McNair
Chief Councillor Polk damned the vaulting ambition that had driven him to the chief councillorship, clawing his way up every blood-drenched step of the ladder. He damned the stupidities that had turned the Hammer Worlds into a crippled, corrupt shambles. He damned the incompetent fools he was forced to work with. He damned a military that once again had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. He damned the Feds for wriggling out of the death grip the Hammers had on their throats.
But most of all, he damned his nemesis, a man with an uncanny ability to be there every time the Feds kicked the Hammers in the balls.
Helfort … Lieutenant Michael Wallace Helfort, Federated Worlds Space Fleet, may Kraa damn his evil heretic soul, the man responsible more than any other for the loss of the Hammer’s precious antimatter plant.
He asked himself for the thousandth time why he was so stupid. Why had he ever allowed one miserable man to get so far under his skin? Kraa knew how hard he attempted to keep Helfort in perspective, but no matter how hard he tried, it made no difference. Not a day went by without him thinking about the man. He had even started to dream about the son of a bitch, for Kraa’s sake!
Was he asking too much? No, he did not think so: He wanted the man dead, one miserable, no-account human being dead; that was all. With the full resources of the Hammer Worlds at hand, why was that so hard? Well, he decided, maybe things were going to get easier; Helfort’s luck had run out … finally. Fate had given the Hammers the best chance they were ever going to get, and Polk intended to make sure the bungling blockheads who worked for him took it. If those useless Serhatis tried to dick him around, he would kick their Kraa-damned asses. He would give them a week to transfer the Feds back.
All being well, he decided, he would get his hands on Helfort, after all. Once the man had been tried, shot, and dumped into a DocSec lime pit-Helfort should feel right at home lying there beside Fleet Admiral Jorge and all the rest of the useless scum responsible for the Hammer’s defeat at Devastation Reef-he might be able to forget him.