HOW TO TURN A PROFIT OUT OF CRISIS: A SF FRONTIER ADMIRAL QUEST

"I'd rather you kill me, all told."

Ha! When did you pick up an ethical core worth dying for? a part of you jeers. Your protege is offering you what you wanted at the start, more money than anyone could ever dream of, and here you are, the big shot, refusing! It's hilarious, you'd laugh if this isn't your last moment on the earth. And what the hell are they looking all sad for? Luca looks like you hit her over the head with a battleaxe, Seubi looks like he's barely holding it together. Actually, Alessandro looks about what you would expect, twitching with the urge to dance a merry jig and sing a song over your corpse.

"Alright," Seubi chokes out from his bark lips.

"Let me get some last words in first," you say.

Alessandro refuses. "Don't let 'em. Kill them," he urges. "What the fuck do we have need for this guy?"

"Shut the fuck up," Luca advises him on the pain of being tossed out the airlock after accidentally falling down a shaft. "And then get the fuck out. You don't need to hear this."

You shake his head. "No, he does. This concerns your triumvirate, which, by the way, never ever works."

"We'll make it work," Seubi. "We're just built different."

You have to smile. "Audacity becomes you. Alright, you want to be Archon, or the closest thing to it. Chop some heads. You'll make enemies among the gens, and it's unlikely the old, big families are going to go with you. But they don't matter, because what you want to do is play the proles. A round of public executions does wonders to boost the legitimacy of the new regime." You're sitting on the edge of your bed, rubbing your hands together like you're praying. "Also, I would recommend that you scupper United. You need to look clean and sparkly and uncorrupt, so you may have to steal a leaf out of the communist's book. If nothing else, those beautiful idiots are probably trying again to build their socialist republic for the nth time in a row, so you'll have to steal a march."

"Noted. Anything else?"

"I would ask that my body be sent to my home planet for rites. There is a note in my terminal. The password is aQvv9%^. That's all."

Your protege nods. "It's been an honor, sir," he says and Luca echoes. Alessandro has pissed off and made himself scarce. You fix your collar and then you get shot.

In the heart, you realize as your blood bubbles out of the hole in your chest. Why in the heart? In the brain is much better. No fuss, no muss, and you'd die faster. Why, Seubi? When did you piss in his cheerios, for what wrong did you do him? Your organs fail, one by one. Bits of you no longer register, passing on into the next world.

---

"Sir. Wake up."

Wind blows against your face. There is a sharp chill in the air, and piercing sunlight shines past your eyelids.

"Oh, I see," you manage out of a throat as dry as anything. "Is this hell?" You ask this question at the Attendant of the Dead, who in its capricous moods takes the form of your killer, Seubi vi Markoviz. "It's a dump, but I guess you wouldn't want to live if hell was a nice place." You sit up out of the coffin you were brought in. Low mountains rise to the west and the waves lap against the rocky beach to your east. There is a salty tinge to the air.

"You're alive," the Attendant says gently. "Me and Luca talked it out. We couldn't kill you, not for real, after what you did for us. Alessandro could, that's why Luca told him to piss off."

"Hmmm." You're willing to accept that you're alive. The coffin looks more like a life support pod, there's a faint ache in your chest. Also, instead of the various spiritual fish that carry one's essence to the dark depths of the afterlife there's a military grade transport lander/lifter that's just finished bolting some habitat modules to the ground. "An inauspicious start to your little partnership. Lies this early? For shame." You struggle out of the coffin, with a single false start.

"It is what it is. We've put together some things for you. A nice house, climate controlled with a really good autochef. Download but no upload capability. Also, this." He drops a big briefcase on the ground. "A portion of your proceeds from United, if you ever manage to get off this rock. Also, there's a nice vintage of bradwin in there. Kaedwin '44."

You nod. "Look," you say, a tad more urgently, "here's my proposal. Let's go up the gravity well and ratfuck Alessandro. I am a beast more oily and my schemes are better than his, and I have the benefit of a long career of bribery and backroom contacts. Am I not useful?"

Seubi smiles. Very sadly. "No, sir. We came to a conclusion. We're not made to play the son."

"I'm not your father," you scowl. "Think, Seubi! Your plan includes a lot of murder, and I'm just the man to smooth things out for you. I have lists! The… the chancellor of the treasury, she's pushed junk bonds to start that bank run ten years ago! That's just the taste. Seubi? Suebi, come back here! You should have just killed me, damn your eyes!"

You don't have the power to compel. He doesn't look back, and the seal on the airlock closes. A sheet of metal shuts your furious pleading out forever.

So starts your new life, you suppose. You're the only one on this planet, the only one with a brain worth mentioning about. After you shouted yourself hoarse you collapsed onto the rocky soil and stared up at the sky. Then you started crying. No sense in hiding it, who's to say you did so? Once the tears are dry, you find a nice rock to sit on and have a good think.

There's a harsh beauty to this rock, but what good does it do? All your life, faded away. Your works, gone in a flash. You have no offices, no power, and if you tried to construct such a thing on this rock it would go from tragic to farcical. The Marquis-Admiral, exiled on some rock, lacking in any world-view but their career, ordering rocks and flowers in elaborate plots and skulduggery. That's comedy. The only power you have remaining is the power over yourself. Without euphemisms, self-annihilation.

You stand with knees that weren't creaking when you were up in space. You walk back inlands, the wave-sound crashing against your ears. With measured breaths you pop open the briefcase, and lo, he wasn't lying about the vintage. There's also a square block, a beastly industrial anachronism that banks use to transfer secure denominations of vast amounts of money off-the-grid.

Why did Seubi and Luca give you this? Did they think that you needed lucre like a fish needs water? Like, if you weren't in contact with money, you'd start choking like an asthmatic. You have to smile. What a ridiculous thought.

Your new digs are nice, that's a consolation. You think it's a bit too old fashioned, too much glass walls and sterile shit, but the military is always two steps behind the current fashion.

You set down the brick of money. There is a sum best encoded in scientific notation stored in there, in indisputably legal coding. You set down the Kaedwin '44 and dig out a glass and pour yourself a shot, as to medicate your trembling fingers. After some thought, you go to the autochef and peruse its contents.

You ignore the various selections of steaks, stews, and salads, and end on the menu on recreational chemicals. A breath whispers past your lips. You pour yourself a sublethal measure of recreational depressant, and then consciously force yourself to make it lethal. You set both glasses on the counter, next to the brick of cash.

"Oh, I get it," you exclaim. "I wanted to retire rich, that's why they gave me the money. Haha." You look through the wall to wall window at the bleakness of your surroundings. "I wish it was a lot warmer, though."

A part of you says that it's ludicrous to off yourself now. What's the point? It's kicking a dead horse, or more pertinently, a dead Marquis-Admiral. The rest of your cognitive parliament vote to give that voice a solid kicking, and proceed to do so. Dastardly dissenters point out that as black as the humor is, its got a point. And furthermore, you really don't want to die, especially since your stoic mastery over your fate will have for its audience some microbes in the water. 'Sides, you demonstrated that already to the triple threat, now you're just trying to catch lightning twice.

In such a manner you think about it until the sun recedes past the horizon. And deep in your heart, you know you'll be here again tomorrow.

There's some things you never want to be in the position of, and among those is an old done man, lord of nothing, staring at a cup of whiskey and a cup of poison side by side, day by day, to eternity.