Read The Unincorporated War for Free Online Page B

“if we lose you we may very well lose this war.”
    Justin looked around and saw that the comment had elicited a fair amount of agreement.
    “But not going will guarantee our failure.” Justin then turned to Admiral Sinclair.
    “Do you have children, Admiral?”
    Sinclair was taken aback. “Seven, sir.”
    “Have they joined the fleet?”
    “Five have,” answered the admiral. “My youngest, Adrianne, is only eight, and my wife is pregnant.”
    “Is my life more important then theirs?” asked Justin.
    “Sir, that’s not the point.”
    “Admiral, that’s the
only
point. For too long value was placed on life by how many shares you owned or had owned by others; no more.” Justin paused for a moment. “By the way, Admiral, what percentage of yourself do you own?”
    “Now? One hundred percent.”
    Justin turned around the command room as he asked the other officers assembled, “And you?” He was greeted with a chorus of, “Hundred,” and, “All.”
    Justin nodded approvingly. “Your children are the most important thing in your life and,” he said, turning back to Sinclair, “I may have to order your children into a situation that will get them permanently killed. It’s the worst part of this job and I can’t shirk it. But at least they’ll know …
you’ll
know, and everyone in the Outer Alliance will and
must
know, that I accept those same risks or I cannot give or expect anyone to follow any orders. So yes, I’m going down to the surface, and that, Admiral,” Justin said with a sly grin, “is an order.”
    “Mr. President,” Sinclair answered, shaking his head, “you have an annoying habit of getting your way.”
    Justin laughed. “You should talk to my wife. She’s proof positive that I don’t.”
    “She’ll be fine, sir,” replied the admiral, knowing full well that Neela was on the surface of the planet at that very moment. She’d gone down as a combat medic with a group of ground assault miners. Justin had initially tried to bar her, but she’d used the same arguments on him in private that he’d just used on the crew.
    Justin smiled awkwardly and left the command room for a t.o.p. to the surface of Mars and his prize.

2 Corporate Core
     
One year earlier
New York, Earth
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The Terran Daily News
     
    H ektor Sambianco was nervous.
No,
he thought to himself, …
anxious
. He was standing on a hover disk thirty feet above ground level in Colonization Park in the middle of New York City. The disk was encircled by a clear rail and afforded the new Chairman a 360-degree panorama of the bustling crowd gathering below. Just beneath him was a thick globular mist that covered a soon-to-be-revealed statue. The air was clear and cool. Hektor was wearing a moderately expensive seven-piece suit, a tri-tie, and leather cowboy boots that he’d personally shined to a gleam. This was to be his first public event since becoming the Chairman of GCI, and he knew just how important it was. His anxiety had nothing to do with stage fright, a fear he’d overcome long ago in his steady march up the corporate ladder. Nor did it have to do with the fear of acceptance. The crowd knew Hektor from his media-saturated days as Director of Special Operations and over the course of many ups