-How’d it go, Mother?- Anatolia /asked me coolly.

-He’s willing to give me a half a trillion credits to help me set up GAMT tech production here and take some property off his hand with a small irradiation and Warp signature problem.-

A cascade of orders to get a Vivic Burn Team to Kammadon III went off on the side. I helpfully supplied the accounts the funds were in, and within minutes they were being allocated by eager Hagbloods buying raw materials to turn into production tools and shipped to the planet. The first buildings would be up within a week, and production lines a week later. The money would start coming in very quickly after that.

-The other matters?- she /went on, having to take resolution of them into the plans for this sector.

I went down the list of legal and various other matters that had been resolved, basically amounting to ceasefires and the possibility of making money off one another in the future with no hard feelings. His legal premiums had indeed been getting somewhat excessive.

-You got into the Foundation. Excellent.- I could almost see her dark eyes glowing with malevolent intensity. She had Plans for the Corunsun Duchy.

-We are going to have tea and discuss the fate of trillions. I think they still serve Earl Grey there...-

She almost /snickered. -We tracked the missing algorithm.-

-It was missing?- I /laughed, knowing one my Goldilocks had let it go deliberately. -Oh, do tell me it is in the Foundation...-

-It’s in almost every financial institution on the planet. The Foundation was merely the second one to get it.-

-PanGal was the first?- I /laughed with all double canines, having a sudden craving for red meat. -My, that must have convinced them all of my genius.-

-Infiltration of their systems is commencing. The TL 18 Coding is very effective.-

-I imagine it is.- It was also a polydimensional mess, and while I could follow it, I couldn’t understand WHY it worked... yet. Things just needed to continue...

-How long are you planning on being this particular Contessa?- she /asked, curious. There was a lottery going on among the Natural Actress and Total Bitch Talents vying to replace me.

Hmm, thinking about it, I should probably restrict it to the more bloodthirsty sorts. I had a reputation I’d set up, after all.

And was that guy looking at me? And that one? And that one?

Oh, my, they were. Someone had sent out some affidavits to be delivered. I met the eyes of the nearest one and smiled.

He was about to do something, and froze right in place. I pointed at the other two with fingers on my left hand, and then turned my eyes to look directly at the sniper a thousand meters away, wagging my finger at her.

Their subdermals all swore, and I hooked into them. “Gentlemen, miss, language. Now, if you would be kind enough to tell me what firm you are representing, you can leave with your lives. Otherwise, I’m afraid you’re about to be served.”

I could hear all of them swallowing as I strode towards the doors of PanGalactic, perfectly in control of the situation, very unafraid, and my smile so ruthlessly expectant the three members of the ground crew were going weak in the knees. The sniper a kilometer away didn’t want to look at me looking back at her.

-Well, I have to get mah present for Fuzzy in place. How long do you expect that to take?-

-Two weeks, tops.- she /admitted, especially now that the algorithm was in place and executing code that the systems it had thoughtfully downloaded into couldn’t even read, or realize existed.

Hell, that code could make a TRS-80 outperform a Cray. TL18 code was no joke. -That sounds about right. Once I have access to the master accounts and chamber for the Ducal Seal, I will naturally let you know so that we can start the transfer of power.-

“Uh, ma’am, we’re with Dorcester and Mumbinai.” The quiet admission kind of put client confidentiality to rest, but they had a choice between living or saying something, and nobody had put a bomb in their heads.

“Oh, you’re representing the Sheaf Cartel. Fine, fine. Consider me to have noticed you. Go home, fill out your reports, and do whatever you do. If I see you again, you’ll die. Don’t be seen, dears.”

“Yes, ma’am!” they all said together and hurriedly headed for different doors than the one I was using at double time.

-Did the Sheaf Cartel happen to download that algorithm?-

-Do they deal in futures and commodities?- she /replied rhetorically.

-Wonderful! They just sent a service team to me. Kindly return the favor with those responsible, to express my delight at their business etiquette and use of proper channels for conflict resolution.-

Some orders on the other end flowed out without batting an eye. Rar, quests!

-Have the replacement team ready once I get the Seal Chamber taken care of. Vet the girls. Although I’m using some brainpower, this is basically war with money and chic clothing. I’m sure the girls can pick someone appropriate.-

-That does sound like something for Priscilla, she’s the most senior of the Total Bitches. I think she’s been shooting nobles minor in Perseidspace. The chance to shoot nobles major would definitely tickle her fancy.-

-Wonderful. She’s getting proper exposure to the right level of snobbery already.- Both of us /snickered despite ourselves.

------------

Well, I had to say that the Foundation was very serious about not wanting the Duke to ever come back.

They had naturally hacked into the great vaulted room where the dais for the Seal rose from wonderfully carved Orion Marble (worth more per pound then corundum) and gleamed eternally, waiting for the Seal that would prove the identity of the new Duke. There were sixteen deathtraps in there of various sorts, culminating with an atomic bomb going off that would have leveled the building, and yet left the Foundation still in control of everything.

The Crown Pillar of the Corunsuns itself was untouched. After all, it did have to verify the authenticity of the Seal, and the Family could only make sure that was the case. If they knew they had the proper Seal, they could of course act to forestall as many shenanigans as possible, but they probably had no idea that the Foundation was totally willing to sacrifice their main base of operations and about fifty million innocent lives to keep their hands on the money.

Fuzzy was naturally very busy on the other side of the Rift, effectively establishing his own kingdom as the Imperial Forces were torn between pro-Mekker, anti-Mekker, and hotshit-we’re-freeeee rabble-rousers. He was literally keeping an eye on developments through mine pretty much all the time, though. His opinion of his future vassals was polysyllabic in many languages.

I spent a couple nights in the room disarming all the deathtraps while making them look fully functional... and then thoughtfully slaving them to the bearer of the Seal, who I was sure would not find all sorts of amusing things to do with them. -Nope, nope-, he /assured me.

Then I went down into the data stacks, where the Foundation had very deliberately completely cut off their systems from the ancient tech still slumbering down below, as if they didn’t want that ancient and formidable coding to wake up and be able to do anything to them.

Thoughtful girl that I am, I started making connections and helping the old systems talk to the new ones. It turns out that they had a lot to talk about, and the newer systems were having some issues denying the TL 17 coding of the old systems. Pity that.

On the other hand, I spent a few hours hobnobbing with Corunsun nobles, non-Corunsun noble wannabes from the Foundation, and there was only one team of brain-spiked assassins sent... no, there were two... nope, it ended up with three, and my what an entertaining shootout!

The Foundation turned out to be filled with a lot of private passages for avoiding just these sort of altercations, which seemed to happen with distressing frequency. As the legal and para-legal teams shot everybody who wasn’t with them, I started a religious service with Chalice, Paten, and some Faith in my fellow man.

Nobody was required to remain standing, thank you.

When the legal and religious issues had worked themselves out, the admiring congregation came out and our discussion had a positive and friendly tempo, with several numbers that had been on the less than optimal side nudged in new directions by others.

A little cold sweat after looking at all the blood splattered on my shimmersilk suit might have had something to do with it. The patterns were positively artistic, and their deep appreciation for culture no doubt influenced an improvement in their bottom lines.

After that, a tour of their facilities, some of which I had gone through singing some harrowing psalms in much haste, was naturally on the agenda, and both sides were very puffed up in their own way to show me the wonderful chamber where the heritage of the Duke To Return would stand forever, until death or destruction.

The psi-active machinery probably would have something to say about the destruction they wanted to heap upon it, but I think they were too scared to mess with it, given the reverence and undercurrents of fear when they talked about it. Somehow, I had the impressions that the hackers and ‘maintenance teams’ sent into the lower stacks ended up with their brains flowing out their ears, and then were quietly disposed of.

There were no blueprints that displayed anything of the lower stacks, but it was plainly obvious to me that it didn’t connect to the city’s power grid at all, so it was running on its own supply, and if any of the readings I was picking up meant anything, that was a zero-point energy source.

I wasn’t even aware humanity had managed to crack a zero-point source here. Just how much tech had the Fall and the damn Mekkers cost us?

Fortunately, the Mekkers were interested in that investing algorithm too... purely as an intellectual exercise, of course. It turned out that most of their reports dealing with the lower stacks of the Foundation building had big warning labels, aggressive coloration, and were tied to reports of death benefits paid to next of kin, reassignment of positions held by trusted subordinates, resignations of senior executives, and some massively damaging coding attacks that took a few million coding hours to set right.

It still plagued them whenever they were feeling uppity.

---------

“You seem rather far from your proper job,” a smoothly synthetic voice said by my ear.

I was upside down inserting some of the very finest newly made QL 18 data transfer cables shunted to me into nigh-invisible receptors in the lower stacks, and then running them across durasteel struts to a hole I’d made in the plascrete wall separating them from the newer (and less sophisticated) Foundation tech put in place down here.

I didn’t glance at the sphere hovering behind me, having felt it coming long ago. “Oh? And what is my proper job?”

“Are you not the Contessa Rantha?” the dry voice asked, and a datafile with my current face came up next to me.

“Yes, I am.” No denying it, as I played out more cable, and slid along the underside of the cable as nanite bands formed behind my fingers, locking the cables in place as they expired and hardened into diamond-tough circles welded to the durasteel.

“It is rather unexpected for a nobelle major to get her hands dirty with electronics.”

“I’ve always been willing to go the extra step for the things that matter,” I replied evenly, handing the cables through the hole in the wall, before shimmying through it myself...