Arvad Barcas stared out of his window across the city of New Tyr. Carthage, Inc. owned nearly everything his eyes surveyed. This vantage offered a magnificent view of the planet-wide metropolis. The tower was so high that one could make out the curvature of the planet. When he glanced up, he noted that the starship traffic was unusually high today.

  Most of them are probably ours, thought Arvad.

  What Carthage did not outright own it controlled through dependencies. Those dependencies might be several layers deep, but there was no denying the company’s control. This influence stretched out into the stars and across solar systems and galaxies.

  Arvad absently ran his thumb over the amulet in his palm. A crude face made from bone-white ceramic and a dark glaze, the trinket was a relic from the company’s earliest beginnings, thousands of years ago when his ancestors first began making their way across the stars after the Great Calamity. Supposedly, the amulet bestowed the blessings of the gods on its owner. Given Carthage’s rise from a small shipping and trading company to its present status as intergalactic conglomeration, it was hard to dispute the superstition.

  Arvad did not believe in such things, but it never hurt to have it, just in case.

  “Do you know our company history, Mister Corvid?” he said without turning around.

  Markos Corvid licked his lips. “O-only some of it, sir. I know that it’s very old.”

  “That it is. It rose from the ashes of the Great Calamity over five thousand years ago. My ancestors learned how to reactivate the old ships. They learned how to make their systems work without the help of artificial intelligence. Through sheer grit and creative determination, they made it work. They were the first and the best. Soon, others came to depend on them.” He turned to face Markos. “For a price, of course.”

  “Of course,” said Markos. “If this is about the pricing—”

  “Do not miss the forest for the trees, Mr. Corvid,” said Arvad, applying just enough edge to his voice to make his point.

  “No, sir. Sorry, sir,” said Markos, visibly unnerved.

  “I don’t need an apology. I require understanding.” Arvad adjusted the sleeve of his tan suit jacket then fiddled with his cuff links for a second. He leveled his stark blue eyes on Markos’. “Failure has never been tolerated, even in the old days. Especially in the old days. A simple miscalculation, an incorrect unit conversion, an errant comma, and an entire ship with her crew and their families could very well perish. Such were the circumstances of their existence. That need for perfection has defined and driven our company throughout millennia.”

  Markos Corvid chewed his lower lip. “I...understand, Mr. Barcas.”

  Arvad shook his head. His next words came out slowly, deliberately. “It is not just me you need to convince. It is also them.” He gestured to the fourteen figures seated around the table: Carthage, Inc.’s board of directors and her senior leadership. They represented some of the most powerful people in the known universe.

  Markos began to visibly tremble. He stood not far from Arvad, within arm’s reach. “Mr. Barcas, please!”

  “Your job was to do what, Mr. Corvid?”

  Markos licked his lips again and swallowed. “C-coordinate the acquisition of Gelon International.”

  “And what happened?”

  “I...failed to make that happen.” Desperate, nearly shouting, he then said, “But I did everything in my power. Basilisk moved in too quickly.”

  “Basilisk?!” Arvad nearly shouted. “Basilisk did not sink the acquisition, Mr. Corvid. You did. And what’s worse, you did it on purpose. You colluded with our competitors based on a promise of protection.”

  “No, I swear!” His eyes went to his executive assistant for help, but the young Kal’Rakki male—Tarris by name—would be of no help, no matter how much sympathy Markos saw in his large, green eyes. Kal’Rakkis looked similar to humans but were generally tall and rail-thin by nature with reddish orange skin. Their eyes were larger than humans.

  Arvad stepped closer to Markos. “We have records of your conversations with multiple executives at Basilisk.”

  “To explore the possibility of joint ownership. That was all! Please, I saw it as a foothold to gain more insight into Basilisk.”

  “Then how did Basilisk acquire Gelon?”

  “Someone must have leaked the terms of our deal and Basilisk outbid us.”

  Arvad crossed his arms and grinned, not kindly. “So, you defend against accusations of treachery by admitting incompetence?”

  “I have a team looking into the leak. They are working on the problem as we speak.”

  Arvad waved a hand. “There is no longer a need.” He moved to his desk and reached for the sword laying on it, a falcata blade roughly two feet in length.

  Fear gave way to confusion in Markos’ features and voice. “What do you mean?”

  Arvad picked up the sword in his right hand and moved back to Markos. He placed his left hand on Markos’ shoulder. His right hand went to his hip and swayed a little with the blade.

  “I mean,” said Arvad, “that the situation will soon be rectified.”

  In a flash, Arvad whipped the sword back and drove it home. Grey blood and bodily fluids gushed from Tarris’ belly and spilled out onto the ground. A look of surprise and horror stayed fixed on the young man’s face as he slowly slumped to the ground. The falcata sliced through more flesh as Arvad yanked it out, spraying gray liquid on the ground and on Markos’ clothing. More than a few drops splattered onto the table and several of those seated at the table.

  “W-what?” said Markos.

  “Your secretary was the leak, Markos,” said Arvad with calm demeanor as he carefully wiped the blade. “He made plans to defect to Basilisk within the next few weeks.”

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  “Then I’m...I’m not—”

  “What you are, Markos, is free to go. You no longer hold a position of leadership in this company, but you do leave with your life.” Arvad placed the blade back on its holder on the desk. “I do not wish to lose your expertise and have opened a consulting role geared for your specific knowledge and skillset.”

  Relief and nervous terror washed through Markos. “Thank, Mr. Barcas. Thank you!”

  Arvad held up a hand. “This is still a demotion, but you can at least continue to provide for your family. Do not thank me. Merely accept it and go about your business. Carla will help you with details and logistics.”

  Markos looked like he was about to say thank you again, but bit it off, straightened, and bowed his head. He gave his traitorous dead secretary a grimace, turned and left the room.

  “James,” Arvad said to one of the attendants against the back wall, “please get a cleaning crew up here and dispose of the trash.” He turned to the board of directors. “The loss of Gelon International is a setback in our plans to grow the asteroid mining segment. Izabel, I want to review those alternatives again.” A short plump Teeflux female that had some flecks of blood on her blouse nodded and rose from her seat, her communicator already up to her large ear as she left the room. “Tammuz, you will assume Markos’ responsibilities until we identify a replacement. I know you already have a full plate, and I hate to do it to you, but we have some holes to plug in the ship. I can think of no one better.”

  Kammuz, a lanky man with bags under his eyes and hawkish features inclined his head an inch. He silently rose and strode from the room.

  “And Kammuz?” said Arvad.

  Kammuz stopped just past the threshold and cocked an eyebrow at Carthage, Inc.’s CEO.

  “Do not miss Malia’s birth for this. It’s a good time to have young Amil step up a little to help you. Family first.”

  Kammuz slowly nodded again before departing.

  Arvad turned to the rest of his leadership team. “The rest of you, back to work. Thank you for your time.”

  Several minutes later, the room was empty. Tarris’ body had been removed and the blood cleaned up. Arvad had left the board room and walked down two hallways to reach his apartment. He finished putting on a fresh set of clothes—a more casual ensemble of loose-fitting khaki slacks and white linen shirt—and poured himself a cup of Turkish coffee. He had assistants that could prepare it for him, but he preferred to do some things himself. The ritual forced him to slow down for a few minutes to focus on the drink’s preparation. For those few minutes, he thought of nothing else. Not the millions of employees whose livelihood depended on his decisions. Not the billions of consumers that demanded products and services that his company or one of its many subsidiaries provided. Not the inter-corporate wars that went on as the galaxy’s worst-kept secret. Not the employee he had just had to kill. It was just him, the coffee, the stove, and the ibrik, a small copper pot with a straight handle that came up at an angle.

  His hands shook a little as he held the scoop of finely ground coffee over the ibrik. He closed his eyes and took a long breath. His hands calmer now, he dumped the coffee into the metal container and then placed the ibrik on the stove to begin cooking. He added two cubes of sugar, the real kind from cane, not that cheap synthetic crap that the ag division sold to the general populous.

  Two years ago, he’d had a section of the building redesigned to include an apartment. He spent so much time at the office that it made more sense to have his living accommodations close by. After all, he had no family to go home to. Not anymore.

  The sleeping quarters lay at the back of the two-story space with a small, simple staircase leading up to it. Below that was a room that combined kitchen, sitting area, and library, all of it adorned in traditional Levantine fashion with modern twists. Arvad fixed most of his own food, too, though his assistants made the visits to the grocery store.

  It had been more difficult this time. Karris was only the third employee Arvad had had to killed, but he hated doing it. This stood in stark contrast to his own father who had once deemed it fit to dispatch an entire department, an event Arvad was made to watch as a boy of fourteen. The changes Arvad implemented after his father was removed from his position seemed to be working. Morale was an all-time high. Arvad had taken the already sizable Carthage, Inc. and made it larger, expanding into edge space, something no one had ever thought possible.

  “Carrot and stick,” his grandfather had once told him. “Both should be applied in managing your people. Take care that you do not lean on one more than the other. Too much carrot and they grow lazy. Too much stick and they grow divisive. Leaving the two out of balance will destroy a company.”

  Arvad had known they would likely lose the Gelon contract to Basilisk. The setback was not a large one, but the treachery could not go unanswered, nor could Markos’ failure to root it out. It was necessary to show that treachery and failure would not be tolerated. The CEOs of Carthage, Inc. had operated this way for millennia and it had been effective. Death for failure had been the way of things since the very beginning when the first Carthaginian ships began traversing the expanse of space.

  As the coffee finished brewing, Arvad’s communicator pinged him. That was another thing that he did differently; other company leaders installed cybernetics into their skulls for ease of communication and information processing. Arvad saw no need for this if he managed his time and resources properly. A simple communicator with a few key applications allowed him to run an empire. Of course, that took discipline, a strong will, and a focused vision.

  He glanced at the small black rectangle and saw an alert from something called “Blackbox.” Though the alert had no text or information associated with it, Arvad knew exactly where it came from and what it meant. He sighed and let the coffee finish brewing. He then poured it into a mug and took a small sip, testing the flavor. Satisfied, he carried it and the communicator with him to his desk at the opposite end of the room. Two-story tall window panes made up one wall and looked out over the city of New Tyr. He had heard of some building that still used glass, but that had fallen out of favor after several CEOs had been assassinated thanks to “impossible” shots made by a sniper. Nowadays, most of these windows were made from a see-through polymer that could withstand a missile.

  Arvad reached his desk and set the communicator and coffee cup down in their usual places. He then opened the safe beneath his desk and pulled out an old portable computer terminal. The thing had sent him a ping when it received a message. This was old world tech, things like this were rare. Where today’s data traveled through quantum gates and light ports, items like this used radio waves. This one had been enhanced, of course, and used a system of buoys hung around the planet and on strategically located satellites that operated on a private darkspace network.

  Darkspace technology was considered forbidden by the Andrani Collective, though no one really knew why. Regardless, thanks to this system Arvad could communicate with someone else over vast distances virtually undetected. Sure, there was some lag, but it was a small price to pay for a secure channel of communication. Unlike the rest of Carthage, Inc., it was not here when he took over as CEO; he had acquired from a black-market dealer.

  He flipped open the lid of the computer, allowed the screen to come back to life, and opened the messaging application. A window appeared on the screen. All it had was a black background and a blinking horizontal cursor.

  Arvad typed, “Msg rcvd.”

  A reply came several seconds later: “Good”

  “Vid?” Arvad typed.

  “Incoming”

  Several long seconds passed before another window opened. It contained a video stream. The view was upside down, but Arvad could still understand what he saw: two figures moving down a hallway at a half-run.

  Arvad went back to the messaging window. “Location?”

  “L34”

  Arvad grunted. They were behind schedule. Not good.

  “Behind” he typed.

  The next reply took a little longer to come back. “Fixing”

  He watched the figures on the screen continue to move, his attention fixed to the smaller of the two. Suddenly, an explosion occurred on screen. Dust and debris obscured all vision, and he lost sight of the two figures.

  Arvad’s heart stopped for a moment. Already? No, they couldn’t be there that quickly. The Andrani moved fast, but not that fast. Everything had been planned out meticulously with multiple contingencies and relied on the Andrani behaving as expected. If they were already there, then the mission was over. And if the Andrani found that Arvad and, by extension, Carthage was involved, his career and life were, too.

  On the message screen he quickly typed. “What?”

  Almost instantly, the reply came: “Fixing”