three years old, which made him one of the oldest human beings alive. Indeed, when the original first-generation prolong therapy was initially developed, he'd missed being too old for it by less than five months.
He'd also been an officer in the Solarian League Navy since he was nineteen, although he hadn't held a space-going command in over half a T-century, and he was rather proud of the fact that he did not suffer fools gladly. (Of course, most of the rest of the human race was composed almost exclusively of fools, in his considered opinion, but Kolokoltsov could hardly quibble with him on that particular point.) Rajampet was also a formidable force within the Solarian League's all-powerful bureaucratic hierarchy, although he fell just short of the very uppermost niche. He knew all of the Navy's ins and outs, all of its senior admirals, the complex web of its family alliances and patronage, where all the bodies were buried . . . and precisely whose pockets were filled at the trough of the Navy's graft and corruption. After all, his own were prominent among them, and he personally controlled the spigots through which all the rest of it flowed.
'It seems we have a small problem, Rajani,' he said out loud, beckoning the gorgeously bemedaled admiral towards a chair at the table.
'It bloody well
'I beg your pardon?' Kolokoltsov said with the air of a man who hadn't quite heard what someone had said.
'I was in the middle of a meeting with the Attorney General's people,' Rajampet replied, without apologizing for his earlier comment. 'They still aren't done with all the indictments for those damned trials, which means we're only just now getting that whole business with Technodyne sorted out. I promised Omosupe and Agatб'—he twitched his head at Omosupe Quartermain, Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Commerce, and Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Treasury Agatб Wodoslawski—'a recommendation on the restructuring by the end of the week. It's taken forever just to get everyone assembled so we could sit down and talk about it, and I don't appreciate being yanked away from something that important.'
'I can understand why you'd resent being interrupted, Rajani,' Kolokoltsov said coolly. 'Unfortunately, this small matter's come up and it needs to be dealt with . . . immediately. And'—his dark eyes bored suddenly into Rajampet's across the table—'unless I'm seriously mistaken, it's rather closely related to what got Technodyne into trouble in the first place.'
'What?' Rajampet settled the last couple of centimeters into his chair, and his expression was as perplexed as his voice. 'What are you talking about?'
Despite his own irritation, Kolokoltsov could almost understand the admiral's confusion. The repercussions of the Battle of Monica were still wending their way through the Navy's labyrinthine bowels—and the gladiatorial circus of the courts was only just beginning, really—but the battle itself had been fought over ten T-months ago. Although the SLN hadn't been directly involved in the Royal Manticoran Navy's destruction of the Monican Navy, the consequences for Technodyne Industries had been profound. And Technodyne had been one of the Navy's major contractors for four hundred years. It was perfectly reasonable for Rajampet, as the chief of naval operations, to be deeply involved in trying to salvage something from the shipwreck of investigations, indictments, and show trials, and Kolokoltsov never doubted that the admiral's attention had been tightly focused on that task for the past several T-weeks.
'I'm talking about the Talbott Cluster, Rajani,' he said out loud, letting just a trace of over-tried patience into his voice. 'I'm talking about that incident between your Admiral Byng and the Manties.'
'What about it?' Rajampet's tone was suddenly a bit cautious, his eyes wary, as instincts honed by a T- century of bureaucratic infighting reared their heads.
'It would appear the Manties were just as pissed off as their original note indicated they were,' Kolokoltsov told him.
'And?' Rajampet's eyes turned warier than ever and he seemed to settle back into his chair.
'And they weren't joking about sending their Admiral Gold Peak to inquire into matters on the ground in New Tuscany.'
'They weren't?' The question came from Wodoslawski, not Rajampet, and Kolokoltsov glanced at her.
She was twenty-five T-years younger than he was—a third-gerneration prolong recipient with dark red hair, gray eyes, and quite an attractive figure. She was also fairly new to her position as the real head of the Treasury Department, and she'd received it, following her predecesor's demise, only as a compromise between the other permanent senior undersecretaries. She knew perfectly well that she'd been everyone else's second choice—that all her current colleagues had allies they would really have preferred to see in that slot. But she'd been there for over a decade, now, and she'd solidified her powerbase quite nicely.
She was no longer the junior probationary member of the quintet of permanent undersecretaries who truly ran the League from their personal fiefdoms in the Foreign Ministry, Commerce Department, Interior Department, Department of Education and Information, and Treasury Department. She was, however, the only one of them who'd been out-system and unavailable when the first Manticoran diplomatic note arrived. As such, she could make an excellent claim to bearing no responsibility for how that note had been handled, and from her expression, Kolokoltsov thought sourly, she was thoroughly aware of that minor fact.
'No, Agatб,' he said, moving his gaze to her. 'No, they weren't. And just over a T-month ago—on November the seventeenth, to be precise—Admiral Gold Peak arrived at New Tuscany . . . to find Admiral Byng still there.'
'Oh, shit,' Permanent Senior Undersecretary of the Interior Nathan MacArtney muttered. 'Don't tell us Byng opened fire on
'If he did, I'm sure it was only because she provoked it!' Rajampet said sharply.
'With all due respect, Rajani,' Permanent Senior Undersecretary of Education and Information Malachai Abruzzi said tartly, 'I wouldn't bet my life on that.' Rajampet glared at him angrily, and Abruzzi shrugged. 'As far as I can tell from the Manties' first note, none of their ships did a damned thing to provoke him the
'I'll remind you,' Rajampet said even more sharply, 'that none of us were there, and the only 'evidence' we have of what truly happened was delivered to us, oh so generously, by the
Abruzzi only snorted, although Kolokoltsov suspected he was tempted to do something considerably more forceful. The vast majority of the Solarian League's member star systems looked after their own educational systems, which meant, despite its name, that Education and Information was primarily concerned with the
So far, he hadn't had a lot of success. Which wasn't too surprising, Kolokoltsov thought sourly. When a Solarian admiral commanding seventeen
'All I'll say, Rajani,' Abruzzi said after a moment, 'is that I'm just glad the Manties haven't leaked this to the newsies . . . yet, at least. Because as hard as we've been trying, we haven't been able to find a way to make