Vice-Chair Marjanovic

Branka Marjanovic came up through the Combine's mergers wing, the polite name for the office that absorbs bankrupt rivals at gunpoint. Her claim, which she defended in quarterly reviews she was not invited to, is that buying a warship and raiding a company are the same problem on different clocks.

The Quarterly Returns is what happens when that officer requisitions her own capital ship. Batteries arranged by what a shot is worth. A reorganization every fiscal cycle. Departments fired between fights. The board hates her because she keeps proving them unnecessary. The shareholders do not hate the dividends. She will leave the Combine the day a better quarter is on offer. She is forty-six, she sleeps four hours, and she has a private line she has never shared: every fortress is a balance sheet that has not been audited yet.