And unlike money we made from selling our output on the open market, the Tradenotes weren’t taxable.
“If you agree to this,” Eld stressed, “you would all be bound by it. There’d be no backing out.”
“This is ridiculous!” Clines exploded. He’d looked like he was about to pop a cork the whole time Eld had been speaking and I guess he couldn’t keep it in anymore. He popped up from the table suddenly enough to make two of Eld’s armed escort reach for their guns. “There’s no fucking way we’re going to take money from weapons smugglers! God alone knows what they’re going to do with those guns! They could kill innocent people and the blood would be on our hands!”
Eld’s eyes narrowed and I wanted to curse Dave Clines for his inability to keep from mouthing off, but I shrugged the concern away. Torrey had announced what we’d seen to the gathered meeting, and if Eld hadn’t found out from Clines, he would have found out from one of Hellnick’s civilian allies. Still, I gave him a dirty look on general principles.
“That ain’t up to you!” Pappas yelled. “We gotta vote on it! You veterans don’t tell us what to do!”
“This has nothing to do with us being veterans or not,” Torrey said, taking Clines’ side for once. “This has to do with putting ourselves in danger of being prosecuted, of involving ourselves with criminals. Do you seriously expect us to vote to do this?”
“What I expect, Mr. Torrey,” Eld said, all of his hail-fellow-well-met gone as he took a step toward the man, somehow towering over him despite the fact he was only a couple centimeters taller, “is that you’ll all do the smart thing. Because the alternative is not going to be pleasant.”
A crack as loud as a gunshot echoed from the other side of the room and I ducked instinctively, my head snapping around, but it had been Klaus Hellnick smacking his palm flat on the table.
“Enough bullshit! I call for a vote!”
“This isn’t right,” Torrey declared, shoulders tensing as if he were about to do something stupid. I shared a look with Vicky, wondering if we were the only sane people in the room, or at least the only ones who realized the damage seven bad guys with guns could do to a roomful of unarmed farmers and shopkeepers, even if at least a third of them were combat veterans.
“Brad,” I said and his gaze flickered my way for just half a second, as if he was afraid to look away from Eld. “Let them vote. Use your head, man. What do you hope to accomplish here?”
He glared at me, but Kayla touched his hand and drew his attention down to her. She shook her head and the wind went out of Torrey, deflating him like a popped balloon.
“Fine.” He pulled out a chair and fell into it, as if he refused to be part of counting the vote even if he was going to allow it to happen.
“I’ll take the damned vote myself,” Hellnick said, walking up to the podium, shooting Eld a smile rife with satisfaction, as if this was exactly what he’d told the captain would happen. “All right, break out your ‘links…,” he began, pulling his own off his belt. But then he paused, his smile growing broader. “Oh, the hell with that. We’ll do it the old-fashioned way. Show of hands. All in favor of taking Captain Eld’s generous deal, getting a nice payday, which is a huge fucking change from the shit money the Corporate Council gives us the chance to earn with all their tariffs for trading off-planet, and all we gotta do is keep our mouths shut, raise your hand.”
He stuck his own arm up as if to show everyone what he meant, just in case we were all too stupid to remember which body parts were which. And unfortunately, but predictably, the civilians voted with him, even the ones whose votes Torrey was usually able to swing. So did a large percentage of the veterans, which depressed me but didn’t surprise me. There were families here and not a one of them considered upholding the law a more important thing than protecting their kids and their livelihood. And all the mean-looking criminals with weapons were a bit more convincing than appeals to civic duty.
“I don’t think we need to count those opposed,” Hellnick said, aiming a sneer at Torrey. “Motion carried. You can all thank me later, when you actually have the money to make these stinking shithole farms profitable.”
Eld motioned to his people and they moved toward the exit, eyeing us all carefully, as if they thought we’d jump them on the way out.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen,” Eld said, tossing us a mock salute on his way out the door back into the rain. “It was a pleasure doing business with you.”
8
“None of this makes a damn bit of sense,” Dave Clines said, but I shushed him with a gesture and motioned for the others to follow me.
Most of the board was still engaged in a heated argument, those vets who had opposed the vote screaming in the faces of the ones who had supported it, and I was afraid things were going to get ugly. I decided I’d rather get wet than get in the middle of a three-way fistfight.
The rain, as it turned out, had died down in the aftermath of the vote and I threw back my hood, breathing in the fresh, ozone tang of the storm, blinking as an errant drop of rain hit my eye. A peal of thunder rolled across the plains outside Gamma Junction, the vibration rattling the walls of the meeting hall behind us. The streets outside the meeting hall were empty, the storm having chased everyone inside, which gave us a great opportunity to get the hell away.
Vicky said nothing, watching behind us while I scanned the front, making sure Eld and his people hadn’t stuck around. Clines seemed to take the hint and fell into a wedge formation with us, Brad Torrey, and Kayla Gruhl, which would have been more impressive and effective if any of us had been armed with anything deadlier than a belt knife. I led the group around the corner past a storage building and then into an alley between the warehouse and a fabrication center, stopping behind the cover of a few discarded plastic cargo totes waiting to be recycled into something useful.
“You were about to tell us all,” I reminded Clines, “how none of this shit made any sense. And I was about to agree with you.”
“Well, it doesn’t!” he said, throwing up his hands, and I made a quelling gesture to get him to tone it down. “What Eld said in there is bullshit, man!”
“Why?” Torrey demanded, sounding as upset as Clines, though more confused. “It sounded pretty straightforward to me.”
“Because look where we are, Brad!” Clines made an expansive gesture. “Eld is peddling this idea that he and his people are storing weapons here because of new markets that have opened up since the war. But markets where? There’s nothing out here except the Forbidden Zone, and who the hell needs proton cannons when there’s no one in the system but a few farmers and some Corporate Council gas miners?”
“The Tahni,” Vicky suggested. She’d planted her back against the fabrication shop wall and her fingers were clenching and unclenching as if she expected someone to come after us here. “Maybe that’s what that Zan-Thint guy is really doing here. Maybe he’s trying to start some terrorist group to try to attack the occupation and Eld is getting him the guns.”
“Maybe,” I said, already shaking my head, “but something about that just doesn’t feel right. There are still Tahni colonies out there. Hell, there’s still a Tahni settlement on Brigantia, even after we took it back, they still live there. If they’re going to set up some sort of resistance, wouldn’t they store the weapons somewhere with a Tahni population? What’s the point in storing everything out here? The Transition Lines outward only lead to Forbidden Zone systems and the only route inward goes through the Tahni home system. Just getting the weapons here is taking a huge risk.”