Chapter 33
Adriana Rabh • Council Chamber, Olympus Station
Adriana never saw Tony palm the Mars rock from the table in front of his father—until it was too late. She watched the young man stalk around the room like a wild animal, each step seeming to amp up his anger to a new level.
Tony has this under control, she told herself. Tony told her not to worry.
But she hadn’t done that, had she? Adriana Rabh didn’t take orders from a kid half her age, no matter what his last name was.
She listened with growing horror. Tony was working with Elise and the Neos. Tony was behind the meteoric rise of the New Earth Order. Tony Taulke took a third-rate, tree-hugger religious movement and turned it into a global juggernaut bent to his own purposes. She took a fresh look at the younger Taulke, so like his father and yet, obviously, so unlike him as well.
Adriana had made a horrible miscalculation.
Her shoulders tightened into anxious knots. Tony was blaming everything on his father, but how long before Anthony spoke up about the child? How long before Tony started looking for someone else to blame for the death of Elise’s child?
She tried to send another pulse to Fischer, but his comms were off.
For his part, Anthony seemed behind the power curve of comprehension. His movements were slow, his reactions distant, and he seemed unable to process what his son was telling him. In that moment, she pitied him.
By the time Tony made his second circuit of the room, his face was scarlet with anger and his movements precise, almost robotic. He paused in front of the Taulke family logo, spinning the older man’s chair around and leaning in with a rigid ferocity to his frame.
She heard Anthony say something in an urgent whisper, but the words made not a dent in his son’s expression.
Tony’s arm flashed down in a piston strike. When his hand came up again, a splash of red flew across the table. The moment froze in time, all eyes fixed on the streak of bright red. The blood contracted on the smooth tabletop into crimson globules, like rain beading on a windshield.
Tony stood, breathing heavily, his eyes wide as if he was unable to process what he’d just done. Then Anthony made a wheezing noise and the spell was broken.
Tony lost control. Again and again, he pummeled the figure in the chair with the heavy rock. Strings of blood whipped up and all around, painting the walls, the floor, even the bold Taulke logo behind them.
Finally, Tony stopped. He let the weapon drop to the table where it rolled away from him, leaving a bloody track in its wake. He gulped air, swayed on his feet, then collapsed into his own chair, pressing a shaking hand to his forehead.
The only sound in the room was the hiss of the air system, the only movement the stars above them. The stillness dragged on for seconds, then minutes. Adriana’s gaze flicked around the table. Viktor stared at the tabletop, his eyes locked on a drop of blood the size of a dime. Elise’s face in the holo image was still, unreadable. Ming Qinlao watched Tony through narrowed eyes, a ghost of a smile on her face. She was a dark one, Adriana thought.
“We needed a change in management,” Tony said abruptly. His voice made Adriana startle in her chair. “I—we—have waited too long and invested too much to just give our competitive advantage back to the people who fucked it up in the first place.” He grinned, a feral smile, made all the more ghoulish by the streak of smeared blood on his cheek. “Imagine. Giving our most precious asset to the United Nations? What was he thinking? That planet—once we’re done remaking it—is our asset base. Skilled engineers, labor, food, it’s all there for the taking and Pop just wanted to give it away.”
He kicked Anthony’s chair, making it spin slowly to face the table. Adriana tried not to look. Anthony’s square jaw and firm, cosmetically enhanced lips were smashed beyond recognition. The divots where his eyes used to be were just battered pools of mush. She clamped her hand over her mouth and locked her eyes on the table.
“Too soon?” Tony laughed at his own joke, then spun his father’s corpse to face the wall. He pushed it away from the table, sliding his own chair underneath the Taulke logo. He looked around the room with approval in his gaze. “Say what you will about my old man. He was a shit businessman, but he knew how to do interior design. I like this place. Five families, five council members. Simple. Bing-bang-boom.”
“What about General Graves and the Neo woman?” Adriana said, trying to keep her voice calm. She needed to buy time to find Fischer and stop him. “They’re supposed to be placed on the Council of Corporations in the morning. Can you imagine the public backlash if we don’t follow through?”
Tony yawned. “First things first, Adriana. I propose that we disband this Council of Corporations and reform as a new entity, the Syndicate Corporation.” He scratched his chin. “SynCorp, for short. I like it. All in favor?”
There were no dissenters.
“I hardly think the UN will let us go back on our word just because we changed our name, Tony,” Adriana said. “Public opinion will—”
“Public opinion will be what we say it is,” Tony finished for her. “This shit about asking people what they want and voting on options is no more. We decide what the future looks like. We lead. We take what we need when we need it and the people follow. Simple, efficient.”
Adriana guessed her job as ambassador to Earth had just been made redundant.
Tony energized the holograph station in the center of the table. After a few seconds, the head and shoulders of the Taulke security head came into view. “Mr. Taulke, what can I do for you, sir?”
“Good evening, Mr. Quince, I need you to take care of a few things for me.”
“Of course, sir.”
“General Graves and Corazon Santos. I want you to kill them for me.”
“Sir?”
“Kill them. Liquidate, eliminate, whatever you guys call it. Shoot them, throw them out an airlock, I don’t care, I just want them terminated.”
“Sir…? Can I speak to your father?”
“No, you may not.”
“Sir, I—” He stopped speaking when Tony spun Anthony’s chair around to face the camera.
“My father is not with us anymore, Quince. I’m in charge.”
“I understand, sir.” Quince recovered his composure remarkably well. “Anything else?”
“Yes, there is. I want you to put Ms. Kisaan’s child under armed guard in the hospital.”
Quince cleared this throat.
“Problem, Quince?”
“The baby is with the general and Ms. Santos, sir.”
Tony sat up in his chair. “What?”
“Yes, sir, they—”
“Find them and get that child back. Do not injure the child, do you understand?”
The room trembled, making the holograph glitch. Tony stood, leaning into the screen. “What was that?”
Quince was looking offscreen and nodding. “Sir, we have possible intruders. Deck six … and seven.”
“Go!” Tony killed the holo. He turned to the holographic image of Elise Kisaan. “What did you do?”
“My child was never part of the bargain, Tony.” She smiled wryly. “You have me. That’s enough.”
“That child is SynCorp property. We spent—”
“The child—my child—is not part of the deal.” Elise’s holo image disappeared.
Tony threw himself against the back of his chair. “We’ll see about that.”
Adriana frantically tried Fischer again with no answer. If the child was killed by Fischer and traced back to her… She stood. “I’m going to see what I can do to help.”
Tony laughed. “Sit down, Adriana. You’d be worse than useless.” He cut his gaze to Ming. “You on the other hand are quite a badass, I’m told.”
Ming got to her feet in a blur of motion. To Adriana’s eye, her black suit seemed to absorb the light.
Viktor made a noise that distracted Adriana for a second. When she turned back, Ming was gone.