Profiteer

Dimitri ignored him. No one would like the precedent that this kind of invasion would set. No one but Sirius and Centauri, who were both in economic trouble even without the financial black hole of Bakunin sitting at their back door.

 

“If you’d please finalize your votes and pass me the chits.”

 

Adams and Green slid their cards over simultaneously.

 

Kaunda wrapped his dignity around him like a cloak and slowly slid his card to Dimitri. The gesture would have looked regal if it weren’t for that fact that Dimitri knew that the Union only had one vote to cast in this matter; they only had one prime seat.

 

Hernandez clicked her claws on the card as she passed it over.

 

Vashniya hesitated. He looked at his card while everyone waited. He was a chocolate-brown man, bald with a heavy white beard, and very short. As he sat there, smiling enigmatically, he looked like a dwarf smiling over some golden horde.

 

Vashniya’s expression was unaccountable. Dimitri certainly didn’t understand the delegate’s glee. Dimitri had already counted prime seats in his head. Even if Vashniya had his two allies solidly with him—even if Indi and company were unanimous against—they would still be one vote short, twenty-two to twenty-one.

 

Vashniya passed the card over.

 

Dimitri slid all five cards into a terminal set into the tabletop and read the results to himself before announcing them.

 

What? He almost said it out loud. He almost let surprise register in his face, something he never let himself do. It wasn’t that Operation Rasputin failed. The measure passed, just as expected, and with a heavy margin.

 

It was how it passed.

 

In a dry voice, Dimitri read off the totals. “The final vote of the Executive Command stands: Twenty votes for, seven against, sixteen abstentions.” When Dimitri read the number of abstentions, Kalin and Green looked shocked, and most of the people in the room turned to look at Vashniya, who was smiling impishly. “The motion carries,” Dimitri concluded.

 

Why? Dimitri thought. The entire block from Epsilon Indi abstained, all fifteen votes. That wasn’t all. There had been two defecting votes from Sirius. That meant that if Indi had voted against, Rasputin would have been blocked.

 

The Indi Protectorate constantly complains about Centauri and Sirius having de facto control over Confed policy. And Vashniya, after gathering the Union and the Seven Worlds into a coalition, just let Centauri and Sirius force through another proposal.

 

So why is he smiling?

 

Dimitri left the Executive meeting planning to assign a task force to study recent changes in internal Confederacy politics.

 

* * * *

 

Ambrose met him at the door, as always. Dimitri’s bodyguard was never more than fifty meters away from his charge, a distance Ambrose’s enhanced body could clear in less than a second.

 

“Rasputin passed, Ambrose.”

 

“Very good, sir.”

 

They walked to the aircar. As they did, Dimitri decided he was going to miss Mars. If you left out the effects of the atmosphere, the lesser gravity made Dimitri feel half his age.

 

Unfortunately, half his age was eighty years standard.

 

“I suppose it is good, even if the circumstances were odd.”

 

“Yes, sir.” Anyone else would ask about the “odd circumstances.” But Ambrose seemed to have no sense of curiosity. It was one of the things Dimitri liked about him.

 

“Good indeed. Sirius gets to pretend it’s solving its economic problems, and I get to finally stage the climactic confrontation.”

 

Ambrose opened the door for Dimitri, and Dimitri tapped the side of Ambrose’s leg with the cane. “Do you get that? My swan song, finally.”

 

“As you wish, sir.”

 

Dimitri slipped into the back of the aircar, and Ambrose settled into the driver’s position. “I’ve been waiting ten years to send Klaus to Bakunin.” Dimitri closed his eyes. “With the need for my successor becoming more and more pressing, for a while there I thought I was going to have to exceed my authority—if that’s possible— and invent a mission for him.”

 

“It is good you didn’t have to, sir.”

 

“Yes, Ambrose.” Dimitri yawned. “Wake me when we get to the spaceport.”

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

CHAPTER TWO

 

Freedom Fighters

 

 

“War is simply honest diplomacy.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

“We go to gain a little patch of ground

That hath in it no profit but the name.”

—William Shakespeare

(1564-1616)