Halberg Infrastructure Systems — Executive Level

  November 7th, 2038 — 15:26 GMT

  Ina Halberg did not raise her voice.

  She didn’t need to.

  Her position, her posture, and her lineage did all the work for her.

  She dialed the internal secure line with the same precision she applied to everything she touched. Each number was pressed cleanly, without hesitation.

  On the second ring, someone answered with the crisp, overeager tone of a civil servant who believed himself important.

  “Ministerial Transitions, Director Phelps speaking.”

  Ina’s voice became smooth and diamond hard.

  “Director Phelps. Frau Halberg, Halberg Infrastructure Systems.”

  A pause followed, the bureaucratic equivalent of a man straightening his papers.

  “Yes, Lady Halberg. We were informed Under-Minister Clarke spoke with you.”

  “He did,” Ina said.

  “And I am calling to clarify several misconceptions.”

  Phelps chuckled nervously.

  “Of course. Naturally. But the Minister would like to emphasize Parliament’s enthusiasm.”

  “Director.”

  The word landed with finality.

  “Before your office circulates a narrative it does not yet have the competence to manage, you will listen very carefully.”

  Silence.

  Ina continued, her voice velvet over steel.

  “You will rescind every informal inquiry sent to Halberg vice presidents. You will halt any discussion of reclamation-chain deployment until I have reviewed your site proposals. And you will remind your Under-Minister that making promises before securing industrial cooperation is, how do you say, operationally suicidal.”

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  Phelps swallowed. Loudly.

  “Lady Halberg, I… we… yes. Of course. Certainly.”

  “Good,” she said.

  Her diction was immaculate.

  “Because I will not have my engineers dragged into a public timetable built on sentiment rather than physics. Halberg Infrastructure will decide when the Magpie-Crow chain is ready. Not Parliament. Not a subcommittee trying to look industrious before recess.”

  “Understood,” he whispered.

  “And,” Ina added, “you will kindly ensure that none of your more enthusiastic colleagues attempt to bypass me again. I am the correct point of contact. Not a vice president who folds under compliments.”

  “Yes, Lady Halberg.”

  “Excellent. That will be all.”

  She ended the call with quiet precision.

  As Ina set the handset gently back into its cradle, the office door opened without a knock.

  Nathan stepped inside, quiet and exhausted, his shoulders still tense from the AGPI meeting.

  He had clearly heard the last line of her call.

  Ina turned to him, the shift from public frost to private warmth so fluid it would shock anyone who didn’t know her.

  She shook her head, muttering in a tone reserved for family.

  “Absolute idiots.

  Well-meaning.”

  A soft scoff followed.

  “And the most dangerous kind.”

  Nathan paused mid-step.

  It hit him harder than he expected, this glimpse of her stepping in front of the blast radius meant for him and Isaac and everyone depending on them. Ina Halberg, whose lineage had survived revolutions and statecraft, standing between their work and Parliament’s hunger for optics.

  He closed the door behind him.

  “Ina… they’re pushing already?”

  “Of course they are.”

  She crossed to him with unhurried confidence.

  “It is Parliament. They smell a solution before it is fully formed, and they want to parade it like a trophy stag.”

  Nathan rubbed his eyes.

  “Ina… if they force early deployment.”

  She touched his cheek, her hand warm and steady.

  “Schatz,” she murmured.

  “You focus on what must be built.”

  Her thumb traced the corner of his jaw, grounding him, anchoring him.

  “I will handle the people who wish to use it.”

  Nathan exhaled slowly.

  Ina’s calm was not passivity. It was mastery.

  The same calm she would show months later, in the incident that nearly took her life.

  The same calm that would haunt him afterward.

  Because this woman, his partner, his axis, was the one shield he could never engineer.

  He had built systems for survival.

  She had survived politics.

  Together, they were the only reason FAEI could exist at all.

  She leaned her forehead briefly against his.

  “Well-meaning idiots, Nathan,” she whispered.

  “Never underestimate them.”

  He laughed, broken and tired and relieved.

  “The most dangerous kind,” he echoed.

  Ina smiled, the kind of smile only he ever saw.

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “Which is why they require management.”

  She kissed the top of his head, quick and grounding.

  “Now,” she said, pulling back with that elegant commander’s posture,

  “tell me everything they asked you for in the meeting.

  I intend to ensure the Ministry does not get a single crumb more.”

  And in that moment Nathan remembered, as he would remember forever, why losing her nearly destroyed him, and why he believed in FAEI not as a system, but as a way to keep the world from ever taking someone like her again.