The report landed on Rajendra's Moscow desk not as a triumph, but as a balance sheet of conquest. It was a dry, five-page document from Major Voronin, detailing the "security landscape assessment" of the Western Military District. Buried in the appendices was the real dividend: a list of mothballed state assets—timber mills, rare earth mineral survey claims, and a small, struggling oil field in Siberia—that were now "under the operational oversight of Zashchita Corporation pursuant to Stability Protocol Alpha."
General Krylov had moved fast. In the chaotic vacuum left by the standoff with Voskresensky, he had simply… taken administrative control. The local Party bosses, either co-opted or terrified, signed the transfer orders. The state was too weak to protest.
Rajendra stared at the list. The Siberian oil field, "Dawnlight-7," was the prize. It was producing at 30% capacity due to lack of parts and skilled engineers. Its real value wasn't the oil; it was the legal fiction of ownership. A corporate entity, Zashchita, now held a Soviet state resource concession. It was a crack in the monolith, wide enough to drive a tanker through.
But there was a footnote, highlighted in Voronin's precise hand. Asset geographically located within the Tatarstan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic. Local political sentiment is… complex. Recommend proactive engagement.
Complex. A bureaucrat's word for a tinderbox.
He called in Kapoor, who had just returned from securing a MAKA shipment in Tallinn. The man looked more like bedrock than ever, his expression permanently set to "expecting bad news."
"We have a new site to secure," Rajendra said, sliding the report over. "Dawnlight-7. In Tatarstan."
Kapoor scanned it. "An oil field. Good. We need the fuel. What's the problem? Bandits? Army deserters?"
"The problem," Rajendra said, "is that the people who live on top of it don't think the oil belongs to Moscow. And now, it doesn't belong to Moscow. It belongs to us. They will see no difference."
Kapoor grunted. "So we are the new colonial overseers. Wonderful. My men are smugglers and bodyguards, not an occupation force."
"You won't be occupying. You'll be… facilitating." Rajendra pulled up a map. "The field is managed by a state director, a man named Fyodorov. He hasn't been paid in three months. His workers are stealing equipment to sell for food. You will go there. You will pay Fyodorov. In dollars. You will pay the workers a bonus. In goods—food, medicine, maybe a few bottles of decent vodka. You will tell them Zashchita is the new management, and under new management, the field will run, and they will get paid."
"And if they don't want new management? If they have a local strongman who wants the field for himself?"
Rajendra's gaze was flat. "Then you will introduce him to The Silencers. Voronin has a team. They specialize in making problems… retire. But try the money first, Kapoor. We are a corporation, not a gang. We're here to make the machinery work, not to break it."
A week later, the second dividend arrived, and it landed in Shanti's inbox in Pune.
It was a draft copy of the Zashchita-MANO Resource Facilitation Agreement. It was a masterpiece of corporate legalese, outlining how MANO would provide "technical consultancy and equipment procurement services" for the revitalization of Dawnlight-7 and several timber operations. The fees were generous. The potential for MANO to lock in long-term, below-market oil and timber supplies was enormous.
Shanti read it in her office, the morning sun harsh on the page. The numbers were perfect. The opportunity was staggering. It was exactly the kind of bold, global move she had envisioned for MANO.
Then she got to Annex C: Security & Stability Protocols. It referenced "subcontracted security services provided by Zashchita's operational arm" and "coordination with local stability partners." It was all euphemism. She knew what it meant. It meant MANO's money would be paying for Kapoor's men and Krylov's soldiers to guard an oil field they had just taken from a collapsing state.
She picked up the secure line and called Moscow. It was late there, but he answered.
"This annex," she said, her voice icy with controlled fury. " 'Local stability partners.' Are we funding a private army now, Rajendra?"
"We're funding the security required to realize the contract you're holding, Shanti," his voice came back, calm, infuriatingly reasonable. "The asset is in a volatile region. Without security, there is no asset. No oil, no timber, no contract."
"You said Zashchita was a logistics and stabilization firm. This reads like a… a corporate colonial charter."
"It's a contract, Shanti. It defines responsibilities and risks. The risk is instability. We are mitigating it. That's what the security line item is for. You wanted MANO to be clean, sovereign, and profitable. This is profitable. The cleanest way to do profitable things in a dirty world is to hire someone else to handle the dirt. That's what the Accord is for."
He was using her own logic, the architecture of the Sovereign Accord, against her. MANO was clean. MAKA/Zashchita handled the dirt. And by signing this, MANO would be washing its hands with one hand and writing a check for the dirt with the other.
"And if this 'dirt' splashes back?" she asked quietly. "If there's an incident? A massacre at an oil field that has MANO's name on the ownership papers?"
"Then you invoke the Kill-Switch," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. "You publicly sever ties, release my confession, and save MANO's reputation. The Accord provides for that. It's your sovereign right."
He had thought of everything. He had given her the power to destroy him to save the company, making her complicit in every step that led to that potential moment. It was the most binding contract of all: mutual assured destruction wrapped in a corporate merger.
She was silent for a long time, staring at the lucrative, tainted numbers. "I'll have legal review it."
"Of course," he said. The line went dead.
Shanti put the phone down. She looked out her window at the bustling, honest chaos of the Pune factory yard. She was no longer just building pressure cookers. She was signing checks for a shadow war. The dividend was profit, power, and a stain that no ledger could ever truly clean. The first green shoots of his new kingdom were breaking ground, and their roots were tangled around the foundations of everything she had built. She had her sovereignty. And it tasted of oil and iron.