First Casualty by Mike Moscoe Page A

credit we extend, to managers we select.”
    “If you are right. If these puppets are truly yours and if they do not slip their strings and discover a life of their own,” the questioner growled. His face twisted in a grimace, and he threw up a hand. He knew none of these people of power could hear his words. He had lost.
    “I am always right. Thank you, Mr. Crossinshield. It is a pleasure doing business with you. We must talk another time of expanding our relationship.”
    Trevor stood. “Thank you, sir.”
    He left. In the cool of the locker room, sweat poured off him that had nothing to do with the sauna. When he could, he walked unsteadily to the shower. Under the cooling spray, he regained himself. The fix is in. We have agents everywhere. We know what is happening. It was a comforting mantra.

Four
    There was nothing worse than being beached. Abeeb men had shunned exile to the land for a thousand years, since the first one set sail in a wooden dhow to cross the blue waters off the east coast of Africa . Well, Uncle Dula had chosen to squat dirtside until this war blew over. Mattim could not. Uncle Dula had seniority and twenty years of good solid profits; he'd be one of the first captains recalled when peace came again. Captain Mattim Abeeb had no such track record.
    He'd leaped at the offer: command of his own ship at thirty. He should have looked closer at what he was jumping into. The routes he drew were deep along the rim of human space. He watched prices paid for his cargos plummet as competing bidders were replaced by Unity monopolies one offer, take it or leave it. And profit was a dirty word, rapidly elevating into a crime. Mattim could only wonder what the storekeepers were paying for his cargos—and who pocketed the difference.
    As profits went down, expenses went up. Corporate groused about the Westinghouse fire control he'd bought, but Mattim and crew had been glad for it when they needed it. Maybe that was why his crew, every one of them, had signed with him when the Maggie D had been contracted for conversion to a Navy cruiser. They knew as well as he that the Red Flag Line wanted its ships back on routes as soon as the war ended. With luck, Mattim would have the Maggie converted back and making money long before Uncle Dula got his recall letter.
    Assuming the Navy hadn't messed up the Maggie too badly—and they lived through the war. Big assumptions.
    Mattim studied his Maggie D ; staring down past his feet, out through the viewing port imbedded in the floor of the station's corridor to where she lay at Pier 12. She took some getting used to. Maggie was not the ship he'd left three months ago.
    The blocky freighter he'd commanded for five years was gone. About all that hadn't changed was the thick ice of the dust catcher at her bow. She was now an even five hundred meters long, fifty added to make room for the second reactor. In doubling the engines to twelve, the stern had gone from a rectangle to something like an oval. Better make sure the engines balance, he thought to himself.
    The hull was the major change. The blocks of thousands of standard containers were replaced by a smooth teardrop, no different from any Navy cruiser. She glistened, metal and ice armor reflecting back the dim light. Amidships, a turret popped up, rotated, then retreated, leaving a smooth hull. Laser guns, ready to boil someone else's armor, were his new business.
    Squaring his shoulders, Mattim marched to meet the officers and crew that had breathed this different life into his ship.
    “ Sheffield arriving” blared the moment his foot touched deck plates. He returned the ensign's smart salute, saluted the blue and green flag painted on the aft bulkhead, and turned to find himself being saluted by a three-striper who hadn't been there a second ago. “We've been expecting you, sir. I'm Commander Colin Ding, your exec. Would you like to inspect the ship?”
    Without waiting for an answer, his XO turned and began said