Korndapp Mountain Resort, Scobie’s World
Chief Councillor Polk walked out onto the sprawling deck that fronted his suite. It was going to be a beautiful day, and in more ways than one, he promised himself.
He took a deep breath. The mountain air was pure and cool, the early morning sun cutting long slanting bars of light and dark through the mist eddying up from the valley far below him. In the distance, the Korndapp Range dominated the horizon, its rock faces thousands of meters high. Long tendrils of meltwater dropped down walls slashed by vertical fissures and ravines, unraveling into thin white skeins that twisted and danced in the early morning breeze. Above them, snowfields dusted a soft pink by the morning light crowned impossibly sharp peaks climbing high into the sky, a few stars still bright against the fading blue-black of night.
It was stunning, and in more ways than one.
Polk had to laugh out loud; he could not help himself. The sheer joy of presiding over the final humiliation of the Federated Worlds was as good as any drug. No, it was better, much better, because today was the start of something that would cement his position as chief councillor until the day he died. There was a wonderful twist to it all, though it was a minor detail, a mere bagatelle. Even so, it greatly amused him every time he thought of it. The Polk clan owned the Korndapp Mountain Resort, home to the negotiations with the Feds. Not that anyone knew that, of course. The endless layers of nominee companies and blind trusts were completely opaque; his many enemies had never found out, and if they could not, the damned Feds never would, either.
Polk laughed out loud. Even he had trouble keeping up with the Byzantine complexities of the Polk clan’s business affairs.
Ah, the wonderful, delicious irony of it all, he thought. The Feds were paying the Polk clan for using the Korndapp Mountain Resort, the place where he would make their defeat final and absolute, where the foundations of future Hammer greatness would be laid.