No one who’d ever met Oravil Barregos could have doubted for a moment that he was intensely ambitious. He knew it himself, and he’d accepted that he was the sort of man who was never truly happy unless he was the one wielding authority. Making decisions. Proving he was smarter, better, more qualified for the power he possessed than anyone else. Nor, he admitted, was he averse to wealth and all that came with it.

That, in many ways, was the perfect profile of an Office of Frontier Security commissioner or sector governor, and it explained a great deal about how he’d risen to his present position. But it didn’t explain all of it, and that was important, because the bureaucrats who’d accepted him as one of their own had made a fatal mistake. They’d failed to recognize that unlike them, Barregos actually cared about the people he governed. That he’d recognized the rot, seen the corrosion, realized the reaction Frontier Security’s abuse of the protectorates must inevitably provoke.

Whether or not he and Luis Rozsak and the other men and women committed to the Sepoy Option succeeded, the storm was coming, and the League’s confrontation with the Star Empire of Manticore could only speed the day its winds swept over the explored galaxy. And that was really the point, wasn’t it? When that storm broke, the chaos and confusion, the warlordism and the violence, which followed the shipwreck of any empire, were going to sweep across the protectorates, as well. They were going to sweep across the Maya Sector, and Maya’s wealth could only make it even more attractive to brigands and pirates and potential warlords.

That wasn’t going to happen to the people Oravil Barregos was responsible for. On oh so many levels, it wasn’t going to happen. And for him to prevent it, he and Rozsak had to build the strength to stand against the hurricane.

To stop the warlords, they had to become warlords…and the biggest, nastiest warlords on the block, at that.

“You’re right, Luis,” he said, setting the glass down with a snap. He looked across the table at the admiral who was not simply his accomplice in treason but his closest friend and smiled. “You’re right. So let’s just consider my cold feet warmed up.”

Rozsak smiled back at him and raised his own glass.

“I’ll drink to that,” he said.

Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine

“I don’t suppose we’ve received any updates on those damned missile ships?”