Profiteer

Captain Kathy Shane had a bad feeling about Operation Rasputin. It wasn’t just the fact that this was the first time she’d been attached to a Confed Executive mission. If that had been it, she might have been able to discount the feeling. It wasn’t even the fact that the two companies under her command were going to operate outside the Centauri Alliance, the first time she’d heard of the Occisis marines leaving that sphere.

 

No, that wasn’t the problem. This was a cooperative effort with the TEC, which meant that her command could leave their nominal jurisdiction for anywhere in the Confederacy.

 

Anywhere in the Confederacy.

 

That was the problem.

 

The planet, Bakunin, was outside of the Confederacy’s jurisdiction. It had never signed the Charter. It didn’t even have a government with which to sign the Charter.

 

That lack of a government was the seed of the dilemma facing Captain Shane. One of the cornerstones of the Confederacy Charter was planetary sovereignty. Layers of sovereignty wrapped the Confederacy like an onion. Every planet was a force unto itself, the arms of the Confederacy keeping interplanetary order, and the TEC keeping interstellar order. Only two things were supposed to call for interstellar military action—

 

Defending a sovereign planet from external aggression, and defending a legitimate planetary government from internal rebellion.

 

Operation Rasputin was neither.

 

Shane lay in her bunk, thinking of her upcoming command. Her cabin was tiny, wedged to the rear of the troop compartment of the Blood-Tide. Even so, the accommodations on the troopship were palatial. She was command, and thus was the only Marine officer on board with private accommodations.

 

Normally a Barracuda-class ship could give most officers private quarters, but Shane’s Occisis marines only formed two thirds of the ship’s complement. The rest of the force was TEC civilians—and the colonel.

 

The troop-carrier Blood-Tide had left Occisis undermanned. Only two, of a possible three, marine companies rode the craft to Sol. In Sol orbit, the Blood-Tide picked up the Executive personnel, their command for this mission.

 

That was another thing that rubbed Shane wrong. Not so much working with the TEC, but the fact that their command was a TEC spook, Colonel Klaus Dacham.

 

Shane looked at a chrono set in the wall.

 

2400 hours Bakunin. They’d been on Bakunin’s thirty-two-hour day ever since entering Sol space a week ago.

 

In a half-hour the Blood-Tide would engage its tach-drive.

 

Her ship communicator buzzed. “Captain Shane.”

 

She picked the little device up from a dent in the wall that wanted to be an endtable. “Shane here.”

 

“This is Colonel Dacham. I want the commanding officers to assemble in the briefing area for departure.”

 

“Yes, sir,” she said as the communicator went dead.

 

* * * *

 

At 2415 the entire command staff aboard the Blood-Tide was assembled in the briefing room. Herself, six platoon commanders, and another half-dozen civilians. Even without the uniforms, anyone could have separated the civilians from the marines. The Occisis marines were all large-boned, squat, fair-skinned, and had a habit of sitting at attention. The civilians were much more racially diverse, and a few of them exceeded two meters in height— taller than any marine on board.

 

Colonel Dacham seemed to bridge the gap. He was olive-skinned rather than fair, and his near-black hair wasn’t cut to military specs. However, he didn’t tower over the marines—genetics, apparently, rather than gravity—and he walked like a military man. His body language was that of someone used to command, or at least someone used to giving orders.

 

He wore a generic uniform, black to match the marines, that was innocent of any insignia.

 

Colonel Dacham stood at the head of the briefing room, in front of a giant holo display. The display showed the cockpit view out the nose of the Blood-Tide. The scene was mostly black starry void, but Shane could see the tiny image of Saturn drifting over the colonel’s right shoulder.

 

“In just an hour,” said the colonel, “the Blood-Tide will enter Bakunin’s airspace.”

 

An hour for us, Shane thought. The rest of the universe is going to lose track of us for nearly a month standard.

 

The colonel addressed the marines. “Fifteen minutes after that, you will lead a surgical strike against Godwin Arms & Armaments. This surprise strike is pivotal to gaining our foothold on Bakunin. The assault and capture of this objective might seem a small target for two companies of marines. Don’t let that appearance fool you into treating this mission lightly. This is only phase one of Operation Rasputin, and it may be the most critical phase.”

 

Saturn drifted off the screen.

 

“Most important, after capture of the facility itself—I cannot emphasize this enough—is the capture of the CEO of Godwin Arms, Dominic Magnus.”