Rich Man's War (28 page)

“Yes,” Brekhov nodded, his brow furrowing deeper with concern.

“Coughlin did an interview,” Donaldson explained, and then opened up a video preset to a specific moment. Brekhov and the other viewers saw a woman journalist and a suited, distinguished if somewhat portly man whom they all recognized as the CEO of one of their rival companies.

“…you’re saying there’s no truth to any of the rumors about CDC’s cash reserves?” asked the journalist. “Rumors that seem to be driving your stock prices down?”

“Well, Maria, I can’t claim to have heard every rumor out there,” Jedidiah Coughlin shrugged, holding his hands out openly as if to concede a point. “But to address the overall point, no. There’s no factual basis to any rumor that our cash on hand is low.”

“He looks terrible,” murmured Pedroso, who leaned forward in her seat to watch.

“Yeah,” nodded Weir.

“
Shh!” Donaldson cut them off.

“No truth at all, Mr. Coughlin?”

“None whatsoever. I couldn’t tell you where that came from.”

“You don’t think that CDC’s affairs in Hashem or the ongoing lockout from Archangel might have anything to do with it?”

“Oh, I’m sure people speculate. People speculate all the time. Heck,” he chuckled, “’speculating’ is a long-standing profession here on Earth.”

“Don’t joke, Jed,” breathed Brekhov, “you sound like you’re covering something up.”

“But no,” Coughlin continued, “those matters are well in hand. The ships in Hashem are largely the same ships we had in Archangel space all along, so it’s not like operating them in another system creates a new expense.”

“Even when it’s not part of a contracted arrangement for payment?
” asked the journalist, her tone and mannerism perfectly calm and courteous. Her approach seemed friendly. Almost helpful. “How do you respond to sources at Lloyd’s Financial who express privately that the firm is looking to reduce its exposure with CDC by pulling back from regular repurchase agreements?”

Coughlin blinked. “Again, Maria,
” he stammered, “I couldn’t speak to a single source sharing a single rumor, but—“

“Damn. How old is this?” asked Brekhov with wide eyes.

“Six days,” said Donaldson. “I got it off of our internal express dispatch. The rest of Fairhaven won’t have it before tomorrow morning. Anton, I got a transmission from a follow-up dispatch ship as I made it here. Dallas sent it about ten minutes after the one with this broadcast. CDC’s stock fell another eight percent before this interview was over and it was still dropping.”

Brekhov sat back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “That stupid idiot never should have spoken up in the first place,” he exhaled. “Now he looks like he’s hiding something. And this is six days old…”

“What’re they losing so much cash over?” asked Weir.

“Everything you’d expect,” Donaldson grumbled. “Archangel, Hashem, a couple bad product rollouts and then this rumormongering. CDC’s overexposed. They should’ve seen it coming, and they shouldn’t have gone in on Hashem with us like they did.”

In the space of a few heartbeats, Brekhov’s expression moved from breathless dread to rage. He swept his desk with one angry forearm, sending glasses, papers and a small crystalline statue flying off to one side. Weir jerked back in his seat, still new enough to his position that he’d never seen the CEO’s anger take physical expression.

Pedroso and Donaldson were not so surprised. They shared a long, wary glance while Brekhov fumed. Pedroso gave a nod, and Donaldson spoke again. “Sir,” he said, “we should talk about our exposure if CDC actually runs out of cash.”

* * *

“It’s getting pretty bad
out here, Tanner. Every night there are three different jerks on the news talking about how Archangel is pulling down the whole economy and they never tell any other side of it. Some of my instructors are repeating it, too. Hell, I got a snotty remark from the junior cohort commander about me wanting a free lunch because I’m from Archangel. If you see your ex, tell her she’d better punch up the PR, because we don’t look good at all.”

--Midshipman Allison Carter, Annapolis, August 2276

“This is why we never should have outlawed extraterritorial assassinations.”

Patrick Shay’s grumble broke the relative silence in the conference room, but no one replied right away. From her seat at the far end of the conference table, Andrea Bennet looked up and opened her mouth to speak, but Victor Hickman headed that off with a gentle hand on her wrist and a stern look. The president’s chief of staff then jotted two words onto the paper notepad in front of him:
No politics.

Andrea
made a face, but nodded in consent. The leader of Archangel’s religious conservative Heritage party had offered her a wonderful opening that she would have to let slide for the sake of governmental unity. Nothing said here could be used to score points in the media. They’d all managed to agree to that before the briefings began.

A dozen senators sat at the table, but in practice only three of them spoke. Stewart Dempsey, leader of the liberal Foundation party, was the closest ally President Aguirre had in the senate and in the room. The real heavyweights, though, were Shay and Diana Castillo of the Compass party.

“Senator Shay, you’re welcome to initiate legislation to change that,” said David Kiribati. He sat beside President Aguirre at the center of the table, lined up with several other advisors to the president opposite the line of legislative leaders.

“No, he’s not,” scowled Castillo. As a younger woman, she’d spearheaded the newborn secular conservative Compass party that made Archangel’s drift from its religious roots into a lasting change. She’d also been president herself only two decades ago.

Aguirre was not entirely thrilled with her return to politics in the last election, but he couldn’t complain now. He needed her. “Sorry, Senator,” he said. “Gallows humor. Anyway, assassinating them wouldn’t matter. They’d be replaced practically overnight. We’re not dealing with individuals here, we’re dealing with a mindset. Someone will always step up to act like this until the behavior itself becomes unprofitable.”

“And you say that your primary source for this information is no longer embedded within NorthStar, correct?” asked Castillo. “All of this has been vetted and verified already?”

“The officer in charge felt that exposure was imminent, so she pulled the source, yes,” said Kiribati. “We’ve verified the info as best we can. A lot of that comes down to statistical analysis, but we spent the last couple months on it before coming to you. We’re confident in our conclusions.”

“So this represents a covert action that is no longer in progress?” asked Shay.

“Technically, yes,” Kiribati nodded, “so this briefing is therefore not subject to restrictions under Article 19, if that’s what you’re asking. Regardless, I implore you all not to go public with any of this.”

“That’s why you asked us to come without any staff aides,” noted Senator Dempsey. “And why you offered the PR gag on Andrea over there.”

“You’ve got it,” Aguirre confirmed, leaning forward in his seat. “Senators, about ten months ago, we all got together in this room and agreed to take back our schools from these bastards. I feel a bit silly saying ‘take back’ when we never had control in the first place,” he added with a grumble, “but that’s neither here nor there. We agreed to hammer out a basic outline of a plan and we stuck with it, and because of that unity and commitment the overwhelming majority of teachers and other staff stayed on. We had the schools back up and running in less than two months, and now they’re
our
schools.”

“They’re our religious schools now,” muttered Castillo.

“Ten percent!” Shay blurted. “Ten percent of social studies curriculum is dedicated to religious studies! A curriculum that specifically doesn’t proselytize! It’s cultural awareness!”

“And that’s a compromise that we agreed to make,” Aguirre counseled calmly, holding up his hands in a gesture of peace while giving Castillo a stern frown. “It wasn’t the only compromise, either. But those deals got us where we wanted. We hammered that all out quietly, well in advance of the public debate. You got your parties in line, we offered cover
, we went out of our way to share the credit, and we got it done.

“I invited you all here to ask you to do it again. Only this time we need to do it on a much bigger scale, and we need to be rock solid.”

The senators glanced at one another curiously. Dempsey spoke first. “What is it you want to do?”

“Yesterday, we received an offer from the chairman of the Union Assembly to mediate a settlement. He’s got NorthStar, Lai
Wa and CDC ready to sit down with us. They’re ready to make concessions.”

“They’re ready to cry ‘uncle,’ huh?” Shay frowned. “Why now? CDC’s hurting lately, but NorthStar and Lai
Wa seem fine. We can’t be costing them
that
much money and they’ve fought tooth and nail on every front.”

“The i
ntelligence,” Castillo realized. “You said your operatives believed that the source was already at risk. They know that we know?”

Kiribati nodded. “It seems likely, yes. We probably know more than they think we do, though. Our people on
Scheherazade came back with a smoking gun. It’s also possible that all this has hurt the other two big players more than they’re letting on.”

“But we’re not going to give the school system back,” Dempsey said. “We agreed to that. We didn’t go through all of that for nothing.”

“No,” Aguirre shook his head. “No, we didn’t.”

“So, what, then?” asked Castillo.

“That’s what we’re here to discuss, Senator,” Aguirre said. “We need to discuss our options, work out a compromise that we can live with and then sell it—
quietly
—to our respective parties, and we need to do that in advance of accepting any offer to negotiate. I realize that could take weeks. Maybe a month or two. I’m willing to accept that. The Big Three may get tired of waiting for a response and start complaining about it publicly, and I don’t care. If you’ll work with me to ensure solidarity on our end, I’ll take the heat.” He looked around the room. “Can we do that?”

Dempsey nodded. “Sure,” Castillo replied. Shay also voiced his consent, though most present knew he more or less had to agree once Castillo was on board.

“No leaks?” Aguirre pressed. Again, he saw unanimous agreement.

“So again,” Castillo said, “What have you got in mind? I’m
sure the Big Three will fall all over themselves to get us to stay quiet with this. We’ll probably have to give some ground to let them save face and make it look legitimate to outside observers, but we could have much better terms than we’ve ever had.”

Aguirre gave a slow nod. “That’s one way we could go, yes.”

“But that’s not your plan, is it?”

“No. No, it’s not.”

* * *

Dear Mr. Malone,

Congratulations on your outstanding payment record with our Educational Investment Payoff (EIP) program. To date, you have paid off 16,500 credits of your educational debt, which exceeds the minimum payoff target.

However, we regret to inform you that due to the debt defaults and failing credit of the Archangel system, NorthStar
Corporation and its affiliates can no longer recognize the EIP payment-matching arrangement formerly held between NorthStar, the Archangel Navy and the government of Archangel. Because of these unfortunate circumstances, your current educational debt remains at 53,974 credits, rather than the 37,132 credits we reported in your last statement.

We understand that this may cause some disappointment, and we sympathize.

--Personal Account Statement,
September 2276

Tanner held back as his boarding team leader stepped closer to the freighter’s crew chief. He didn’t like the look on the stranger’s face, or the arrangement of crates and machinery in view. A couple of other freighter crewmen stood nearby, all lingering around and watching rather than working. That didn’t seem odd. People stopped and watched boardings happen all the time. Yet as the usual routine progressed, Tanner felt something out of place. He saw less lollygagging and more tension in the body language before him.

The crew chief turned his back to the boarding team leader, reaching for something out of sight, and then spun around quickly to swing a huge wrench at Tanner’s comrade. Tanner had his laser pistol out by the time the wrench connected with the team leader’s shoulder. The world around him exploded into action; crewmen burst from their positions, many of them having hidden behind the plentiful cover offered by the freighter’s myriad forms of cargo. Several rushed forward; others took off in different directions, but that only meant they were a lesser priority. Tanner put a blast straight through the crew chief’s torso, shooting him even before his injured team leader fell out of the way. Then he turned his attention to all the approaching movement in his peripheral vision.

Freighter crewmen ran left, right and away, ducking for cover or reaching for weapons. Tanner started shooting. With no cover in immediate reach, Tanner threw himself to the deck as he fired. He didn’t hit with every blast, but he put down more than one of his targets in those first few seconds. Blast after blast shot from his weapon. People screamed. Men fell lifelessly to the deck.