Free The Vengeance of the Tau by Jon Land Page A

suggestions have been duly noted and will be taken under advisement,” Von Tike snapped off curtly, and rose to face him. “Now, if you will be kind enough to excuse me …”
    Shoulders slumping, Heidelberg was halfway to the door when Von Tike spoke again.
    “Oh, and Herr Heidelberg, I trust this conversation will be kept between ourselves.”
    Heidelberg stiffened and turned.
    “After all, my friend,” Von Tike continued, staring him straight in the eye, “there are your wife and children to consider. Three boys, ages eight, ten, and thirteen. The youngest has brown hair and blue—”
    “Enough! You’ve made your point.”
    “Good,” Von Tike said. “Now get out.”
    After Heidelberg had closed the door behind him, Von Tike sat down again and reached for his pocket-sized tape recorder. He composed his thoughts before beginning to speak. Von Tike owned the controlling portion of Levenhasse, a thriving giant in the German military-industrial complex. He had made his first fortune selling major components for advanced weaponry to any country that could afford them. Oh, nothing that could be traced back in any amount great enough to do Levenhasse significant harm. Recent disclosures, though, had become a nuisance, and, worse, the fall of the Soviet Union had led to a drastic reduction in military orders. Von Tike saw his empire crumbling and was scrambling to reroute his priorities.
    As a result, companies like Heidelberg’s had been swallowed in a series of monstrous gulps to expand Levenhasse’s industrial base. Many possessed inadequate and antiquated equipment. Von Tike’s engineers had updated them and increased their efficiency at the expense of dumping huge volumes of pollutants into the Rhine and its tributaries. It was a cost Von Tike found easy to accept. As far as he was concerned, all of the backward villages bordering the river could be wiped out, so long as his company’s revenues continued to rise.
    Von Tike switched on his tape recorder and spoke into it. “Meeting with Heidelberg, April seventeenth. Commissioned his own report on pollutants flowing out of his plant and several others. Probably intends to approach the government with his findings now, which we cannot allow to—”
    Thump …
    Von Tike eased the machine away from his mouth. He looked toward the door to the conference room.
    Thump …
    Coming from inside it. Who was there? There was no entrance to the conference room other than through his office, and no one had passed that way.
    Thump …
    Von Tike rested the still-running tape recorder atop his desk and stood up. He moved out from behind his desk and started toward the conference room.
    He was almost there when the door crashed inward. The force blew Von Tike backward, nearly spilling him over.
    “What?” he managed. “Who the devil is—”
    The scream that followed was the last discernible sound on the tape the security guards would later find. They arrived barely a minute after Von Tike uttered the scream, but it took them several more to locate the recorder, because it was hidden beneath their employer’s severed arm. The blood had rendered the recorder inoperable, and it was some time later before another was found, and the guards could listen to the last agonizing moments in the life of Friedrich Von Tike.
    Javier Kelbonna stood on his balcony watching the night waves break over the shoreline. He was the master of all that he saw, all that he could see. The island belonged to him. It had been granted along with asylum after he had fled his own country in the wake of a disastrous civil war.
    The world had judged him wrongly, harshly, and in the end had turned his own people against him. They had risen up in the streets, and Kelbonna had ordered his militia to use all means at their disposal to quell the violence. Then crowds had gathered to oppose him, and the militia had fired on them, regardless of whether or not the crowds were armed. Preemptive strikes were