Torch of Freedom

time, you already know ninety-nine percent of all my deepest darkest secrets. This one isn't going to make any difference.'

'Yes, Sir.'

Stabolis settled into his usual on-duty position in the chair beside the office door, and Albrecht turned back to Benjamin.

'As I was saying, fair's fair. They aren't really cooperating, you know. They've just agreed to refrain from breaking each other's kneecaps where Verdant Vista is concerned, and we both know why that is.'

'They do tend to hold their little grudges where Manpower is concerned, don't they?' Benjamin remarked whimsically.

'Yes, they do,' Albrecht agreed. 'And that pain in the ass Hauptman isn't making things any better.'

'Father, Klaus Hauptman's been pissing you off for as long as I can remember. Why don't you just go ahead and have Collin and Isabel get rid of him? I know his security's good, but it's not that good, you know.'

'I've considered it—believe me, I've considered it more than once!' Albrecht shook his head. 'One reason I haven't gone ahead and done it is that I decided a long time ago that I'd better try not to get into the habit of having people assassinated just because it might ease my blood pressure. Given the number of unmitigated pains in the ass there are, I'd keep Isabel employed full time, and it would still be a case of weeding the tomato patch. However many weeds you get rid of this week, there's going to be a fresh batch next week. Besides, I've always felt restraint builds character.'

'Maybe so, but I figure there has to be more to it than self-discipline were Hauptman is concerned.' Benjamin snorted. 'Mind you, I agree about the asshole quotient of the galaxy, but he's one asshole who's demonstrated often enough that he can cause us a lot of grief. And he's been so openly opposed to Manpower for so long that having him taken out in an obviously 'Manpower'-backed operation couldn't possibly point any suspicion in our direction.'

'You've got a point,' Albrecht agreed more seriously. 'Actually, I did very seriously consider having him assassinated when he came out so strongly in support of those Ballroom lunatics in Verdant Vista. Unfortunately, getting rid of him would only leave us with his daughter Stacey, and she's just as bad as he is already. If 'Manpower' went ahead and whacked her daddy, she'd be even worse. In fact, I suspect she'd probably move making problems for us up from number three or four on her 'Things to Do' list to number one. An emphatic number one. And given the fact that she'd control sixty-two percent of the Hauptman cartel's voting stock outright, once she inherited her father's shares, the problems she could make for us would be pretty spectacular. This survey business and those frigates they've been building for the Ballroom wouldn't be a drop in the bucket compared to what she'd do then.'

'So take them both out at once,' Benjamin suggested. 'I'm sure Isabel could handle it, if she put her mind to it. And she's Hauptman's only kid, and she doesn't have any children of her own yet, which only leaves some fairly distant cousins as potential heirs. I doubt that all of them share the depths of her and her father's anti-slavery prejudices. And even if they did, I imagine that spreading her stock around to so many people who'd all have legitimately different agendas of their own would end up with the family control of the cartel finding itself severely diluted.'

'No,' Albrecht said sourly, 'it wouldn't.'

'It wouldn't?' Benjamin's surprise showed.

'Oh, having both of them killed would dilute the Hauptman family's control, that's for sure. Unfortunately, it would only hand that selfsame control over to another family we have reason to be less than fond of.'

'I'm afraid you've lost me,' Benjamin admitted.

'That's because Collin just turned up something you don't know about yet. It would appear our good friend Klaus and his daughter Stacey don't want to see their opposition to Manpower falter just because of a little thing like their own morality. Collin got a look at the provisions of their wills a few T-months ago. Daddy left everything to his sweet little baby girl, pretty much the way we'd figured he had . . . but if it should happen that she predeceases him or subsequently dies without issue of her own, she's left every single share of her and her father's ownership percentage—and voting stock—to a little outfit called Skydomes of Grayson.'

'You're joking!' Benjamin stared at his father in disbelief, and Albrecht snorted without any amusement at all.

'Believe me, I wish I were.'

'But Hauptman and Harrington hate each others' guts,' Benjamin protested.

'Not so much anymore,' Albrecht disagreed. 'Oh, everything we've seen suggests that he and Harrington still don't really like each other all that much, but they've got an awful lot of interests in common. Worse, he knows from direct, painful personal experience she can't be bought, bluffed, or intimidated worth a damn. And, worse still, the daughter he dotes on is one of Harrington's close personal friends. Given the fact that he won't be around anymore for Harrington to irritate, and given the fact that he knows she's already using Skydomes' clout to back the ASL almost as strongly as he is, he's perfectly happy with the thought of letting her beat on Manpower with his money, too, when he's gone. Which'—he grimaced—'makes me wish even more that our little October surprise on her flagship had been a bit more successful. If we'd managed to kill her, I'm sure Klaus and Stacey would have at least reconsidered who they want to leave all of this to.'

'Damn,' Benjamin said thoughtfully, then shook his head. 'If Hauptman and Skydomes get together, Harrington would have control of—what? The third or fourth biggest single individually controlled financial bloc in the galaxy?'

'Not quite. She'd be the single biggest financial player in the Haven Quadrant, by a huge margin, but she probably wouldn't be any higher than, oh, the top twenty, galaxy wide. On the other hand, as you just pointed out yourself, unlike any of the people who'd be wealthier than she'd be, she'd have direct personal control of everything. No need to worry about boards of directors or any of that crap.'

'Damn!' Benjamin repeated with considerably more force. 'How come this is the first I'm hearing about this?'

'Like I said, Collin only found out about it a few T-months ago. It's not like Hauptman or his daughter have exactly trumpeted it from the rooftops, you know. For that matter, as far as Collin can tell, Harrington doesn't know about it. We only found out because Collin's been devoting even more of his resources to Hauptman since his active support for Verdant Vista became so evident. It's taken him a while, but he finally managed to get someone inside Childers, Strauslund, Goldman, and Wu. Clarice Childers personally drew up both Hauptmans' wills, and it looks very much as if they decided not to tell even Harrington about it.' Albrecht shrugged. 'Given the sort of tectonic impact the prospect of what would be effectively a merger of the Hauptman Cartel and Skydomes would have on the entire quadrant's financial markets, I can see where they'd want to keep it quiet.'

'And Harrington would probably try to talk them out of it if she did know about it,' Benjamin mused.

'Probably.' Albrecht showed his teeth for a moment. 'I'd love to see all three of them dead, you understand, but let's be honest. The real reason I'd take so much pleasure from putting them out of my misery is that all three of them are so damned effective. And however much I may hate Harrington's guts—not to mention her entire family back on Beowulf—I'm not going to underestimate her. Aside from being harder to kill than an Old Earth cockroach, she's got this incredibly irritating habit of accomplishing exactly what she sets out to do. And while she may not be as rich as Hauptman is, she's already well past the point where money as money really means anything to her. From everything we've been able to find out, she takes her responsibilities as Skydomes' CEO seriously, but she's perfectly satisfied running it through trusted assistants, so it's not as if she'd be interested in adding Hauptman to Skydomes as an exercise in empire building, either. In fact, I sometimes think she's at least partly of the opinion that what she's got already represents too much concentrated power in the hands of a single private individual. Combining Hauptman with Skydomes would create an entirely new balance of economic power—not just in the Star Kingdom, either—and I don't see her wanting to stick her family with that kind of power.'

'So he's planning on sneaking up on her with it and trusting her sense of duty to take it in the end?'

'I think that's what's going on, but I think it's really Stacey Hauptman who's doing the 'sneaking up' in this case,' Albrecht said.