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  “Agreed,” Tony said. “Two days.”

  “Fair enough,” Ruben said quickly. The camera’s eye found him again. Then, perhaps still anxious over his sister’s nerve: “We’ll do better.”

  In the background, out of focus, Ming’s body language grew agitated again.

  Never take the kid to a poker game, Tony thought. You’ll get cleaned out.

  “Ming,” he said, pausing until she was center image again. “I’ll remind you once: there’s a one-to-one relationship between production and profit.” He spoke deliberately, with steel. “As Regent of Mars—”

  “Qinlao Manufacturing is aware of its responsibilities under the Corporate Compact,” Ming stated. “We don’t need a lecture from you.”

  Sitting back in his chair, Tony regarded his old partner and adversary. If he were being honest with himself, he was glad to see this side of Ming Qinlao. It reminded him of his own youth and all they’d accomplished together, and despite one another. Her arrogance, her defiance genuinely touched him. And to think he’d tried to have her killed before they’d ever really gotten to know each other.

  “I miss you, Ming,” he said, displaying his perfect teeth. “I miss your fire.”

  Her expression was curious. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Miss me? What does that mean?”

  Ruben sat forward. “It’s been a long night, Mr. Taulke. Is there anything else?”

  More irritation from Ming in the background. Tony knew what Ruben was doing. It had taken him a while to notice Ruben’s interventions after first observing Ming’s recent decline. But now the SynCorp CEO easily recognized them for what they were. Despite how it no doubt appeared to Ming, Ruben’s attempts at protecting her were admirable in their loyalty. But the Company couldn’t afford an invalid in charge of Sol’s manufacturing mecca. Ming’s obvious decline was something Tony would have to keep tabs on.

  “I’m glad you asked,” Tony said, addressing Ruben directly. “Helena will arrive in Lander’s Reach in two standard days. Just in time to celebrate meeting your repair deadline, in fact. I want her personally directing the public narrative on this, and I want her on Mars to do it. You’ll provide her every courtesy and cooperation.” He stretched his arms wide along the edge of his English oak desk. It was a favorite gesture meant to seem inclusive and expansive at the same time. Tony knew exactly how wide the camera lens captured him. “I’m depending on you, Ruben.”

  To his credit, Ruben held fast Tony’s gaze. Not many risked doing that, not even among the faction leaders. “Of course, Mr. Taulke. Every courtesy and cooperation.”

  Tony ended the call with as little ceremony as he’d begun it.

  “Where does she get off talking to you like that, Pop?”

  Regarding his son, Tony pursed his lips. The boy had an entitlement problem. Part of that was being a teenager and, like all teenagers, a heretic against the Galilean notion that the universe did not, in fact, revolve around him. Part of it came from being the oldest and only son of the most powerful man in the solar system. Tony sometimes wondered what his heir might have been like if Junior’s older brother hadn’t died in utero.

  “She’s a faction leader, just like me,” Tony said. “In one sense, my equal.”

  “Yeah, but you’re—”

  “Shut up and listen, son.”

  Tony the younger, called Junior behind his back, clamped his mouth shut. Had anyone else addressed him so, he likely would have leapt up and punched the person in the face. Junior’s having grown up in the lap of luxury had imbued him with an impulse-control problem. It had also spoiled him. Not just materially but morally. Being a good leader required a broader view, a flexibility in one’s perspective. One day, Tony knew, his son would be sitting in his chair, leading the solar system. It was his obligation to educate the boy.

  “She’s leader of the Qinlao Faction, like I’m leader of the Taulke Faction. Like Gregor Erkennen leads his family’s faction. Like Elise Kisaan leads hers. And Adriana leads the Rabh Faction.”

  “God, what an ancient bitch,” Junior said. “Won’t she ever die?”

  Tony released a silent breath through his nose. “Interrupt again and see what happens.”

  Junior’s expression went stiff for a moment, and Tony thought he might actually have to make good on the threat. Then the fire burned back to embers in his son’s eyes.

  “As faction leaders,” Tony continued, “each of us is exactly equal to the others under the Corporate Compact. But when we implemented business rules to make sure the arms of this giant octopus we created together actually work together, we knew there could be only one leader. You can’t sail a ship across the ocean with five captains at the helm. I put the Taulke at the top, and the other factions agreed because each got its own piece of the pie. The syndicate is a balancing act, son, a high-wire walk with crosswinds blowing in every direction. When the wind whips up, like with this sabotage business, a steady course becomes even more important. Too big a hiccup and the whole body shakes. Understand?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tony doubted Junior really understood the life lessons he was trying to teach him, or that he cared much about them if he did. If only his first son hadn’t died before being born.

  “Pop, you’ve told me all this before. I get it. But I’ve seen you go off plenty of times. Like what just happened with Ming. You were gonna send the fleet to Mars. You said so.”

  “No, I did not.”

  “I heard you!”

  “You heard your interpretation of what I said. What you wanted to hear—which is another problem for another day, by the way—but not what I actually said.”

  Junior seemed confused.

  Was I this dense when I was his age? Tony wondered.

  “I threatened to send the fleet,” he said. “I suggested it might be necessary.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  “The difference is the gray between the black and white, son. That’s what you need to learn if you’re ever going to run things.”

  His son’s face pinched. A juvenile’s reaction to being frustrated and out of his depth.

  Tony threw him a line.

  “I told Ming, without saying it, that if she didn’t get her house in order, I’d get it in order for her. Could I send the fleet? Sure. Could I even replace Ming Qinlao or overthrow the whole Qinlao Faction? Sure. But either one of those things, especially the second one, would throw the whole Company out of balance. Others might even try to exploit the chaos and take out the Taulke Faction altogether.”

  “Like Ra’uf Erkennen did a few years ago,” Tony Junior said.

  “Right. Like Ra’uf Erkennen did a few years ago.”

  “But you made a deal with his brother Gregor—”

  “And Ra’uf went bye-bye. And now Gregor leads the Erkennen Faction. And the Company survived. Thrived, in fact.”

  “And so did we,” Junior said.

  “And so did we.”

  “I think I get it, Pop.”

  Tony smiled. “Good,” he said, “now hit the road. I’ve got other business to attend to.”

  Junior made no attempt to rise. “I can’t stay and learn? Someday—”

  “Not this time,” Tony said. “And don’t be in such a hurry to take over. You’ll make your old man paranoid.”

  Returning a nervous version of his father’s smile, Tony Junior rose from the chair. “Aw, Pop, you know me better than that.”

  Do I?

  Tony knew part of his paranoia stemmed from his own method of taking power. He hoped committing patricide didn’t run in the family.

  After Junior left the room, Tony counted to ten to clear his mind, then pinged his receptionist.

  “Kesh?”

  “Yes, Mr. Taulke?”

  “Send in Fischer.”

  Chapter 4

  Stacks Fischer • SynCorp Headquarters, Low Earth Orbit

  I walked into Tony Taulke’s office, my eyes lingering on the new receptionist in
the anteroom. She was a looker. And she knew it, too.

  The door slid into the wall, cutting off heaven.

  “How’s life in the killing business?” Tony asked.

  “Tolerable,” I said.

  That’s our way of saying hello, a kind of password of greeting between the head of the Syndicate Corporation and his top enforcer.

  “What happened to Mai?” I asked, tossing a look to the sealed door behind me. X-ray eyes, where are you when I need you? “Not that I’m feeling particularly nostalgic.”

  “I’m sending her with Helena. Special media tour to Mars. Kesh is her temporary replacement.”

  “Kesh?”

  “Marakesh.”

  I thought about the exotic name. And what else about her might be exotic. “I think I’ll call her Mary. Safer that way.”

  “For you, maybe.”

  “Right.”

  Tony Two-point-oh and I went way back. No one ever calls him that to his face because it reminded him there’d been a Tony One-point-oh—his father, Anthony. Tony ascended the throne the old-fashioned way, by killing Papa Bear and taking control of Taulke Industries and the entire corporate conglomerate most people nowadays just call SynCorp. Sometimes I feel like the only person in the solar system Tony can relax with, but even I don’t call him Tony Two-point-oh to his face. I’ve pulled Tony’s ass out of more scrapes than I can count if I used my hands and my feet. That makes me the closest thing Tony has to a friend.

  Then again, nobody’s friends with Tony Taulke. I’m more like a comrade in arms. He’s SynCorp’s top dog in a pack of dogs, the one the other dogs let eat first from a fresh kill. I’m his right hand for getting the seedier side of business done. I’m a problem solver. I’m the guy you call when you want it done quick, quiet, and without a mess for the press. Unless, of course, you want the mess front and center for the press. Then I’m still the guy you call. Every faction has its top fixer. I’m Tony’s.

  “Heard about Mars?” Tony asked.

  “Who hasn’t? The Real Story’s full of feeder content. Lots of video of pulling bodies out, that kind of thing.”

  The Real Story … ’round-the-clock, real-time streaming vids of whatever infantile, in-flagrante clickbait happens to get captured in high def. The offerings can sometimes be schizophrenic, five- or ten-second snatches separated by flash ads of corporate propaganda. An algorithm determines the seediest thing the public wants to see based on past, popular clicks, then pops it to the top of the queue: a famous entertainer’s uncensored sex vid, a murder in progress on a backwater moon. Sometimes SynCorp even seeds content to shape whatever story it wants out there. Tony tolerates The Real Story, figuring it feeds the public’s darker angels and keeps them from thinking too much about more important things. Critical thinking is the death of empires.

  Mentioning the program brought a dark cloud over Tony’s features. When he gets that look, it’s like the humanness has left him, and all that’s left is the cold, calculating CEO. Soulless Tony. Patricidal Tony.

  “Resistance?” I ventured.

  “Seems like.”

  “And Helena is off to manage the message? With Mai as backup?”

  “More or less. Mai’s my eyes and ears on the ground,” Tony said.

  “Isn’t that Helena?”

  “Mai’s my eyes and ears on Helena.”

  That was a surprise. Helena’s been Tony’s mouthpiece for decades. The Queen of All Media. And one hundred percent loyal. Or so I’d thought.

  “Don’t tell me Helena’s looking for greener pastures.”

  Tony shrugged. “I’ve got no reason to suspect Helena,” he said, raising a hand. “But I’m in a careful mood. Mars is only the latest problem on my plate. Things are starting to pile up, Eugene. Coincidences are starting to seem too coincidental.”

  Whenever Tony uses my given name, I know he’s getting serious. It means he wants my attention. And he doesn’t like repeating himself.

  “Such as?” I prompted.

  “Such as the pirate problem between Jupiter and the Belt.”

  That one was new. “I hadn’t heard.”

  “Officially, only the five faction leaders know about the problem.”

  “Pirates, though. Sounds like something for the fleet.”

  “It does, doesn’t it?” Tony leaned forward, doing that arm-stretch-across-the-desk thing he does. “Blowing them out of space, yes. Finding who set them loose in the first place? Admiral Galatz isn’t that subtle.”

  “An infiltration op, then. What about the marshals?”

  “Too corrupt. Too tied into the public domain. If I needed a headline on CorpNet about shutting down a run-of-the-mill black marketeer, I’d call them. Having them run to ground whoever’s feeding shipping schedules to the pirates—well, that’s as likely to net them a payoff from the prey as help me catch them.”

  Understandable. The marshals—formally an arm of the United Nations when LUNa City was the only off-world colony Earth had—were the tin-star-wearing keepers of law and order most citizen-workers looked to for protection. Fact is, the marshals are bought and paid for by the Company like everything else in the system. They enforce SynCorp law but only when SynCorp wants them to. Like the corporate navy, they wear a uniform and perform a function. But they’re Kama Sutra’d with local bosses, who pay them off to look the other way. Some even employ marshals after hours as local muscle. The Service would do what SynCorp told them to, but there was no guaranteeing they’d keep quiet about it.

  I thought that through. Sounded like Tony wanted me to deal with the pirates in a way the marshals and the fleet couldn’t. That meant surgical work. As in cutting out a cancer.

  My specialty.

  “You think this is more than a space-based black market? A faction making a move?”

  Again Tony shrugged.

  After Ra’uf Erkennen’s ballsy move five years earlier, I had to ask. The elder Erkennen brother had innovated Molecularly Enhanced Synthetic Hemp, or MESH, which acted like a shield against stunner tech when woven into clothing. Without it, a stunner lives up to its name in spades: your own EM field, enhanced and focused by the weapon, fries your nervous system. Shocking, I know! Ra’uf hoped to topple Tony and set the Erkennen Faction atop the SynCorp totem pole. I stopped him—permanently. Things had been relatively quiet since then.

  We were due for another coup.

  “Someone’s siphoning helium-three and deuterium from the tankers coming out of the Jovian system,” Tony said. “I want you to go out to Callisto and sniff around. Find out who’s behind it. Find out why.”

  “Okay,” I said. A colony barely ten years old, Callisto was the coordination point for what the Company took off Jupiter. The tankers moved from there into the Frater Lanes headed for the switch rings orbiting the Moon, their cargo offloaded or redirected from there. “The Belt is full of asteroidal hidey-holes,” I said. “That’s where I’d work from too.”

  “The working theory: the pirates match course and speed, hook up to the tankers, and drain off amounts so small, they seem like margin-of-error losses,” Tony explained. “Do that a hundred times and you’ve got a lot of fusion fuel.”

  “That seems labor intensive, not to mention inefficient. How’d you ever figure it out?”

  “My margin of error is zero.”

  His voice was crypt-like. The Taulke Faction does more for SynCorp than just give the orders. They run the distribution network. Nothing moves in the solar system that isn’t tagged and tracked by them. On the books, there probably was a legit margin of error—allowable loss from whatever cause, mechanical or human slipup. But Tony Taulke keeps closer watch on the numbers than he leads others to believe.

  “Think the pirates and the refinery explosion on Mars are linked?” I asked.

  “Coincidental, maybe,” Tony said. “Maybe. But like I said—I’m in a careful mood.”

  “Am I catching or killing?”

  Tony considered my question. If I caught a big enou
gh fish, he’d want the flapper brought back and gasping for air. Public trial, lesson for the masses, that kind of thing. But if things were getting hinky across the system, keeping things quiet on the home front might be smarter. Take care of business, make sure only those who needed to see the endgame saw it. I like to get my orders straight before executing them.

  Pun intended.

  “Use your discretion, Eugene,” he said finally. “There’s a ship leaving for Callisto in the morning, the Cassini’s Promise. Settlers, migrant workers, supplies. Be on it.”

  I prefer the Hearse, my own personal ship. That’s not an official designation, of course—she doesn’t have one. The Hearse is off-network, unregistered, which comes in handy in my line of work. I like the closeness I feel wrapped inside the Hearse’s cocoon, the isolation on the front end of a job. Sitting alone, inside my own head. Even on six-day hard burns like getting to Callisto required. Without the Hearse, I’d be entirely reliant on the Company to be mobile.

  “I’ll have the Hearse shipped separately,” Tony said, guessing my thoughts. To my raised eyebrows, he said, “I want you integrating with the people heading out there. Lose the MESH coat and fedora. You’re an over-the-hill migrant worker spooked by the explosion on Mars. I want you thinking like they think. You might even scare up a lead or two on the trip.”

  Doubtful, but possible. I hated losing my longcoat and hat. An enforcer without MESH is like a soldier without armor—damn-near defenseless. But Tony’s the boss. I’d keep ’em packed away and close at hand, just in case.

  “Understood. I’ll leave the keys to the Hearse with K—Mary.”

  He nodded. “Good hunting, Stacks.”

  “Good luck with Mars,” I replied. The door disappeared into the wall, and Miss Exotic turned her smile my way from the front desk. It felt like sunshine.

  At least I was getting a warm send-off.

  • • •

  Exotic Mary booked passage on the Promise for me before I reluctantly left her presence. The ship wasn’t scheduled to depart for twelve hours, so I headed to Mickey Stotes’s place. The Slate’s located on the main docking ring of SynCorp Headquarters and the first stop for anyone wanting a quick drink soaked in atmosphere. It’s done up like an Old West saloon, which makes it stand out among the higher-tech, slick shops around the ring.