“You didn’t execute an eviction today, Julian.”
“You attempted to establish unauthorized physical surface control over Valve Station Ten.”
“And under Section Fourteen-B of the **1944 Mercer Sovereign Lineal Charter**:”
Cooper bared his teeth in a razor-thin, cold line of white bone:
“…your entire sixty-billion-dollar shadow syndicate has been permanently forfeited and vacated unto Colonel Clara Eleanor Mercer and her seventeen-year-old daughter, Willa Eleanor Mercer, in perpetuity!”
Julian Vance let out an un-human, animalistic shriek from the foyer:
*“CALL ARTHUR!
CALL MY UNCLE!
HE IS THE CHIEF JUSTICE OF THE UNITED STATES!
HE CONVENES THE COURT AT ZERO-TWO-HUNDRED HOURS!”*
He lunged toward his cashmere coat pocket, clawing for his encrypted satellite transceiver:
*CLACK.*
Two SOG tactical operators stepped forward in fluid, synchronized mechanical velocity:
Their gloved hands caught Julian Vance by his Huntsman lapels and his right wrist in mid-flight, spun his six-foot frame one hundred and eighty degrees against the hallway wall, and drove his face down onto the floorboards with four hundred pounds of downward kinetic leverage:
