen to either side, ranking them roughly by threat potential without conscious thought.

  Rikkard ignored them, steadily regarding the woman on the throne as he approached. Looking for signs of the daughter in the mother. The relationship of flesh and blood—not merely genetic material—carried with it potential levels of interaction he knew he did not fully understand. Did the spirit gestate with the flesh?