Profiteer

At exactly 2542 hours, Godwin Local, Colonel Klaus Dacham strode into Dominic Magnus’ office. Klaus was not in a pleasant mood. Ten years ago he’d convinced himself that it had been dealt with. Then came the discovery of Dominic Magnus’ identity, and then this mission—

 

And at the critical moment the murdering bastard escaped.

 

The feeling strung Klaus’ nerves tight, in an invisible tide, as if he were piloting his mental ship much too close to a point gravity source. It was a point he’d been orbiting for fifteen years.

 

Forget her, said a small heretic thought. She’s dead.

 

The thought angered him even more. The fact that she was dead, beyond reach, beyond any reconciliation—that was the dark hole his soul orbited. Killed by her favorite. The knowledge that the murderer had escaped justice this past decade tore all the wounds open.

 

The blood was still fresh.

 

And her murderer was still alive.

 

Sometimes Klaus wondered why he was obsessed with punishing the murderer of a woman he had hated. Hated and abandoned. Still hated. Every memory of her burned as badly as acid.

 

However, also burning in him was the sense that he was right. The necessity to punish the wrong was a scar on his soul deeper than even his duty to the TEC. A burning scar that, until recently, had been dormant.

 

Klaus should have been able to take Dominic, this time, without having to stretch the authority the TEC had given him.

 

And the murderer had still slipped through.

 

Klaus wondered if anyone at Executive Command— other than him—knew who Dominic really was. Did his superiors know why Klaus Dacham was so eager to command his first field mission since Paschal, at an age when most TEC agents were comfortably ensconced behind desks?

 

Klaus suspected that the old man Dimitri knew. If Dimitri Olmanov didn’t know, he was certainly capable of knowing. It was rumored that the head of the TEC could know anything that he put effort into finding out.

 

Klaus was skeptical of omniscience. However, Klaus did believe that if Dimitri knew about Dominic and still ordered this mission, then Klaus had implicit permission to act as he saw fit.

 

“Dominic Magnus—” Klaus frowned at that. It was a pretentious alias.

 

Klaus had only recently learned that his quarry had fled to Bakunin. Apparently, “Dominic” had appeared here within a year of Klaus’ last attempt to bring a belated end to the murderer’s life.

 

Coming to Bakunin had been like falling into a black hole. Bakunin was not part of the Confederacy, and even the TEC couldn’t penetrate beyond the scarred surface of its society. Klaus had been liaison between the TEC and the SEEC intelligence community, a dusty desk job, when he had learned of his quarry’s continued existence.

 

The file on “Dominic Magnus” had been buried in with a mass of reportage dealing with the arms industry on Bakunin. Klaus would never have seen it if the information packet hadn’t been mislabeled. The report had been requested by Klaus’ opposite number in the SEEC, and Klaus was only supposed to be a courier. Instead, someone had keyed the file “ATTN: Klaus Dacham.”

 

That file had been a minor part of Sirius’ and Centauri’s massive preparatory effort for Operation Rasputin. Seeing “Dominic Magnus” buried in those files had resurrected old phantoms Klaus had long thought exorcised.

 

Even when he maneuvered to be part of Operation Rasputin, Klaus had never thought he’d receive authorization to go to the planet himself.

 

Then, suddenly, Dimitri placed Klaus in command of the mission.

 

Not only a command, a real force, but a chance to—

 

Klaus slammed his fist into the wall of the hemispherical observatory.

 

It had been prefect! Stage one of Operation Rasputin was to take a munitions company. A munitions company. The objective was almost tailored for him to target “Dominic.”

 

He looked out the holo-transparent walls and watched the mop-up operation. Klaus’ ship was settled in the landing quad, a Barracuda-class troop-carrier with oversized engines. It was modified and fitted with enough weaponry to conduct an air assault on a small city. The Paralian-designed ship was named Kalcthwee’rat. The translation was Blood-Tide.

 

The ship and 130 Occisis-trained marines, and the murderer got away.

 

“Colonel?”

 

Klaus turned toward the voice.

 

The woman addressing him was still in field combat armor, though she’d removed her helmet. Her hair was shaved into the transverse stripes that were the trademark of the Occisis marines. Her red hair and stocky build marked her as a native. She was the captain, the ranking officer among Klaus’ marines.

 

Klaus didn’t like her. He had been given a week to prepare himself for the mission and another week with the marines in Earth orbit. The briefings he gave on Bakunin and their mission—the part the marines knew about anyway—had been successful, for the most part. He felt he could count on the large majority of his troops.