The recycled air of the Adjunta Defense Station always carried the faint, metallic tang of avarice. It was a smell Raphael Kassim had come to adore, as familiar and comforting as the scent of his favorite concubine’s perfume. It was the smell of opportunity, of deals struck in shadowed corners, of power measured in parcels and blood.

  Adjunta Defense station- Repurposed by order of Supreme Commander Raphael Kassim of the Assad Primacy-

  At times, Raphael desperately wished his great-grandparents hadn’t opted for such aggressive genetic optimizations. The chiseled jaw, the hawk-like eyes, the trim, well-muscled physique that refused to accumulate even a hint of softness no matter how many rich delicacies he consumed—it was all so… militant.

  He was a merchant, in the end. His soul, or what passed for it, was dedicated to a single, elegant truth: anything could be bought and sold. He’d tried to cultivate the old-fashioned merchant mystique, the genial, trustworthy fa?ade. The problem was, as the prime minister of Adjunta—a world barely two generations removed from tribal warfare and orbital bombardment—he was expected to maintain a certain… intimidating presence.

  A bulging belly, the kind that would set interstellar customers at ease and bounce when he laughed like a bowl full of jelly, would have been perfect. It allowed enemies to underestimate the threat right before you cut their throats, sometimes figuratively, often literally.

  But no. Building that appropriate merchant look would require habitually and grotesquely overindulging, and Raphael was not a gourmand of food. He had other appetites. His was a unique, exciting, incredibly diverse, and most importantly, young harem. He knew that made him almost a caricature of the self-indulgent merchant prince, but there were certain advantages to that caricature. It made others see the decadence, not the dagger.

  He stood from his heavy gold-and-marble desk, a piece that had been shipped at ruinous cost from Assad Prime, and walked to the curved transplas viewport. His office was the station’s former primary observation lounge, and it offered a stunning, star-dusted view of the Hammad Boneyard. A graveyard of ships, a monument to failures and ancient wars. To him, it looked like an unclaimed bank vault.

  For hundreds of years, Adjunta had passed from warlord to warlord, ideologies clashing with the violence of a meteor storm. He recalled the historical briefings with a smirk. One Dictator had only managed to declare himself world leader in the name of Allah for twenty-one minutes before being deposed by the next one, who declared himself leader in the name of Ventor. Six world leaders in a single day, one after the other, each ending up slightly more dead than the last.

  But in this enlightened age, religions and ideologies played second fiddle to the one true universal constant: Money. After the Primacy of the Autarch and the ensuing seven-week war, their rival, Telurdt, had been broken—militarily, spiritually, and economically. Now the Assad Primacy ruled both worlds with a golden fist, and that fist was Raphael’s to command on this rock.

  Of course, that money had to come from someplace. The Unified Planets, with their sanctimonious morality and hundreds of developed worlds, never offered the same golden tribute—which they pretentiously called ‘assistance’—that the old empires had. The UP had rules. Stupid, profit-strangling rules.

  That was where people like Kassim stepped in. The bloody coups were a thing of the past. Now, those who could pay the Assad dynasty for the privilege and profit opportunities of ruling a world took the job of prime minister. You stayed in power as long as you could afford the protection payments. If you failed… well, there was always someone new, wealthier and more ruthless, to be ‘duly elected’ in your place.

  It was a magnificent system. Being prime minister offered wonderful economic benefits, from creatively pocketing citizen taxes to flat-out extortion of passing merchants. It was, as the ancients said, good to be the king.

  It was also good to get the UPF to clean out any incursions occasionally. The best part was, because each world in the Assad Primacy was considered independently run, all the stupid rules the UPF demanded for their help—curtailing slavery, banning certain pharmaceuticals, respecting ‘basic sentient rights’ that they could never agree on, were neatly stymied by claims of religious freedom and traditional practices.

  The Assad Primacy itself agreed to every UPF mandate. Assad Prime was a Paradise world, a gleaming jewel where the wealthy of the Unified Planets came to fritter away their money and morals. It absolutely didn’t allow slavery, as a rule, even though more than a few UP citizens were happy to indulge in practices only a slave would permit. An occasional, publicized bust of a ‘slavery ring’—usually composed of black marketers who’d failed to pay their taxes or bribes—was more than enough to maintain the fiction.

  But worlds like Kassim’s were sovereign nations. They gained all the advantages of the Primacy, including the UP Fleet’s protection, while being able to claim all of the Primacy’s dirty little secrets were protected due to religious, ethnic, or traditional reasons.

  Idiots, he thought, not for the first time. They’re so busy patting themselves on the back for their tolerance that they don’t see the noose they’re supplying the rope for.

  That’s why Adjunta was damned near as prosperous as a UP world. Because visionary men like Raphael Kassim kept their eyes open for profit opportunities. Like the Valkyrie-class ship that had just pinged the station, announcing its intention to ‘clean up’ the Hammad boneyard of chaos portals.

  “Run a deep scan on that ship,” Raphael said, his voice a low rumble that carried easily in the quiet room. “It’s a Valkyrie, not regular Fleet, correct?”

  His second-in-command, Matthews, shifted slightly. The man was a mountain of calm patience, a eunuch who’d been at Raphael’s side as bodyguard, servant, and advisor since they were both teenagers. “Your Excellency, we are not planning on attacking, are we? A Valkyrie is still a Fleet-affiliated vessel. The repercussions would be… extreme.”

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  Raphael scoffed, a dry, dismissive sound. “Of course not. The Fleet would turn this station into a new ring for Saturn. But get an Icon on it anyway. A full spectral and systemic diagnostic. After all,” he said, a slow, oily smile spreading across his face, “while WE might not be able to retrieve anything of value from them directly, it’s not even remotely our fault if that scan data finds its way, for a significant profit of course, to certain… interested parties.”

  He rubbed his hands together gleefully. Valkyrie ships were almost exclusively staffed with females. Unique, difficult-to-obtain breeds, universally healthy and fit. Often young, if not quite as young as he personally preferred. And the raiders who paid for such information were always pathetically eager to reward the one who gave them a fresh opportunity.

  Ten minutes later, Matthews returned, his aged face a placid mask that hid a mind sharper than a monomolecular blade. “Icon Lister has completed the scan. He wishes to give you first right of refusal on bidding for the data.”

  Raphael spun around, his good humor evaporating. “What? That preening, pretentious asshole… isn’t his usual retainer enough? He knows the deal.”

  Matthews shook his head slowly, the movement economical, precise. “He claims the information is of a particularly sensitive nature. His report is here,” he said, holding up a physical folder. The paper was high-quality vellum, and the script on the front was written in Lister’s distinctive, gold-leaf ink. A costly vanity to have transmitted. “I have not looked at it.”

  Raphael stroked his neatly trimmed beard with his fingertips, a gesture he’d practiced after seeing it in ancient historical vids. He felt it made him look thoughtful, intimidating. Given that he could order the torture and death of almost anyone in the two-planet region on a whim and was a silver-ranked unlimited-class duelist, he was intimidating enough. But sometimes, a little theatricality was required.

  “Tell Lister,” Raphael said, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper, “that if I catch so much as a whisper that he has released that scan to anyone else in the next two standard hours, I will have him, his children, and his grandchildren beaten to death in front of his wives. I will then force the wives to eat the remains before spacing them out the nearest airlock. If, however, what is in this report is worth the extra shakedown, I will discuss a… bonus.”

  Matthews nodded once, his expression not changing. It was a standard Kassim negotiation tactic. Extreme threat followed by conditional reward. It worked remarkably well.

  Raphael took the folder and opened it. He read the first line, then the second. His eyes narrowed. He read it again, then a third time, his heart beginning to hammer against his ribs. This wasn’t just good. This was… unprecedented. He tossed the folder back to Matthews. “What do you think?”

  Matthews took his time, reading every word with the careful scrutiny of a man who knew the price of a mistake. Finally, he looked up, his calm finally cracked by a faint line of worry between his brows. “This looks like either complete, fantastical bullshit… or a desperately obvious trap.”

  Raphael nodded, a fierce grin tugging at his lips. “That was my thought exactly.” He valued Matthew’s experience. The man had been a mercenary for a hundred years before his ‘modification’ and had been in the shit enough times to smell it a light-year away. “So, what is your recommendation?”

  Matthews sighed, a soft exhalation that spoke of weary acceptance of a universe that loved to dangle poisoned fruit. “Honestly? Even if it is a trap, the bait is just too damned rich. It’s like baiting a mousetrap with the crown jewels. Is there any chance this… Crow… knows how to mask itself from an Icon’s scan?”

  Raphael shrugged. “Not likely. Valkyries are support vessels. Their command crews are usually political appointees or has-beens. Their cunning lies in logistics, not subterfuge.”

  “Then you know what my suggestion is,” Matthews said. “I believe it is a trap, but one we cannot afford to ignore. Wait until the Paladin is confirmed gone, deep in the rift. Then, we let the Blue Velvet Company know. For a cut.”

  “A substantial cut,” Raphael agreed. “Two active, system-generated quests on a single tech-seven ship. What do you want to bet one involves the Hammad boneyard, and the other…” He let the sentence hang, his smile turning predatory.

  Matthews picked up the thread, his voice gaining a rare, eager edge. “...involves something right here. We keep our own assets out of it. Let the Blue Velvet company deal with the initial violence. They cut the ship off from the rift, take it intact, and then wait for the Paladin to come out. Hell, even if we have to let Blue Velvet clean up all the bronze-rank troopers, a live Paladin is worth a king’s ransom. Then there’s the crew, the ship itself, whatever artifacts or individuals triggered those quests…” He trailed off, the implications vast and profitable.

  “If we are very, very lucky,” Raphael finished, his eyes gleaming, “we might even be able to attach one or both of those quests to ourselves. Have you ever seen a system quest, Matthews?”

  Matthews shook his head. “No, Excellency. But I was part of a mercenary company seventy solars ago that provided security for a team that completed one. The reward…” He paused, the memory still vivid. “An inheritance upgrade guide for a jade-tier seeker from a scout class. A class-eight organic organ fabricator, set to produce a perfect liver. A full set of void-rated armor… class eight. And it popped every single member of the primary team from mid-bronze straight to platinum. Every. Single. One.”

  Raphael’s breath caught. Platinum. He was a wealthy, powerful silver. The gap between him and platinum was a chasm that most never even glimpsed across. The thought of leaping it in a single, glorious moment was almost erotic. Right past gold, it would open up his core to potential immortality itself.

  Most people failed to cross the rift from Platinum to the immortal tiers, but that was because they were weak. Unwillingness to shed the blood it would require to become a true immortal was not a problem Raphael would have to deal with, even if it meant sacrificing an entire planet.

  “That was my thought precisely,” Raphael said, clapping Matthews on the shoulder. “I am glad your counsel is in line with my own. VINCENZE!”

  A servant, who had been standing motionless behind an ancient, decorated paper screen, hopped forward and dropped to his knees, pressing his nose to the thick carpet that covered the station’s cold metal deck. “Yes, your excellency!” he barked, voice muffled by the wool.

  “Tell Icon Lister that keeping his mouth and his pen shut for the next two hours will earn him a flat payment of one million parcels. He will not get a piece of the larger prize unless he can somehow transfer or hijack the quest data to me, at which point he knows my generosity can be boundless. Go. Now.”

  Vincenze leapt to his feet and immediately backed out of the room, bowing the entire way. Raphael watched him go, then glanced at Matthews. “Go. Keep a circumspect eye on the good Icon. If he receives so much as a whisper of a quest notification himself, cut his throat and dump the body. Otherwise, we will see what we will see… but after this, killing the old fool is mandatory. He should have known better than to try and extort me. And get me Marshall Granby from Blue Velvet on the comms. It’s time to go fishing.”