Profiteer

Tetsami looked back through the mirror at Shane. “Are you sure it’s a good idea involving her?”

 

“The information she has is invaluable.”

 

“What if she’s a plant?”

 

“She’s not a plant,” Dom said coldly.

 

Tetsami turned around slowly and looked at him, really looked at him, for the first time since he’d come into the room. Her expression now showed some of the concern that had crossed Zanzibar’s. Dom realized his cheek was twitching.

 

“Are you all right?” she asked.

 

“A plant would not have mentioned my—” Dom raised a shaking hand to his face. “Would not have mentioned Klaus Dacham to me.”

 

“Can I do some—”

 

“I need to be alone,” Dom whispered.

 

“But—”

 

“Now!”

 

Tetsami circled around him, looking as though she was trying to decide whether or not to be scared. She was through the door before Dom could see which won.

 

Dom was alone in the observation room.

 

“Klaus,” he whispered. The harsh name scraped his throat.

 

He watched as Zanzibar entered the interview room and escorted Shane out. Zanzibar had known him for the better part of a decade, and she could only suspect what this meant. She’d seen only the fringes of the wound that Klaus Dacham was clawing open. Tetsami had no idea. And Shane—

 

She thought that GA&A had just been stage one in some larger TEC operation.

 

Did that matter? Would it matter to Klaus?

 

Helen Dacham’s death had affected both of her sons. Perhaps Klaus even more than him. Amazing how tragedy could sharpen parts of life once thought faded.

 

Helen was their only parent. She had not been a good mother. She’d been prone to extreme emotion. She drank. She beat her sons. She had her sons beg from Waldgrave’s tourists.

 

The Executive Command had been a way for both of them, him and Klaus, to escape.

 

Escape.

 

Escape was all Dom had ever tried to do.

 

His hands were on top of the observation chair Zanzibar had been sitting in. His left hand clenched through the upholstery on the headrest, all the way to the chair’s metallic skeleton.

 

It had been after Dom’s greatest success as a TEC officer. He had single-handedly “suppressed” a military coup on Styx without losing a single TEC operative. He had received commendations on the deftness of the surgical strike.

 

It was in the glow of that victory that he had received word that Helen Dacham had been on Styx, in Perdition.

 

Perdition, a city that no longer existed.

 

He deserted the TEC and had lived within the cracks of the Confederacy until—

 

For the first time in a decade, he had to face something totally unexpected. And, again, it was his brother.

 

He looked up at the empty observation room and realized that his whole body was shaking.

 

“My God, Klaus. Wasn’t it enough for you?”

 

He pulled on the chair, and his left hand yanked it free of the shaft in the floor. There was a screech as the metal under his left hand bent. He barely felt the pseudoflesh on his fingers crush and give way.

 

“You killed me already!”

 

Dom swung the chair at the observation window. The one-way mirror was armored, and the chair bounced off it, starring the view of the interview room and setting off a dozen red lights on the observation console. Dom swung the chair again....

 

“What the hell are you doing here, Klaus?”

 

“Don’t you know?”

 

“The Command?”

 

Klaus laughs.

 

The chair hit the window again. It bounced, leaving a concave depression where it hit.

 

“Gunrunning is low on the Executive priority list at the moment. This is personal.” Klaus is no longer laughing.

 

“What are you talking about?” Jonah backs to the railing, wondering where his security is. He’s been out of the game since Styx. Five years. Longer since he’d seen his brother.

 

“You could have saved her, Dominic.”

 

God, no.

 

Dom swung the chair harder. The sound was even louder this time, and white dust blew from the cracks in the window. The view into the interview room became fractured and rainbow-colored. Somewhere a siren blared.

 

“What could I, anyone, have done?”

 

“Shut up! It was that damn Styx operation!”

 

“Talk sense! That was a black op. There was no way the TEC—”

 

Dom swung the chair and the observation window exploded.

 

Klaus’ gun fires and Jonah tumbles over the railing, a hole in his shoulder.

 

The chair sailed through in a cloud of polymer glass fragments.