The office went silent. She saw the signs of fatigue now, the bloodshot eyes, the slight sagging in the skin of the face, and the deeper lines. This was a man on the verge of collapse. Considering that, his response to her attack was doubly impressive.
“His wife is screwing my husband,” she told him. “They have the entirety of our seco research, and they’ve disappeared.”
Matias pivoted to her.
“He deserves an honest answer,” she told him.
“Well.” Haider took a deep breath, pulled his chair from behind his ruined desk, and sat in it. “I am sorry. I know nothing about this. They didn’t come to us, probably because they realize we can’t pay them. Not as much as they would need to make it worth your combined wrath, anyway.”
As she suspected.
“Even if they had approached us, we would pass,” Haider continued. “Davenport, Inc., has abandoned its seco initiative.”
What?
“Since when?” Matias asked.
“Since the beginning of the month. We can’t stabilize the field fluctuations. I can no longer justify throwing good money after bad. We simply can’t afford it.”
Wow. The shock must have shown on her face because Haider shrugged. “It is what it is. Have you been able to stabilize the field?”
“Yes,” they said at the same time.
“I hate you both.”
She still struggled with the enormity of the loss his company would take. “Walking away after all this time . . .”
“It’s not a complete wash,” Haider said. “We’ve stumbled on a significantly more efficient way to calibrate the Kelly-particle agitator to sustain a constant flow of energy. It has multiple industrial applications.”
He caught on to the expressions on their faces and leaned forward, his eyes suddenly bright. “The two of you haven’t figured it out.”
Neither of them answered.
“Ha! I have something you don’t! You are running out of money. You can’t afford to keep researching it indefinitely. You and you are going to pay me for that tech. All the money.” He leaned back in his chair, spread his arms wide, and howled at the ceiling. “I’m the smartest man in the world!”
Matias looked like he was considering cutting Haider’s head off out of sheer irritation.
“I’ll pit you against each other and make you bid for it,” Haider continued. “Or, better, I’ll want a percentage of each sale. I’ll own this planet.”
Matias rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked at her.
“Clearly, he’s gone crazy with power,” she told him.
Matias didn’t look amused. The word likely wasn’t in his vocabulary. “He’s gone crazy with something.”
“Call me crazy,” Haider told them. “Call me anything you want as long as you pay me.”
Ramona allowed herself a small smile. Licensing from the Davenports would cost her family a fortune, but somehow Haider’s joy was infectious.
“That’s a good plan,” Matias said. “However, unless we recover our files, nobody will be paying you anything.”
Haider sat up, suddenly serious. “That’s right. I just thought of something. About two months ago, we were approached for a complete buyout. They wanted everything, every bit of seco data and research, all of the prototypes, even the failed ones, and the offer came attached with a draconian noncompete. Not only wouldn’t we be able to ever work on seco applications, we couldn’t even utilize any of the side projects we developed as a result. This was ‘abandon the family business, take a lump sum, and retire’ money.”
An alarm went off in her head. “An off-worlder?” she asked.
Haider nodded.
Kinsmen families had spread far and wide through the galaxy. They had come into being because humanity needed a vanguard for its expansion. Their ancestors led the waves of settlers, establishing footholds on dangerous new worlds. Each planet had their own kinsmen culture, but for Rada kinsmen, family was everything. Money mattered less than growing and maintaining the family business, cultivating it, and passing it on to the next generation. Business anchored them to the province. It rooted them, and they grew from it like a tree. Their status, their life purpose, and their self-respect, all of it was wrapped up in family enterprise. No Rada kinsman would ever make that kind of offer to another kinsman. It was an insult, and they would know it would be automatically rejected.
“Do you know the identity of the buyer?” Matias asked.
“No,” Haider said. “And believe me, I tried to find out. The pitch came from a private shipping firm, but I’m positive it was only a cover.”
“Why?” she asked.
“There was a lot of arrogance. It was less an offer than an order, and when we declined, the reaction wasn’t positive. There was no haggling, no bargaining, no attempt to sweeten the deal. We were expected to take the offer on the table, no questions asked. That’s not the way experienced businessmen do deals.”
The Davenports had a deadly reputation. They didn’t actively seek conflict, but if attacked, they retaliated decisively, and they didn’t stop until the threat was neutralized. The way the buyer went about it all but guaranteed failure. The question was, Was it ignorance or arrogance? Perhaps the buyer wanted his offer to be rejected, although she couldn’t imagine why.
“I can tell you that their cover identities were bulletproof,” Haider continued. “Either they have an incredible counterfeiter, or their fake IDs are real.”
Which would mean they were connected to someone local with a lot of power.
“Did you record the meeting?” Matias asked.
And that right there was the difference between being born on Rada or off planet. Of course Haider had recorded the meeting. All of them knew it. What Matias was really asking was to see the recording, but demanding access to another family’s private business dealings would be the height of rudeness.
Haider stared into space for a couple of long breaths. “I forwarded it to your in-boxes.”
Her implant chimed, acknowledging the receipt. They would have to find a secure terminal to view it.
“Hilariously, they demanded that we erase it.” Haider chuckled. “You have what you need. Go forth, brave heroes, track down the traitors, and recover your data so you can pay me. I wouldn’t recover the spouses, however. Seems like a lost cause.”
True, she thought.
Haider waved them off. “You can take the elevator down.”
“No thanks,” Matias said. “The aerial will be just fine.”
He headed to the window. Ramona followed him, paused, and tossed a brief message to Haider’s in-box from her implant.
“What’s this?” Haider asked.
“One of my childhood friends. Two children, natural conception for both. Both born with the Tarim mutation. They are now five and three. I thought you and Damien could use someone to talk to, and Olivia Solis has gone through this gauntlet.”
Haider smiled. “Maybe I won’t take all of your money. Just some of it. Happy hunting, she-wolf.”
She nodded and leaped across the void into the cargo hold.
CHAPTER 3
New Delphi perched on top of a towering plateau, its glittering skyscrapers and beautiful office buildings vying for space with residential apartments and houses, cushioned in greenery. On the side of the cliff, five hundred meters below the city level, lay the Terraces. Seven platforms, each about a couple of kilometers long and two hundred meters at their widest, they curved from the living rock one under another, like scalloped mushrooms from a massive tree trunk.