by David Weber
His lips quivered again, this time with a smile—or Helen thought it was a smile, anyway. She wasn’t really sure, because she was crying, she realized—crying so hard she could hardly even see the imagery, even as she laughed—and her hands rose to cover her mouth.
“Look,” he went on, “the CW’s deploying to Spindle as soon as we get the new personnel worked up. And when we get there, I’m taking you to the best restaurant in Thimble. And after that, we’re finding a hotel, and—”
He went on talking, and Helen Zilwicki took one hand away from her lips and touched his face on the display—the face she’d known she would never see again—with trembling fingers while it wavered and swam through her tears.
Chapter Forty-Three
“Marika!” Ibtesam van der Leur exclaimed. “I’m so glad you were able to come!”
“Thank you, Ibtesam,” Marika Zygmunt replied with somewhat less enthusiasm as she shook van der Leur’s hand. “Your memo made it sound urgent enough that the Board thought it would be a good idea to send a representative. I hope you understand, though, that since I’m not an officer of the corporation, I’m not in a position to make any sort of binding agreements tonight. Assuming, of course, that that’s the purpose of our meeting.”
“Oh, I understand entirely.” Light glinted off of van der Leur’s cybernetic eyes and her smile turned just a little condescending, for several reasons. Not that her employers were in any position to be condescending to their rivals at the moment, in Zygmunt’s opinion. “But you are a member of the Board, with all that lovely stock,” the other woman continued brightly, “and I’m sure the Board will value your practical experience in this matter just as much as I will.”
“I suppose we’ll just have to see,” Zygmunt responded equally brightly, then tried not to wince as Immacolata Yemendijian, Manpower, Incorporated’s CEO, crossed the room to put an arm around her and kiss her on the cheek.
“It’s good to see you, Marika,” she said.
“Immacolata,” Zygmunt replied.
She not only didn’t wince, she managed not to draw back visibly, which constituted a major triumph of the will. It was impossible for her to imagine a first name less suited to Yemendijian’s actual personality, and that kiss was more than a pro forma peck, although much less…intense than the one Zygmunt knew van der Leur would have preferred to give her. The thought made her skin crawl. In fact, it made her think longingly of her days as one of Jessyk’s senior starship captains when she could have put several hundred light-years between the two of them. Unfortunately, that had been T-years ago, before she’d inherited her parents’ stock and traded her command deck for the loathsome swamp of corporate politics as practiced in Mendel.
She nodded to Yemendijian and stepped past her to shake hands with Menendo Wirschim, Technodyne of Yildun’s senior VP for Operations on Mesa. He looked a little nervous, but that was understandable. He’d done the corporate equivalent of stepping into a dead man’s shoes when his predecessor was recalled to the Solarian League as one of the numerous casualties of the Battle of Monica.
“Good evening, Menendo,” she said, and his smile was a bit more thankful than that of a senior transstellar’s bureaucrat was supposed to be.
“Good evening, Marika,” he replied, and nodded to the considerably shorter, black-haired, and badly overweight man standing beside him. “I don’t believe you’ve met Ivan Tuero. He’s our Director of R and D here in Mesa.”
“Mr. Tuero,” Zygmunt said, shaking his hand in turn, and Tuero smiled, his olive-dark eyes twinkling.
“Please, call me Vancheka,” he told her. “I’m a working stiff, not really someone accustomed to these sorts of high-level meetings. I understand you actually used to work for a living the same way I do, Captain Zygmunt.”
“That was a long time ago,” she said, but she also bestowed an even broader smile upon him.
The temptation to smile faded as she looked across the room and saw Maximilien Beaudry, van der Leur’s deputy. Beaudry was Director of Logistics in Kalokainos Shipping’s Columbo Region, and he stood by the wet bar, martini in hand with Vitorino Stangeland, Manpower’s VP for Sales and Marketing. There was no love lost between Kalokainos and the Jessyk Combine, but it wasn’t Beaudry’s presence which had banished the smile she’d shared with Tuero. Stangeland was a mousy little bureaucrat of a man, yet he was just as morally corrupt as Yemendijian—albeit without her…exotic tastes and sadism. Being in the same room with either of them was enough to make Zygmunt’s skin crawl.
“Marika!”
Zygmunt brightened a bit again when Gerhaus Yang swept down upon her. She and Yang were very much of a height, but where Zygmunt had dark hair, dark eyes, and a trim figure kept that way through vigorous exercise, Yang was, frankly, spectacular. There was obviously some good, solid genegineering in her family, and biosculpt hadn’t hurt one bit. Coupled with that long red hair, those arctic blue eyes, and a richly curved figure Zygmunt deeply envied, she could hold her own physically in any company. She was also one of the smartest women Zygmunt had ever met, and she’d personally built Sapphire Technologies of Mesa into the primary builder for the Mesa System Navy. More to the point, she clearly felt much the same way Marika did where Manpower was concerned, and the two of them had known one another since Zygmunt’s spacefaring days.
She was accompanied by Óttar Nagatsuka, Sapphire’s VP for Weapons Research. Nagatsuka was the youngest person present—aside from Lucinde Myllyniemi, Stangeland’s Assistant VP for Sales and Marketing—and there were persistent rumors that he and Yang were lovers, which obviously explained how he came to head Sapphire’s second most important division at such an absurdly tender age. Given that Yang’s preferred form of exercise occurred in bedrooms, and that her cheerfully equal-opportunity appetites were well known, that was probably inevitable. In fact, however, Nagatsuka had been happily married to Francisco Smirnov for almost as long as Zygmunt had been married to Bradley Mykos, and he was just as relentlessly monogamous as she was.
She shook hands with Nagatsuka and exchanged a hug with Yang which was as welcome—and genuine—as Yemendijian’s had been distasteful.
“Well, now that we’re all here,” van der Leur said, looking just a bit pointedly in Zygmunt’s direction, “why don’t we find something to drink and get down to the dreary business at hand. I’m sure we can all find something much more enjoyable to do with our time after we get that out of the way.”
Zygmunt punched her order into the wet bar, accepted her tall, iced—and, in her case, nonalcoholic—drink, and followed the others as they settled around the large conference table. It was interesting, she thought, how the natural pecking order established itself with van der Leur at one end of the table and Yemendijian at the other, flanked by Stangeland and Myllyniemi. As the sole member of the group with no satellite in attendance, Zygmunt settled between Myllyniemi and Yang, which put a lot of X chromosomes on that side of the table, she reflected.
Van der Leur waited until everyone else was seated before she took her own chair, which wasn’t totally inappropriate, since she was the one who’d sent out the invitations, but was typical of her arrogance. Although Yang was the most beautiful person in the room, Zygmunt had to admit that van der Leur was the most…visually striking. She was barely a hundred and fifty centimeters tall, with crimson hair—not red, crimson—even more tattoos than most members of Mesa’s “new lodges,” and the polished, featureless silver of her eye implants. Unlike most people with cybernetic vision, van der Leur had traded in a perfectly serviceable pair of organic eyes, and Zygmunt wondered sometimes exactly what that said about her.
“I’m sure all of us have been following what’s happening out in the Verge,” she said now, with unusual brusqueness, for even her hyper-aggressive personality. “What many of you may not have realized, however—although I’m sure Marika’s aware of it—are the probable ultimate consequences of this unprecedented seizure of wormholes the Manties have embarked upon.”
More than one of her audience’s expressions flickered at her assumption of ignorance on their part, Zygmunt noticed. Not that van der Leur cared; she had more of the typical transstellar’s arrogance than most, difficult though that was.
“If this is allowed to stand,” she informed them, “the consequences for the Solarian League’s economy will be somewhere between dire and catastrophic. I’m well aware—” she showed her teeth for a moment “—that as Kalokainos Shipping’s local CEO for Operations, I’m automatically…disinclined, let’s say, to look favorably upon anything coming out of Manticore. But I invite any of you who haven’t already done it to have your operations people run their own analyses of what this will do to the interstellar movement of goods and services and the people who do that moving. Frankly, quite a few of the smaller lines will go belly-up very, very quickly, and some of the major players are likely to follow suit, if this goes on for very many T-months.”
Well, you’ve got a point about that, Ibtesam, Zygmunt reflected. Not that you give a single good goddamn what happens to the crews of your ships.
“That’s bad enough,” van der Leur continued, “but what’s even worse, in a lot of ways, are rumors I’m beginning to hear out of the Verge.”
She paused, those featureless eyes swiveling around the table. Silence hovered for several seconds before Immacolata Yemendijian cleared her throat.
“And which rumors might those be?” she asked. “Frankly, I haven’t heard anything good coming out of the Verge—especially, given what you’ve just said, where the frigging Manties are concerned—for a long time.”
“By an interesting coincidence,” van der Leur told her with a thin smile, “the ones I have in mind do concern the Manties. And the reason I invited this particular group to discuss those rumors this evening is that it seems to me that there’s a certain…reluctance in Old Chicago to tackle those rumors effectively.”
Zygmunt managed not to blink. She couldn’t disagree about the effectiveness of Sollies’ efforts to deal with the Manticorans, but that was scarcely due to anything remotely like “reluctance.” Or sanity, for that matter. Thanks to the Visigoth wormhole, news of the disaster at Spindle had reached Mesa well over a month ago. Zygmunt’s own career had never included naval service, but no one who’d ever skippered a starship could fail to understand how catastrophically Sandra Crandall’s fleet had been crushed…despite the fact that the Manties hadn’t had a single ship heavier than a battlecruiser. The jury might still be out on precisely how the RMN had managed that, but the consequences were abundantly clear. And van der Leur wanted the SLN, having just lost one hand to the buzz saw, to stick in another one?
“Precisely what kind of ‘rumors’ are we talking about, Ms. van der Leur?” Menendo Wirschim asked after a moment. “And could you explain to us exactly how you expect the League to deal with them ‘effectively’?”
“Why, yes, I can!” She smiled brilliantly at the Technodyne executive. “And when I do, I think you’ll understand exactly why I invited you and Mr. Tuero over for drinks, Menendo.”
* * *
Rufino Chernyshev tipped back his chair and waved expansively in a “come in” gesture as Lucinde Myllyniemi appeared in his office doorway. The tall, blond haired young woman—for a prolong society, fifty-one was barely out of babyhood—shook her head and smiled as she accepted the invitation.
“So, was it as bad as you anticipated?” he inquired as she settled herself on the corner of his desk.
“Being in the same room for almost four hours with Ibtesam van der Leur and Immacolata Yemendijian?” She shook her head, kicked off one shoe, and put her foot in his lap. “Rufino, nobody could possibly ‘anticipate’ something as thoroughly ‘bad’ as that.”
Chernyshev chuckled and began massaging her foot. He and Myllyniemi had known one another since he’d been a thirty-three-year-old junior instructor at the Mesan Alignment’s agent training facility on Mesa and she’d been an especially precocious fifteen-year-old student. He could still see a lot of that fifteen-year-old’s reckless humor in the confident, seasoned agent, and her hobby—she was a marathoner who routinely worked out under an extra twenty percent of gravity—kept her as slender and graceful as she’d ever been.
And the two of them had been on-again, off-again lovers ever since she’d turned eighteen.
Of course, he reflected affectionately, watching her almost visibly purr as his fingers worked skillfully along her foot, quite a few people could say that about their relationships with Lucinde.
“So, aside from the company, how was it?” he asked.
“Well, your little birdies were mostly correct. I’m not sure how this is going to impact our plans, though. You know, it would really help at a moment like this if we had someone a little more highly placed in Manpower’s official hierarchy.”
And if we did, you wouldn’t have to carry water for us with Manpower, would you? Chernyshev thought with a certain degree of compassion…and a lot more sympathy. But somebody has to do it, and your reward for doing it so well is to be stuck with it for the foreseeable.
Manpower, Incorporated, was extraordinarily useful to the Mesan Alignment, but it was also the single most hated, most reviled transstellar in the entire explored galaxy. Right off the top of his head, Chernyshev couldn’t think of a single one of the Alignment’s military, political, or philosophical opponents who wouldn’t cheerfully shoot every Manpower executive. None of those opponents had ever heard of the Alignment, however. Not yet. And the Alignment intended to keep it that way for as long as possible. Towards that end, having Manpower regarded solely as a corrupt, morally bankrupt, and incredibly depraved business entity was absolutely essential, and it was equally important to keep anyone with a direct connection to the Alignment as much in the shadows as possible.
For the Alignment’s purposes, Immacolata Yemendijian and Vitorino Stangeland were perfect. They actually were everything the galaxy thought Manpower was, and neither of them had any inkling of the Alignment’s existence. Two or three members of the Manpower Board were also members of the Alignment, but all of them were fairly low-profile, and no Alignment operative had ever risen above the middle management level. People at that level could accomplish a great deal to…shape Manpower’s activities, but none of them were in positions to formulate official policy. True, half a dozen of the largest shareholders were Alignment fronts, but none of them knew exactly who actually gave them their instructions. There still had to be someone—someone who understood the Alignment’s ultimate objectives—in that “official hierarchy” of Lucinde’s, and that was where she came in.
Privately, Chernyshev knew, she considered Manpower a perversion of the Detweiler Philosophy and believed the Alignment should have cut its ties with the corporation long ago. She might understand the advantages Manpower created; that didn’t mean she liked them. Fortunately, it also didn’t prevent her from steering Vitorino Stangeland with consummate skill. In fact, Stangeland was convinced he was the one doing the driving, and the fact that he would very much have liked to become one of her lovers was a lever she used very effectively. In fact, Chernyshev never doubted that if it ever became necessary for her to actually allow Stangeland into her bed, she’d do it with a smile.
And then go stand in a shower for the next three days.
“You know I’ve passed that observation of yours along,” he told her now. “And I sympathize. But I have to admit, I was a stronger supporter of the notion before I inherited Isabel’s chair and realized how really effective you are over there.” She made a face, and he patted her ankle. “No, I mean it! You are effective. And, while I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, I doubt you’re going to have to put up with it a lot longer.” Her eyes narrowed, and he nodded. “We’re definitely moving into the end game.”
“Thank God,” she said. Then her nostrils flared, and she leaned back, bracing herself with her hands on the desk behind her. “I’m not sure how that endgame’s going t
o work out, though. Especially if van der Leur’s suggestions wind up bearing fruit in Old Chicago.”
“And those suggestions were—?”
“Well, the general anti-Manty groundswell’s building nicely. Of course, we could pretty much count on van der Leur to want Manticore burned to the ground, but she and some of the others—including my own dear Immacolata!—are picking up rumors of growing unrest in the Verge. And they’re leaping to the conclusion that Manticore must be the one squirting the hydrogen. But they also seem to feel the SLN isn’t taking things seriously enough. From what van der Leur said, Volkhart Kalokainos and his father plan on turning up the pressure on Kolokoltsov and the other Mandarins to increase Frontier Fleet’s presence in the Verge in general and in the trouble spots in particular.”
“Really?” Chernyshev chuckled “And how do they plan to convince Frontier Fleet captains—those who have working brains, of which there are more in Frontier Fleet than Battle Fleet—to rush in where Crandall chose to tread?”
“By offering the Sollies Technodyne’s second-generation improved shipkillers,” she told him, and he stopped smiling.
“The second-generation birds?” he said with the air of a man making certain he’d heard correctly.
“That’s what she said, and Wirschim and Tuero both seemed to know exactly what she was talking about.”
“I see.”
Chernyshev frowned as he contemplated the idea. Lucinde didn’t know about Massimo Filareta’s orders to attack the Manticore Binary System. Nor did she know about the first-generation Technodyne shipkillers with which his ships had been supplied. Shipboard ordnance wasn’t Rufino Chernyshev’s strong point, either, and from everything he’d learned, even the best of Technodyne’s new hardware remained markedly inferior to the Manties’. But the second-generation weapons were essentially identical in performance to the Mesan Alignment Navy’s current shipkillers. The idea of handing them to the Sollies, giving the Manties a good look at them before they had to deal with any MAN units, might not strike the people in charge of the Alignment’s naval posture as a good idea.