Profiteer

Shane nodded absently as the colonel went on. He wasn’t covering any new ground. Everyone had undergone an intense week of preparation for the upcoming mission, including a few mock assaults on the Martian surface. Most of her people could do the mission blindfolded by now.

 

In fact, even with the obscene corporate defenses bred by the violent Bakunin environment, the fact was that the Blood-Tide was an exercise in massive overkill. There was no real question that the Godwin Arms facility would fall to the TEC invaders.

 

Shane’s thoughts kept returning to the fact that this covert operation, if performed anywhere within the Confederacy, would represent an act of war that could tear the Confederacy apart. The violent overthrow of GA&A— even though it was a corporation and not a government— was tearing the spirit, if not the letter, of the Charter to shreds.

 

The worst part of this was the fact that Operation Rasputin was cloaked in the same secrecy that shrouded most of the TEC’s activities. Shane knew absolutely nothing of what was to happen beyond phase one. That was “need to know,” and the grunts didn’t.

 

During the colonel’s talk, there was a brief whoop over the PA system. Colonel Dacham stopped talking and turned toward the holo.

 

With little sensation or fanfare, the display on the holo shifted radically. The background stars remained more or less fixed, but now in the foreground sat a small reddish sun, and filling almost a quarter of the screen was the planet Bakunin.

 

Bakunin was a white ball that was girdled by a wide strip of ocean around its equator. Bakunin’s one continent was on the side opposite the Blood-Tide. The tach-in had gone flawlessly.

 

Colonel Dacham nodded and said, “Get into position for the assault.”

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

 

PART ONE

 

Leveraged Buyout

 

 

“War was not invented by humanity, but we have perfected it.”

—Marbury Shane (2044-*2074)

 

 

<>

 

* * * *

 

CHAPTER THREE

 

The Military-Industrial Complex

 

 

“Capitalism is a dog-eat-dog system. However, with most other alternatives, the dog starves.”

—The Cynic’s Book of Wisdom

 

“Capitalism will kill competition.”

—Karl Marx

(1818-1883)

 

 

“It isn’t a hardware problem.”

 

Dominic Magnus’ voice came out in a whisper. His attention was focused on his left hand. Under the translucent flesh he saw no problem with the connections. The synthetic muscles still moved smoothly, and the abstract mirrors of the printed circuits hovered unbroken just under the surface of the flesh.

 

He had noted his fingers drumming unconsciously, and he had hoped to trace it to some concrete miswiring. Unfortunately, the finger tapping and the facial tic originated in his brain, not in the prosthetics. They’d always been with him, but lately—with some of the recent upsets in the munitions industry—the tics had been getting worse.

 

He kept hoping to find some sort of mechanical difficulty, something he could get a handle on. Something to fix. Something to control. He didn’t like things he couldn’t control.

 

He made the mistake of looking up from his hand and caught sight of his reflection in the black marble of his desk. He closed his eyes, but since the pigment was off, it didn’t do any good.

 

Not that he didn’t know what he looked like when he turned off the skin. He just didn’t like the reminder.

 

Most of the time, Dom resembled any other man in his mid-thirties: olive-skinned, shorter than average, unremarkable. But with the pigment off, all the reconstruction was visible. Under the transparent skin, half his torso, as well as his entire left arm, snaked with wire filament and printed circuitry. All the musculature on that side of his body was synthetic and only slightly opaque. Underneath, the gunmetal gray bones glistened. A few of his remaining human organs were visible under his titanium ribs. On the right, a few natural muscles shone red, nourished by transparent capillaries carrying a watery fluid that passed for blood.

 

Worst of all was the face.

 

A titanium-alloy skull grinned from under the marble of his desk. Its teeth were too white to be real. A pair of brown, human-looking eyes stared up at him. He willed the pigment back and the skull was slowly obscured as his skin took on an olive cast, like slightly tarnished bronze.

 

The doctors had said he’d get used to the idea eventually. ...

 

So far it had been ten years standard and he had yet to get used to it.

 

The klaxon sounded the half-hour warning, announcing the tach-in of a cargo ship. The ship was cruising insystem and should maneuver for planetfall any minute. The scheduled ship was the Prometheus out of Cynos.

 

Dom supposed the coming deal was why he’d felt a sudden wave of self-consciousness when he realized he’d been drumming his fingers on the desk. CEOs weren’t supposed to get nervous.