“They’re cut off from their families, and they live in constant fear of not making production or having to deal with the bats. I wouldn’t call that borrowing trouble,” Zeke said.
Jacqs was quick to say, “I would.”
Zeke sighed and considered Jacqs with a weariness that suggested they’d had this fight a few times. Zeke was the first to look away. “If we could reestablish communication with their families, it would do a lot to soothe their minds.”
Allie made a face. “It probably wouldn’t,” she said. “The camps are getting bad, maybe even worse than when Jacqs was in them. If some of those miners could see their families, it wouldn’t do anything to make them feel better.”
“Great.” Zeke scrubbed his face with his hand. “That’s great. We saved those kids and sent them into hell.”
“I made it out the other side. Plenty of them will too,” Jacqs said, but Allie could read the distress in his eyes.
“If the miners have accounts in Alliance banks, maybe they could transfer the money to the kids,” Allie said. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but it might make things a little better for a while.
“It’d be nice if they could ship some of the excess ore back to their kin,” Jacqs said. Allie was surprised at the depth of the pain she could hear in his voice. This truly bothered him. While Allie knew he had a heart under all that gruff, she wasn’t used to seeing it.
“Why can’t they?” Zeke asked.
“Why can’t they what?”
Zeke leaned forward. “If they have excess ore, why can’t they send it home and support their families?”
Jacqs peered at him. “Have you been hit real hard in the head lately?”
Zeke looked right at Shank. “The miners can produce extra ore. They have a large stockpile already, and the bats seem to think that they only have a right to demand reasonable quotas. The problem is who would ferry any extra? Who would be willing to cross the border to come out here for a shipping run? But maybe you have a solution for that.”
“You want the families to do it?” Shank sucked in a breath and sat back. “They carry kids on those ships, so they’re going to want some sort of guarantee they aren’t going to get blown up by either side.”
Zeke tapped his fingers against the table. “I can’t do anything about Command—we’d have to trust SC to handle that side of things—but I’m getting pretty good at handling the bats. I think I could talk them into this. I’ll just point out that parent units are more efficient when they’re allowed to pursue their original function of supporting their children.”
Shank nodded. “And the family ships would not skim. They’d charge a certain percentage of the goods, but the rest would get delivered to a refinery, and the money would be deposited to the right accounts. If someone stole from refugees, the rest of the families would cut them off.”
“We have a lot of ‘ifs’ going here,” Allie pointed out.
“But they’re attainable goals. I think.” Zeke frowned in concentration.
Jacqs quickly spoke up. “If they ain’t, that’s not on you. Seems like all that is pretty reasonable. The bats get their ore; the miners get to take care of their kin. I ain’t sure how SC is going to like sharing intel with the families, but we can worry about that when we tell ’em and they threaten to shoot us.” Jacqs looked toward the door as Ben came in. He dropped into the chair closest to Becca.
“You okay?” Allie asked.
Ben rolled his eyes. “Yeah, they just had to threaten me. I abandoned my post. I’m a Nicve marine, and I have certain standards to uphold. If I don’t go along with this, they’ll court-martial me and throw me in prison until I forget my own name. Same old, same old.”
Becca reached out and grabbed his hand.
“Hey, I’m fine. The worst they can do is put me in prison, and I wasn’t joking when I said I’d been stationed at worse places. Honestly, I think they’re just blustering so I’ll pressure the rest of you into going along.”
“Should we go along?” Zeke asked.
Allie watched Ben for some sign of distress, but honestly he seemed more amused than anything. Then again, Commander Jasper seemed very amused, so she was starting to think that irrational bouts of amusement were a sign of battle fatigue.
“I believed in the work I did for them. And I don’t think they’d promise you small jobs and then ask you to take out some councilman. That’s not how they work. They’re famous for warning you ahead of time so when you’re nose-deep in the shit, they can say, ‘I told you so.’ I’m fairly sure that’s why they’re spending so much time warning me about prison now. If you turn this down and we all go to prison, I expect ‘I told you so’ communications on a regular basis. I then expect them to offer me a job that would get me out.”
“So they’re more about manipulating than outright lying?” Zeke asked.
“Oh hell yes,” Ben agreed.
“I say we take the job,” Copta said with not a hint of doubt in her tone. Becca seemed surprised for a second, but then she nodded.
“I’m in,” Allie offered. “If we can get them to sign off on our terms, this is the best exit strategy we have. The only other offer on the table is to live with Shank’s mother and never leave the ship for fear of being seen. I think we can all agree that the universe needs more room between Anpaytoo and me.”
