“… so I was thinking that a strategic alliance between our two corporations would make a lot of sense. Together, we could outmaneuver Humphries, and outmuscle him if we have to.”
Nobu pretended to be impressed. “The problem is,” he said slowly, “that Yamagata Corporation has confined its activities to Earth ever since the greenhouse cliff devastated Japan and so many other nations.”
“I know,” Pancho said, after the nearly three-second lag that bedeviled communications between the Earth and Moon. “But if our two companies work together, Yamagata can get back into space industries as Astro’s partner.”
Stroking his chin thoughtfully, Nobu replied, “That is something worth considering, naturally. I will take it up with my board of directors. I’ll call a special meeting, as early as I can.”
Almost three seconds later Pancho nodded. “Okay. I appreciate that. In the meantime, though, I need some advice. Military advice. Can you recommend someone to me?”
Ahh, thought Nobuhiko, now we come to the real reason for her call. She is going to war with Humphries and she needs a military force.
“There are several organizations of mercenaries that might be of service to you.”
“I want the best,” Pancho said.
“I will send you complete dossiers on the best three organizations,” Nobu said, while thinking, Father will be very impressed. His plan is moving well. Let Astro and Humphries destroy each other. Yamagata Corporation will even help them to do so.
“Terminated?” Harbin stared at Grigor’s message on his screen. “Just like that, they kick me out?”
He was in his quarters in Vesta while the damaged Samarkand was undergoing repairs. Leeza Chaptal was in bed with him when Grigor’s stinging message came through. Simply one line: Your services for Humphries Space Systems are hereby terminated. Period.
Harbin knew it would take at least half an hour for him to get a message back to Grigor. But what could he say? Ask why he’d been cut loose? That was obvious. He’d failed to get Fuchs, and failed to carry out his assignment about Pancho Lane. They were finished with him.
How many have I killed for them? Harbin asked himself. For more than eight years I’ve done their bidding, and now they kick me out. Terminated. Like some bug they squash under their boots.
Leeza saw the frozen expression on his face, realized that Harbin was raging beneath his mask of icy indifference.
“It’s all right,” she said, sliding her arms around his neck. “Yamagata will hire you.”
“How can you be sure?” he muttered.
“They’ve wanted to hire you for months. Now there’s nothing to prevent you from accepting their offer.”
“But if I’m no longer with HSS, why would they hire me? They only wanted me to spy on Humphries for them.”
“They’ll hire you,” she repeated. “I know they will.”
“Why?”
Leeza smiled at him. “Because there’s going to be a war here in the Belt, and you are a warrior.”
ASTRO CORPORATION HEADQUARTERS
Technically, the principal offices of Astro Corporation were still at La Guaira, off the drowned coast of Venezuela. But Pancho had moved almost all of the corporate headquarters staff to Selene. Most of the board of directors lived in the lunar city, and those who didn’t attended board meetings electronically. The three-second communications lag made the meetings tedious to some extent, but Pancho was perfectly willing to accept that. Astro’s business was off-Earth; even shipping asteroidal ores Earthside was almost entirely a space operation, and Pancho had always insisted on being where the action was.
Now she sat in the richly paneled boardroom, in her usual place at the head of the long polished conference table. The only other person in the room at this moment was Jacob Wanamaker, known as “Hard-Ass Jake.” A retired commander of the International Peacekeeping Force, Wanamaker was a big-shouldered, heavy-bellied, genial-looking older man with a wry, lopsided smile and sad, pouchy brown eyes that had seen much more than their share of death and destruction.
Nobuhiko Yamagata had recommended three military advisors to Pancho: a Japanese mercenary who had fought in miniwars from Indonesia to Chiapas, in Mexico; a Swedish woman who had organized the multinational force that pacified the turmoil in southern Africa; and Hard-Ass Jake. The first two had never been off-Earth; Wanamaker had served several tours aboard a missile-defense space station in Earth orbit. Besides, Jacob Wanamaker had been an admiral in the U.S. Navy before accepting a commission with the IPF, and Pancho figured that fighting in space would be more closely akin to naval warfare than land campaigns.