Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [72]
Everywhere he looked there was destruction. Corribus had been entirely annihilated. Roberts opened and closed his mouth several times until finally he blurted out, “Holy crap—and crap again! What happened here?”
Orli threw herself into his arms, and the man automatically folded her in a reassuring hug. She was sobbing too much to answer him.
“We’d, uh, appreciate a lift out of here,” Steinman said, “if you could manage it.”
Chapter 34—BASIL WENCESLAS
While General Lanyan droned complaints at him in the empty Hansa boardroom, Basil stood with his hands behind his back, studying the portraits of his predecessors. The faces of the sixteen former Chairmen of the Hanseatic League looked stern and self-important, true demigods of business and empire.
Three days ago he had been standing before the Mage-Imperator in the Prism Palace. Seeing the dynasty of the Ildiran leaders had made him think of his own forebears in the Hansa Headquarters. Like him, these men and women had controlled the wheels of commerce as human ambition spread from the Earth to the Moon and then the inner solar system. Next came the eleven generation ships, slow-moving monstrosities whose passengers cut their umbilical to home, assuming they’d never return.
Incensed as usual, Lanyan had asked for a conference within hours after the Chairman returned from his diplomatic visit. “According to the latest summary, in the seven years since the hydrogue war began, we have lost almost a hundred of our conscripted scout ships. In only three instances have we found legitimate evidence that the vessels suffered some mishap. The others simply...left. The pilots are AWOL. They abandoned their duties.”
Basil was troubled, but preoccupied. It seemed like a fairly small issue in the face of much greater debacles. One hundred pilots? “One often encounters such problems when dealing with forcibly conscripted soldiers who are given too much independence.”
He strolled along the boardroom wall, looking from one Chairman to the next, wondering about the priorities they’d had, the crises they had faced. No doubt, they’d felt that the fate of the Hansa was in their hands as well. Basil had never met most of these people; nevertheless, he felt he knew them.
Malcolm Stannis, a young cutthroat manager, had served during Earth’s first contact with the Ildirans; an effective leader saddled with two incompetent Kings, first the old fool Ben and then the young and unproven boy George. King Ben had clumsily given away the store, formally granting a Theron delegation their colony’s independence simply for the asking; luckily, he had died (under suspicious circumstances) shortly afterward.
Adam Cho had served for twenty-one years, the Hansa’s longest-acting Chairman prior to Basil, who was now approaching three decades in office. Regan Chalmers had served for only a single, scandal-ridden year. Bertram Goswell’s blundering friction with the Roamer clans had earned the Hansa the snide nickname of “Big Goose.” Sandra Abel-Wexler, a descendant from the generation ship that carried her surname, had returned to Earth, wanting no part of the new colony the Ildirans established for them.
So much history, so many mistakes...
Basil stopped in front of his own portrait, wondering what the painter had been thinking, what moods or nuances he’d tried to evoke. Then he looked at the blank wall space beyond. Would Eldred Cain’s portrait hang here in later years? The pallid deputy was his heir apparent, but their personalities were quite different. Was Cain really the man he wanted as his successor? Cain was cool and evenhanded, detail-oriented, but not ruthless enough.
Lanyan’s voice grew louder. “Are you listening to me, Mr. Chairman?”
Basil did not turn. “I am always listening, General. Don’t underestimate my ability to concentrate on more than one thing at a time. I understand the importance of what you are saying.”
Chastened, the commander of the Earth Defense